Einstein Intersection

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Whanne, as he strod alonge the shakeynge lee, The roddie levynne glesterrd on hysheadde; Into hyshearte the azure vapoures spreade; He wrythde arounde yn drearie dernie payne;— Whanne from his lyfe-bloode the rodde lemes were fed, He felle an hepe of ashes on the playne. Thomas Chatterton, "English Metamorphosis" "Now there's a quaint taste," said Durcet. "Well, Curval, what do you think of that one?" "Marvelous," the President replied; "there you have an individual who wishes to make himselffamiliar with the idea of death and hence unafraid of it, and who to that end has found no better means than to associate it with a libertine idea . . . " . . . Supper wasserved, orgies followed as usual, the household retired to bed. Le Marquis de Sade, The, 120 Days of Sodom The motion of gathering loops ofwater Must either burst or remain in a moment. The violet colors through the glass Throw up little swellings that appear And spatter as soon as another strikes And is born; so pure are they of colored Hues, that we feel the absent strength Of its power. When they begin they gather Like sand on the beach: each bubble Contains a complete eye ofwater. Samuel Grcenberg,"The GlassBubbles" The EinsteinIntersection 81 Then to the broken land ("This"—Spider halted his dragon in the shaly afternoon—"is the broken land." He flung a small flint over the edge. It chuckled into the canyon. Around us the dragons were craning curiously at the granite, the veined cliffs, the chasms) slowing our pace now. Clouds dulled the sun. Hot fog flowed around the rocks. I worked one muscle after another against the bone to squeeze out the soreness. Most of the pain (surprise) was gone. We meandered through the fabulous, simple stones. The dragons made half time here. Spider said it was perhaps forty kilometers to Branning-atsea . Wind heated our faces. Glass wound in the rocks. Five dragons began a scuffle on the shale. One was the tumored female. Green-eye and me came at them from opposite sides. Spider wasbusy at the head of the herd; the scuffle was near the tail. Something had frightened them, and they were plopping up the slope. It didn't occur to us something was wrong; this wasthe sort of thing that Spider (and Friza) were supposed to be able to prevent. (Oh, Friza, I'll find you through the echo of all mourning stones, all praising trees!) We followed. They dodged through the boulders. I shouted after them. Our whips chattered. We couldn't outrun them. We hoped they would fall to fighting again. We lost them for a minute, then heard their hissing beyond the rocks, lower down. Clouds smeared the sky;water varnished the trail ahead. As M. M. crossed the wet rock, he slipped. I was thrown, scraping hip and shoulder. I heard my blade clatter away on the rock. My whip snarled around my neck. For one moment I thought I'd strangle. I rolled down a slope, trying to flail myself to a halt, got scraped up more. Then I dropped over the edge of something. I grabbed out with both hands and feet. Chest and stomach slapped stone. My breath went off somewhere and wouldn't go back into my lungs for a long time. When it did, it came roaring down my sucking throat, whirled in my bruised chest. Busted ribs? Just pain. 82 S A M U E L R. D E L A N Y And roar again with another breath. Tears flooded my sight. I was holding on to a rock with my left hand, a vine with my right; my left foot clutched a sapling none too securely by the roots. Myright leg dangled. And I just knew it was a long way down. I rubbed my eye on my shoulder and looked up: The lip of the trail above me. Above that, angrysky. Sound? Wind through gorse somewhere. No music. While I was looking it started to rain. Sometimes painful catastrophes happen. Then some little or even pleasant thing follows it, and you cry. Like rain. I cried. "Lobey." I looked again. Kneeling on a shelf of stone a few feet above me to the right was Kid Death. "Kid—?" "Lobey," he said, shaking wet hair back from his forehead. "I judge you can hold on there twenty-seven minutes before you drop over the edge...