It would be nice if I didn’t screw things up!

Picture taken slightly after my 60th birthday. I don’t know how I zapped my draft, though.

That’s why I call her “The Claw”!

New microscope. Works nicely.

I got WordPress to drop the text of my post. I’m so clever that way

That’s why I call her “The Claw”!

Uh, did I post two nearly identical items one day a part?

I’m not entirely certain how THAT happened. I’ve got other stuff to write (like the first several months after I got out of the “Lovelace Hilton” blasted to the ears with so many psychotropic drugs that I didn’t know which way I was going. Too late tonight to take that up, just now, however…)

The Second Anniversary Of Yet Another Grand Weirdness

To begin with, I cannot say that I’m sane. There is a high likelihood that I’m quite emotionally and psychologically damaged. To the best of my knowledge, admitting this will not affect any my official dealings with the world, but the third instance of a “psychotic break with reality” occurred two years ago, ‘earning’ me a stay in a locked ward at the Lovelace hospital for a few weeks, being let out once I could remember what day of the week it was, what the date was, who was the president, and that I could remember particular events in my life. I don’t particularly remember the stay very well: I was given quite a few medications every day which did, indeed, effectively banish all hallucinations but still left me extremely confused – which, on top of the original difficulty, was a pretty awful situation in which to be. I’m not casting about for sympathy here – I don’t particularly want it. However, I spoke with my psychologist and my medications psychatrist today: basically for my three-month check-up. My medications haven’t changed although there is one that the psychatrist would like me to work on reducing the dosage to an “as needed” basis. One medication that we dropped out of my regimen the previous visit stopped an incredible tendency towards stumbling (and falling down badly once), utterly erratic handwriting, and mental confusion. Basically, I feel quite clear-headed now. As to the psychologist – what can I say: I feel that it is a relatively “soft” science, obviously prone to how hard the patient wants to “work” toward goals – being an engineer I find it difficult to deal with. So… what has been going on recently? In one week I’ve been able to eradicate a colony of ants that beset my kitchen with the “sugar, water, boric acid, cotton ball, bottle cap” technique, something that worked far more effectively and quickly than I actually expected. However, it pointed out my feelings about the frailty of life, on one’s dependence on another and so forth. I depend quite a lot on my cat, Fuzzybutton. She is now 15 years old, blind in one eye but still has a glossy coat and seems the right weight for her frame. The question came to mind as to what would happen when of us dies before the other. My 60th birthday will be on April 13th, 2015 and given things like a recent deep vein thrombosis in my left leg and the fact that my pension runs out when I’m 65 and Social Security won’t kick in until I’m 66 and two-thirds, things are somewhat sticky. My son and his wife have been supporting me quite a lot given that I am not permitted to drive and thus cannot buy groceries and so forth; they have, of course, aided me very much in other ways. If we can sell my white elephant of a house for more than the mortgage and capital gains tax, that will help and there is five years in which to do it, but the housing market in Los Alamos tends to be extremely variable. In any case, I wrote up a note that I gave to my psychologist to read for the first half of today’s visit. It goes as thus: ———- I got Fuzzybutton as a kitten when my father was 76. My father was born in 1924. Therefore, Fuzzybutton was a kitten in 2000. This makes her about 15 years old, which is rather old for a cat. She is an somewhat expensive cat to maintain, but paying for her food & litter grit is supposedly tax-deductible. I thank J. very much for getting her what she needs. I am certain that Fuzzy acts as a part of my 2:00 AM wake-up alarm problem which has been a difficulty. This appears to be based on how often and how much food she can eat at a time and an entire night-length is too long. She likes lying on the Indian blanket on a chair next to me when I am on the computer. She is usually in bed with me when I am asleep, she is in her “cat tree” watching somewhat askance when I am doing my ‘fast indoor walking’ routine (which serves as aerobic exercise for someone who doesn’t wish to leave the apartment to speak of). She is a bit of a “crazy cat” (streaking about in fits of boundless energy) sometimes after she’s been fed. I am quite