Status Updates From The Opal (and other stories...

When the retina of the eye is stimulated by light, pressure, heat, electricity or any other irritation, the corresponding sensations are not specifically those of light, pressure, heat, electricity etc., but merely sensations of sight [… I]f you apply a stimulus to the clergywife’s essential nucleus, no matter by what means, it will start crocheting; if however it is left undisturbed […] it merely reproduces.

A dim, gloomy illumination emanates from somewhere or other, seeping down from the Hradschin on to the roofs of the city below, like a phosphorescent haze. You turn into a narrow lane, and see nothing: only a deathly darkness, until suddenly a spectral ray of light stabs into your eyes from a chink in a shutter, like a long, malevolent needle.

Even someone's superficial fate may be shifted on to a new track if his consciousness can break through the barriers of earthly perception for just one moment.

Even the air is different, here on the Kleinseite, as if all the life in it has drained off, deep underground for fear of the Death that stalks above. Don't you ever get the feeling that this whole shadowy scene will one day just vanish like a mirage, a fata morgana, and that all the pent-up life that's waiting here somewhere in suspended animation, will suddenly revive, wraithlike ...

I prefer to admit quite publicly that I am depraved. I take no interest in the sort of things that fill the rest of the nation with pride; I am bored by the most revered canons, my heart does not beat one whit the faster at the sight of Clothilde the Chaste's lacy breast-binders.