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TABLE OF CONTENTS - PROSEFor Luca - Daniele Pinna
I care about you… I care about you….. I care about you…. I care about you …. I care about you …. I care about you …. I’d repeat it over and over again for those thousands of times I would have wanted to say this to you, but didn’t. I’d like to go back to all those times we met and greeted at school, met and greeted at Fabio’s house, at Marco’s house, in restaurant’s and in pubs. I’d like to repeat it for all those times we met and greeted at my house, like last Sunday when, after having given me a ride home and having said goodnight, you stood there staring at me for a little bit more, leaving me embarrassed, as if I had forgotten to give you something, to TELL you something. But I, stupid, ended that embarrassment asking you to thank your parents for the dinner they had offered me; I, stupid, made you go away unsatisfied; I, stupid to the bone, imbecile for all I’m worth, didn’t realize that I was forgetting to tell you something extremely important, something we all take for granted often, too often. Because we are naive, we are victims of our own conventions. Of the conventions that treat certain phrases like simple pretensions, like shabby oversentimentalities. But our conventions are stupid, and we are stupid to apply them. You, on the other hand, were a sentimentalist, you truly believed in affections, you really believed in caring about other people and telling them. Maybe I ignored this, and maybe everyone underestimated the tender soul that tried to be strong at all costs. And maybe, if I would have hugged you every once in a while, if I would have once honestly told you how much I cared about you, I wouldn’t have found myself Friday night in that cold and impersonal Intensive Care room, squeezing your hand, never so pale and cold. I wouldn’t have found myself tightening my grip, hoping that you would answer, hoping that you would still look at me like the previous Sunday. And now I live in the regret, in the awful regret of not having been able to tell you how much I care about you. Now, in bloody delay, I curse all the times that, maybe, I and others have underestimated you and haven’t satisfied your sweet and gentle heart. Therefore, if you allow me, I’d like to close my eyes and place the stars in the exact same position they were in on that clear night, that night when, through the helmet’s visor, your big blue eyes gazed at me like a child that doesn’t find presents under a stripped christmas tree. And I’d like to be there to satisfy you, to tell you on my and everyone’s behalf how much we all care about you, how precious you are, how dear you are to us and how much you really are worth. On my and all your friend’s behalf, I’d like to remind you how great of a friend you are, have always and always be. I’d like to make you touch the scar you’ve left on all of us and make you listen to the roar that our friendship makes. By now, each one of us carries a sweet share, a tender recollection, of what was your smile, your hug and your encompassing laugh. And, if the stars assured me their stillness, if they would stay put just a little more, I’d keep repeating, followed by all your dearest friends, that simple, yet extremely important phrase… …. I care about you …. I care about you …. I care about you … I love you!
Yes there is and always has been one human race. Which I find is both
impressive and unimpressive. We all use words. A few of us use those complex
mathematical formulas which are so useful in technology and so possibly
useful and also both harmful and useless in social engineering. Poets
use words better than others. Even though for some reason, the stuff doesn't
sell well. Hm, must be the gods who disapprove of us? Or the good and
responsible registered leagues of mediocrities who sometimes seem to run
nearly everything, uh, for the greatest good of the greatest number of
course. Well, as futile as this may seem, I am tired of existig in the
shadows of these Great Thinkers that my post refers to , who are your
family and also mine: my father's oldest brother, the "genius"
, supposedly wanted to be a poet but got browbeaten by his dad, an accountant,
into becoming an engineer. Auden, who was trained as an engineer, but never quite "got over it" (like how can you?) once wrote that poetry "survives ina valley of it's own saying/where executives would never want to tamper." Or something like that. Another modern formula for endless introspection and in most cases, very very little money. Or as anoither engineer, an art engineer, once yelled at me in college, "you can't change hte world!" As he ran all the way to the bank and the art department of some college where he got a fellowship. Ok, you know the territory. We all do. "The world" is "too much" (apparantly) so we dwell solely within the realm of hte personal and metaphysical. Any way out of that? I'd like to be able to afford my uncle's house or my dad's but I wouldnt' wanna be them.. KNow what I mean?