fond of her & she is one of the things that keep me sane. I have lost four cats in my life (fewer than my son S., I fear, who lost one that he loved dearly just a month ago). The first was with Mu who suddenly decided to become an outdoor cat one October… and I didn’t pay enough attention to her & didn’t notice that she had escaped when I went off to the Balloon Fiesta. I could not find anywhere when I got back. That hurt a lot and made me angry with myself, but at least I still had Mau soon after. One of the other cats lost lived at C.’s house: one early October, there was an incredible freak snowstorm and she ran out of the house and quite frustratingly would not come back in. She apparently did not actually leave the yard and I discovered her remains, flattened by the snow the subsequent Spring in the back yard. This was not pretty. I do not remember what the name of the third one was: she was more C.’s. However, she began to have breathing difficulties (cats do not live long when they have lung problems), which became serious over a period of two weeks. She had no strength to resist being held as she began to perish. I had her on my lap and tried to pet her: she bit me and then succumbed. This was on a New Year’s evening: I put her in a shoebox and then placed that in the “sun room” attached to the back of C.’s house. I had an insane (literal?) notion that she had not died and expected to find her outside of the box in the morning, but found that there is nothing much more limp than a dead cat. Finally, Mau began to deteriorate: C. constantly commented over the period of a year (perhaps longer) that it appeared to be a kidney problem and that I should take her to the vet. I believe that I was stubbornly & stupidly resistant, always thinking she would improve. Near the end however, she stood, fur unkempt, staring at the water bowl and not being able or willing to drink. I did take her to the vet at that point: when I did, I was told the best I could do is spend a lot of money to keep her alive another two weeks. She was suffering too much and I asked them to put her down. I was not there when it was performed and they took care of her remains. I was horribly depressed by this, but Fuzzybutton was an active and re-assuring part of my life by then. Therefore – Fuzzybutton is an elderly lady cat & her demise is impossible to determine. If she becomes blind in her other eye (her right one developed a detached retina or some such, two veterinarians could not decide), she will not be able to live properly. If she becomes ill… well, she is so old that she will no doubt slip away somewhat quickly & we know that I do not have the money to keep her alive. In either case, putting her down will be the only solution. I am horribly frightened by the prospect of not having her anymore. The loneliness would be too much to bear. She may not be a human being and of course we do not talk to each other, but we do communicate and she loves me as much as a cat can love anyone. Just to remain sane at all, I would need another cat: possibly a “rescue” that has been properly socialized (a process I was a part of for quite a few litters when C. and I were fostering litters for the Espanola Animal Shelter) and the new cat will need all of her shots, licensing and so forth. It will be a difficult change but if the cat is companionable and I treat it properly, it will likely outlive me. As noted, I truly do not think I could bend my mind around not having another animal in the house, and of course, a dog is out of the question. I am just exceedingly fond of cats. So… I will do my best to not be “catastrophic” (absolutely no pun intended) about this, but it is on my mind and it does make me worry & tense. I originally thought to send this note to S. and J., but since S. has (as previously noted) just so recently lost a cat he loved deeply I realized that it was ill advised. If I die before her then I do not believe that she should be kept alive: J. and S. have two cats of their own and would not be able to take another in. There is no other home for her: I have worked with the Espanola Animal Shelter enough to know that old cats are not adopted. My psychologist worked on the basis that looking towards the past was not a good idea. The best is to look toward the future, working on a will, getting a “Do Not Resuscitate” card, and (of course) things that are substantially more pleasant. Having a blog and no audience serves as a pleasant thing. It allows for a “mind dump” with little worry about controversy – there are many, many other blogs and mine is yet to be discovered. So, having posted two entries in as many days, perhaps I’m going to blog a great deal more often – we’ll just have to see. Thank you much for reading.

