INSULINDIAN PHASMID: Few of us can begin to imagine the horror of you --- with all of creation reflected in your forebrain. It must be like the highest of hells, a kaleidoscope of fire and writhing glass. Eternal damnation.
INSULINDIAN PHASMID: Even when you're sleeping...And when you wake, you carry it around on your neck. With eyes open that cannot help but swallow more behind the mirror. I feel great, mute empathy for you.
Grey=today: colorful=tomorrow
"I observed in you pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
We came from Caladan---a paradise world for our form of life. There existed no need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind---we could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life---we went soft, we lost our edge.
Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice had contained a difference then from any other voice in his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them. He felt that any question he might ask her would bring an answer that could lift him out of his flesh-world into something greater.
His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it... the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.
"Father," Paul said, "will Arrakis be as dangerous as everyone says?"
The Duke forced himself to the casual gesture, sat down on a corner of the table, smiled. A whole pattern of conversation welled up in his mind---the kind of thing he might use to dispel the vapors in his men before a battle. The pattern froze before it could be vocalized, confronted by the single thought:
This is my son.
"It'll be dangerous," he admitted.
Boethius recognizes Lady Philosophy. She promises to help him as she has always helped those who love and serve her.
In a similar way, I too was able to see the heavens again when the clouds of my sorrow were swept away; I recovered my judgment and recognized the face of my physician. When I looked at her closely, I saw that she was Philosophy, my nurse, in whose house I had lived from my youth. "Mistress of all virtues," I said, "why have you come, leaving the arc of heaven, to this lonely desert of our exile? Are you a prisoner, too, charged as I am with false accusations?"
She answered, "How could I desert my child, and not share with you the burden of sorrow you carry, a burden caused by hatred of my name?"
Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.
Матушка-земля,
Белая берёзонька...
Для меня - Святая Русь,
Для друтих - занозонька.
Сколько мне ешё годочков
У кукушки поспрошать?
The Romangorod Conference distinguishes between ten different types of missing people. The ninth of them, non-entity, is a flagrant violation of the Internationl Bill of Human Rights. Such a person has not only been eliminated by a state's organ of violence but the documentation of his or her former existence has also been lost. This particular case of political fading, the cursing of memory, has been inflicted on a number of historical figures with varying degrees of success. In the case of Mesque, for example, a loss of as much as ten per cent of the historical scale of the entire culture can be statistically established. We can't dwell on the successful examples --- it would be impossible to talk about a day that did not happen. But small signs are left behind of all of us, and the censor is also human.
What was that sacred and terrible, elusive smell in the air this time? My name is Ambrosius Saint-Miro, the locals call me "Ambrosius Pyha-Mira" and in Graad they call me "Svjata-Mira". "Diduska?" they ask, their eyes wide with affection, but I answer them: "No, I am not your diduska." I am Ambrosius Santa-Mira from Mesque, Ambrosio Hagiamira, I am ambrosia, the holy world. You chose me, authorised me with your life, your thoughts, your mind cabinet. At night, when you went to sleep, and tomorrow morning, from the window of public transport. But what I do is no longer a conversation, there are no arguments here, no sides to choose. The time for doubt is over.
You could never quite say exactly what it is. Even when your eyes were turned inside out and staring straight into your head, you couldn't say. The ghost, slipped through all the lost places, irrevocability. I give it to you to take, it smells in the palm of your hands, the sacred and terrible smell, rub your face against it now. The Pale is ripe with colours, it seeps from the slimy cracks, I open the rib curtains, intermediate frequencies, and all the terrible lost colours of the past come out. Everything is new again.
This is where nihilism leads. This is no longer what could be or what might not be. This is it.
The whole world is in the immediate zone of an entroponetic catastrophe.
Above, in the dark sky of an autumn night, masses of clouds sink into each other. Slowly. He grabs the top of his head with both hands and squeezes. The mouth, blue with cold, opens slowly, the airways shudder, and the stomach ripples in contradictions. His heels dig into the sand and his fists twitch, but nothing changes. He remembers everything. A fifty-second yer stands still inside his skull, a haunting, impossible museum exhibit, a replica of a lost world. The smell is ever sweeter and always the same, an irrefutable fact whose seriousness cannot be overstated: there is no going back.
The End of the World. The dark arches of the mast stations loom over the city entrance. Barriers rise. Customs officers' vests and tripes glow lemon-yellow on the barriers. The motor carriage starts, and everything moves evenly, and smoothly. In the leather-seat-scented rustle of the radio, they talk about an atomic weapon that was dropped on Revachol three hours ago. Khan feels warm, and the female announcer's voice is calm and beautiful. The rows of streetlights rise above the road, crowned with frost, they glide under the dark blue sky of the morning. He drifts along with them to his hometown, where he will leave tomorrow night. One task remains. The lanterns fade. Khan watches as the ghosts of the buildings ome out into the light of dawn.
"These will have much happier lives than we had. They will not experience what we lived through. There will not be so much cruelty in their lives... And yet I don't envy them. Our generation achieved something of amazing significance for history. The cruelty, which the conditions of our life made necessary, will be understood and vindicated. Everything will be understood, everything."
The originary relation of law to life is not application but Abandonment.
ORESTES: The only loves I’ve known were phantom loves, rare and vacillating as will-o-the-wisps. The solid passions of the living were never mine. Never! […] Nobody is waiting for me anywhere. I wander from city to city, a stranger to all others and to myself, and the cities close again behind me like the waters of a pool. If I leave Argos, what trace of my coming will remain, except the cruel disappointment of your hope? […] What do I care for happiness? I want my share of memories, my native soil, my place among the men of Argos.
Scylla: I put you before my country, I put you before my father. Where are you fleeing, pitiless man, whose victory is due to my kindness no less than my crime?
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease and midnight never come.
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise, again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul. O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
O run slowly, slowly, you horses of night!
When I was little, I would follow you around the garden, asking all their names. We walked beneath these trees; you named them all and promised them to me. Ten apple trees, and thirteen pear trees, forty figs, and fifty grapevines which ripen one by one.
In Tadjik and Kazakh legend Lenin was as high as the hills, as the clouds; in Dungan folklore he was brighter than the sun and knew no night. The Oyruts say that he had a sunbeam in his right hand, a moonbeam in his left, the ground trembled under him. For the Uzbeks Lenin was a giant who could shake the earth and move great rocks in his search for the fortune hidden in the hills; he could solve the most puzzling riddles. In Kirgiz story he had a magic ring, with the help of which he overthrew the power of the evil one and liberated the poor from wrong and injustice. He is reputed to have arrived in Armenia on a White horse, to lead the people. In another legend Lenin was a Titan struggling against Asmodeus, the friend of the rich and privileged, the worst enemy of the poor. Asmodeus strove to kill Lenin, but the light from the hero’s eyes put him to flight. Lenin then seated himself upon an eagle and flew to Dagestan, where he stirred up war against the rich, and finally flew back to the cold regions to write books of truth for the people. For the northern Ostyaks Lenin was a great seal hunter who slew the rich fur traders and gave the booty to the poor; similarly, the Nentsy think of Lenin as the most expert of all sailors, who overcame his enemies in combat, seized their dogs and reindeer, and divided them among the poor.