I have often had the same thought that you express here. I have When asked to explain why I am easily upset, why I am fundamentally The high IQers on the paternal side of my family are engineers. They
Consider racism. I think it is a problem that humans created. They Still, many refuse to listen. It seems to me that enough people want
Kay
Paul
Thanks Torg, Mark WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN (1907 - 1973) Auden, widely regarded as the greatest English poet of the 20th century, Auden continued to make use of North Pennine imagery at intervals for the rest of his life, and made it clear that the area constituted one of the bedrocks of his poetry. Amor Loci (1965) is a particularly poignant evocation of his 'great good place'. http://www.audensociety.org/ He discovered that poetry was an art unlike any other, an art which must either be ignored or appreciated. In this excerpt from 'The Cave of Making', Auden implies that if poetry is read, its influence on society can be profound, but that it is far too often ‘unpopular’ and ‘ignored’. ‘After all, it's rather a privilege A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets,
some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can
and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
The world and everything that is in it, or at least everything that concerns most of us is, believe it or not==and in it's most profound sense -- much like a gigantic glob of Swiss Cheese. And like all pieces of Swiss Cheese, it has solid areas of (hopefully) wonderful tasting cheese as well as lots of holes amidst the cheese, somewhat irregularly spaced. Nobody knows exactly why this distribution occured although nearly everybody has some theory or other about the matter and its consequences.Or in other words, what they end up talking about quite often. These theories basically state why their lives,revolving of course mainly around procuring this cheese eg eating etc--- either in the center of the cheese or the periphery,or perhaps in the center of some hole or at its periphery , (wherever they ended up or perhaps relocated to---were justified or meritorious and quite often, as well, why the others, who came from "somewhere really far away" or who did a "bad job" of procuring this cheese-(or perhaps "too good" a job) -were unjustified.or lacking virtue. Other than that, most of everything else is a lot of fancy words designed to keep many folks from dying of stress and boredom --that is, among the at least somewhat cheese-endowed; the others alas, really have no time for this. As well as to go boldly where no man has gone before and perhaps find some ..as yet undiscovered sources of ..or even new..types of ..cheese. Well, no, that's not all there is to it, but things, minus some rather fancy jargon or English constructions or formulas of one kind or another can often get rather cheesy in this world and I dont' know too much about any others.. (indirect apologies to Mr Disney (among others).Uh, sort of)
Reply to "Thomas Hadley's" <snip>..... I find this Latin motto a bittersweet, if not PC, reassurance:
(I may actually get it tattooed on my left (sinistre) arm); Illegetami
Non Carborudum" (Bastards not grinding: i.e., don't let
As I typed this post, I looked up sinister in my thesarus. At the end of the list of disheartening synonyms it says "see-bad". I guess some of us should be left alone. (sorry for pun-ishing you). I'm curious as to the makeup and opinion of our group members. Is there any relationship to being lefthanded and the arts? Do southpaws write more sinister poems? Hello There All Poets - Dusk Wilson - Weaver Hello there, poets all, This response may qualify me as the most dilatory post-er our group has ever known, so it is with humility and grins that I at last respond to a poem that Kay shared here almost FIVE MONTHS AGO (see "Point Lobos" below).... This response may also qualify me as the most garrulous member of our group ever, and that's not a real flattering title within the succinct world of poetry. But I'll sally forth, nonetheless, and incredibly enough, I'll dare ask this illustrious band of poets to drift mildly left-brainward for a few minutes in exploring something mathematical (oh, God! not that!) that has tremendous bearing on every one of the Fine Arts, including the poetry we all love. This mathematical something (oh, there it is again!) is included in the poem that Kay shared. It was repeatedly used in the works of DaVinci, Monet, Bach, Berlioz, Ansel Adams, and thousands of other artisans of all disciplines throughout recorded history. It is found in the design of our greatest structures (The Pyramids at Giza, The Parthenon, the great Shiite temples, Stonehenge), just as it is in everyday items such as credit cards and legal notepads. It is part of the geometry of pine cones, sunflowers, snowflakes, the human body, and even the atomic structure of plutonium, to name a precious few. At this point, I hope you're more curious than terrified, so here goes... Kay, not only do I think the poem reprinted below is enjoyable for its
language, but also I think its very form is worthy of consideration....
