Words with Images

Loose-limbed and languid
voluptuous squid
slid slowly by seaweed
and more slowly hid.
with thoughts of millennial mercantile schemes
amounting to nothing but opium dreams.

Apes weep but leap from tree to tree,
leap from tree to tree
(but me I’m free to see them not);
the great-beaked birds in herds make skreaks
(while I agog hear only fog).
Arachnids hide in holes ignored
we -- we dare to fare into the air aloft – and gone.

Yearly the killer bees yaw and romp
through the golden filigree of printemps.
Like opals and carbuncles dewy and light
that ravish the soul at the very first sight,
confusing their victims, occluding their might.
Soon their prey will sink in a swoon.
These oligolectic bees buzz up a tune
of garnet greens and things unseen,
a hermit’s eye, leanest of all the Essenes,
a hermit’s eye, leanest of all the Essenes.

Hopping the freighter bound for below
Daniel and Emrys and Ethan and Joe
stowed all the cargo and gobbled shad roe.
The hold was so cold that they all fell quite sick
but avoided Beelzebub’s grasp with a trick.
When he came with the aim to seize on to their souls,
they feinted and flung him to sulfurous coals.
So Daniel and Emrys and Ethan and Joe
7jiu-jitsued that japer their underground foe,
then exited up as if shot from a bow
and returned to their monkeys in Mohenjo-daro.

Under the counterpane’s tropical heat
it’s torrid and humid down under the sheet
where natives go naked and nuzzle at will
down each damp valley, up each fertile hill.
We’ve sailed past the Cape, we’re rounding the Horn,
we’re starboard of Cancer below Capricorn!

Aleister Crowley announced a grand fête
in his pharmaceutical phantasy land
where tight-laced Edwardian dope dealers met
and danced to the tune of the Bag O’ Bones Band.
These hopheads were bopping and called out for more
till their nerves all shut down and they fell on the floor,
a great heap of satyrs with faces like flies
all tangled in gaiters and braces and ties.

The early earthworm twisted his tail
and glistened his part that was glad to be male.
Vermicular lust began to rise
when the male part caught sight of his feminine side.
Before the morning was halfway done:
a hermaphroditical orgy of one.

The dog days run on
like a viscid elixir,
and steam mounts up to the brain.
I’m feeling so languid,
can’t feel the heart stir
like the long-dead fen-buried Dane.
I’ve the drive of an aphid
I never will thrive,
but, only, if only, could I only gain
a hypothetical prosthetic pain
at least, at least, I’d know I’m alive.

Documents of the Fifth Surreal Cabaret

1. press release (in fact acts numbered 2 and 8-11 did not appear due to snowfall the day of the event)


Surreal Cabaret in Sugar Loaf – One Night Only!

The fifth Surreal Cabaret will be presented at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 3 at the Seligmann Studio, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf. Admission is free. The event will feature a series of short performances by local artists produced by Steve Roe with the assistance of William Seaton.

Acts may cross genres, mixing poetry, drama, dance, and music, while featuring conceptual play, experimentation, and improvisation. Several projection screens will provide a variety of visual stimulation in an environment of new word patterns, sounds never heard before, and suggestive theatrical gestures.

The event is part of an ongoing series of exhibits, readings, lectures, and workshops presented by the Seligmann Center for the Arts. Kurt Seligmann was a Surrealist artist who lived in Sugar Loaf, and the Center offers a rare Hudson Valley venue for avant-garde painters, writers, and performers.

This particular show, titled “On Thin Ice,” will memorialize Seligmann’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, deemed to be accidental, on January 2, 1962. The extraordinary program, involving a wide circle of performance artists in the region, is detailed below.

For further information contact William Seaton at seaton@frontiernet.net or Steve Roe at sroe33@optonline.net . See www.kurtseligmann.org for details on other programs.

