Fragile things

While you are here, of course, you will hear the ghosts, always a room away,
and you may wake beside me in the night,
knowing that there's a space without a door,
knowing that there's a place that's locked but isn't there.
Hearing them echo, scuffle, thump and pound.

~ The Hidden Chamber, from Gaiman's Fragile Things

Yep. FINALLY got the book. And I love this better than Smoke and Mirrors. It isn't as twisted as the latter, and has more...how do you put it...lyrical pieces. His writing isn't rocket science difficult, and yet it works so well, it's scary.

Something like magical realism, I'm thinking. Mundane with the magical, and you can't tell where the other comes in. And it has The Problem of Susan. Read it a long time ago, back before the first Narnia movie and Skandar Keynes's gorgeous dark eyes. It spoiled the other Narnia books I read later though.

And my favourite poem in the book, The Day The Saucers Came:

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
Or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed with genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
That Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came
And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,
You didn't notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything,
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

I'm supposed to have a cold. Still do. Nose has stopped leaking, thankfully. But my head's still a little woozy.

Sometimes you can't make it
The best you can do is to fake it

U2's Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own. Listen to it when things look about glummy. Oh, and Sigur Ros's Hoppipolla.