I have seen death, standing close by, attractive all right – quite like Gaiman’s Death. In fact, in a surreal way, I feel as if it is only now I understand the true darkness behind the allure of Gaiman’s vision. Because whether it be Death, or the angelic grandeur and nobility of the Star of the East, one forgets what they represent to one’s ultimate peril. This peril, to keep the circle just, can often prove only too fatal.


I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's
a-gonna fall.

(This last bit from Robert Allen Zimmerman, writing in the summer of 1962.) Hopefully, more anon.

In Aurora's fading hour before the city wakes up, may it be for you too, the peace rising radiant out of the morning Sun.