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dr-divinae · 3 years

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Spirit Guide Session

Welcome to your Shamanic Healing Journey experience where you'll be introduced to your Spirit Guides for the second time tonight!! Yeah, I used GoogleNotes for your Spirit Guide Sessions and lost all of my work but I'm not terribly off track I had wrote some of le. Details down via Grimoire for ShamanicChanneling

@cosmic-badlarry

Thank you so much 💖 for joining me this evening 💞 or should I correct myself and say late evening 🌃 night!!

I'm noticing the moon right now 😹

First Quarter Moon 🌜 in ♉⚡💜 When the moon is in Taurus we are motivated by a place of serenity, security, peace, and comfort.🌺⚡Tonight, this evening my dear Gemini child you are going to meet your most active🍂 Spirit Guides...I just pulled some Oracle Cards from multiple decks and based on their Chakra balancing and literal meaning you've got a lot of 🌸Spirit Guides in the 💙fifth Chakra💙 or the 💎Vishudha❄️, and right away we know that that's the 🗣️throat Chakra🗣️💫

And the throat Chakra represents: All sound, Vibration , Communication, Self-expression, Listening, Speaking, Writing

This to me tells me that there could be something related to yourself in the mentioned areas of voice , or vibration?

Or perhaps it's a hint of who your Spiritual Guardians are and what your Spirit Guides gifts are as far as communication goes because that's another vibe I strongly get as a result of this card pulling set.

On my Oracle Card I can tell it's Gabriel's horn... So dear Gemini 💞💖 your first Spirit Guide that's showing up today is Archangel Gabriel as he is also associated with the fifth Chakra as well. Due to his communication link in literally each and every story we ever heard of him .. and he's even known to wear this blue which actually relates to the Chakra I am speaking on so much now ,

now now I'm going to get comfortably numb 😂😂😅 no drugs needed just my regular medical medication 😭dont tell them your dr is now! It's just that I'm ready to do the most in depth part of this Shamanic Session which you've paid for ... I just need to relax , I'm listening 🎧 to a specific type of binaural beats music 🎶 that allow me to channel your most Active 🍂 Spiritual Guardians hopefully I'll really connect with your Spirit Guide ☺️ here we go it's 12: 36 now wow long process🍂💫🌜 but worth it no?

When i begin typing again it will all be channeled information all from your Special shamanic experience with your Spirit Guide.. see you there in the channel 😎...

Hello 👋 Gemini 😁 I'm glad that you have made this choice to finally meet the voice behind all of the synchronicity 🏵️ in your life🍂🍁 to meet the real reason we have met this evening and I'm glad and honored to introduce you to your Spirit Guide🏵️🌸💐

Your most active and current Spirit Guide is a Greek Goddess from this tale I'm about to share and although she's been cursed by Juno and lost her voice somewhat; She is able to repeat sentences, fragments and makes a whole lot of sense when I have her communicate with your higher self 😅 because when I first found out through this Shanic experience that your Spirit Guide is sort of speechless I was lol pretty depressed. About the direction of this Shamanic Healing Journeys for you but going forward I did find the magical method to communicate with the ever forever silenced echos of your Greek. Spirit Guide.

And it's 1:17AM EST Did you guess your Spirit Guide 🏵️ yet? No...

Name: Echo

Origin: Latin

Meaning:reflected sound

Echo as a girl's name is of Latin and Greek origin meaning "reflected sound". In mythology, Echo was a nymph who loved Narcissus and faded away until only her voice was left behind.

In Greek mythology, Echo (/ˈɛkoʊ/; Greek: Ἠχώ, Ēkhō, "echo",[3] from ἦχος (ēchos), "sound"[4]) was an Oread who resided on Mount Cithaeron.[5] Zeus loved consorting with beautiful nymphs and often visited them on Earth. Eventually, Zeus's wife, Hera, became suspicious, and came from Mount Olympus in an attempt to catch Zeus with the nymphs. Echo, by trying to protect Zeus (as he had ordered her to do), endured Hera's wrath, and Hera made her only able to speak the last words spoken to her. So when Echo met Narcissus and fell in love with him, she was unable to tell him how she felt and was forced to watch him as he fell in love with himself.

In Metamorphoses (8 AD), the poet Ovid tells of Juno (Hera in Greek mythology) and the jealousy she felt over her husband Jupiter's (Zeus in Greek mythology) many affairs. Though vigilant, whenever she was about to catch him, Echo distracted her with lengthy conversations. When at last Juno realized the truth, she cursed Echo. From that moment on, the once loquacious nymph could only repeat the most recently spoken words of another person.

