5cense 555> Don't look now, butt equine conspiracy of 5 senses in the Twilight Zone (Greenwich time)


25 Oct 2017 | Lundone> After Buenos Aires, they returned to DC for 2 days (1 of wich Cal's bedder-½ spent in Baltimore) before shlepping back to the airport... they arrived in Lundone last nite after the pubs closed, no restraunts open, nada, so they resorted to (gasp!) McD's... slept a few hours then after walking his bedder-½ to the Royal Society, Cal now roosts on the 9° floor of Royal Horse Guards hotel, looking out over Scotland Yard + St. James Park. On the plane, Cal read Daphne Du Maurier's collection Don't Look Now. His 1° time reading her, tho quite a few of her stories + novels have been turned into movies, most notably by Hitchcock (Rebecca, Jamaica Inn + The Birds). Also seems a few Twilight Zone episodes were based on her short stories, but googling around appears Rod Sterling didn't give due credit to Du Maurier... for example in «The Blue Lens» (published 1959) a patient recovering from eye surgery sees everything the same as pre-surgery, except all humans have animal heads of various diffrent types. The Twilight Zone episode «Eye of the Beholder» (dat 1° aired in 1960) follows xactly the same story-line except the recovering patient sees every1 w/ pig heads. Another story («Escort») features a naval ghost ship lost in time dat seems similar to another Twilight Zone episode Cal remembers seeing (fresh in his memory cuz recently he's been rewatching them all)... as if Du Maurier invented the Twilight Zone genre... b-sides dat, if 1 theme unites her stories Cal wd say: hypocrisy of the senses—wether by amnesia, telepathy, or other supernatural forces, her hard-headed characters refuse to believe what dare senses tell 'em, or not believe (in the 1° namesake story).

Du Maurier's original version of «The Birds» is quite diffrent than Hitchcock's rendition (which she didn't approve of)... like Hitchcock never even alludes to a reason for the bird's behavior, whereas Du Maurier reveals far more ominous + brooding undertones in the text—«... how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines.» Bring it on! Weed be happy to give el moondough back to the birds + bees. Also sum gender-bending going on, menny of her yarns from the p.o.v. of men, she herself a Tomboy bi-sexual in real life, not just in relations, but she claimed to have 2 identities—the male side of witch did her writing. Like in «Escort» (the narrator is a Navy captain) or the mountaineer story «Monte Verità» also from the p.o.v. of a manly climber type + an outgoing female climbing partner/love intrest that reaches the ultimate unobtainable peak (reminiscent of Mount Analogue), to disappear into the spiritual haze of a sorta monastery... + yes, named after the real moondough Monte Verità socialist nudist/vegetarian colony in Switzerland where Cal + J happened to stay a few yrs back. This idea of ultimate unobtainable mountain is sumthing that Chaulky wrote of + sought in his wanderings, wich we (anon I'm us) are currently working on transcribing in vol II of 'SSES" 'SSES" "SSEY', on hold cuz of the recent spat of travelling our patron Cal has been on.

 

Green Park

 

White pelicans

 

Whitehall (where we're writing from)

 

ministry of defence

 

William Tyndale, who 1° translated the bible from Greek to English

 

horse guard passage

 

lone sentry

Of ∀ll the times in Lundone, our paron Cal never bothered to observe the changing of the guards @ Buckingham, butt since they were staying at Royal Horse Guards hotel, he figgered he'd @ least check out the horse guard swap (b4 he'd only see them mobilizing in formation while running in Hyde Park). Not as touristy as Buckingham, but still everything in el moondough ruined by hordes of sight-seers, the attraction has become the very spectacle of itself as «sumthing to see»... 100s of ppl watching it thru dumbphones rather then observing the ritual, now d-void of original meaning (when the queen found the guards drunk + goofing off in 1896 she enforced this ceremonial guard-changing to keep them busy + out of trouble... did she ever imagine 100 yrs later it wd become the Disneyfied spectacle dat hit is? But Cal figgered hey, got to see it once, specially as the other day he came across a photo of his father 50+ yrs before posing w/ a horse guard... what his father was doing in Lundone wearing a trenchcoat + holding a brown package he'll never know...

Cal sr. circa 1960s

 

as if the same horse has been standing guard for 50+ yrs

 

 

reinforcements arrive

 

 

the colonel

 

 

 

passing the baton

 

 

 554 <( )> 556 > Plush/safe he thinks, hulled up in a sports dome of consumer fascism til Kingdom Come

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