FuzzyButton

I had Fuzzybutton as a kitten when my father was 76. My father was born in 1924. Therefore, Fuzzybutton was a kitten in 2000. This makes her about 15 years old, which is rather old for a cat.
She is an expensive cat to maintain, but paying for her food & litter grit is supposedly tax-deductible. I thank J. very much for getting her what she needs. I am certain that Fuzzy acts as a part of my 2:00 AM wake-up alarm problem because I had been skimping somewhat on her food in order to not run out completely. I reckon she is set up for 20 days at this point (presuming she eats 1.25 cans a day)
She likes lying on the Indian blanket on a chair next to me when I am on the computer. She is usually in bed with me when I am asleep, she is in her “cat tree” watching somewhat askance when I am doing my ‘fast indoor walking’. She is a bit of a “crazy cat” (streaking about in fits of boundless energy) sometimes after she’s been fed. I am quite fond of her & she is one of the things that keep me sane.
I have lost four cats in my life (fewer than my son S., I fear). The first was with Mu who suddenly decided to become an outdoor cat one October… and I didn’t pay enough attention to her & didn’t notice that she had escaped when I went off to the Balloon Fiesta. I could not find anywhere when I got back. That hurt a lot and made me angry with myself, but at least I still had Mau soon after.
One of the other cats lost lived at C.’s house: one early October, there was a freak snowstorm and she ran out of the house and very frustratingly would not come back in. She apparently did not actually leave the yard and I discovered her remains, flattened by the snow the subsequent Spring in the back yard. This was not pretty.
I do not remember what the name of the third one was: she was more C.’s. However, she began to have breathing difficulties, which became serious over a period of two weeks. She had no strength to resist being held as she began to perish. I had her on my lap and tried to pet her: she bit me and then succumbed. This was on a New Year’s evening: I put her in a shoebox and then placed that in the “sun room” attached to the back of Cheryl’s house. I had an insane notion that she had not died and expected to find her outside of the box in the morning, but found that there is nothing much more limp than a dead cat.
Finally, Mau began to deteriorate: C. constantly commented over the period of a year (perhaps longer) that it appeared to be a kidney problem and that I should take her to the vet. I believe that I was stubbornly resistant, always thinking she would improve. Near the end, she stood, fur unkempt, staring at the water bowl and not being able or willing to drink. I did take her to the vet at that point: when I did I was told the best I could do is spending a lot of money to keep her alive another two weeks. She was suffering too much and I asked them to put her down. I was not there when it was performed and they took care of her remains. I was horribly depressed by this, but Fuzzybutton was an active and re-assuring part of my life by then.
Therefore – Fuzzybutton is an elderly lady cat & her demise is impossible to determine. If she becomes blind in her other eye (her right one developed a detached retina or some such, two veterinarians couldn’t decide), she will not be able to live properly. If she becomes ill… well, she is so old that she will no doubt slip away somewhat quickly & we know that I do not have the money to keep her alive. In either case, putting her down will be the only solution. I am horribly frightened by the prospect of not having her anymore. The loneliness would be too much to bear. She may not be a human being, but we do communicate and she loves me as much as a cat can love anyone.
Just to remain sane at all, I would need another cat: possibly a “rescue” that has been properly socialized (a process I was a part of for quite a few litters when C. and I were fostering litters for the Espanola Animal Shelter) and the cat will need all of her shots, licensing and so forth. It will be a difficult change but if the cat is companionable and I treat it properly, it will likely outlive me. As noted, I truly do not think I could bend my mind around not having another animal in the house, and of course, a dog is out of the question. I am just exceedingly fond of cats.
So… I will do my best to not be “catastrophic” (absolutely no pun intended) about this, but it is on my mind and it does make me worry & tense. I originally thought to send this note to S. and J., but since S. had just so recently lost a cat he loved deeply I realized that it was ill advised. If I die before her then I don’t believe that she should be kept alive: J. and S. do have two cats of their own and wouldn’t be able to take another in. There is no other home for her: I have worked with the Espanola Animal Shelter enough to know that old cats are not adopted.

I’m not happy with “Serif” in Nottingham, England

In particular, I’m displeased with their “WebPlus” products. It is sufficiently true that one can create simple web sites using their software, but in order to use blogging, e-commerce and so forth (a) you have to have your site hosted BY them and (b) you also have to obtain the rights/ability to using host-side facilities. Version 8 of WebPlus is now available: I’m glad I only bought Version 6 some years ago and haven’t followed it up. I have a tiny little site out there in the web-sphere that has been sufficient for my needs for quite a bit over ten years and it ONLY required HTML2 (don’t groan too loudly, please!) I’m working on learning the newer stuff using courseware that is available from About.com (if I’m allowed to make such a reference) and I’m not sure if this old dog can quite learn the new tricks that are available these days.

It does definitely go to show that WordPress is a fabulous facility. If I had the money to do so, I’d get a paid account, but alas my budget wouldn’t stand it. Still, using the free version for a blog that has entries occurring by starts and stops it is extremely attractive.

