Still solar eclipsing, and avoiding people.

 

The battle.

The white hands still hold the blade. But the shaft has sunk in, with little hooks, that catch beneath, drawing the breather under. The morning is still, creeping over the rim, revealing the desolation; which in the first light shows it'self, laid wide and bare,with no movement save for the folorn black hubs where embers and smoke are still rising. Deep gouges of the land where the home bryres used to sit. The gathering houses of the kin. Her kin. But the kin folk have all gone- the desolation of the light shows it; in the burnt valley with it's blown out forms. She is pulled back from them now, as the stab of pain once again catches. Her ribs disintegrating. Even now there is something splintering , something foul that has cracked forward and is now rising. The barb!. It was poisoned. All kilahr metal work is. She should of known it. It will not be long now. She feels it, the dark pouring of the magic rushing in. Soon will come the blackness of the broken sanctuary. The deep sleep, that like a heavy cape that will follow. She has failed , she knows this, as she tries to move against the pain, and once more catch sight of all the blasted devastation down below. Her people. Thrown out, and brutal in their deaths, deaths that now only her dwindling eyes, for a few more minutes will recall. The last of her race. No more survivors of her people. MB

Yesterday's write. Today back to shungite.

 The Grasp ends..

My neck's stove in, broke upon it's own joint; line-deformed, in a world of macro falling order. Wrapped around it's own voice, no longer guttural and primal. Instead, it seeps along a hidden seam; as one falls in and folds under . Oh these veins that bled from life. Guards and sentries!. Beckons and mentions! Those holy orders that fight and light the way towards the secret shore of an eternal sea; and the the right to find movement within the dark again. MB

The masseuse

“How dare you touch me” She had not said this to the coal black face; Straight like an ailment; globes heavy with absent stagnation that stared and bulged within it's own strangeness..A patriarch of a closed order- he  righteously stiffened in pious self belief. A sneer of a body, in the blue and the black; but still far removed from things. At first she had tried to remain closed, to avoid his accents; rhythmic and regular for the counting; but the hands had come in a slow conduct, that had finally struck; tall and thrifty, and mean with the giving. And so she had sat, overspent and long  along the body, straining under skin; fleeing the touching and the feeling. But in the end, it was of no use-  he had pressed all things in-  in a self- obliterating, queer-adulterating payload; unique to his own particular, discombobulating self blend. He had not earned what he could not deliver. And so she was stuck with the Blasphemy of the thing.  MB

10 days and still no plumber/money run or macro fail dilemas?

 

He robbed me/ reverting back to the path/slipping my skin moorings

It had all seized up, the rough- said parts, where she had caved. Was it in ? Or under? she wasn't sure, except to say that things had slid, and now the head marooned, sat stiffly like some mute siren-shriek, atop a pole. Mournful on the rocks, dragged in by the tides and the unsafe modesty below. These were the places where she suffered openly, but in secret, behind a line, in degrees that separated from reason. Nursing her tomb, the underling; neglected and rejected in full parts. The soft placed power of the old ways. Full of rightness, but dangerously hemmed in. Except now the tide had caught, and new currents break, somehow no longer confounded by the past. And within these, there comes a candour- a willingness to right the line. To break lose of all the twists and turns; and again do that dangerous thing:  Become a full bodied woman rising. MB

Amidst the terror of a neighbourhood lateral move- a creative spurt.

 

That was the crime.

It was the year of 1805, the last war had ended, and now the murdered men, with their empty eyes were returning. Each day one would see the long lines of the trembling broke, carrying their bent legs and filthy rags, back into the city. The towns folk would stand to watch them in silent applause, as the grocers, and the other good men who had stayed; mustachioed and portly,in their crisp waistcoats,  saved from the ravages of time; glared back in indifference at these un-intact, dismembered men; whose psyches were tattered and worn. For they had seen the evil of their days, in vast standing cannons, that had pointed out from mean impressive hills, polished black, before their quarry, like, unruly gods, and generals of battles, unceasingly raining their horror to the ground. There the men, far away from everything, had huddled in their burrows, the mud climbing in with the lice and the flies, as the dead stood the hours of the seasons, from dense heat, to thick cold; from night and day, until the weeks like the maggots, turned them over to a generalised rotted, sod; and all pervasive burrowing- breaking down rot. In these hovels of dirt, Side by side, the living would plead with their fallen comrades, who now gathered as invisible witnesses, telling the sacraments of their mass; until the living too, longed for the place beyond life. Until one day, suddenly, it was over. The tide, like the world, had changed, the crimson was no longer needed. And so these last bones of men, had picked up their packs with their rifles, in a desecrating weakness. And on uneven legs, that stood un-fast, had hobbled the long lost way back to home again. MB

The first monday morning write after the T va.c.cination visit.