Abode/Residential: Mount Cathaeron

Parents: Ouranos

Siblings: Nymphs

Children: Lynx and Lambe

Consort: Pan and Narcissus

Symbol: Crabgrass, Hemlock , the Skunk

Colors: Black, White, Blue, and Purple

The myth of the goddess is told in Book III of the Metamorphoses, and tells the story of a "talkative nymph" whom the goddess Venus admires for her magnificent voice and song. When she tricks Juno into believing that her husband, Jupiter, was in the city, Juno curses Echo by making her able to only finish a sentence not started, and unable to say anything on her own. "Yet a chatterbox, had no other use of speech than she has now, that she could repeat only the last words out of many." This is the explanation of the aural effect which was named after her.[1]

Sometime after being cursed, Echo spied a young man, Narcissus, while he was out hunting deer with his companions. She immediately fell in love with him and, infatuated, followed quietly. The more she looked at the young man, the more she longed for him. Though she wished with all her heart to call out to Narcissus, Juno's curse prevented her.[2]

During the hunt, Narcissus became separated from his companions and called out, ‘is anyone there,’ and heard the nymph repeat his words. Startled, Narcissus answered the voice, ‘come here,’ only to be told the same. When Narcissus saw that nobody had emerged from the glade, he concluded that the owner of the voice must be running away from him and called out again. Finally, he shouted, "This way, we must come together." Taking this to be a reciprocation of her love, Echo concurred ecstatically, "We must come together!"[3]

In her delight, Echo rushed to Narcissus ready to throw her arms around her beloved. Narcissus, however, was appalled and, spurning her, exclaimed, ‘Hands off! May I die before you enjoy my body.’ All Echo could whisper in reply was, ‘enjoy my body’ and having done so she fled, scorned, humiliated, and shamed.[4]

Despite the harshness of his rejection, Echo's love for Narcissus only grew.[5] When Narcissus died, wasting away before his own reflection, consumed by a love that could not be, Echo mourned over his body. When Narcissus, looking one last time into the pool uttered, "Oh marvellous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell", Echo too chorused, "Farewell."[6]

What's Hemlock?

Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is a poisonous invasive weed that has caused many accidental deaths because of its resemblance to carrots, including the wild carrot (Queen Anne’s lace). The poisonous agents in the plant are volatile alkaloids, and they are found in every part of the plant. In addition to causing death when ingested, the plant also causes a miserable dermatitis in sensitive people upon contact with skin. Socrates drank the juice of this notorious plant to commit suicide, and ancient Greeks used it to poison their enemies and political prisoners. North American Natives dipped their arrowheads in hemlock to make sure every hit was fatal.

.........TO MOST DEFINITELY BE CONTINUED

Having technical difficulties as far as uploading and sharing this channeled session of Shamanic Healing so @cosmic-badlarry just pleeease hold on

Anybody who's interested inbox me

I can tell you who your Spirit Guide is not a problem just need to get a small fee 😊 and speak to you for a quick second of does not take long at all that part . . But my part of doing channeling does take it m afraid hours. This case I'm doing now omg I've been working since 11:33PM EST NOW ITS 5:44 EST

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yespoetry · 4 years

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Control the Echoes

By Jonathan Russell Clark

Her spoken sentences tended to omit proper nouns, leaving only discursive, aimless run-ons that veered off one point, switched to another, swooped again, got murky, and finally landed not really anywhere specific but simply where a period arbitrarily stopped them.

“You were here when they told me,” she’d say, “and so you know that I’m not trying to do anything like they said I did, but they keep coming at me, and I don’t know who or what or where anymore, because there isn’t anything like that that I want, and I said that I was fine yesterday because I saw her over there, you know the young one, the one with the, oh what’s her hair like, and she wasn’t asking because like I said I wasn’t saying anything if I didn’t want to.”

The hospice info pamphlets said to go along with whatever she said, but how do go along with that? It didn’t take long, though, for me to figure out the purpose of going along with the things she said. If you don’t, you have to ask for clarification, or you have to contradict them, or you have to interrupt an already tenuous thread—and none of it with any results. It’s the flow that’s important, not the content. If I’d stopped my grandmother and said, for example, “Who are they?” she’d look at me as if I’d just asked her the most nonsensical thing, since of course she didn’t know who they were, because who they were didn’t matter. What mattered for her was some deep need to express, to communicate something, even if that something didn’t come out explicable. It was the act of talking that compelled her, and any obstruction jammed the rhythm and frustrated her. And since no actual clarification or sense came from any question we asked her, it was obviously better to let the linguistic current expel forth unimpeded.

Among her verbal hemorrhaging were numerous references to her long life: sometimes she’d wonder why her parents hadn’t been around to see her; sometimes she asked if I knew her brother, and where was he; and other times it seemed the words were some uncontrollable reverberation of various points in her nine decades.

An echo of herself.

In Aleksander Hemon’s novel The Lazarus Project, there is the following line: “Nobody can control resemblances, any more than you can control echoes.”

If there is a sound and a reverberating obstacle, there is an echo. There is no judgment in the existence of that echo, no choice, no accusation of agency, no life in it. Nobody accuses an echo of hyperbole, of lying, of falsifying the expanse of its resound. It is simply there because it is there.