A nice day at the Albuquerque Zoo, 2015-02-14

Not exactly a “Valentine’s day” kind of thing, but pleasant with my friend Cheryl & her friend Cathy. The incredibly nice thing about it is that they are willing to make the ~200 mile round trip from Los Alamos to Albuquerque and back so that the three of us can go to the zoo.

Last weekend, was a tad more difficult, however – we (including Cathy’s sister) were supposed to go to see the film “Selma”. I was feeling a tad “green about the gills” before they even showed up. I managed to remain moderately self-composed during lunch but only had a glass of ice-water while they were eating. At that point, I asked to be brought back to my apartment because I felt so ill which Cathy did as there was enough time to make a round trip and get back to where the other were to complete their day.

As for myself, however, I barely got into the apartment, closed the door, ran to the kitchen sink (deep, no water at the bottom, fairly comfortable angle, disposal) and begin the explosive technicolor yawn (as some people call it) series that lasted until the wee hours of Sunday morning. It was a rather difficult way of losing somewhat over 6% of my body mass and I don’t exactly remember when I started eating again… or for that matter, taking my rather long list of physician prescribed meds: there is no point in swallowing them if you can’t retain them.

And then… and then my PT/INR test on Friday the 13th showed a value of somewhat over 4 when it was supposed to be in the 2..3 range. The one slightly further back in time was 1.9 after the the lady who does the checking so she had upped my intake of Coumadin somewhat. Well, I still haven’t come close to my former weight and I hadn’t the presence of mind to tell her about the ‘mild’ food poisoning incident so she was feeling particularly clueless about what was going one… until I remembered Friday afternoon -WHY- the value was so high. You’ve got to balance your intake the amount of “blood thinner” to body mass and obviously that hadn’t occurred. I’ll call her Monday morning and explain and she’ll reset what my prescription ought to be.

However, things were MUCH nicer today because my body was working properly and I was feeling fine. We had a nice lunch at “Garcia’s” near Old Town, bopped over to the Albuquerque Zoo, found a place to park, were able to get out of the back of the line because a new turnstile had just opened for people who had “Zoo Support Tickets”. Famously nice it was that we did because the lines were long and moving slowly.

The only difficulty is that we ought to have gone to see the Elephants early rather than visit the Cat Walk and the seals and all of the colorful birds and the simians of one sort or another. The big beasts had gone into their huge, comfortable shed before we got to them. Sigh. “Oh well…” etc.

So – the day fairly well, we walked about 3.3 miles which was good for us and drove me back to my place, passing displays of Valentine’s Day balloons and candy on the various corners in town… for those last minute shoppers, we supposed.

All in all, a good time was had by all. The best cotton candy I’ve ever had as well…

Having your memory drift away in small waves all day

It grimly difficult when your fingers don’t respond properly to allow you to touch-type as you’d like to. It isn’t painful, but having to look down at your keyboard obviates the whole flow of the device. For what it is worth, I’d prefer having a Dvorak keyboard, seeing as how Windows supports it, but my money is sufficiently tight that I can’t afford one: not even a USB-cable sort.
And then there are passwords. I can’t even trust the ones I’ve stored somewhere or other. My passwords are sufficiently cryptic that they are difficult to type in the first place… and then attempting to remember one five minutes after you’ve created it, it fails to work. Worse yet, when you’ve made a written note within those five minutes and even THAT doesn’t work, things get to be rather frustrating. No, this isn’t Alzheimer’s, it is something that isn’t likely to disable me or make me a burden on other people. But when you can’t do simple cash-register math in your mind & always hand what you know is too much and THEN by seeing how much is returned to you (even if it is only a penny) then the transaction pops up again.
I’ve been mucking around with domain registrars lately, going from one company to another. One of the companies has such an esoteric and bothersome password creation process that it staggers the imagination. Well, it staggers mine, at least. Finding out that you probably have two registrars both pointing at the DNS servers of your “Long Time Ago Site All In HTML2” then you Really get freaked when you THINK you are attempting to send the registration from one company to another and the receiving company doesn’t flag you with errors that almost CERTAINLY ought to be ringing bells and flashing red lights. It makes me wonder: does the entire domain registration biz really work properly or not. And it all started with PayPal telling me that a credit card I was using was going to expire in a month (as it turns out, it isn’t going to expire until 2019) and you discard PayPal as the relatively wretched thing it is you suddenly realize: my registrations are usually for two to five years long so that I don’t have to worry about them expiring for a LONG time… but I was having PayPal moving money to one registrar that I didn’t think it should have been when renewals come up. So, I kill PayPal and fiddle around with the registrar they say was going to be “automagically” paid and think that maybe I ought to use a different registrar. And then the lack of memory capacity hits again and you realize that you don’t know which of two registrars is the one you really want. After all, it had been two years since I paid for that term of time & hadn’t had to worry about it in the mean time.
I think I’ll be doing better simply by writing this rant against myself (my typing is improving even as I spew) so perhaps other things will “come to mind” when I need them.
Exercise your mind (or brain… what have you) because if you don’t, it will wither. Thus ends the rant.

