Wednesday 29 February 2012

Loving the Macabre.

The sky was clear tonight, and the half moon bright enough to cast deep shadows on the lane. A light mist infused the fields and trees with the merest hint of a cold glow, and the walls of the farmhouse and cottages in Mill Lane were rendered a harsher range of half tones than usual. The combined effect was to make their angles seem slightly more angular, their prospect slightly more twisted. In a word, they looked gothic.

I’ve always taken pleasure in such an atmosphere. I remember walking home some nights as a teenager. The route was a track that ran close to the road along the bottom of a small range of hills, and I used to imagine that every large junction box standing out from the power poles was a dead man hanging from a gibbet. I didn’t know then what the difference between a gibbet and a gallows was, but it hardly mattered. My sense of the macabre was duly satisfied. And it wouldn’t have worked had I not been alone. It seems that some aspects of our natures don’t really change very much.

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Venus was a little higher above the horizon tonight, and Jupiter a little further away from her. And that’s something else that doesn’t seem to change very much.

5 comments:

Anthropomorphica said...

Me too Jeff! Many a time I've seen a body hanging in a house window, only to discover a t shirt on a coat hanger. Thought I found a dead body in a field but it was an old bag lady taking a nap.
Loved your description of the night!

JJ said...

The others are all mad, aren't they Mel? We should form a club.

I'm not sure I'd like to find either a body or an old bag lady in a field. One would have maggots, the other fleas.

Anthropomorphica said...

Absolutely! Why I giggle when I read of the maggot and fleas I don't know, but it tickled me...

JJ said...

I think we have something strange in common, Mel. Something creepy, crawly and utterly unnameable.

Anthropomorphica said...

:) hee hee...