 

The beaded elvis suit

Threads, like loose billowing waves. Rough notes where she wanted to stay. Bright and blind. Soft work, firm within the coil, hard in the underlay. Shimmers, and silent tracks of things. A pattern within the order.

Shoes , she remembered, she had worn them; before she had boarded the train where they had welcomed her with diamonds; and at the hospital, a queer place, where poor folks gathered beside deep pools into which they dived/lay. She too had had her turn, as an efficient nurse directed; until the music stopped and she, the main element, had waited in her beaded suit; for those were the night places; cut off  but wholly in the drift of their own self thinking. But now, eyes open,  in the morning bed, she fought the layers upwards into her day. MB

Readjusting the gates of stress.

 

The knife butcher

The knife was in .. moving against it's own serrations, within the shallow breaths even as his boot stood heavy. Laced and still muddy - Firm upon her chest. He poured in-searching for intimacy - the moment of maximal hurting. She tried to move but it was all struck dumb, Closed contact, cloying within the throat, like some ungurgled scream, thick in the slip of it's own choke. So Instead she closed her eyes, The last effort of will against the glare of his weight as her breath turned to crimson, as her lungs began to drown. Til nothing could rise. Her soul was scattering into a thousand places. For every part of her was a sorrow now marked in a protestation of eternal innocence, that would not release itself- except for  a single fragile tear that would not cry/come . MB

Fuck around and find out Plus liquorice moods in the morning.

 “It falls sir” , she says this more than once, eyes leading, as her breath is almost gone. There are blue lips ringed, that spread to a mottled hand, held out and pleading. There were four of them before, three now long departed- mustered hearts that fought great and brave wars. “ we were close sir” she says it, as if to acknowledge them, as her lips slip words towards some other time- away from the poor gates of this bleak dark house and all it's under crowded things. She will rattle loose, with these final clotted breaths; a dreary aspect, drudging up some old, long forgotten hill. These are the last rites, which like a ghost, move through papery walls in fast and fading light.“Oh sir”, she says, lips half moving, as for one last time she searches his tall kind face. For he is a gentleman physician, used to such things, and she - only one of the lowly and dim witted;  who foolishly give their hearts and souls away/ in play. MB

The friend.

Dark inversions

 The moon was quickening, or at least that is what she had heard it called, down in the old streets, at the low of the harbour; were across the years, many tales had come in on foreign tides, with even stranger men to bear them. Back in the half century, these dark ships had sailed under crescent moons, with mysterious crews, that never spoke, and were rarely seen. But the whisper of them, spread, even as their strange ships had sat low in the waters, often for days at at a time, before they left.. These ships had runners, men of other parts, who would do their bidding during the waking hours, other than that, whilst in the belly of the port none other than the runners exited or entered this black carved boats; and no one was seen on deck. But those things had not been seen for many a century or more now, until all thought of them eventually passed away. Lowton in time had become a quaint and sedentary town, with a harbour master, and a wife, and two children that had grown fat. It was a civil pace that  now docked at the shore, or was carried in land by porters and men. But still somewhere, within the old, stones, that lined the sewers that moved in other currents below, knowledge of what was old and lost and buried beneath, continued to exist.

Merite had been an outsider, her family like all the others, brought in on the gossip of prosperity, and the rich trade plied by the unique position of a bluff of land straddled, between too great ranges- the low east and the great western high ground. Low town was a place where the aeons had carved out a great centre piece of rising toppling land, half jettisoned into the ocean, in megalithic dark and ague d rock, drawn out like the long terrain of an accusing finger. Here low-town had been tossed, beholden to all the strange vagaries of water that had stormed, molten and melted,then eventually cooled, into a territorial drift, never quite comfortable with where it stood. Here for 4 centuries the two great terrains had traded, the harbour acting as a conduit, for all that had stood , even further to the west and east. Places where strange, wanderers had come and gone and gathered and ungathered, hurled across great tapestries of water, in undulating currents and ships. MB

Tie him to the table

 

Market day, heart of the valley and boundraying the boring brits.

