So, tonight is the infamous (of horror stories fame) Walpurgis Nacht (or as I call it the Eastern European Hallow’en) and tomorrow is the 233[sup]rd[/sup] anniversary of the founding of the Bavarian Illuminati by Adam Weishaupt. So raise a glass (of the hemlock of your choice) to ghouls and creatures of all kind and to everybodies favorite conspiracy. Enjoy !
fnord !
Well, in that case…
To the creatures of our nightmares, and the conspiracies of our fevered dreams!
clink
Ewige Blumenkraft unt Ewige Schlangekraft! Heute die Welt, Morgens das Sonnensystem!
Wikipedia mentions in the article on Walpurgis Night “chaotic spirits that were said to walk among the living then”. Do these spirits block sewer drains and corrupt laptop hard drives? That would explain some things that have been happening to me and Mr. Neville this week… I wonder if a gas fireplace would be close enough to a bonfire to scare them off.
Hey, the Scandinavians like it too, although here in Sweden they treat Easter like Hallowe’en and Walrus Night as an excuse to build a bonfire and light it with torches.
I’d like to celebrate with you guys, but tonight’s the night I immanentize the eschaton.
Aw gee Tapioca, that old trick never works!
Except it’s 23 decades since since Herr Weishaupt got the ball rolling.
This is May Day. Every year there’s a Welcome Spring gathering of pagans, tree-huggers, and the Bassett Street Morris Dancers, on top of a hill, at dawn. Not sure if they dance around a May Pole or what, but I’d love to be there some year…
I’d rather light a spliff of Alamout Black
Nothin’ wrong with that, as long as you share and enjoy.
sings
Take the flame inside you
Burn and burn below…
Thursday night around nine, nine-thirty, I went to our neighborhood taqueria to order up some chow for me and my partner – one super al pastor burrito, hold the sour cream, one super chorizo burrito with the works, refried beans on both, hot salsa, and a couple Mexican Coca-Colas in the bottles ‘cuz they taste way better (Mexican soda pop has actual, honest-to-Dog sugar in it, not fuckin’ corn syrup – and that makes a real difference, friends, don’t let 'em tell ya otherwise). I ordered, then sat down at a table right next to a plate-glass-windowed view of Sutter Street, took out my book, put on my reading specs, and leaned back against the pane to relax and wait for the goodies.
A sudden muffled* thwakk! *jarred me from behind – the impact of said glass pane with the bodies of two gentlemen who now lay grappling violently on the sidewalk, just inches from my view. Except really all I could see much of was the guy on top; of the pummel-ee, only a wildly flailing left arm and a foot pounding on the sidewalk were visible.
From behind me I heard the other customers babbling: *“Is that a real fight?” “Are those guys just fooling around, or what?” *and all like that. I surveyed the lot – three chicks who looked to belong in other neighborhoods entirely, and the big shlubby looking square citizen dude date of one of them–and went back to watching the fight. Being a somewhat bloodthirsty person (albeit a low-key and polite one when in mixed company), I will stop to watch a fight anytime. The combatants’ moves were constrained by the tight clinch in which each clutched the other, but driven with intensity and viciousness; you could hear muffled garbled yells of “motherfucker!” “goddamn faggot punk!” “Ima kill yr ass!”“my goddamn money you cunt cocksucker” and suchlike tribal war-chants of the street savage being grunted repeatedly by both parties.
“Is nobody gonna stop it?” one of the bougie chicks asked the room. I eyed her coolly and suggested that she, then, should go out and do just that (I’d love to have seen how that would’ve come out had she done so). “But I’m a gurrrl!” she hem-hawed. I retorted with “Yeah, and I’m a faggot, and I sure ain’t goin out and gettin in the midst of that shit.” Actually I just figured that since I didn’t know either one of the individual strugglerss or what had led to this dramatic moment of the evening, it was none of my goddamn business anyway.
The action out there abruptly went more vicious and tighter focussed. When the guy on top reached backward toward his hip pocket with a free hand, an audible sequence of dismayed gasping inhalations passed sharp-edged among the spectators. “Is that a knife?” squealed one lookie-loo in a girlie-girl tremolo. It was indeed; a folding hunter’s knife had appeared in his right hand and sprang open with unnerving suddenness.
You’ve seen before, how when someone’s stabbing someone else their arm moves back and forth in this tight slow but hard single thrust straight forward, right? I have, and that was just how upper-side guy’s right arm moved then.
One of the chicks was on her cell phone to 9-1-1 and saying she’d heard there was a knife involved but she didn’t know…I told her she could say to them that there’d definitely been a knife involved, no fucking doubt about that . Meanwhile there was a third party wout there on the sidewalk now, shouting – a shabby dressed man of the streets, looking much like them, or much like me, or both, who stood there wide-eyed, wild-eyed, telling them (or the whole world around him generically) that this was some fucked up shit.
“Al pastor and chorizo to go” announced Bernabe, the guy who runs this particular taqueria. I went to pick up my order and scoop a pile of free chips’n’salsa; even as I turned away from the spectacle the blue and red lights that announced the arrival of the law dogs were flashing stroboscopic commands.
Moments later I walked out with our burritos and sodas. At least three carloads of SFPD had materialized. One cop, armed with a riot-pump shotgun, gave me the cold stinky eyeball I often receive from such as himself; two of his colleagues had the stabber, hogtied with steel handcuffs, lying belly-down on Sutter Street. The guy who’d had the worst of the scuffle was still on-site, standing a little distance away from the detainment action and pointing out two or three bloody areas on his hand and arm to yet more SFPD personnel. I returned the shotgun brandisher’s hostile stare coolly and without comment and was on my way.
Half a block away from home I passed the guy who’d been hollering at the fighters earlier as he headed up the street in the other direction. “Man”, he told me, “that shit was fucked up.”
“It sure as shit was that, bro” I agreed, then turned my corner and headed for our front door.
While I was telling Himself about it, I realized that today’s date was the 30th of April – the evening, indeed, was Walpurgisnacht. A random street stabbing seems an appropriate occurrence with which to mark Walpurgisnacht; it sure felt like that way to me anyway. Chaos, hazard and uncontrolled passions breaking suddenly like thunder, but still a manifested aspect of the nature of that location and moment in time.
The burritos were top-shelf, by the way.