Fri 21 Jul 2006 5:46 AM
Quote of the Week:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Kubla Khan
I’ve been thinking about Xanadu a lot the last couple of days.
No, not this Xanadu.
Not this Xanadu, either.
Rather, this Xanadu.
As the world order seems to be dissolving or rearranging or ovulating (reference any major newspaper for details) I would like to order a new world, with chili sauce on the side. This is costly, so costly I can’t afford it.
I read in the news that Justin Timberlake does drugs. Maybe if I gradually insert myself into his life I can be around him while he’s all high and stuff and take his ATM card.
I’ll pick up where this *NSYNC pantywaist left off
and pay the cosmonauts to hook me up.
It will be me and a big space tank of ol. It will take a long time to get to Xanadu, but it will be worth it. I’ll take my tank of ol and pour it into the rivers of liquid methane and ethane carving Earth-like features into Titan’s landscape.
I will still Moonshine.
I will sit still and pet a dog with a fishbowl on his head and look back towards the sun and the world I left behind. I wonder if at that distance the sun will be blinding, or if I could just take it in like an extra big star?
The Earth will be too small to see, but I can look closely at Saturn, which will surely dominate the night sky way out there. It must look five times the size of our moon. It seems like it would always be night.
And then I’ll be blindingly drunk all the time, staggering around beneath enormous rings of particles.
I’ll be much closer to the edge of the solar system, and every time I look up, wasted, beneath that bizarre and unfamiliar sky, I’ll get a feeling like vertigo, or a door opening behind me at night.
If I jump I’ll feel like I might just drift into space.