that is, Dr. Dorn's "Golden Section Thirteener." In case the
term "golden section" is alien to members of our PGS group,
it refers to a ratio that shows up in nature an astonishing number of
times, a ratio that constitutes one of the very building blocks of the
world around us. Other terms used to describe this relationship include:
the golden mean, the golden ratio, the Fibonacci series of numbers, and
phi (not "pi," mind you, although pi is a cousin of phi).
Here where the wolves have trod, the grass is bruised.
Inside were the offices of the staff or management or whoever was in charge, filled with office machines and files and all sorts of colorful reproductions of this or that old European painting as well as peoples' family photographs. The management was mostly separate from the workers, or clients or, well, whoever they were as these did not have offices and also ate separately. This seemed to be okay with everybody and indeed, Progress House operated without many problems week in and week out, year after year. That is, whatever was going on there, there were no loud, noisy worker's strikes or riots or altercations of any kind, which one sometimes found in many other places. . People were very serious and professional and smiled---among the management--and if some of the workers or clients or whoever they were became upset with their situation, nobody knew. Though it was rumored that occasionally some went in for rehabilitation for some defect in their attitude or habits or points of view or behavior or brain-chemistry. Nobody liked to talk about that much. Management ran its management groups and led some of the worker or client or whomsoever groups. And then parted for a separate dining room. Occasionally reporters from some outside paper would come into the structure to do a story about Progress House. At these times, the management would become quite strict and tell the workers or clients or whoever they were to put their best foot orward and respect themselves and the firm or agency or whatever Progress House really was, because nobody knew for sure. It turned out that almost all of the stories done in the papers about Progress House were extremely positive, which was an unusual coincidence, I suppose. Everything worked very well indeed, but one day the management put up a series of signs written in a type of script which, for some reason, only the most intelligent personnel could understand. These read: "Do,Don't Think", "Thought is Unprogressive", "Excellent, But Who Would Buy It?" and "I Belong Therefore I Exist.", "Those Who Think Don't Eat" "You Can't Change the World" and "Don't Be Angry".among other slogans. In addition they placed a poster which nobody could decipher except, as I said, the more intelligent of the workers or clients including the management staff: in bold letters, it read, "Those Who Thought Too Much" and underneath this caption were photographs or drawings of various artists and writers and actors and politicians and philosophers and spiritual leaders who had met a bad or untimely end or who had suffered a great deal, presumably from too many attempts at independent thought. After all, in this world, who wants to meet a bad end when good ends can be somewhat uncommon? Everything functioned very well here and all were quite happy even if some grumbled a great deal about their situation.There was nothing to be done. Things were as they were. You might as well get used to it. The buses came on time, the groups ran according to schedule, the meals were always served on time as well. What more could one ask for? In this best of all possible worlds? For Anne, a weekend at the beach was like a weekend at a carnival. While the adults slept on towels, browning their oil slicked backs, she wandered down the boardwalk. Duffy's sold gleaming conches and periwinkles, imported all the way from Cape Hope and dunked ten times in varnish for long term preservation. Wacky Patty's offered rhinestone rimmed sunglasses, flourescent pink visors, postcards of the local Hilton, and one-size-fits-all T shirts emblazoned with "Ocean City, Miami of the North" in screeching orange. Behind a scratched open air counter reeking of solidified grease, a coppery man with an accent hawked cotton candy and hot dogs with everything on them. A fat lady in a polka dotted bathing suit waddled out of the gypsy parlor, scratched her balding scalp and exclaimed that Madame Celeste, Reader and Advisor, had foreseen wealth and romance in her future. Anne glanced at the faded gauze curtains behind the chipped