Three years. Three years. Three years. Three years.

I’ve never reached a fourth anniversary with a partner. All four of my major relationships ended at three, never developing the ability to speak in complex sentences, never learned to count past ten or understand the concept of time or tell a story about what happened to them.

My relationships died before they began to truly become independent. The failure of my love—its inability to keep something alive—repeats in my mind and through me when I meet someone who moves me. The joyous noise of new love echoes off the obstacle of my past failures, and I can no more control it than I can family resemblances.

My mother looks like my grandmother, and my sister looks like my mother, but my sister really looks like my grandmother. I see each of them in each other, in little softly articulated ways, as subtle as color schemes in well-decorated interiors, minute spots of this shade, that one, which unite a space of otherwise unconnected things.

Echoes are beyond our control—unless we alter the geography of where the sound is made.

Echo is a nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who is condemned to repeat the last few words of whatever Narcissus says. So when he asks, “Is anyone there?” she responds, “One there?”

I am standing in a cavern at Old Man’s Cave in Ohio, where I’m from. I yell out, “HELLO!” and hear loud and clear my voice coming back to me: ELLO Ello ello lo lo o.

Echoes do not return our words; rather, they transform them.

From Lacy M. Johnson’s essay “The Reckonings,” in which she grapples with notions of justice and retribution for the man who kidnapped, raped, and tried to kill her:

I carry these stories with me because I don’t know what else to do with them. The details may differ. If it is not the story of an abusive lover, perhaps it is a mother, or a father, or an uncle; or it is the story of a friend who has been killed by a stranger while trying to do the right thing, or a woman who is shot in the back of the head while asking for help; it might be a story about the abuse of power, or authority, of the slow violence of bureaucracy, of the way some people are born immune to punishment and others spend whole lifetimes being punished in ways they did nothing to deserve.

These horrific and common stories demand a corresponding action—some form of symmetrical absolution, as in movies where the villain is righteously killed by the victimized hero. “Then, as now,” Johnson writes, “we want to transform our suffering: to take a pain we experience and change it into the satisfaction of causing pain for someone else.”

Later, on becoming a writer: “I’ve called myself a writer now for more than half of my life, and during all this time, I have learned that sometimes the hardest and more important work I’ve done has meant turning a story I couldn’t tell into one that I can—and that this practice on its own is one not only of discovery but of healing.”

The American Psychiatric Association has this to say on PTSD:

People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.

Echo tries to touch Narcissus, but he repels and rebukes her, saying, “Hands off! May I die before you enjoy my body.” To which Echo replies: “…enjoy my body.”

Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves features a chapter dedicated to echoes. This chapter has caused much consternation in readers: if you Google “house of leaves echoes” you’ll find numerous threads asking why this section is included in the book at all.

From that chapter:

Nevertheless, above and beyond the details of frequency shifts and volume fluctuations—the physics of ‘otherness’—what matters most is a sound’s delay.

Point of fact, the human ear cannot distinguish one sound wave from the same sound wave if it returns in less than 50 milliseconds. Therefore for anyone to hear a reverberation requires a certain amount of space.

My grandmother, out of necessity, does the same things everyday: she gets out of bed, takes medications, eats some fruit or toast, sits in her chair and watches TV. And she talks. In circles, full of non sequitors, wholly incomprehensible. Though there is sometimes a hint of frustration or helplessness in her words, she does not seem unhappy.

And yet she is losing herself. Has already lost most of herself. This self now—the one that still lives, functions, talks—isn’t her. So she isn’t happy; she is gone.

It is this echo that seems happy.

From Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence:

The painting is an allegory of the evils of power, how they pass down the chain from the greater to the lesser. Human beings were clutched at, and clutched at others in their turn. If power was a cry, then human lives were lived in the echo of the cries of others. The echo of the mighty deafened the ears of the helpless.

I repeat: echoes do not repeat; they transform. It may be slight, it may seem miniscule, but it is not the same as the original vibration; it is like a recollection of it, a memory.

Memories fuzz the details. They make them murky. They soften the edges of some parts, intensify the sharpness of others. But we do not mistake memories for current realities, no more than we believe that a son and a father are the same person, merely because they share traits, look alike, echo each other.

Imagine the inside of yourself. Not the physical inside but the abstract inner space—the spirit or the soul or the heart or the essence—whatever you want to call it or believe it to be.

Imagine it as an open expanse of sky, or an endless field of grass, or a wide ocean. Imagine these impossible geographies filled with items: the house you grew up in; your first pair of glasses; your crush on your neighbor; the backpack you lost on the subway; the books you read and remember; the words that hurt you, that healed you, that gave definition to something that before was inarticulate; the shape of your calf; a painting by a friend; the hope you carry that persists in the face of repeated failures. It is you who connect this space of otherwise unconnected things.