1. The program opens with a benediction from Surrealist chaplain Lama Swine Toil.
2. The Surreal Cabaret house band Mr. Sexy and the Hot Chicks warms up the audience.
3. “Lamp,” inspired by 1964 lamp subculture and other new wave consumerism is staged.
4. Spreaders offers “SoftError\\\drenched electronics::: damaged cassette loop junk media disruptions.”
5. “Dada Frolic” features Dan & Detta Andreana- speaking in their native tongue (Jibberish) and making sound art on the Bow Box and The Micasonic String Board.
6. William Seaton and the voice of Patricia Seaton alert the audience to “The Metaphysics of Everyday Life.”
7. Steve Roe performs “I Am Strange,” a work inspired by the work of Sun Ra.
8. The New York Pop Conceptualists, featuring Julie Mejia on bass, synthesizer, and vocals and Matt Luczak on drums, create “a response to the event itself.”
9. “Caution Horses,” from Jeffery Justin Van Dunk, is an experimental audio visual performance.
10. Jonas Bers offers an “abstract audiovisual improvisation using handmade electronics and modified consumer equipment to produce projected images and corresponding sound.”
11. The “23rd Toad Psalm” by the Orchestra de Fou, a long standing noise orchestra led by Dr. George Omara, with the assistance of members of Ohms of Resistance and Council of (Poetic) Experimentation will close out the evening.
For further information contact Steve Roe at sroe33@optonline.net or William Seaton at seaton@frontiernet.net. See www.kurtseligmann.org for details on other programs.


2. posters by Steve Roe

3. The Lineage of the Lama Swine Toil

I am the Lama Swine Toil and, like each of you, though singular, I am not alone.

I knew the divine madman Gundam Raul who played with Vishnu in the temple babbling and sticking his fingers in the statue’s mouth: “he’ll bite, he won’t bite, he’ll laugh, no he won’t, he’ll talk, but be silent”

And my neighbor next door is that Christ of the Gospel of Thomas who warned that buyers and merchants could not enter the kingdom and said to dance naked and unashamed, trampling on one’s clothes once and for all.

I am descended from Shi de, whose janitor’s broom swept his own mind clean, wiser than all the learned monks at the Guoqing Temple

And the illiterate Huineng who was delivering firewood when enlightened and who stole away in the night to avoid the envious when he was named Sixth Patriarch

I am at one with Muhammed who cut the sleeve of his robe to avoid disturbing his dear cat Muezza who slept and later the cat bowed to him in thanks as my own latter day cats have been known to do.

I revere the memory of the great Ji Gong who crazy and drunk was expelled from his monastery and thereafter practiced compassion in wine shops and low dives up and down the dusty streets crowded with suffering souls.

And in France my brother, the tumbler of Our Lady outshone the learned monks when he leaped and danced in love before the altar and heaven’s queen found his offering most sweet.

Not a hair’s breadth separates me from Johannes Tauler who knew Mechthild’s Flowing Light and knew as prophets and physicists alike will say that all without exception returns in the end to the source.

I am cousin, so I think, to Zhuang Zi who preferred his “filthy ditch” to the sovereign’s court and said, “I have determined never to take office, but prefer the enjoyment of my own free will."

I would scratch Diogenes that dog upon his hoary head, Diogenes who when he saw the shepherd boy drink from his own hand, then tossed away his begging bowl and said, “Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time.”

I strain my ears to hear the strain that came one night to that most annoying lady Margery Kempe as she lay with her husband in bed and “herd a sownd of melodye so swet and delectable, hir thowt, as sche had ben in paradyse.”

I think of dear Ikkyu who was brilliant with his flute entered brothels in his monastic robes and insisted his time with pavilion girls deepened his enlightenment.

I am as one with Hakuin Ekaku who, when asked about the afterlife, said, “Why should I know?” and when the questioner cried out, “You are a great teacher!” replied, “Yes, but not a dead one.”

Xuefeng Yicun tells all we need to know: “The Buddha is a bull-headed jail-keeper and the Patriarchs are horse-faced old maids!”



4. a further fit of "The Metaphysics of Everyday Life"

And a birth releases widening waves rolling fugue-like in four dimensions or more throughout fields known and fields awaiting a viewer and further yet where sight is unnecessary altogether;

For a death as well makes waves of an inverse character but no less graceful and potent, and were some gifted eyes to view from time’s back end they would see the end as the start spelled backwards, though the symmetry escapes us now,

And just as the truth of a birth is concealed behind jubilation that, in spite of mortality, we are keeping abreast of the game through efforts strenuous and strongly felt through the entire human race,

So the truth of a death is folded in self-pity and vain attempt to grasp at the straws that felt the summer sun so many years ago and, though we knew this moment was coming, we were nonetheless hard hit.