hand-painted lettering and wondered if this gypsy bought her crystal ball and tarot cards from some discount wholesaler of psychic paraphernalia. "So, what do you want today, little girl?", the man asked when a tinkling bell on the door announced Anne's entry into Bane's House of Magic; the owner's bass, which sometimes jarred her like a blast from a trombone, greeted her today with the warm suggestive notes of a cello. "Not outside watching Lola?" Lola, a gray hen, strutted haughtily in a her cage while vacationers scowled at the gold and purple calligraphy "How smart are you? Can you beat Lola at tic-tac-toe? 25 cents", then rummaged through pockets for spare change. Swaggering playboys with carefully exposed chests would drop ten quarters into that slot, then slink away. College guys would scoff that any moron could beat a bird, then wince at their losses and embarrassment. Stooped old men in Hawaiian shorts, tanned mothers pushing strollers and weightlifters turning to flab would glance away from Lola, recalling how they'd been trounced. Anne had thought Lola a magic bird, a prodigy even smarter than whiz kid Danny, until Father told her that Lola was probably controlled by a computer. "The bird always goes first, right?," he'd asked. "And always puts her X in the center square? With that strategy, you're guaranteed to never lose a game of tic-tac-toe. A computer records her move and tells her where to peck next; it only takes a simple computer to do that, I could build one in the basement. And Lola's been taught to peck where the computer sets a little red light blinking. When she wins, she gets rewarded with more bird seed, right? Simple behavioral conditioning." Anne didn't know what behavioral conditioning was, but she knew that wires and cables ran out of computers; when she scrutinized the cage, she couldn't see any wires poking from mysterious black boxes or cables snaking under the floormat or red lights. "No, I'm shopping inside today." "Oh, we have lots of goodies in here too," the owner cooed as he leaned towards her, close enough for her to smell his sweet spice breath laced with ginger and something that prickled her nose. With his craggy face eroded into deep gullies around the mouth, he seemed as ancient as a boulder; still, his black eyes sparkled, sometimes burned into her more hotly than the sun. He billed himself as Doctor Heironymous O. Bane, expert magician and master alchemist, and demanded to be addressed as "Doctor" in business transactions. Anne's father guessed that the name was fake, a stage name for business; no real doctor worth his weight in diplomas would set up shop selling snake oil and plastic wands. "Do you sell snake oil?", Anne asked. "Snake oil?" The proprietor cackled. "Little girl, didn't they teach you in school that snake's aren't oily? They're not even slimy. They feel like alligator shoes and their insides are all sinew and fang. But, little girl, we don't even sell snake meat; that would be a sacriledge to one of nature's most beautiful animals. Someone's been telling you stories, dissing the snake. Watch a snake move, little girl, it dances through the grass; it's melody in motion. And the painted mosaics on its back beat any designs those fancy merchants of Turkish carpets sell to suckers. But kid, I'm rambling. Wander around, see what catches yor eye." Anne scanned the pale lavender walls, the gauzy cobwebs draped from a cracked plaster ceiling, the gaunt proprietor as pale as an overcast sky. The same weighted dice, guaranteed to bring any wannabe gambler into the winner's cycle, grayed under sedimenting dust; the same packs of marked cards, which wouldn't even fool a sleepy kid, waited in smokey boxes labeled "Players' Dream". Long capes, of violet velveteen studded with glass beads or decorated with white felt moons and gold foil stars, hung from creaking racks beside spray painted silver wands stippled with glitter. Top hats in black, white and royal blue satin lined a high shelf, each with a secret compartment for hiding even the fattest rabbit during a disappearing act; Anne imagined the hat rocking back and forth on the performer's head as the rabbit scratched at his scalp before being allowed to leap away. Whenever Anne entered the shop, Doctor Bane glared at her over his pince nez, then loped towards her, his shiny bowtie incongrously formal against his dusty complexion; Anne guessed that Father was right, that few customers bought merchandise and that the seller of dreams and magic made his profit off the genius bird. "But our best stuff, the