(actually, it doesn’t. I had the good fortune of saving my draft before BLOODY CHROME CRASHED AGAIN. And thus you get to see me use what in England is considered improper speech.

Fall of the house of Usher, Poe, Public domain, Spritz reading test

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.
Béranger

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was–but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon
the scene before me–upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like
windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of
decayed trees–with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to
no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
reveller upon opium: the bitter lapse into everyday life, the hideous
dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a
sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no
goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the
sublime. What was it–I paused to think–what was it that so unnerved
me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all
insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded
upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there _are_
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of
thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among
considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a
mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and acting upon
this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and
lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed
down–but with a shudder even more thrilling than before–upon the
remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly
tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
part of the country–a letter from him–which in its wildly
inportunate nature had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute
bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an
earnest desire to see me, as his best and indeed his only personal
friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society,
some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this,
and much more, was said–it was the apparent _heart_ that went
with his request–which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
summons.

Although as boys we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art,
and manifested of late in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies,
perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable
beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable
fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had
put forth at no period any enduring branch; in other words, that the
entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with
very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this
deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect
keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character
of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which
the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the
other–it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the
consequent undeviating transmission from sire to son of the patrimony
with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge
the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
appellation of the “House of Usher”–an appellation which seemed to
include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family
and the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment,
that of looking down within the tarn, had been to deepen the first
singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of
the rapid increase of my superstition–for why should I not so term
it?–served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have
long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as
a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I
again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the
pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy–a fancy so ridiculous,
indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the
sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as
really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung
an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity: an
atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had
reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent
tarn: a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly
discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I
scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal
feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The
discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the
whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet
all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of
the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency
between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling
condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that
reminded one of the specious totality of old wood-work which has
rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of
instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have
discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio
of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know
not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already
spoken. While the objects around me–while the carvings of the
ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of
the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as
I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been
accustomed from my infancy–while I hesitated not to acknowledge how
familiar was all this–I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were
the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the
staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I
thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He
accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open
a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The
windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from
the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the
trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more
prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach
the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and
fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general
furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any
vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of
sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and
pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying
at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much
in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality–of the
constrained effort of the _ennuyé_ man of the world. A glance,
however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him
with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely man had never before
so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It
was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A
cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but
with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely
moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral
energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.

And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these
features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much
of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort,
connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence,
an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of
feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an
excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed
been prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain
boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of
energetic concision–that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and
hollow-sounding enunciation–that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly
modulated guttural utterance–which may be observed in the lost
drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of
his most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of
his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and
one for which he despaired to find a remedy–a mere nervous affection,
he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as
he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the
terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid
food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain
texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds,
and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with
horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I
shall perish,” said he, “I _must_ perish in this deplorable
folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the
events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I
shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which
may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed,
no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect–in terror. In
this unnerved–in this pitiable condition, I feel that the period will
sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together,
in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”

