Ultima Thule

This is the last place; this is the first place. This is a place without feature; this is a place of infinite detail. It is empty here; it is overflowing. This is the gate to a new world; it is the door that leaves all the old worlds behind.

In equal measure, hope and fear. And one more thing: truth. Hope and fear will grow if the truth recedes. As the truth grows both the hope and the fear diminish.

This is a place of continual light; this is a place of perpetual darkness. There are no shadows here; yet nothing is fully illuminated. Nothing moves; nothing is permanent. This is the end; this is the beginning.

Welcome, and farewell.

Terra

Tunis: a group of foreigners play a game near the ancient ruins. Turin: cats in the cathedral. Tunbridge Wells: a man is building a stone wall. Tenerife: these are the books that we have read. Tristan da Cunha: the sea, always the sea. Tenafly: a fire hydrant, painted with a crude face. Trenton: Trenton makes, the world takes. Terre Haute: a truck, just passing through. Texarkana: what do you watch? Tarzana: we all aspire to something. Tahiti: it's all in the code. Tonga: welcome to next year. Teheran: the streets are full of ghosts, pretending to be birds.

Sargasso Sea

Like shellac. Sorrowful lessons there is a season as a sea sounds a cessation. Session is in court, short as a breeze on a ceaseless sea. Silly faces see phases of races, shallow forces for memorial murmurs. These phrases cease to seem full, seem to seize souls. Faceless laces fail the thrushes of the series. Here is the series the cereal herons parries. Ceres, Eros, Ares and Eris select the Susurrus they share with the heroes. Chase a shack, a pallid valis, like shellac.

Rhodesia

The last time I saw Greystoke he had just got back from an expedition to the Lost Gold Mine of the Zambezi. He was running then every fortnight like clockwork, had the crocs plunging on cue and the hippos roaring as the steamer went by, a little excitement with a cordial crowd shaking spears and whatnot, he was making a pretty good living. But things were getting precarious, with the communists and the natives making a fuss, and he was inclined to get out.

He'd developed a taste for gin during his trips back home, quite a prodigious taste to be truthful, and I found him propping up a bar on a back street on Salisbury. Horrible place, but at least it was so dark you couldn't see the lizards.

We got to talking, and it seemed that he had one last scheme. There was this ape. A most talented ape, strong as the dickens and clever. He could talk to the apes, you know. Damned useful skill, got him out of more than one scrape. So he'd been talking to this ape, name of Don, who'd been watching the newsreels and had seen a chance for the two of them to make a bit of coin. Of course America would never do, those that had gone out there had come to a bad end, but Don thought maybe Japan might be a land of opportunity. There had been a big lizard, he'd made a bit of a mess but had gotten popular nonetheless.

As it happened, I knew an Italian chappie who was also trying to make good in the land of the rising sun, and had developed a few contacts. I told Greystone about him, we had a last drink or six, and I went on my way. Out of Africa for good, thank heaven. Of course Don and the Italian fellow did all right, but I never heard anything more of Greystoke. I suppose they cut him out, poor sot.

Qena

The sun is bright, the sun is hot. You can smell the water but you can't see it. You see nothing but bright limitless earth beneath, bright limitless sky above. The water, the living, moving water, it is an invisible presence, the limitless third party just beyond seeing, just beneath the horizon. A blue ribbon in the middle of the earth. Endless this way, endless that way. The life in the midst of. And where life is, time begins. No water no life no time. And here the still form, tongue out, eyes open, beneath a limitless sky, bright sun, hot sun. You can smell it, you can see it. Tongue out. Smiling, you smile. Still life, no life. A tentative sniff. There is no water to be seen. There is no time like the present. No life no water no time. It is still moist.

Philadelphia

There are two cities, and two loves. Augustine proclaimed this truth, but it was up to Christopher Morley to fill in the details. And, like Kitty Doyle, we stand between our two cities and our two loves, which places us, probably, in the neighborhood of Plainfield, New Jersey, or not very distant from the present location of this writer. And it is not clear, not ever, which city, which love, we will ultimately embrace.

But really, to choose that useless Wyn? Unlikely; even if I'd rather be in Philadelphia.

Olympus

It isn't the way it used to be. The mountain is the same, at least it seems so at first, but then it is obvious. It's gotten so ... shabby. All tarnished metal, broken crockery, crumbling plaster. Even the clouds seem less majestic, the Brocken specter seems less spectral, the clear skies less brilliant and the dark ones less terrible. Less terrible, also, the gods who once dominated this peak, drained of ichor and exhausted by the burden of immortality, less deities than curiosities. No powers that the hundred handed beasts below can't duplicate if not improve upon. Apathetic, they watch, they wonder, they fade away. Conquered by the clay they molded.