And we wept not for the departed but for ourselves, and not for our loss and raw loneliness torn open but as well for our own death lurking in a distant hallway awaiting most patiently our approach ever closer past the dusty doors of abandoned offices until we come upon it all at once.

For to be immortal would be like being of infinite height and would surely prove an inconvenience and hardly a thing to be wished for though it is true that one’s finiteness does not always seem to fit even after squirming and stretching!

And great flares of transformation arise and stars pass out of existence in the blooms of supernovae and think quiet afterthoughts of cosmic rays, world without end,

For there is always a further readjustment to be sought whether in the passing of stormy galactic clouds or some sac of eggs suspended in swampy water, restless and wriggling, or patterns of pencil marks on paper, and things never come wholly to rest.

And what Socrates called wind-eggs may not be without value in the end, for the church and the film industry and indeed all the advertisers likewise trade in images, and enjoy good custom indeed, though poets may go begging.

For liberation as well as manacles must be mind-forged, though the meadow breeze in one’s hair is none the less palpable for that, nor the dizzying sight from the peak, and we must be glad of our bargains and catch them where we may.

And the sum of all things is precisely nothing at all, when positive charges meet negative and matter meets antimatter and finds annihilation perfect and sweet and a most elegant end,

For we can only think that the primary concerns of the kosmos are aesthetic in spite of baryon asymmetry and other pebbles of ignorance that cramp our walk and give us blisters;

And Kurt Seligmann has gone off to join the many, for a single slip on a January morning may overpower a legion of intentions and halt the burgeoning of a host of futures each full of fresh promise,

For like him it is all we can do to pursue the vermin that annoy and the nightmares that trouble our sleep and the furtive darting threats that circle about seeking to gain advantage in this imperfect light.

And we can only breathe together and think of him and gaze each other in the eye and know we walk also a path that can only end in drama and alarm.

For the pot will continue to boil and sometimes to boil over and sometimes to simmer and in it the currents are drifting describing lovely patterns that never repeat and the dance cannot come to rest and in this it is like feet when the music plays.

Documents of the fourth Surreal Cabaret

1. the announcement

Fourth Surreal Cabaret at the Seligmann Center
The fourth Surreal Cabaret, featuring performance art, multi-media, and other avant-garde techniques will be presented at 7:30 on Friday, June 13 in the Kurt Seligmann Studio, 23 White Oak Drive, Sugar Loaf. The event is free and open to the public.

The program will open as usual with a benediction from the Surrealist chaplain, the Lama Swine Toil. Music will be provided by the New Jersey experimental ensemble ArtCrime. Acts include a rap by Anne Hanson, the Council of (Poetic) Experimentation doing “Genet Discordia,” William Seaton’s “Party,” and Susanna Rich singing two songs from her one-woman musical Shakespeare’s *itches: the Musical.

The Cabarets provide a rare opportunity for Hudson Valley residents to see exciting new work by area artists using cutting edge practices. “We pay tribute to Surrealist Kurt Seligmann in a way I suspect he would have approved – by showcasing new vision.” says producer William Seaton.

As in the past artist David Horton has created a poster for the Cabaret.


2. the program

Lama Swine Toil "Benediction"
The Surrealist chaplain will seek to save the lost and to convince the saved to lose themselves.

CO(P)E "Genet Discordia/Bird of Paradise"
Featuring Steve Roe’s voice, Dan Andreana’s video, Al Margolis, Kevin Geraghty, and Detta Andreana on sound. The Council of (Poetic) Experimentation is an art collective dedicated to the performance and publication of experimental works. Their most recent publication is War Stories.

Anne Hanson "The Panther and the Butterfly"
A poem transformed into a rap, sort of falling between the two. Anne Hanson is known to Hudson Valley audiences as a poet and storyteller.

William Seaton "Party"
Unspoken conversations, the subterranean levels of a social gathering, find utterance. Actors are Ingrid King, Jim Kenny, & Patricia Seaton. William Seaton is the producer of the Surreal Cabarets. He maintains a blog at williamseaton.blogspot.com.

Susanna Rich "Nicole's Song"
This song from the one-woman show Shakespeare’s *itches marks the twentieth anniversary of Nicole Brown Simpson's death.