I learned moreover at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
ventured forth–in regard to an influence whose supposititious force
was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated–an influence
which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
spirit–an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets,
and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
brought about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin–to the severe and long-continued
illness, indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution, of a
tenderly beloved sister–his sole companion for long years, his last
and only relative on earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness
which I can never forget, “would leave him (him the hopeless and the
frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke,
the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my
presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not
unmingled with dread, and yet I found it impossible to account for
such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my
glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the
brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only
perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the
emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily
borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken
herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my
arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night
with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the
destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person
would thus probably be the last I should obtain–that the lady, at
least while living, would be seen by me no more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;
or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his
speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the
more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a
mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured
forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one
unceasing radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail
in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the
way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous
lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my
ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von
Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and
which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the
more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why;–from these
paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain
endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within
the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever
mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at
least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose, out of
the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon
his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I
ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
concrete reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although
feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory
points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the
earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and
no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a
flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a
ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the
exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps,
the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar,
which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his
performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his impromptus could
not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes,
as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of
that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the
highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I
have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed
with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its
meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness, on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty
reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted
Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:–

I

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace–
Radiant palace–reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there;
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This–all this–was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingéd odor went away.

III

Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne where, sitting,
Porphyrogene,
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI

And travellers now within that valley
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh–but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
a train of thought, wherein there became manifest an opinion of
Usher’s which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for
other men[1] haye thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with
which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of
the sentience of all vegetable things. But in his disordered fancy the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
to express the full extent, or the earnest _abandon_ of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously
hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his fore-fathers. The
conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in
the method of collocation of these stones–in the order of their
arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread
them, and of the decayed trees which stood around–above all, in the
long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its
reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence–the
evidence of the sentience–was to be seen, he said (and I here started
as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere
of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was
discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible
influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family,
and which made _him_ what I now saw him–what he was. Such
opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

[Footnote 1: Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the
Bishop of Landaff.–See “Chemical Essays,” Vol. V.]

Our books–the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid–were, as might be supposed, in
strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
such works as the Ververt and Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of
Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean
Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of
Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue
Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite
volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium
Inquisitorum_, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were
passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and Ægipans,
over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight,
however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious
book in quarto Gothic–the manual of a forgotten church–the
_Vigilice Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiæ Maguntinæ_.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when one evening, having
informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its
final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this
singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to
dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me)
by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the
deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her
medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the
burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to
mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the
staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to
oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an
unnatural, precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements
for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the
building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
donjon-keep, and in later days as a place of deposit for powder, or
some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had
been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an
unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead–for
we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed
the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush
upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile
upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
possible, a more ghastly hue–but the luminousness of his eye had
utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
terrified–that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet
impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away. I
struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
endeavored to believe that much, if not all, of what I felt was due to
the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room–of the
dark and tattered draperies which, tortured into motion by the breath
of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and at
length there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless
alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself
upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness
of the chamber, hearkened–I know not why, except that an instinctive
spirit prompted me–to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not
whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable
yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste, (for I felt that I
should sleep no more during the night,) and endeavored to arouse
myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing
rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped with a gentle
touch at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as
usual, cadaverously wan–but, moreover, there was a species of mad
hilarity in his eyes–an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
demeanor. His air appalled me–but anything was preferable to the
solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence
as a relief.

“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared
about him for some moments in silence–“you have not then seen
it?–but, stay! you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like
velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this; yet we had no
glimpse of the moon or stars, nor was there any flashing forth of the
lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
mansion.

“You must not–you shall not behold this!” said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him with a gentle violence from the window to a
seat. “These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
phenomena not uncommon–or it may be that they have their ghastly
origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; the
air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen;–and so we will
pass away this terrible night together.”

The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir
Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s more in
sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac might find relief (for
the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in
the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged,
indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he
hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might
well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
thus:–

“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain
upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted
his mace outright, and with blows made quickly room in the plankings
of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith
sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed and reverberated
throughout the forest.”

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
excited fancy had deceived me)–it appeared to me that from some very
remote portion of the mansion there came, indistinctly, to my ears,
what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
disturbed me. I continued the story:–

“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was
sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;
but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
of shining brass with this legend enwritten–

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of
it, the like whereof was never before heard.”

