Dear reader,
I should make this an opening post, one in which I welcome you in a kind of warm hospitality, to better suit your mood; and to state that I am here to please your eye with some flight of fancy.This is not the case, though...Here in this little wretched corner, that I affectionately dubbed "The Cat and Fiddle" you will not find solace, and I do not intend to write in a form of mock poesy* to amuse you.But still there is hope for your satisfaction with the "unique"...I am sure that among my downward spirals of thought you shall find an odd fascination with the very things that make my heart resonate in a myriad of tones, that are crafted in such an architecture it will either leave you enchanted or in little awe.So, with these trifles out of the way we may begin to further follow...
It was past five o'clock...I was the only one in a party of eight that still complained about the fact that i did not have my tea ( and that was of meager importance, because I was the only one to keep to such a custom ).We were on the outskirts of this lovely city of ours, in a middle of a grassy field.A great mass of clouds were towering their frames to stifle the dusky sky.And in this tightening of nonexistent tendons the feeble red glare of the sun managed to find it's way through rough openings.We were dragging our feet through the fine mud that was just beneath the tall grass...There was a lot of cursing, even from the ladies in our lot.The wind didn't help our state, but only amplified our inert anxieties.On its gentle Eastern breeze it brought the stench of decay.Waste and animal death...for you see, we were near a great rubbish pit ( one of the largest of our city, I believe ).
Here ought to be the part where I reveal the purpose of our being there, why such a large party? and other information leading towards some paroxistical chain of events.But that is all of too little bother...For right in front of me, stifling my eyes, erecting itself over my sight was the shape of a derelict abbey.Its form was all that was left of it...great "murs" of geometrical beauty heaved themselves up into the air.A delicate balancing act of weather worn arcades and columns, and the spectacle of the sheer mass of bricks was enough to stamp the feel of tininess unto anyone who dared to openly view this as such.
It was empty...only its walls remained. Large holes punctured them, once stain glass adorned their insides, now only voided sockets and lidless windows staring inside and out of wilderness.A great, cracked dome broke itself over our heads.The shattered beauty of skilled masons now the perch of crows and ravens.Dozens upon dozens lined the jagged teeth of red brick which made out from the base of the dome.Malevolent, black, staring us down with an evil eye, croaking seldom, startled upon our intrusion into their solitary den. Flapping ill wings, harvesters of decay the birds that are the crow and raven, the watchers of the derelict.
Three large gateless entrances made light in the western wall...The sun was tumbling down in a yellow glow.It was not cheerful, not even melancholic, but diseased.The sky was putting out its daytime light in sickness, a pestilence of the clouds, of the whole clime, which blew on us with a wind of plague, a stench of unbirth.
This was all played out in front of me last summer, and my dearest reader due note that even in the most abandoned corners you might stumble upon, chance and happening are subjects to be ruled out.As I found out later on, this brought on great joy to me, a gift maybe...for I do believe in the stuff that memories are gained and lost upon, in such stuff that, even if impenetrable, is still mirrored back in fancy, and fancy turned, by nothing less than subtle alchemy, into living flesh.
Yours A. Aron