 

Leopold: The lost count.

“ Give me your hand” she had said it as she fell fully into the moment. A surrender that she beckoned him to join. But his hand was rough and old and wizened- a too dead corpse. He knew that, as he pushed it further within the soft lapel of his robe. Shame coursed through him in little tributaries, that soon merged into a gushing river that threatened to hurtle all things over. “ Fool” he thought to him self; an agonising chasm now writing it's self heavily upon his face.

In these his best things, on this his best day; he had convinced himself that he could pass, and that somehow he would at least be comparable with the rest . So he had risked it, and for a moment he had hoped; mostly because She had been so pretty in her asking, and in the way her eyes had threatened kindness, with a softness like the downy hair upon her face. For months he had imagined all the the warm hours of sun it must have taken, to turn those hairs to white. But then the moment had come when they had left the main body of the group, filing down to a matched pace of impending intimacy. And so his mind had leapt to other things, like too hot beaches, and the handsome men of value that had so adored her that summer. And then like icarus he had fallen; and all at once he was a dreaming fool who was deformed again. So he said it “ NO”, this time with an ice that was served full- frozen, even as her face and trust still stood wide open; as his eyes kept pace with the ground, and the smooth stones and the speckled gravel of the path. The twist in his hand a constant ache, reminding him that in things of the heart, he should proceed with caution. MB

Death Light Monday, cameras arrive, beanbags go.

 

Death light

She didn't want to walk. The only thing she felt these days was the broken that had worked it's self all the way in; like a far reaching load straddling all sides, that then emerged in the many fallen lines upon her face. Lines that had formed the day of the blaze.

The house had burned evenly, charcoal to dead wood, in less than 45 minutes; till all had been spent, and  left in a charred clearing, of dead space.

This morning, like all the others, using a well gloved hand as a barrier to shield against the light, not stopping as she approached; she tried to look away. But it was no use, it's absence dominated everything - a hollow evanescence calling all things in. Each day the fallen outline looked different. Each day a little less. The weather of course, and the towns folk, had carried most of it off; till what was left stood angled and defeated, like a ship wreck. The remains of her life, objects that she would occasionally recognise or glimpse in the newly patched fences of neighbours, or blown willy nilly to odd landings by the wind; these scattered pieces, unlike her, seemingly finding renewal and redemption and purpose; whilst each morning  she would pass the site of the crime- not because she had to, but because there was no other way. And so each day, buttoned up in old sensible shoes, neat and shut up like some old maid; she battled to keep going, and then battled  to keep all things in - hat on tight against the world as one defiant loose lock of wilful amber hair,  fought to escape, and then  stray away from her mourning. It was always the same- the drudgery of  the low distant horizon, and another house where she earned a wage.

Later, She would return in the solace o the  dark, pain obscured for another day. And it was  then and only then, that she could fully bear to look past the silhouettes of old carbon blacked out falling beams;   through an old square red door made of cherry wood, no longer there-  towards all the things she used to be.. MB

Deflecting Josillio and the Galera stories/Writing again after morning pages.

 

Unholy

There is nothing to say, nothing that hits, nothing that soothes the soul or wipes the pain, the deep mark of red, the great stain. It is printed across her chest, in heavy hard to reach places, deep inner recesses, and misplaced folds, the locks, that only open one way. She had closed her self, bruised upon the earth, in one solid motion,where the wounds were formed, and the deed was spoken; by his hand. One blade. A through cut. She had watched how the first drops had fallen, amazed by the purity of it. Her own hand, half suspended. Half surprised. Recklessly, enthralled. He had cut her- taken the action; and in one fell swoop, their love had fallen. Their histories, had moved like little pieces, in foul motion. like men who fought and swore. So many wars, so many unholy reactions, that sat rough hewn ,closeted,half mourning, and gazing across the waste; as each night  her prayers took flight, stumbling their way up to God, in rough spilled tears, and increasingly coarser and more desperate displays, that first froze, and then bled for pity.,in the full  glare light upon her tongue. MB

Franco dies.

 Guilt.