really interesting stuff, is behind the counter," Dr. Bane interjected. He lifted a box and spread tinted bottles, jars of crimson and fuschia creams, plump and skinnny brushes, and oily pencils ranging from raw umber to yellow ochre across the counter. "Face paint," he continued. "Actors have used it for centuries. But you can too. If you follow the instructions in this manual, you can make yourself look like anyone. You can be anyone; put on the new face and be the person of your dreams. You can fool your teachers into thinking you're the kid next to you who's always well behaved. You can fool your mother into thinking you're an reservation orphan collecting for charity. You can pencil in arched black eyebrows, cover your own with this special white paste, wear this black wig and look like the greatest geisha of the century -" "Geisha?" Anne looked perplexed. "But I don't want to look like a geisha. And my parents wouldn't allow me to wear all that makeup." "Parents," Dr. Bane muttered sympathically, "They never understand, do they? But, I wouldn't want to cause you any trouble at home. There's other stuff back here, stuff which won't start the parents asking questions, stuff far more interesting to an intelligent girl than the geisha kit." Dr. Bane lifted a heavy tome, with thin yellowing pages and the title "The truth Behind Edgar Cayce: How to Become a Genuine Psychic" in gilt across its cracked leather cover. "How much is it?" Nothing in this store ever had a price tag. Dr. Bane squinted. "Eighty dollars," he drawled. "Eighty? That's way more than I can spend, Mr. Bane," Anne sputtered. "Way more than I have in all my savings put together, and some of that money has to go for birthday presents and lunches." "That's Doctor Bane, little girl". His eyes, above the angular frosted cheeks, glowered in their dark hollows. "Never forget the doctor. Eighty dollars isn't much when you're buying lessons in telepathy. When you're learning how to predict the future, including the lottery numbers which could make you a millionaire. Darn cheap, for a payback of ten million dollars or knowing in advance who's scheming to screw you over. Or knowing all the answers because you can read the teacher's mind. Bargain basement cheap; most people would grab it but I don't offer it to most people. Mow a few lawns, run a few errands, kid, and it's yours. Some people do work for what they want." "Uh, Dr. Bane, I do want it, "Anne stammered. "But I'd be afraid to read it. The pages are so thin; they feel like they'd fall apart when I turned them. And the writing's so small, I can hardly make out the words. And the script's funny too, slanted and squiggly." "Gothic, back then all the deep writing was in the Germanic style, the style of the arcana." Dr Bane noticed Anna's perplexed expression. "Maybe when you're older. No, this really isn't for kids to play with; one needs maturity. But - I have something you might enjoy now." He lifted a pocked lumpy rock; it looked like a piece of concrete. "A genuine piece from Haley's comet, fell to earth the last time Haley passed by. This rock's been past Pluto, it's seen mercury close up and personal, and it comes with its own certificate of authenticity." Anne squinted at the round gold seal pasted on a sheet of vellum filled with illegible signatures. "See. All these signatures are from genuine nobel laureates or first rate space engineers. It's not everyday that you get something authenticated by rocket scientists, a genuine piece of the cometary rock." "Uh, I don't know," Anne shrugged. "It looks too much like the pieces that broke off the back steps last summer. Or something I could steal from a construction site. My mother won't be happy to see it in my room; she'll tell me to throw that ugly hunk away and tell me that only beautiful things should be brought indoors." "Then, if you want something beautiful, I may have just the thing for you, "Dr. Bane pronounced, as he lifted an egg shaped mass. "An extraterrestrial geode. Or really, an extratemporal geode...if the term 'geode' can even be applied to something not of this world" Anne gaped. The exterior was as smooth and glossy as factory buffed metal, but gleamed like mica, as though hundreds of semitranslucent, reflective flakes had been layered atop one another; this casing ended at the opening into an amythest city. The longer she looked, the more Anna felt pulled into that metropolis of purple towers, noticing how one facet reflected rosy light and immersing herself in alleys where tiny facets joined into stairs rising towards