"Kate Explains"
Also from Shakespeare’s *itches, Kate the Shrew as a contemporary bartender. For more information on Susanna Rich’s performances, books, and other activities see susannarich.com or wildnightsproductions.com.

ArtCrime Music
John Korchok, Steve Orbach, and Bob Siebert perform as ArtCrime, New Jersey’s outstanding experimental ensemble. With backgrounds in jazz, rock, and experimental music, the instrumentalists of ArtCrime create entirely new, often improvisatory music. See http://www.art-crime.net/.


3. the poster by David Horton

4. the words of the Lama Swine Toil

The Parable of the not-OK Corral
He walked the dusty, sun-baked streets of a town
on the far frontier of metaphysics.
His faithful Indian companion whispered sutras in his ear.
The townspeople hustled off to shelter behind the nearest received ideas.
The tumbleweeds blew, and the buzzards cried out wise suggestions ,
but he never heard and just stared straight ahead.
At the street’s opposite end, walking slowly toward him, was his enemy,
his brother, his mirror-image.
(And the town’s pretty schoolmarm walked an identical street
at that very moment, facing a Doppelgänger of her own,
her foot like his poised seeking the next step,
and neither could help it at all.)
The sweat dripped down his cheek.
The Avidya Boys, he knew, were crouching in doorways,
leaning from second-story windows,
and the gang from the Hungry Ghost Ranch,
covered him from every angle.
The clock ticked on toward the highest of high noons
when time, that old codger, will expire, as did Gabby Hayes in 1969.
Suddenly he heard from behind the voice of the kosmos, deep and unmistakable,
“Drop your ego on the ground right there, I’ve got you covered. “
And he knew the jig was finally up.

5. Party

To be performed by four actors, dispersed throughout the room. The lights should be out as the monologues are unspoken. Art the Cabaret performance, the audience was told they might close their eyes.

Party
I.
1st speaker: How can it be that everyone is talking to someone with the sole exception of me. I can hardly continue staring at the book titles much longer. Oh, how to assume an insouciant air as I sit outside the gate, listening to the self-satisfied buzz of all the drones? I sit discomfited on rocks, so harsh a seat alone, a tragic pariah, unrecognized, unappreciated, like the finest of apples, too high on the tree, pecked by mindless birds, exposed to wind and rain and merciless fate. The fallen apple is more fortunate, its crisis past, the quick hurtle to meet earth over.

2nd speaker: All is well just now. I think. My dyspepsia has subsided, my portfolio has gained twenty percent this year and yet I haven’t gained more than ten percent in weight. Last time I saw my doctor he said he saw no problems, but that was two weeks ago and I failed to point out that weird blemish in my armpit which online research has indicated could be the sign of any number of serious conditions. Then, too, even darker possibilities may lurk in the bushes, ready to leap like a fierce and mocking panther. My balance sheet will be powerless then. My successful lawsuit will mean nothing. I can only imagine the leap of the predator who is surely there,, the sudden sharp full-body alarm. I can only imagine it again and again until the thought is worse than the reality.

3rd speaker: Oh, god, I haven’t the slightest idea what she has been saying for the past five minutes. It looks like I’m cued to respond. I have perhaps two seconds to devise the best strategy. I am on the edge of a high cliff and I see the rocks below. Vertigo seizes me. Oh, that I might buzz like a fly to the further reaches of the room. Lord, lord, what does that look mean? I am pinned in an album, classified and dessicated, without recourse, but perhaps that is only right. This day, another damp and ruined space of time, to be discarded like a used tissue, capable of inspiring only disgust.

4th speaker: light in room’s corner, groan of outside autos, tremor in the skull, graceful neck flesh incline curve of thigh shaking of a comely arm eruption of energies heading toward a brick wall hurtling on to whammo collision dizzy soft knee whew take a long breath wine rises to brain already fogged by error confusion and willful refusal to see to feel to ----? Buzz of anger yesterday at the bus stop what was the look about? Tomorrow the dentist.

1st speaker: Indeed, I am out of my element. When I lived in California, ah, all was palmy. I flourished in the sun, but here its heat is rude and pushy. These people all think just alike. They grow here rooted to the soil like barnacles to their rock. When will someone ask the question that will free my soul and let it rise and flourish and sing? I am the genie, locked still inside the lamp, pinched by unfair circumstance, awaiting the magic word. I hear the confident rumble of everyone else’s words knowing that my own alone would be garbled and meaningless as though run backwards. My silence is finally my preference.

2nd speaker: O might one feel secure in a grand and hilltop mansion? Or would I then attract lightning, jealousy, angry mobs perhaps? My position is a lofty one, but I gained it through deceit, I maintain it by impersonating a success. The strain is mounting. How can I continue the fraud another day? Another hour? Many eyes see through me, they slyly predict my downfall, indeed perhaps they can cause it. I’m propped up only by my reluctance to let the jackals lick my bones. Yet they advance steadily with sharp intentions in their eyes. I shall take refuge in the toilet. Perhaps it’s time to exit before my stride will be even less graceful than now.

3rd speaker: If only time could pause a moment I might regain my composure, but the ground slips from beneath my feet ever so slightly. I need only a chance to catch up, to rest a moment, to seize time and hold it by the throat and shake it until it gives me what I must have. I could then be master, I could flourish, yet here I am, condemned to run two seconds behind, always regarding my movie with a detached and critical eye and always writing later a most brilliant review which will never see the light of day.

4th speaker: Twinge of envy I am a barely balanced funambulist with no rest on the high tension line buzzing with power, the birds on either side skip and dance, the sun blazes with certainty and power, the other people are far away, all security systems on high alert these past few years, avoid feedback, prick of lust, flash of pale skin, twitter of neural dendrites leap every synapse whee whee mememememememe eeeee

The Liturgies of the Lama Swine Toil

The Lama Swine Toil first appeared last December at the Surreal Cabaret at the Seligmann studio in Sugar Loaf. He has returned a number of times since, most recently at the Spoken Aggregate performance produced by Adrianna Delgado and Glenn Werner in the Widow Jane Mine in Rosendale August 26.


Introduction

I am the Lama Swine Toil
I am the belated Surrealist chaplain.
I am a guru without disciples.
I am the yogi who arrived late and whose stomach rumbled out of a full lotus for the next hour, distracting all seekers alike.
I am wise though one would never guess it from the crumbs all about my place at dinner.
My mind wanders the heights and still calls out plaintive as the wild goose.
My shoelaces were untied and as I dozed the novice monks tied them up in an original manner so that when I woke and stumbled, I fell into perfect enlightenment.
My words are precisely as effective as the voice from the radio, but I cannot stop speaking them nonetheless.



The Old Lama

My master taught an end to all masters and yet taught with cranky authority.
One day he would strive with all his might, seeking an end to striving, and the next he would drift, scarcely knowing any goal at all.
He followed the North Star of enlightenment as a way to while away the time.
Among his scriptures were Pogo, Nancy, and the divine Krazy Kat.
My master said that for him rocks were rocks and water was water. (Though he realized that this was not, strictly speaking, true, yet he found it served in most circumstances.)
My master said that he became a lama in order to avoid selling snacks in the market. As good a reason, he thought, as any.
My master could read the irregularities on the surface of a loaf of bread. A croissant was to him a novel, a brioche a hymn.
My master knew that, in spite of differences, his big toe’s fate was bundled with his tongue’s and thus he found it wise to be wary.



Spiritual Exercise

Think of nothing.
Seize upon what you thought of when attempting to think of nothing.
Regard it from every side noting how unique and exquisitely commonplace it is in every aspect.
Discard it whether it seems a precious leaf in the wind or a dead pearl.
After a time, gaze upon your rubbish until you spot a comely match:
coffee grounds besmirching high-minded lemon rind,
cantaloupe seeds victorious over yesterday’s news
proliferation of feathery pale mauve mold covering all.
Here, here you may found your credo,
safe from all challengers however many may venture here to follow.
You may tell the rest, but they will hear only the hum of their own intent search,
Place this discovery on a chryselephantine altar and be glad.
You need search no more. Know one can go no further.



Apothegms of the Backbrain

Chasing after anything will surely make it run. Your breath has better uses.

The flame is bold and glorious for consuming itself; the clod hermetic and wise for doing nothing whatsoever.

Definitions slip and slide. Our vision’s is made of concepts, concepts of words. The deer in the woods sees things straight on, and eludes pursuers even when killed.

The toil of a swine is beautiful to behold; the slime on the tireless worm’s back reflects galactic shine.

