Something’s happening in there, I know it.
I just glimpsed a hand
– well, I say hand,
perhaps I should say an appendage. Yes, something definitely slunk, sort of
withdrew, faded into the penumbra inside that gaunt and granite edifice that
faced me across the time-bemoldered alleyway of ongoing experience.
The day could not have
been more leaden and grey, a sobering blustering blast blew chill from
Atlantic’s swirling swell, flecked with crawking gulls and slopping jellyfish
blooms. A squall stole in, scattering
showers, gusts and blasts across the gables, tiles and slates of the village-towne. I’d noticed signs of activity in the old
warehouse recently, coeval with an increase in footsteps late at night, in
owl-hours and beyond. Sesquipedalian
scuttlings astir in archaic rhyme-rich dripping atmospheric glassy-eyed
glaucous backstreets. I seen lights on
in there at night and I heard hammering and a-yammering coming out of there and
I know there’s something going on in
there.
A slate-grey gloom
slayed hopes of drowzy summer’s slumberous afternoons, chilled and thawed and
frozen out as brittle bits and fractured fragments of brown-baked bracken blew
down like brittle biscuits. Maybe it’s
the Glagolitic Mass, echoing and emanating down tunnels of steel, bronze and
bulkheads of obsidian basalt columnular conglomeration in catalytic conversation. That’s probably what did it, what set my mind
to thinking and to realizing.
Blending into that
tea-like darkness, that was a being alright, definitely a being of some
sort. Swirls of fog notwithstanding,
some denizen flittered and flitted in, in stealthy flight departing. Thirsting for experience’s flow, I followed
and bat-like flitted silently inside.
An unearthly glow
pulsed colourless drenching the ancient chamber in nacreous effulvous
effulgence oscillating with slices of photoperiodic obscurity and a deep deep
blackness. A calm warmth seemed seeping
forth, encouraging my peregrination. A
fresh impression like a French Impressionist painting, blurry and soft; muted, speckled; plates, greenish-white glow, spinning
fingers, antennae, shifting plates of the carapace, a gliding motion of an
archaic garment of clothing, a vast greatcoat surcoat, swaddling the figure of
the being, the entity, the Caterpillar!
And now, as I look
back, the encounter – if such it was – is indeed a little vague and sepia-faded
at the edges, this being the inevitable concomitant
of such episodes as these, featuring as they do, the meeting of mundane with
supra-mundane Mind… I have a series of
recollections, rather fragmentary, disjointed and indistinct. I have much more positively in my possession though
the echo of the feeling, and this is
the subtle gossamer whisp that is so discolos hard to convey through
words. A sensation of being refined and
rarified, as when metal is purified in great fire. This suttleification was bathed in a warm
vibrant peace – whilst all this was going on, knowledge and informations were being
poured into me from a source universally present. The presence of the central figure was one of
great warmth and wisdom, a sunny benignity coupled with the dizzying mysterious
drift of space itself. In fine,
something that went beyond my limited grasp, yet left me uplifted, inspired
with a hint of something vast and brilliant.
When I had fully
returned to my normal condition, I was in possession of a casket of scrolls,
tablets, cuniform phonograph rolls, wire-recordings, sketch-books, scribbled
formulae and classical poetry, incantations, evocations and revalations. Rich food for the soul, for psyche’s flight,
butterfly-like into the new bright night of day.
What follows in ‘The
Caterpillar’ – A Visionary Ghetto Tabloid - & its remixed Dub Version is
culled from the fertile trove of lore and learning bequeathed to me on the
occasion of my most recent visitation of my mysterious carapaced friend, to
whom ye humble blogspot and its accompanying journals are most respectfully
dedicated.
A
poster from The Caterpillar: