Friday, April 30, 2004

“I was saying,” said Mr. Spiers, “that if I detest anything more than a filthy mess in my saucer, it is the sort of fool who blathers out a dream at the breakfast table.”

“Oh, my dream!” said Mrs. Spiers with the utmost good humor. “All right, my dear, if you don’t want to hear it. It was about you, that’s all.” With that, she resumed her breakfast.

“Either tell your dream, or don’t tell it,” said Mr. Spiers.

“You said you didn’t want to hear it,” replied Mrs. Spiers, not unreasonably.

“There is no more disgusting or offensive sort of idiot,” said Mr. Spiers, “than the woman who hatches up a mystery, and then—”

“There is no mystery,” said Mrs. Spiers. “You said you didn’t want—”

“Will you,” said Mr. Spiers, “kindly put an end to this, and tell me, very briefly, whatever nonsense it is that you dreamed, and let us have done with it? Imagine you are dictating a telegram.”

“Mr. T. Spiers, Normandene, Radclyffe Avenue, Wrexton Garden Suburb,” said his wife. “I dreamed you were hung.”

“Hanged, Mother,” said little Daphne.
John Collier, “Midnight Blue”

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

You know the sensation one has, peering into the half-light of a vivarium? One sees bark, pebbles, a few leaves, nothing more. And then, suddenly, a stone breathes—it is a toad; there is a chameleon, another, a coiled adder, a mantis among the leaves. The whole case seems crepitant with life. Perhaps the whole world is. One glances at one’s sleeve, one’s feet.
John Collier, “Evening Primrose”