the enigmatic and invisible. "It was dropped by a ship from a world where time runs in the opposite direction; that's what the scientists think. Our future is their past, and this is a memory stone from that world. For us, it's a prophecy stone." He peered closely at Anne until her stare was locked into his. "That means, this rock can tell you about the future. But you have to hold it in both hands and ask it your question out loud, then stare into the crystals to see the picture. Try it." Anne clutched the smooth exterior that resisted scratches and her own sweaty fingerprints. "What will Camden be like in the year 3000?", she asked, recalling the treeless streets of tin box stores and factories lean and brown as cigars that belched out suffocating plumes of mauve and yellow. Whenever she rode through Camden en route to the shore, she tried to hold her breath against the stinging smells; her father called it "the pollution capital of the east" and wandered how many mutant children were locked away in its attics. The stone vibrated gently and warmed in Anne's hands. The amythest crystals trembled, then dissolved into a lavender cloud which whirled until its particles joined into vague shapes, then a distinct picture; Anne saw a flat land spotted with craggy charred ruins and only occasional tufts of dry grass poking through the wounded earth. "Are you sure it's not just reading my mind? Or that I'm not just seeing what I imagined might happen?" Anne asked. "Well, some people believe we can create reality, bring something into being if enough people imagine it intensely. But that's religion or psychlogy; this rock isn't a psychologist. And you should try asking it about something in the near future, something you can verify. You won't be around in a thousand years to find out what happens to Camden." "True," Anne muttered. "What will my family be eating tonight?" Dr. Bane nodded approvingly. Anne gazed into the geode and saw her parents bickering, her mother insisting that "We're at the shore, Fred; fish is what people eat at the shore", then the hostess leading them to a table where father ordered shrimp for everyone from a discrete waiter. "How much?", she asked. "How much do you have?" "Only $38.50," Anne sighed. "And that includes lunch money for tomarrow." She dropped her gaze to the floor and idly drew a line in the dust with her left shoe.
Anne gaped, wide eyed, then pawed through all her pockets, heaping crumpled bills and coins on the counter. Dr. Bane counted carefully. "It's yours," he declared. "I'm almost giving it away. And remember, little girl, people don't usually give away anything for free, not in this world; they expect other payment later. So, think of me when you look at it. And use it well." "Oh, I will!", Anne exclaimed. "Thank you so much! And,uh, Dr. Bane, one more thing?" "Yes," Dr. Bane's asked hesitantly. "I'm not a little girl; I'll be thirteen next month." That night, Anne and her family ate shrimp at The Briny Bucket, an upscale fish house near the high rise hotels. As she left, she noted the cloyingly sweet aroma of her mother' s tanning lotion mixed with the pungent saltiness of the ocean breeze; she watched the plaintively squawking gulls circle before swooping down to peck at tossed rolls and paper plates encrusted with pizza sauce. As the first stars flickered in a cyanotic sky, she ran her fingertip over the the brown, almost featureless surface of a lone penny at the bottom of her pocket and thought fondly of her new geode. Anne asked the stone little questions, ones with answers that didn't really matter. What will I get for my next birthday? Who will be my new math teacher? Will Uncle Joe fly all the way from Minneapolis to visit us this Thanksgiving? Always, the stone answered correctly. She showed the stone to her father but didn't tell him what it could do. He remarked that she'd gotten a good deal for $38, even if the crystals weren't real amythest but just convincing replicas. "I've never seen a geode with this kind of shell," he muttered, frowning. "Their shells usually are bumpy, course rock. And this doesn't look like any metal I've seen before either. Maybe it's a new super-hard plastic. " Anne had winced when he tried, unsuccessfully, to scratch it with hs pocket knife. "I could take it to the guys at the lab. They have lasers, gas spectrophotometry, electron microscopy. They could chip off a piece so tiny you wouldn't even notice, put it through the tests, and tell you exactly what you've got here." Anne declined the offer. She slept with the geode on the