Gothic spires silhouetted before a lurid sunset, darkened terrain and flashes of supernatural mysticism inhabiting the deeper levels of my superstition. A thick scent of ozone. Torrid, hopeless, sublime subjective natural landscapes mirroring personal doom. This nightmare world, spreading beneath the distant stars on the infinite horizon, cutting through the shadows inhabited by the indistinct shapes and symbols of all the things I have ever dreamt. Where everything is iridescent purple mirror shine, a black mirror where things look out that never looked in, or looked in once and were trapped, twisted to reveal what they are.
All that's necessary to reach the stars is to cross it.
The eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg as they look over the grey Valley of Ashes, the hopeless space that separates us from the green light, from the hopeless gay parties that never end, the dangerous and fascinating people who can make anything happen, for a price. Gatsby stands on his dock, reaching back to a dream he'll never re-create. A midwestern story. A story of being so fundamentally fed up with who and what you are that, desperate to become anything else, you become a symbol. A warning.
But J. Alfred Prufrock knows there is nothing to stop us, with the evening spread out against the sky, except for a million realities, doubts and fears, the things that keep us from ourselves, our hair, our faces, life and death, and do we dare? There will be time later, so wait, turn back. Know that mermaids sang, but not to me, for human voices wake us, and we drown. Because life is talk, and death and work and sleep and doubt, and more than that, the certainty of doubt which reminds us we are not infinite, and should we dare, time will turn us back to coffee spoons.
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