The rosary, a string of silvery beads, entwined between fingers, nails,polished, and finely trimmed. She is looking to the light, past the reality of the hard wintery spaces, of the place where she is. Bleak hard mountains form the back drop, a view she cannot see. Glinting hard like white, sharp, stakes, protruding through high difficult ground. She pauses, her sad face a beauty, whittled down by the cold morning that also takes her breath away; as silent inward thoughts struggle to find place, as they bleed upwards from the space freshly reached below. A place where the wound of the news went to settle. That was five minutes ago, and even now the cruelty of the delivery still hangs in the air. His was a truth that was not whispered, as it watched her crumble. Instead It took pride in it's hatred, a malicious sneer, preaching triumphantly across the face. So now unfocused, she looks away from him,down to the dark earth below. Everywhere there is fresh turned sod, each depth waiting to receive,..There will be no escape. She will die here, perhaps many years from now. Like an empty plot, in a beckoning grave. She feels it - the arriving melancholy, which will layer on through the years, as her capture and isolation becomes complete. And as each moment passes she knows only that his darkness will deepen and grow.  MB

  

Assymetrical christmas morning

 https://www.quora.com/Why-do-I-find-Indian-people-so-hard-to-work-with-I-work-in-technology-in-Silicon-Valley-Is-this-a-shared-experience

Related

What is it like being an Indian in Silicon Valley?

You uber from the airport to your new home. The rent is beyond belief, but so is your salary. Your driver grew up in the city but the rent forced him to move out. He asks if you work in tech. You say yes, and the conversation stops.

You stare out the window and start counting all the Indian restaurants. You stop after the third Chaat House. It’s 3 am when you enter your new home. Your flatmates are huddled around a dimly lit table, the silence interrupted only by the click-click of Poker chips.

It’s so silent at night, you have a hard time falling asleep.

You wake up at noon the next day and nearly call out to your mom to make some chai. Your fridge is empty and the lone saucepan is covered in dust, so you order tea at the coffee shop across the street. They hand you warm water with a teabag in it.

Your office is amazing. Co-workers come up to you and tell you they look forward to working with you. After the fourth Michael, you stop trying to remember their names. There are a lot of Asians (you’ll learn soon that Indians aren’t counted among Asians) and most have American accents. You realize the only other Indian guy in the office doesn’t speak Hindi.

You meet more people at lunch. They ask you about your weekend, so you ask them about theirs. They mention Tahoe and Napa; you nod along, unsure if they are places or music festivals. The food is mostly non-vegetarian, so you just eat the salad. It’s bland but you’re just happy to be here.

Conversations are short because you’re tired of repeating yourself.

You try to call your parents and friends back in India every day. Your best friend makes fun of you for rolling your Rs. You compensate by calling him behenchod and immediately feel dirty saying it. Every time you talk, you have fewer things to say. Your friend forwards you a racist joke and you stop talking.

You fill your weekends with work because you’re really good at it.

You bond with a co-worker over immigrant problems. She’s concerned about her parents living alone. You realize you haven’t called yours in two weeks. She invites you to a new year’s party. Everyone is in suits and you show up in a hoodie, but no one seems to care. You get high for the first time and dance with her. You later ask her to a movie, but she invites her friends.

Your flatmate makes you a dating profile. Most matches never reply. As you complete a year at work, you start getting recruiter emails, which you delete without reading.

At the office holiday party, she’s talking to a co-worker the entire night. Someone tells you they hooked-up. You don’t know what that means yet, but you’re heartbroken.

You don’t work weekends anymore. The year-end review is good, but your manager thinks you could do better. The small raise is enough to make your parents happy, but you know how much your friend at Uber is making. You start reading recruiter emails again.

Your manager is leaving the company, but tells you not to be alarmed. The CEO mentions cost-cutting at the All Hands but assures that all the numbers are up and to the right. You talk to your friend at Uber. He tells you he’s quitting to do his own startup in India.

This time the salad is so bland you take a bite of the chicken for the first time.

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Bad coke.

 

The house keeper.

The fire of the night has burned through in dark momentum; even as old ashes of fragmented grey lie half burned upon the hearth. Moving slowly She lights a lamp, the old house, quiet. Cold is in the air, her breath white like lace, even as the others sleep, in the comfort of upper levels of panelled stillness, quiet with the silence of vaulted warm mahogany. In this half light,,, beyond the flicker of the candle in her hand. She will peer out on to the day,to slow rising light drifting across the great frosted expanse of park- a whiteness like a shroud Stretching out to the old folded boundaries of the gate house that keep the world away. Reining in the old ghosts, she thinks. The ghosts that cannot move and cannot play. She shivers, as she pulls the heavy mantel to her.