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement; for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
sound–the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had during the last few minutes taken place in his
demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features,
although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring
inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast–yet I knew that he
was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught
a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
variance with this idea–for he rocked from side to side with a gentle
yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
proceeded:–

“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking
up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out
of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver
pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than–as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver–I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped
to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was
undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent
fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned
a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there
came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered
about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and
gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely
over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

“Not hear it?–yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long–long–long–many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it–yet I dared not–oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!–I dared
not–I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the
tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you
that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard
them–many, many days ago–yet I dared not–_I dared not speak!_
And now–to-night–Ethelred–ha! ha!–the breaking of the hermit’s
door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the
shield!–say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of
the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered
archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here
anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard
her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and
horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”–here he sprang furiously to
his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were
giving up his soul–“_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without
the door!_”

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to hich the speaker
pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust–but then without those
doors there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the
lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
the threshold–then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
the person of her brother, and, in her violent and now final
death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
terrors he had anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm
was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before
spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
widened–there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind–the entire orb
of the satellite burst at once upon my sight–my brain reeled as I saw
the mighty walls rushing asunder–there was a long tumultuous shouting
sound like the voice of a thousand waters–and the deep and dank tarn
at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
“_House of Usher_.”

Is there anybody out there?

Yes, I like “The Wall” by Pink Floyd.

Someone for Hotmail-Land just registered: thank you very much.

This is being an unduly tense day. The landlord called to see if my “swamp cooler” was working properly. I said that it was (Albuquerque is hot during the summer, unless it is raining…) After all, with the exception of the Rio Grande (which isn’t so terrifically large by the time it gets here with everybody tapping water out of it up stream), this is a plain in “mountain desert” country, with an Elevation of 5,312 ft (1,619.1 m). When I was living in Los Alamos, the elevation was about 7,200 ft, so I guess there is more air down here.

Let’s see… My sister Kathy sent me some registered mail last week but didn’t add the “tracking service”. It hasn’t appeared yet and I’m supposed to sign for it upon receipt. So… we don’t know where it is and being out of the apartment defeats the whole process and between doctor/dental visits & some other things means that basically, I’m screwed. Well, I suppose she can send the same stuff without registration or even via email (fat lot of chance that!)

Well, my son Sean just zapped through and fixed a problem I was having with the DOS-in-Windows command line box. I understand WHAT he did, but I don’t particularly know how he did it, etc. In spite of being fairly good with computers, there is a whole area of, for example, Windows that is unknown country to me. His expertise makes me acknowledge that I simply didn’t learn or worse, ignored that makes life less… how shall we say, grumpy.

I’m in the midst of making chase crew pins for my favorite pilot/owner’s followers at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (or B’loon Fiasco as I like to put it). The balloon is quite beautiful… at least in the photographs I’ve seen. I now have the design specs chart and the button art has taken me deep into the depths of Inkscape. There are two competing designs in mind: one that uses the “wind rose” (like a compass) star that graces two sides of the balloon and the other being what the ‘crown’ looks like if you are in the gondola & looking straight up. One aspect of balloon pin-making is the fact that the colors are “flopped” horizontally – if it goes yellow-orange-red-yellow-light blue-dark blue on the outside it is necessarily the inverse of that. I’ll leave the trick of figuring out what the arrangement is for this example.

I’ve crewed for my friend Gerry about 20 years, the last year being 2006. There has been a hiatus, therefore, of 8 years but I probably won’t actually ‘crew’ (which involves following the balloon so that it can be tucked back into its bag once on the ground: the following is sitting on the bed of the balloon’s truck in the crisp, cold air of the first full week of October. Sometimes the crew has been minimal, sometimes it has been huge (would you believe 30-odd folks all crammed on the bed of the truck with the gondola and the bag in the center?) Generally speaking, we’d get to the “Park” at about 4:30 AM making the mandatory question and answer. This is “Are we having fun yet?” answered by “This IS the fun part!” no matter how insane the situation might be.

During those 20 years I would often make about Badge-A-Minit pins with artwork to be handed out to the crew. It turns out that I’m reasonably good at graphics which pleases me. As noted above, there are two competing designs in my head & I’m going to go for the “star” of the balloon named “Lofty Fiestar” (can you see the pun in that? I shan’t mention anything further.

On to doing some physical labor…
Zoz