In the end we all are in the same boat, and we know it has sprung a leak, and we hold hands in dread and in this way our comfort and our fear are as one.

The artist and the saint are muddlers very like yourself.

If the saints of an earlier era were giants, the fleas they scratched must have been more powerful yet.

In the corridors of the maze of time, nothing else is visible, but one may change
perspective without changing location.

The true base of morality is aesthetic: great-hearted deeds are muscled cats exploring new territory, small-minded ones make of the brain a hard and shriveled pea.

You depend on the creeping insect half a world away as it in turn must have your love.

There is no questioning joy.



The Lama’s Vision

In the middle of the open air’s a sign,
a letter hidden to common view,
a signal ample to the knowing.
I answered a knock at my door
and found a discarded plastic bag
in a suit with a narrow tie
peddling eternal life.
I rode out upon the highway
and saw specters of desire
on every side of the interstate.
I opened a can of pintos
and saw between the beans
ties and animosities,
contending armies and one small chance for love.
I leaned down and saw the angle of an ant’s knee,
that calculated forwards and backwards
corresponded to the movements of history.
In the pain of my lower back I saw an opening,
dived through it, and seized the fish
that had eluded me for years.



The Lama’s Confession

I participate in every vice, though I am too lazy or dull to actually enact any but the most trivial.
I am a fraud and only my cheerful admission of this fact preserves my ability to assist the needy.
I know nothing whatever of immortality or the divine will and this ignorance keeps me pure and thoughtful.
I like to play at being a lama and consider it less harmful than playing at business.
And if I detailed my failings further, you would be repulsed, and the world needs no more ugliness.



The Guiding Paw

We may receive the aid of tutelary spirits if we conceive them aright, and for me the cat’s guiding paw points out the path of wisdom.
For the pounce is all act and a performance we might emulate with advantage.
For the cat’s whiskers are sensitive antennae, taking the measure of the world and
asserting herself most delicately.
For the cat kills without anger or compunction to illustrate that life can live only on life and that is why the world is always moaning,
and if she toys with her mouse, it is only to express wonder at the spot in which they both find themselves.
The cat produces a great variety of articulate sounds to express the stirrings of her heart: indignation, alarm, and an inquisitive attitude.
And most memorable among these sounds is a meditative mantra of purr.
For the cat is so tidy as to lick her own anus.
For the cat rests, realizing that nothing need be done.



The Lama’s Dietary Laws

It is easy to imagine oneself a kale plant,
plunging forward with baroque and curled leaves,
or a radish, all the more pungent for being shallow.
See how bright and hopeful the chives!
Such light plays sometimes on all.
But few can see with rabbit’s eyes,
or move with chicken’s abrupt readiness,
and fewer yet can bathe in the sea
of bovine eyes. The lama says,
eat only what you can understand.
Spare monkeys and neighbors,
for they will be always surprising.
Hot pepper’s cock-a-doodle’s a wager often won.
Allspice will conjure for the true believer.
We’re prairie beasts, we live on grass.
Milk is booty from our raids.
As food may be the greatest art,
each eater must make menus alone,
each digestive tract tale unique.
What more obvious karma than a meal?
Reckon your flavors and bulk and belch
and stomach’s turns and draw your own conclusion.



Prophecy

Neither more nor less pleasure and pain in your future, neither more nor less beauty; if you want to experience the future -- know! -- you are already doing it. Now!

The branching maple of your ego is there and is not there. If one digests this stubborn fact fear will have no space to sit..

Why rush? The finish line will not dash off, and when you glimpse it, you will be sure to feel needless regret.

How silly to grasp – no need, no need!

Holding the reins of dark and light, you will ride steadily onward. On the ridgepole of ignorance and wisdom, you will stride with confidence.

After all is known, nothing is changed.



The Lama’s Blessing

You are elect already as you are here.
You cannot step outside your nature even for a moment. Carry on exactly as you are. Correct!
How grand an assemblage of distinguished minds, distinguished for one thing of not for another!
How hopeful a congress for the future only the event will tell.
Feel on all sides the brains of your fellows, pulsing in exhilarated sine waves, and know that your own self’s surf is no less grand.
May a waterdrop fall upon your head and with its cool arrival may you know all is well and proceeding according to plan.
Embrace those specters to your right and left, your neighbor – it can be chilly here on earth.