It will soon be time to wake them, The small children in the nursery, stained with red wracks of ruin, moving slowly over rosy cheeks, and perfect Gold of curls that tuck under crimson sheets. soon the crow will sing. It has been a long night. She takes the candle, and lays it on the long mahogany of the great table; empty seats long since vacated, places where the family have been. Beside it she will places the empty jar of cyanide, setting it before the slow flickering flame that moves around with the attendant shadow. For a moment she will sit in the last of it, waiting for those that have crossed the veil to begin. MB

The Coven- rupture.

 The door,stood ajar; half broken, like a hard stab or a dark question mark. Amongst the fallen walls, and gaping ceiling; She stood quietly, staring into the rupture, and with it, the sad desecration and wanton ruin that now confronted her. In the pale moon light she could see that the coven room was destroyed. A great gash laid open, with wide ruin everywhere. Even the great oak shield had been penetrated - and with it the seer glass, which now lay obliterated on the high altar floor. All connections would be cut now, the meso threads gone forever. Her immediate reaction was to flee, to re- enter the dark, but that option was impossible. The laminar had been pierced with her entry. If she were to return now, the malevolent magic of the place would follow after her, and enter their world. Oak wood would be destroyed. She could try to counter, there was danger in it, she knew that. But to use shield magic within darkness such as this; meant only that more darkness would come. In spite of the dread that was now rising, she knew that there was only one option- she had to press on, and she had to press on, without magic, and alone.. Moving deftly, as if not to disturb the ongoing tremors of discordant memory spells; She picked through the destruction, circling round the silence of upturned energies that, now hovered ,disembodied, writhing and deforming; even as the walls seemed to contort within the material body of the remaining space. A space which seemed to be imperceptibly shifting from moment to moment; as if something strange, and truly grotesque was forming. She didn't have much time. Soon the dark transformation would be complete, and with it the last threads of the light essence would recede . Then the heathen would come. Whatever happened , She mustn't be here then for that. Already she could feel the once bright great room, beloved to them all, now seething with an unbridled hostile resentment of her. Soon the rejection would be complete. She shook her head sorrowfully“ Angaraad what have you done? “. hadn't Gruen warned warned them ? But the fault of seeking dangerous knowledge had always been too easy and too quick with her sister. The death of the child had just provided a ready excuse. “But still this Angaraad ?” She thought sadly surveying the embers and still smoking chaos that lay at her feet.

The night was stretching, she could feel it, the layers, becoming dense and intertwined, the fibres of the dark separating, flipping under to a darker line. Over head the moon seemed to pivot back through the black phalanges of writhing trees, which even now seemed to growl, in the absence of any wind. The night moon was turning. There was no use lingering, The marks had been made, complete and irreversible magic had been done- soon the waldrag would come. She shivered. Whatever remained of this place was theirs now, to be fouled and irrevocably stained. There had always been skirmishes on the the outer ring,the old ones of told of it, even in the mother's time- but nobody ever thought that the oak heart could fall. The death dogs would penetrate the unter land. It was theirs now. Angarad in her folly had let them in. Why hadn't she waited for the counsel?

For a final time, she looked to the heaped ruins and dark remains of the coven room, the upturned objects of veneration, now blacked and ashed and desecrated, forever beyond repair- the holy scent herb, and it's sweet woody pungence, still strangely present in the remains of once burning air. Her kind would never come to this part of the world again. The only option now was to reach Moriah. But dare she brave the outer rings alone? Without the protection of the counsel or the silver oak?. . These thoughts came brimming now, as she started to retrace her steps; picking a way through the destruction towards the half fallen, once mighty oak door, each step filling her with more despair and dread. All was lost now, her life was forfeit, she was trapped in the veil, with no hope. She was alone. Hopelessness came upon her, now like the ending of all the worlds at once. And with the despair, came a single tear, that hit the floor of ruin. Settling for a moment, before seeping and stretching out, until strangely it started to glow for a moment; like a half second flicker of brief silver.. A withering trace of gently fading light, as if some scent or semi mark, had happened upon it, and seemed to glow up from the floor- struck , she stood still for a moment, letting her eyes focus on the faint and disappearing outline, before moving gently down to examine it further- but it couldn't be? Could it? Was soemthing else other than darkness and Angaarad's folly here tonight? Her heart began to swarm, rising through her , as she now saw, within the destruction the receding silvering half shapes, of serial marks that led out towards, and beyond the door. Something had moved into the forest. A very slight, and gently fading glow, one after the other the unmistakeable, light magic prints of a holy animal . Could the movement of such dark magic have stirred him? Could it really be? “ But she knew it, even before the answer even came- the quickly fading light, told of an older magic. Angaarad the desecrater, was being pursued by the last, and only hope for their kind. .MB  

Back when I worked for Murthi

 The operative..Small petite, and arched, like a child. 

He was small, and neat and balanced – with a cool unreasonable quietness, that sat malevolently perched , despite his smallness, waiting beneath fine porcelain skin. Cruelty leached out of him in a steely high refining beauty- repugnant but inviting in it's quality. It spoke of an alone man, formed around the borders of a peach plum mouth; of an away mind with precise tastes, and  close closeted commitment to purpose - that held itself neat and beyond display. I used to surreptitiously watch him, enthralled but afraid.  But there was never enough time, because the stop would always come, and he would get off-  and disappearing; lead off into the day- small steps carrying his impossibly childlike frame. He had the essence of a zen master, a ministerial assassin; that bore the full terror of his torturing being behind the smooth contours of a doll like face. There was something  chilling in the beauty of it, that meant,  I simply could not look away.  MB

Between freak out and panic..fabric modem off.

 The whatsapp ECG.

The ward is like a great wave, as things collect and gather; threatening to land on any shore, so often mine. I try to keep the centre, to live and give as I think and die, offering things, so many times- too much of what I've got. So I walk the plank soothing, and bestowing and smiling too much. Administering alms, touching forheads, blessing unsoothable babies. I like the space, and this time, it does not feel too much. The clients are moderated, there is no under stone, or dying thug, that wants to eviscerate around me. Maybe it is the mix of man, and woman blood, they some how, out hostile each other out, creating some fucked up some enchanted circle, where their monsters use each other for ballast. Today was irritations interspersed with adventures, the snake of traffic, coiling back to acton mainline, slow action, the challenge to walk, relenquished in the end to the slowly moving dumb forward, simultaneously hurtling us pieces into space. But some how I made it, and took the line, through early chores, and clinical come backs, culminating ina cardio reg whasapp hoe -down around 4. Pacing it was always about that, even on the way home, post coconut bounties, and nearby places to grace. I disgorged in to the plaza station, the platform, in the west, always a welcome arm, on which to to rest. Even now with the new ways home. Leafy late arrays,  of dusty crumbling leaves. Shower followed by removal, and then the calm, despite the blast. The world has coiled around it's self, it sits trimerous cavitating around it's centre. It is  the seedy run down decay of old majestic houses, that have given their best away. The world is falling in beyond the ears, it's silence has become a deathly motion. I fear soon it will snap, and in the blinking of an eye, lay it's self down all the way.

from Aphra to police checks.

 

Him.

Yesterday was robust and steady in it's form. little steps, moving like some prelude to some great leap forward; except for that which sat behind the tongue; Gathering full force with it's own silence. Awaiting the first note. Shapeless and heavy within it's own weight, squat behind the never been said, but continually replayed. I don't remember when it first stuck, except to say that I was small, and still standing on two good legs, that for the most part still walked straight. But something stopped the momentum ; turned the light to grey. Something rooted me in, tied me to this spot, and put me in my place. But even then, low within the quiet, a storm weathered on. Rampantly defying- as big and black as any storm that he owned. Quietly, uncomfortably, it settled. Concealed below ground- waiting in it's new home. And wise it was  to lock it's self down, to hunker in, and curl up, hardening like a ball. Curing and tempering with the time, forgetting what happened, but somehow still quite remembering it all. Till one day, dying on it's prominence, in the rancour of forgotten speech, tangible within invisible emanations it would finally learn not to speak, Defiance curled, defiance worn within a mouth, as a new as the day was born. A reminder to the bland at heart , that beyond the beauty of the rose, inside their dwells a thorn. MB