The Sandstone Edifice: Intro
The time has come due to make good on my promise to write you a story. Here's the beginning of the set-up. I hope you like it. More to come...
The Sandstone Edifice and a Temptress of Valhalla
By Pat [Blank]
Begun 01//27/07
Barreling forth from the flimsiness of my dreams for as long as I remember, there have lurked images involving a grand and imposing house standing upon a hill.
Though the house itself remains principally the same, the characters float in and out of the setting with great frequency, changing in presence and prominence as suddenly as they do in the real world. A percentage of these faces are physically known to me, but I am reasonably certain that I have never seen this house during my waking hours.
The countenance of the house is eerie and imposing, and when I fix gaze upon it, I am greeted with the sensation of holding a leash attached to a large dog -- powerful and awe-inspiring things that I, for whatever reason, have been granted a modicum of control over, if merely by appearance only.
After many slumberous voyages to the house, I've developed an understanding that the house contains the ability to spin off on iterations of itself, potentially growing unrecognizable and distant from me, suddenly possessing of a will perhaps in violation of my own, thereby casting aside its most regular visitor and nominal master. I find myself trying very hard to maintain its image in my mind, to maintain points of reference about it, lest in my absence it succumbs to wildness and transforms completely out of my control.
But it hasn't squirmed away from me yet. To be sure, it changes and adapts with great frequency, sometimes in anticipation of my directions or wishes, other times resisting my commands completely. We are at once separated and intimately intertwined, in ways that I am only beginning to understand and probably never will completely. In its strange way, it challenges me by gently pushing me forward, serving a dual function as both a repository and a reflecting pool of my thoughts.
So for now, as ever before, it stands solemnly upon its hill, unaffected by my meandering contemplations of its inner-workings, glowing in all its Victorian magnificence, a piercing vision of splendor, regally administering its tiny hill kingdom. That small rise in the earth, nothing more than a gradual upward slope, lends glory and prominence that lighting or external accoutrement never could.
The angles of the house melt in a graceful and peculiar fashion into the hill. I've been lead to believe that the lawn serves as some sort of extension of the house, like a broad, complex series of nerves splaying outward, picking up on the goings on near the far reaches of the property, that the two are intertwined to a degree. Always meticulous in length, the grass of the sloped lawn seems to have a different manicure every time I stroll upon it. I yet to venture into the deep-green woods lying to the left and to the right of the property. My hesitence is not due to an apprehension of what lies within; rather, the focus of my attention always falls squarely on the limitless peculiarities of the house.
I have stared at its many features for hours on end, sketched them sloppily on scraps of paper, and attempted to retain to memory every last detail of its exterior, all to no avail. Something sublime and shifting lies beneath its edifice, something I noticed and have struggled with since my first visit. A little voice in the back of my head tells me that if this house were ever neglected or misused for a long period of time, the crackling and magical glow that surrounds would most flare up and wither, leaving the structure to disintegrate into something haunted, something frightening.
This voice whispers in the faintest of tones that the house would not much like to be overgrown with ivy or weeds, that the grass would not appreciate garbage-laced breezes, that the wrought-iron fence would not take kindly to chips of paint and rust. No sign of deterioration has yet been evident to my eyes, but I am aware of this warning emanating from somewhere deep within the bricks and mortar. This faint threat, combined with my preference that these terrible things never happen, draws me ever deeper into my observations.
For the most part, the house maintains a general size and shape, though certain details -- architectural as well as tonal -- shift and float about depending on the moment. To give an example, on one visit not too long ago, I discovered a massive rose window on a wing of the house that had never previously been there. Somehow, the window demanded my strict attention. And so I've reclined on the lush grass beneath and examined its peculiarities in great detail.
Over stretches of many hours, I witnessed fascinating images unfold before my eyes, principally stories and fairy tales that simultaneously soothed, frightened, and enlightened me. I saw God creating mountains, knights battling lions in a desert, bandits trekking through a forest, and scribes illuminating texts by candlelight. The images were absolutely, radiantly beautiful, the synthesis of every stained glass window I'd ever seen. These images evolved painfully slowly and were absolutely silent, like watching the world's most brilliantly engineered silent cartoon on a huge screen -- raw, fresh, vibrant -- with nothing but sounds of the birds and the wind passing overhead to fill my ears over long stretches of hours.