nightstand beside her. Sometimes she dreamed of Dr. Bane, even more gaunt and ashen faced, huddled like a statue in his vacant store as the dust settled over him. "Use it well", he'd drone, "Use your gift well"; she'd feel the heat burning in those ember eyes. After such dreams, the geode seemed slightly warmer than room air and seemed to vibrate just at the threshhold of detection. Anne told herself that she was feeling vibrations from trucks and vans rumbling down the street, and that the warmth was caused by her own heated imagination; girls who owned foretune telling geodes were prone to wild fantasies. Use it well. "Where will I be at age thirty?". The geode showed a handsome but life-hardened man arguing with a tired woman who held a bawling three year old. Papers bearing the word "custody" slammed on a mahagany desk, one signature line was left blank on a paper labeled "settlement". Divorce court, just where her parents might end up if they didn't stop shouting. "What will my parents be doing tonight?", she asked the stone one fall afternoon, as she walked home from after-school band practice. The geode showed a ransacked house, clothes strewn across the floor, jewelry and big screen TV and stereos and expensive furniture missing; dark stains splattered the kitchen walls and floor. The image flickered, rematerialized into the picture of a gun and a clock reading 5:15. "That's now!", Anne screamed inwardly and ran. "I'm sorry, you've got to keep out. There's nothing you can do," the policeman barked as Anne tried to push her way past the cops and screeching sirens into the house. "Rickster," the policeman shouted to a burly female, "Keep this kid company so she doesn't destroy the crime scene. It's her parents". "At least four gunshots, that's what the neighbor heard when she called. Could be more bullets inside though, " Anne overheard as she stood rigidly in the lady cop's arms, still too overwhelmed to cry. "Looks like they cleaned out the place; maybe the owners put up a fight. Lady next door says that four guys ran out and jumped in a truck; she just says that they looked like thugs. But she does remember the driver of the van - says he had the whitest skin she's ever seen, looked craggy faced and too old for this kind of job, almost like a skeleton at the wheel." "Probably her imagination. Panic makes you see things". Anne clutched the geode and shivered in the lady cop's arms. Later that night, she stole out of the police station to a corner pay phone and asked Directory Assistance for the phone number of Banes House of Magic. "I'm sorry, the number you have requested is no longer in service", the tinny voice droned. She called Madame Celeste, Reader and Advisor. "I'm sorry to bother you," she panted, "You don't know me but I have to talk to Dr. Bane - Bane's House of Magic, just next door to you. I wouldn't bother you but it's an emergency." "Oh, I'm sorry honey, but he's not there any more. It was the strangest thing - he just packed everything into a van and left in the middle of the night. No warning, no "store closing" signs, just vamoosed. I wouldn't even have known he was gone, that place always being so empty, but he woke me with his racket. All this clanking and door slamming when even the seagulls were asleep. Most of all, his special hen Lola squawking loud enough to wake the people in the Hilton penthouse; he left her behind, you know, so I guess I'll have to take her in. Honey, you should have called last night, he was still here." Anna glared at the geode. "Where's Dr. Bane?" she asked. The crystals, wan under the street lamps, did nothing. She rephrased the question "What will Dr. Bane be doing in fifteen minutes?" The crystals, anemically colorless, retained their form. "What will Dr. Bane be doing tomarrow? Where will I be tomarrow?" The geode refused to answer. In the shadows cast by the yellow lights, the angular crystals seemed like the sides of a stony face and the dark spaces between them like the burning black eyes that she recalled too well. "Damn you! Who needs you!", she sobbed, and hurled the geode at the ground. The once unscratchable shell and crystals splintered into a thousand shards; as Anne shook, each shard became smaller and smaller, mixing imperceptibly with the glass and metal dust that coated most streets, then dissolving altogether into the pavement. "Oh, there you are!" the burly policewoman called. "It's
not safe to wander around out here this late. Come inside; your uncle's
due in around midnight."
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