Now imagine moving through these expanses—flying, walking, swimming—brushing up against the items, through them, past them, around them; touching them, holding them, feeling them. Imagine the culmination of these touches, these brushes, how they add up in your fingertips, give you a sense of surfaces, a variety of weight.

Imagine a sudden interruption in these spaces—a wall bounding upwards forever, a cliff with no foot routes, a curved shaped you can’t get above or below or around or inside. Imagine trying to continue moving through the space, but not matter what you do, you can’t get above or below or around or inside this interruption. In vain, you attack it with your fists, which only serves to confound your sense of touch, which before had been the entire point of moving. You have no options. Like some Biblical figure, like some mythological cypher, you yell at the interruption, condemning, berating, pleading, accusing, decrying…

But your words do nothing to it; they only echo back, mocking your futility.

When Narcissus first hears Echo in the woods, before he rebukes her, he calls out to her, “This way! We must come together.” Echo replies: “We must come together.”

We do not know what to do about my grandmother. She is not she and yet she is.

I do not know what to do with my new love, how I can deflect the echoes of my three-year pattern. Every love is different and yet shades of similarity persist.

We do not know how to get over trauma—not fully, not completely. Those echoes will always be there; we can no more control them than we can control the cause of that trauma.

We do not control the echoes of us; we can only control our own volume, the spaces we create sound in, our voices. We cannot control the sounds of others—“the physics of ‘otherness’”—but we can to the best of our ability change our distance, our space in relation to the echoes, to maybe get close enough to the source, that we can hear it no longer. We must turn the stories we can’t tell into ones that we can. We must reverse the echoes of power.

We must come together.

Jonathan Russell Clark is a literary critic. He is the author of An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom (Fiction Advocate), on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. A former contributing editor at Literary Hub, his work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, Tin House, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the Columbus Dispatch, The Georgia Review, The Millions, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, Chautauqua, PANK, and numerous others.

#essay #Jonathan Russell Clark #special feature

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g-w-3-d-damn · 6 years

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Like God’s Breath 2

Hey guys, guess what?!

Congrats! You guys won! Here’s the part two I promised. I’ll try to tag everyone that re-blogged this. Part one is here THIS ONE IS MORE EXPLICIT THAN THE LAST ONE.

Part two is not formatted with HTML for color coding. If you would like to see the color coding, try the google document here. This writing was created in exchange for a commission by @Teckmonky and the original request can be found here.

Songs played while composing this work can be found at this playlist:

