A lavish and sensuous excerpt from Joris-Karl Huysmans’ extraordinary 1884 novel A Rebours (Against Nature), just to draw you into the world of dreams.

The gardeners were bringing in yet more new varieties; this time they simulated the appearance of fake skin scored by artificial veins; and the majority, as though eaten away by syphilis and leprosy, exhibited livid flesh marbled with roseola and damasked with darters; others were the bright pink of scars that are healing, or the brownish tint of scabs in the process of forming; others were the blistering from cautery or puffing up from burns; still others revealed hairy skins pitted by ulcers and embossed with chancres; and then, finally, there were some which looked as though they were covered with dressings, plastered with black mercury ointment, with green unguents made from atropine, or sprinkled with the glittery-yellow dust of iodoform powder.

Why am I always the last to hear? (No need to comment).

I often issue a statement, if you will, that I do not care for stories about cats. In fact, I do not care for cats in general. Some take such statements as a challenge and dare to send me cat stories.

I grudgingly admit I loved that one, despite the inclusion of a cat.

Just cleaning out Closets. Only readying for the next Issue. Maybe a little Colour this time.

A greater joy each time I watch it.

Propped up on the mantelpiece
Throphies stuffed in a life that flies
A couple of seconds can be a long time
If’n it’s froze, if’n it’s froze
_______________________
Everybody lies
What’s the big deal?
It’s impossible to know what is and isn’t sealed
Faith is the lies we tell and tell ourselves
Life is the lies we tell everybody else
History is a daisy chain of lies
Humans love distortion
Public record is a poetic device
Blown way out of all proportion

_______________________

et cetera, et cetera.

I♥VIC

£££

No. Changed my mind. Again.