italio lovecraft calvino--cities of the dreamworld

george (pickman) stubbs painting of a dreamworld zebra at yales british art gallery.
"Carter hired a zebra and set out one morning on the road by Yath’s shore for those inland parts wherein towers stony Ngranek. ... By evening he was near the nameless ancient ruins on Yath’s farther shore, and though old lava-gatherers had warned him not to camp there at night, he tethered his zebra to a curious pillar before a crumbling wall ..."

"The sun had just come up over the great slope whereon leagues of primal brick foundations and worn walls and occasional cracked pillars and pedestals stretched down desolate to the shore of Yath, and Carter looked about for his tethered zebra. Great was his dismay to see that docile beast stretched prostrate beside the curious pillar to which it had been tied, and still greater was he vexed on finding that the steed was quite dead, with its blood all sucked away through a singular wound in its throat."
h.p.lovecraft, dreamquest of unknown kadath. the complete text can be read at the lovecraft archive.
invisible cities, italio calvinos guide to the cities of the dream world. the best places to water your zebra and shop for onyx
"at the end of three days, moving southward, you come upon anastasia. a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it. i should now list the wares that can profitably be bought here: agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony: ... if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labour which gives for to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying anastasia wholly when you are only its slave."
italio calvino, invisible cities. made in to english by william weaver.

Posted with Blogsy

dunwich lovebirds

ring by wilcox-silvershrimp at materialicious.

'' then too the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. it is vowed that the birds are psyhchopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eery cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. if they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemonic laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence ...

'' old whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of cold spring glen to chirp under his window at night. he seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at osborn's that he thought his time had almost come. "they whistle jest in time with my breathin' naow," he said, "an' i guess they're gitten ready to ketch my soul. they know its a-goiin' aout an' dun't calc'late to miss it. yew'll know boys, arter im gone, whether they git me er not. ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singing' and laffin till break o' day. ef they dun't they'll kinder quiet daown like. i expeck them an' the souls they hunt fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes" ...

'' that hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on sentinal hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted whateley farmhouse. after midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemonic cachinnation which filled all the country side, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. then they vanished hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. what this meant no one could be quite certain till later. ...

'' a loud chourus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man. ... outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of panic struck whirring and fluttering. against the moon vast crowds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey ... dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickley yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whipporwills. ''

i: caprimulgiforme songs at naturesongs.

h.p.lovecraft, the dunwich horror.

Posted with Blogsy

ghoul sighting

a troop of ghouls pay visit to a house in the vale of arbroath.

Posted with Blogsy

whippoorwill's lament

'' then too the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. it is vowed that the birds are psyhchopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eery cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. if they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemonic laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence ...

'' old whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of cold spring glen to chirp under his window at night. he seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at osborn's that he thought his time had almost come. "they whistle jest in time with my breathin' naow," he said, "an' i guess they're gitten ready to ketch my soul. they know its a-goin' aout an' dun't calc'late to miss it. yew'll know boys, arter im gone, whether they git me er not. ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singing' and laffin till break o' day. ef they dun't they'll kinder quiet daown like. i expeck them an' the souls they hunt fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes" ...

'' that hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on sentinal hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted whateley farmhouse. after midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemonic cachinnation which filled all the country side, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. then they vanished hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. what this meant no one could be quite certain till later. ...

'' a loud chourus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man. ... outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of panic struck whirring and fluttering. against the moon vast crowds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey ... dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickley yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whipporwills. ''

i: caprimulgiforme songs at naturesongs.

h.p.lovecraft, the dunwich horror.

parentalia

'' i had not been a day in anchester before i knew i came of an accursed house ... the bare statistics of my ancestry i had always known, ... of details, however, i had been kept wholly ignorant. ... nor was any kind of tradition handed down except what may have been recorded in the sealed envelope ... the envelope that had bound us all to the past. ... neither my father nor i ever knew what our hereditary envelope had contained ... i lost all interest in the mysteries which evidently lurked far back in my family tree, ... had i suspected their nature, how gladly i would have left exham priory to its moss, bats and cobwebs! ...

'' apparently the delapores had a colorful and perhaps sinister history, for a friend of my son's ... dwelt near the family seat at anchester and related some peasant superstitions which few novelists could equal for wildness and incredebility. ... the anchester villagers had an almost unbelievable fear and hatred of the place. ... they viewed exham priory as nothing less than a haunt of fiends and werewolves. ... they represented my ancestors as a race of hereditary daemons ... and hinted whisperingly at their responibility for the occasional disapearances of villagers through several generations. ''

h.p.lovecraft, rats in the walls.

zoog-land

'' in the tunnels of that twisted wood, ... dwell the furtive and secretive zoogs; who know many obscure secrets of the dream world and a few of the waking world, ... most of them live in burrows, but some inhabit the trunks of the great trees, and although they live mostly on funghi it is muttered that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual, for certainly many dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out. ...

'' one particular village of the creatures was in the centre of the wood, where a circle of great mossy stone in what was once a clearing tells of older and more terrible dwellers long forgotten, ... for at that spot a mightly slab of stone rests on the forest floor; and those who have dared approach it say that it bears an iron ring three feet wide . ... the zoogs do not pause near that expansive slab with its huge ring; and they would not like to see the slab rise slowly and deliberately. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.