Like God’s Breath 2

Anthony slept upon his throne of bones. His failure to rest for one day in seven exhausted his inner fire. His earlier tryst with Loki expedited his burnout. Loki returned to this scene on silent feathers. One excruciating week passed since Loki met the fallen angel, one week since God called Loki back to His light in a Heaven where Anthony could not follow. The tension in the joints of Loki's long alabaster legs cringed as he crept on the balls of his feet toward the macabre throne. The gait of his creeping waltz resembled the motility of a silent white spider. He muted his inner light, which yearned to glow in his excitement. He told himself he could not let this opportunity pass. He rested one knee on the arm of the throne and reached for Anthony's face. Loki swallowed his own elation and pressed the tips of his fingers against Anthony's serene eyelids with a featherlight touch. Loki took from Anthony his light, his memory. Loki's lips twisted in a wicked grin as he stole millennia of Anthony's combat experience. The grin dropped to a curious open mouthed stare as he took Anthony's dreams, his fantasies, his vulnerabilities from his mind. Goosebumps appeared on Loki's porcelain flesh, his stare morphed into a look of awe as he re-lived his own sexual encounters through Anthony's eyes. Loki saw himself, saw the look of ecstasy on his own innocent face, felt himself basking in his own light, in his own song. Loki shuddered at his own beauty, and fell like Narcissus into the allure of his own reflection. He felt what Anthony felt, and loved Anthony all the more for the depths at which that love sank. He felt the wrenching sense of loss as he watched himself fly away from Anthony, called back to God by God's Word. Loki felt the despair left in the wake of his absence just as Anthony felt it. The knowledge that Loki's absence left Anthony in a deeper pain than his own fall from God shocked Loki. Anthony's sexual focus bled into Loki's light and aroused him. Loki pried. Loki relived the past week as Anthony. He raised dullahans as a distraction to his suffering, between bouts of deficient masturbation and failed attempts at self-love and self-appreciation. Loki witnessed everything Anthony imagined doing to Loki, and everything he'd imagined Loki doing to him. Loki witnessed everything Anthony did to the dullahans, everything Anthony made the dullahans do to him, and everything Anthony did to himself, to entertain these fantasies. The visions stimulated him. Loki disregarded the precum pooled at the head of his cock, until Anthony twitched and the light went dark. Loki lifted his fingertips, hovered them over Anthony's eyelids. The eyelids flicked open, the brown iris grew as the pupil contracted in focus on a spot on Anthony's leg. Loki's own eyes darted down to his cock; he realized his dribble of precum fell atop Anthony's lap and roused him. Loki felt hot, strong hands on his hips, for just an instant, as Anthony threw the angel off of him and rose in preparation for combat. Loki landed on his feet with his body bladed towards the older angel. Anthony launched himself from his throne at Loki. Recognition lit Anthony's face mid jump, chased away the fog of exhausted sleep-induced confusion. Loki caught Anthony with a graceful flip. Their bodies somersaulted over each other in the air. Loki controlled the fall, landed on his feet; only his feet landed atop the bottoms of Anthony's wings, ground the majestic feathers into the floor. Loki stood over Anthony with a wide stance, then squatted down to pin Anthony's arms atop his wings. Anthony's sleep-deprived face posed a dozen questions at once. Why are you here, what are you doing back here, how did you get out of Heaven, does God know you're missing, don't you know not to wake me up, what were you doing in my head, and how much do you know, asked the angel's face. “Let go,” Anthony said. The words compelled Loki, who released the grip in his hands with a grunt. “Surrender,” Loki ordered. Anthony struggled against the binding Word. “I won't hurt you,” Loki crooned, “calm and gentle, now.” Anthony sank limp into the floor with a huff. His arms remained outstretched in compulsory surrender. Loki gently placed his hands at Anthony's graying temples and smiled. “I don't like this smile,” Anthony said to Loki in The Light, “this is different, what have you done?” “I've fallen,” Loki said. “What, how, oh!” “Wrap your legs around me,” Loki interrupted Anthony's thoughts. Anthony looked up at him but did not move. A fearful sadness painted Anthony's face, as if he were on the brink of profuse apology. His lips quivered. “What did you see?” Anthony asked. Loki grinned down at Anthony. “Wrap your legs around me,” Loki requested again. “Take back your order to surrender,” Anthony asked. “Promise me you won't keep fighting,” Loki asked of him in The Light. “I was half-asleep, kid, I don't wake up to angels without expecting a fight,” Anthony apologized. “I release you from The Word that bound you,” Loki said aloud. Loki caught Anthony's hands on the way to his throat. He looked at Anthony with a total lack of surprise. “You promised,” Loki said flatly. “You took my light, didn't you? What did you see? Please tell me,” Anthony said. Loki, flatfooted atop Anthony's wings, dropped his shoulders towards Anthony's chest. Loki's wings dipped beneath Anthony's legs. The crooks of his wings hooked the undersides of Anthony's knees, and Loki drew Anthony's legs apart beneath him. Anthony's calves draped over the white wings, nestled in soft down, as Loki lifted Anthony's legs to hold them aloft around him. Loki caressed Anthony's caught wrists with his long thumbs and stood. His wings supported Anthony's legs, brought Anthony's hips off the ground. Anthony felt his ass slide into Loki's lap. Loki held Anthony's hands, interlaced their fingers palm to palm. “Oh, you saw this one,” Anthony whimpered. “Shh,” Loki said aloud. “Yes, I saw this one,” Loki said in The Light, “and I needed to see how beautiful you are while we do it.” Anthony drank the compliment with the same addicted greed as a sober alcoholic would a shot of whiskey. He looked to Loki, ravenous for the rest of that bottle. “I'm warning you, flattery will get you everywhere with me,” Anthony said. Loki smirked, clenched his fists around Anthony's hands. His light seeped into Anthony through his fingertips. Loki bent forward, lifted his wings, bent Anthony. Loki caught Anthony's ankles with the alulae of his wings. Anthony pushed back against Loki's palms in support. They settled into a position in which Anthony's weight rested on the back of his neck and shoulders alone, his back in the air, his spine aligned along the length of Loki's long legs. The insides of Anthony's pinned wings lifted and twisted between Loki's knees. Anthony's feathers felt like velvet beneath the soles of Loki's feet. Loki released Anthony's hands. Anthony's arms returned to their position of submission at his sides, stretched out, pushing pressure into the floor to better take his weight. Loki drug his palms along Anthony's abs. Loki's wings controlled Anthony's legs. Loki bent his lover until Anthony's own cock hung towards his neck, and Loki's cock hung against the seam of flesh between Anthony's legs. “I wanna make you come first so we can watch you,” Loki said. “We? What do you-” Loki reflected Anthony's memory back into him. He led Anthony to experience the narcissism he felt in watching himself through Anthony's eyes. “No, n-n-n-n-no, you're corrupt enough already, if you proceed to put your self-worth above His- Oh, that's, that's very nice, but no, Kid, listen, He won't just banish you, He'll destroy you,” said Anthony. “He'll have to catch me first,” whispered Loki. “Idolatry is pretty easy to spot, Loki,” Anthony said. “Loki?” Loki huffed, “not calling me 'kid' anymore, I see.” Anthony nudged his ankles apart, and Loki adjusted his wings to hold Anthony's legs open in the manner that Anthony's body language suggested. Loki showed Anthony the memory of those stolen fantasies that made him drip. Loki drew his finger over the errant line of precum that woke Anthony. Loki swabbed the dribble from the front of his leg where it still remained. Anthony experienced Loki's extreme arousal at the theft of these memories he returned. Loki reached down, under Anthony's cock, to catch the unavoidable trickle of precum before it reached Anthony's throat. He rubbed the slick gel back onto the head of Anthony's cock. Anthony felt wetness build beneath his balls where Loki rutted between his legs. Loki collected this wetness as well and added it to Anthony's shaft. “That's nasty, but I like it,” Anthony said. “Whatever makes you come is what I like,” Loki crooned, “you should see yourself.” Loki reflected Anthony's light back into him. Anthony saw himself, felt himself, from Loki's perspective. Anthony felt Loki's love for him as if it were Anthony's own love for himself. Through Loki's eyes, Anthony was stunning. “Oh no, Kid,” Anthony groaned, “you've got me painted wrong.” Anthony felt Loki's hand stroke his cock in a too-perfect rhythm, a too-perfect pressure. Anthony realized that Loki had watched him masturbate, experienced Anthony's masturbation when his light was stolen. Anthony realized that Loki had taken excellent notes. Anthony's back arched, his toes curled in the air. Anthony felt hungry for himself, as Loki made him watch his own cut abs crush together from Loki's vantage. Loki made Anthony watch his cock stroked through the lens of Loki's own blue irises. Loki made him watch his own handsome face, his own tanned broad shoulders and biceps tense, bulge, and roll as he pressed himself towards Loki. Loki reflected Anthony's being back into Anthony. Loki made him bask in his own light. “No, I'm not that beautiful, I'm not,” he said. One of Loki's eyebrows lifted without the other. “But you are,” Loki said, “you're the brightest star in the night sky, you're the most beautiful angel He ever created.” Anthony held back. He tried not to come as he watched his own chest heave, his own feathers squirm at his sides under Loki's long, bare feet. His whimpers formed a feedback loop, as hearing each of his own whimpers elicited a louder whimper and a longer shudder. “This is a line I haven't crossed,” Anthony gasped, “it's His first, most unbreakable unforgivable command, I haven't broken it.” “And what command is that,” Loki asked. “You will have no other gods before Me,” Anthony answered. Loki's pink lips cracked wide. He let Anthony watch himself say 'you will have no other gods before me.' Loki twisted the context of Anthony's words. As Anthony commanded himself to not have any other gods before “Me,” Anthony truly commanded himself to not have any other gods before Anthony, Himself. He squirmed beneath Loki. Loki caught his own arousal as it dripped into his free hand. “I intend to see you bask in your own glory,” Loki whispered. “I really think that should be my own decision,” Anthony said. “There's not much I would force upon you, not much I would make you do,” Loki said in the light, “but if I have the power to make you love yourself, I will not hesitate to take that decision out of your hands.” Loki massaged Anthony with both hands. Anthony's toes curled, gripped tufts of velvet feathers. “Sing,” Loki said, “praise yourself, come to light for yourself, see your own light and bask in it.” “I want to see you,” Anthony said. “You'll see all you want of me,” Loki said, “after you come first.” Anthony viewed himself through the lens of Loki's experience, and saw that his light was a paragon. Faced with this vision of himself, Anthony admitted his self-appraisal of himself to himself. In that appraisal, he found himself to be as immeasurably beautiful as he was valuable. He felt forced to admit that God had thrown away something priceless when He cast Anthony out of Heaven. Anthony never wanted to admit that God made a mistake when He cast Anthony down; Anthony desired only to make amends and be forgiven, himself. Until this moment, Anthony thought he had forgiven God. Loki made Anthony realize that it would be improper to offer forgiveness to God. Anthony's newfound love for himself manifested as a rage against God who made and harmed him. Anthony's rage at God's mistake manifested as an incinerating light. Loki whispered into him through the light. “I want you to come first,” whispered Loki, “I want you to put yourself first, love yourself enough to come first for once. I've seen you put yourself second all throughout the memories of your light. You, in every moment of your existence, put yourself second, when you, Anthony, were first, always. You were brightest, you were what God first wanted, His first breath, His first wish was for you. First. You're first. Put yourself first.” Anthony kicked into Loki's feathers. “Fuck 'em. No, fuck Him. I hate Him,” Anthony said. “Then, love you,” Loki said, “love yourself, look at you, look what you'd steal from Him if you loved yourself how I love you. Take it for yourself.” “Okay,” Anthony uttered. Anthony locked eyes with himself. The incinerating light cast from Anthony's body poured back onto him. His lightwaves cycled into a feedback loop. The buildup of energy grew exponentially. The particles sped faster and faster with each moment, until reality ripped within Anthony's irises to form singularities, controlled black holes in which his own light could never escape once sucked inside. The singularities in Anthony's eyes drew Anthony's own love and energy within, compressed inward for eternity.

Loki watched the edge of Anthony's irises bend light back into themselves, watched light spiral into his eyes. Loki steadied himself against the sudden gravity of Anthony's eyes. Loki stared in shock, dizzy, as he realized each pupil contained its own hell, a hell both infinitely hot, and endlessly dark. The black holes captured Anthony's light and unwound God's will, unmade what God created. What God exhaled into existence, the singularities inhaled until nonexistence. All the light and love that Anthony ever radiated, he now drew back to himself to absorb. He sucked his own existence out of space and time, sucked himself out of God's very own mouth. Singularity crashed against singularity to create its own exhalation.

Anthony devolved into plasma, so dense that atoms could not form, so shrunken into the dark that it ceased to exist, yet so strong that light could not escape. He returned to the darkness from which He was formed, before God separated the darkness from the light. Anthony recreated himself, how He Himself wanted to be. Anthony chose not to change. He chose to be everything God wanted Him to be, except for God's own. Anthony separated His light from the darkness, Himself. He evolved from darkness into black plasma. From black plasma, he spread out, exploded outward until His Light flew free. He filled Himself out into Loki’s welcoming grasp, filled Himself into the exact same position as the destroyed Anthony occupied as he exited existence, and began His new existence in Loki’s embrace. Anthony shone as bright as the day God made Him. And Anthony decided to shine brighter, as a gift to Himself, to outdo what God had done. He basked in His own brilliance, and put himself aside. “Alright, kid,” Anthony called to Loki, “I want to see you.” “W-what happened?” “I stopped existing for a moment,” explained Anthony, “these are brand new eyes, and I want your light to be the first thing they've ever seen.” Anthony's light forced through Loki's reflective vision of Anthony's body to reveal Loki's beautiful face. Loki's face shimmered with uncontained light. Loki suspired audibly, overcome with the sweetness of Anthony's words. His pink lip trembled as he held an intent gaze on Anthony. Anthony looked between his spread legs, up at Loki's face. “I can't wait to do that to you. I can't wait for you to feel exactly how I feel, right now,” Anthony growled. “First, you,” Loki insisted. Loki watched Anthony's eyes trail down Loki's neck, his chest, his torso. Anthony's eyes lingered at the vision of their cocks. “Can I get that inside me?” requested Anthony. “But you haven't c-” Loki protested. “I'll get there in seconds, I just wanted to see you,” Anthony said, “I needed to see this, it's all I'd need to push me over the edge.” Anthony showed Loki his own face. Anthony wanted Loki to know what it felt like to look at himself through the lens of Anthony's self-absorbed black iris. He smiled at how innocent he looked to Anthony's eyes. “You have me painted wrong,” Loki said. Anthony let the vision fade back into a vision of himself, on the edge of orgasm, basking in his own light. He felt Loki push inside him. “Don't let go, Loki,” Anthony said. “God's Word could not pull me from this,” Loki said in The Word. And those were the first Words that Anthony’s new ears ever heard. Through Loki's reflected light, Anthony could still see himself even when he closed his eyes. Loki ensured that Anthony knew how beautiful he looked with his eyes screwed shut and his head thrown back in ecstasy. The music in Anthony's light reduced to a desperate, broken roar, and Loki could not miss the opportunity to show Anthony how irresistible the song of Anthony's frenzied light could feel. “Ooh, I wish you to bask in this,” Loki crooned in The Word. He howled. Light itself howled with Him. He rained down on himself in spurts, drenched his stomach. Cum swished into the furrow between his pecs and split to run through the fluting beneath his collarbones. Loki paused, held Anthony's cock between both hands and gingerly pressed the last drops from it with the lengths of his thumbs. Loki held Anthony the way Anthony would have held himself. Loki panted, broke into a sweat of soft bluish flames. Anthony enjoyed his brief recovery, his cock lovingly cradled while Loki's throbbed and twitched inside him. Anthony smiled at his own afterglow, then pushed the artificial image of himself away to focus on the star-kissed alabaster skin of his lover. Loki's smooth face twisted in feigned disregard to his distress, so much so that a crease appeared in his otherwise smooth forehead. Every cum-slicked muscle in Anthony's torso worked as the two panted. The spectacle tightened lust's wrenching grip on Loki's body. Urgency darkened the creases in his forehead. Anthony flexed his calves to pull his ass upward in suggestion. The bones near his tailbone cracked a bit with the motion, and he grunted. He swirled his hips in the air, careful to keep Loki inside him as he worked the kink from his spine. Loki dropped Anthony's cock and grasped Anthony's squirming legs with a huff. “I know you like what you see, so why hesitate?” Anthony asked. “First,” Loki said, “We're putting you first, we do what pleases you.” Anthony commanded him with The Word. “You're aching. Do it.” These were the first words that Anthony said aloud in his new form, since mastering himself. They were as powerful an influence in the universe as God's First Words. Even without The Word, Loki could never have resisted the compulsion Anthony's request stirred with him, and so the sweet snap of Loki's hips against the airborne ass rang out as Loki slaked his lust upon it.

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readbookywooks · 7 years

Text

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing [4] his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry, languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. The Grosvenor is the only place.”

“I don’t think I will send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No: I won’t send it anywhere.”

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”

“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”

Lord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with laughter.

“Yes, I knew you would laugh; but it is quite true, all the same.”

“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you–well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and consequently he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is a brainless, beautiful thing, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”

“You don’t understand me, Harry. Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that [5] seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are,–my fame, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks,–we will all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

“Dorian Gray? is that his name?” said Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.

“Yes; that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”

“But why not?”

“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them. You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”

“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, laying his hand upon his shoulder; “not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet,–we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the duke’s,– we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it,–much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me.”

“I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said Basil Hallward, shaking his hand off, and strolling towards the door that led into the garden. “I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together, and for a time they did not speak.

After a long pause Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be going, Basil,” he murmured, “and before I go I insist on your answering a question I put to you some time ago.”

“What is that?” asked Basil Hallward, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

“You know quite well.”

“I do not, Harry.”

[6] “Well, I will tell you what it is.”

“Please don’t.”

“I must. I want you to explain to me why you won’t exhibit Dorian Gray’s picture. I want the real reason.”

“I told you the real reason.”

“No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself in it. Now, that is childish.”

“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret of my own soul.”

Lord Harry laughed. “And what is that?” he asked.

“I will tell you,” said Hallward; and an expression of perplexity came over his face.

“I am all expectation, Basil,” murmured his companion, looking at him.

“Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,” answered the young painter; “and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly believe it.”

Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass, and examined it. “I am quite sure I shall understand it,” he replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered disk, “and I can believe anything, provided that it is incredible.”

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup in the grass, and a long thin dragon-fly floated by on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward’s heart beating, and he wondered what was coming.

“Well, this is incredible,” repeated Hallward, rather bitterly,– “incredible to me at times. I don’t know what it means. The story is simply this. Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon’s. You know we poor painters have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious instinct of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. My father destined me for the army. I insisted on [7] going to Oxford. Then he made me enter my name at the Middle Temple. Before I had eaten half a dozen dinners I gave up the Bar, and announced my intention of becoming a painter. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then–But I don’t know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I knew that if I spoke to Dorian I would become absolutely devoted to him, and that I ought not to speak to him. I grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

“I don’t believe that, Harry. However, whatever was my motive,– and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud,–I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. ’You are not going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?’ she screamed out. You know her shrill horrid voice?”

“Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,” said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.

“I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and hooked noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was mad of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so mad, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other.”

“And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man? I know she goes in for giving a rapid précis of all her guests. I remember her bringing me up to a most truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, something like ’Sir Humpty Dumpty–you know–Afghan frontier–Russian intrigues: very successful man–wife killed by an elephant–quite inconsolable–wants to marry a beautiful American widow–everybody does nowadays–hates Mr. Gladstone–but very much interested in beetles: ask him what he thinks of Schouvaloff.’ I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But poor Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know. But what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?”

[8] “Oh, she murmured, ’Charming boy–poor dear mother and I quite inseparable–engaged to be married to the same man–I mean married on the same day–how very silly of me! Quite forget what he does– afraid he–doesn’t do anything–oh, yes, plays the piano–or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?’ We could neither of us help laughing, and we became friends at once.”

“Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one,” said Lord Henry, plucking another daisy.

Hallward buried his face in his hands. “You don’t understand what friendship is, Harry,” he murmured,–"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”

“How horribly unjust of you!” cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back, and looking up at the little clouds that were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk. “Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their characters, and my enemies for their brains. A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.”

“I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be merely an acquaintance.”

“My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.”

“And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?”

“Oh, brothers! I don’t care for brothers. My elder brother won’t die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”

“Harry!”

“My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that we can’t stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of the upper classes. They feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite magnificent. And yet I don’t suppose that ten per cent of the lower orders live correctly.”

“I don’t agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, Harry, I don’t believe you do either.”

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled malacca cane. “How English you are, Basil! If one puts forward an idea to a real Englishman,– always a rash thing to do,–he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it one’s self. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it [9] will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don’t propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?”

“Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him every day. Of course sometimes it is only for a few minutes. But a few minutes with somebody one worships mean a great deal.”

“But you don’t really worship him?”

“I do.”

“How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your painting,–your art, I should say. Art sounds better, doesn’t it?”

“He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the history of the world. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoüs was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, model from him. