…As if for the hundredth time it
seemed, my ears did glean the clattering feet of the carapaced companion of my
nocturnal fog-bound wandering wayfaring ways.
By rotting wharves of eldritch and ancient buckling beams the galleons
moored, awash to the gunwales with spices and pots of squid-ink,
crabster-lobster hybrid thynges in baskets and barrels of salted starfish for ‘Pymbis
Pie’. Here strolled those scuttering
pendulous feet and here followed I, aghast and agog with amazement – to be
again on the trail of the Carapace – like a beetle blue he scuttled across the
tremulous flower-head that is New Lynsmouth.
His tour of the lurching and festering wharfs was taken at a leisurely pace
– he consulted a quadrant that he produced from under his maroon quilted coat –
he took bearings on the sun and the land and the celestial objects, bodies and Worldes. Picturing hieroglyphics in his mind’s
splendid inner eye, he described arcs and great ballistic perambulations with
the point of one of his many prehensile feelers. Prodding forth an exoskeletal hand, or sort of an appendage of sorts, he traced the trajectory of the great heavenly
globulations in their interstellar gyrations and oscillations. Like a dirigible sailing through a great antediluvian
cactus-forest he sailed and sallied forth, sails full of steam and boilers
straining at their halyards.
Mesmerically galvanized by the sheer wattage of his radiant moonglow
soul, I yielded as I always did, to the subtle influence of his presence, which
was like the gradual incursion of a yak-herd upon a grassy upland
pasturage. Αυτόχθωνός
– Autochthonous things did stir and wind beneath the rich native
soil. Vapors and spirits did whirl as
the multiple feet of the carapaced thing crept along. His glow radiant-warm and self-contained, his
culture emanating in waves like a wisdom-radio device. This
was the Caterpillar as I had come, fleetingly and in a will-o-the-whispish way,
to know him. As on other occasions, I
was not to be disappointed, as he whirled round and set those unfathomable and
barely meetable eyes of his on me. I
felt the ground seem to give way, as my mind was swept up in the powerful
luminous waves of his vast and buzzing consciousness again – and again that
dread leaden drowse that I fought in vain to fight ere wakefulness took winged
flight and I felt my waking-mind flee, flying free to realms buoyant and
unknown and most relishable and wonderful – and I was glad. And I flew
I knew not where. The smell of rain on
the dust filled the hot spring air, the drowzy air of afternoon. Like cattle lost in the pillars of an ancient
temple I wandered in my mind, through hills of purple heather and upland
hinterland dodder and furze, broom and burs.
Through ivy-clad ancient dripping woods I wandered whithershins with my
back to the sun and my face to the moon, stars in my eyes and the dust of a
million aeons smote my skittering feet.
The cultural-transmission began and the carapace clicked and clattered
in glee as the stream of mind-stuff was beamed into midstream and minds
streamed as one. Smiling on his acolyte,
I felt that he was pleased so far with my efforts to pass on his message of
lepidopteral fluttering moth-bliss, a thousand swarms of suchlike things as
this. Rivulets flew and flowed through
and into a luminous glowing golowji, a towering beacon of nautical, dry,
aquatic and spiritual knowledge, a flow of musical elements, an image-stream,
an ideation alight and lit from within by lambent and translucent quivering
foxglove dewdrops. Rolls, scrolls,
phonographic moles, dewlaps, specimens of various orders, cordata,
taxonomological oddities, quirks, freaks, frequent flumes, quercus robur,
plumes, enflorescenses, tribal-chants, masks, amusing anecdotes, stoat-skin
waistcoats, outbursts of furious imagination and amplitudes of utter gargling
bliss – nay, waves of the stuff, sheer waves of the stuff. --- Later, of course, events were less clear in
my mind, but the essential event had eventually unfolded and with it a new
chapter of carapaced culture unrolled upon a million crystal compound eyes.
Magnetic Rag - Scott Joplin
Riding on a High & Windy Day – The Paragons
Let’s Get Together - H.P.Lovecraft
I Wasn’t Born To Follow – The Byrds
Hope you enjoyed The Caterpillar Dub, A
Visionary Ghetto Tabloid… thanks for
reading and see you next month!
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