The Sandstone Edifice and a Temptress of Valhalla
By Pat [Blank]
Begun 01//27/07
Barreling forth from the flimsiness of my dreams for as long as I remember, there have lurked images involving a grand and imposing house standing upon a hill.
Though the house itself remains principally the same, the characters float in and out of the setting with great frequency, changing in presence and prominence as suddenly as they do in the real world. A percentage of these faces are physically known to me, but I am reasonably certain that I have never seen this house during my waking hours.
The countenance of the house is eerie and imposing, and when I fix gaze upon it, I am greeted with the sensation of holding a leash attached to a large dog -- powerful and awe-inspiring things that I, for whatever reason, have been granted a modicum of control over, if merely by appearance only.
After many slumberous voyages to the house, I've developed an understanding that the house contains the ability to spin off on iterations of itself, potentially growing unrecognizable and distant from me, suddenly possessing of a will perhaps in violation of my own, thereby casting aside its most regular visitor and nominal master. I find myself trying very hard to maintain its image in my mind, to maintain points of reference about it, lest in my absence it succumbs to wildness and transforms completely out of my control.
But it hasn't squirmed away from me yet. To be sure, it changes and adapts with great frequency, sometimes in anticipation of my directions or wishes, other times resisting my commands completely. We are at once separated and intimately intertwined, in ways that I am only beginning to understand and probably never will completely. In its strange way, it challenges me by gently pushing me forward, serving a dual function as both a repository and a reflecting pool of my thoughts.
So for now, as ever before, it stands solemnly upon its hill, unaffected by my meandering contemplations of its inner-workings, glowing in all its Victorian magnificence, a piercing vision of splendor, regally administering its tiny hill kingdom. That small rise in the earth, nothing more than a gradual upward slope, lends glory and prominence that lighting or external accoutrement never could.
The angles of the house melt in a graceful and peculiar fashion into the hill. I've been lead to believe that the lawn serves as some sort of extension of the house, like a broad, complex series of nerves splaying outward, picking up on the goings on near the far reaches of the property, that the two are intertwined to a degree. Always meticulous in length, the grass of the sloped lawn seems to have a different manicure every time I stroll upon it. I yet to venture into the deep-green woods lying to the left and to the right of the property. My hesitence is not due to an apprehension of what lies within; rather, the focus of my attention always falls squarely on the limitless peculiarities of the house.
I have stared at its many features for hours on end, sketched them sloppily on scraps of paper, and attempted to retain to memory every last detail of its exterior, all to no avail. Something sublime and shifting lies beneath its edifice, something I noticed and have struggled with since my first visit. A little voice in the back of my head tells me that if this house were ever neglected or misused for a long period of time, the crackling and magical glow that surrounds would most flare up and wither, leaving the structure to disintegrate into something haunted, something frightening.
This voice whispers in the faintest of tones that the house would not much like to be overgrown with ivy or weeds, that the grass would not appreciate garbage-laced breezes, that the wrought-iron fence would not take kindly to chips of paint and rust. No sign of deterioration has yet been evident to my eyes, but I am aware of this warning emanating from somewhere deep within the bricks and mortar. This faint threat, combined with my preference that these terrible things never happen, draws me ever deeper into my observations.
For the most part, the house maintains a general size and shape, though certain details -- architectural as well as tonal -- shift and float about depending on the moment. To give an example, on one visit not too long ago, I discovered a massive rose window on a wing of the house that had never previously been there. Somehow, the window demanded my strict attention. And so I've reclined on the lush grass beneath and examined its peculiarities in great detail.
Over stretches of many hours, I witnessed fascinating images unfold before my eyes, principally stories and fairy tales that simultaneously soothed, frightened, and enlightened me. I saw God creating mountains, knights battling lions in a desert, bandits trekking through a forest, and scribes illuminating texts by candlelight. The images were absolutely, radiantly beautiful, the synthesis of every stained glass window I'd ever seen. These images evolved painfully slowly and were absolutely silent, like watching the world's most brilliantly engineered silent cartoon on a huge screen -- raw, fresh, vibrant -- with nothing but sounds of the birds and the wind passing overhead to fill my ears over long stretches of hours.
posted by Pat at 1:40 PM
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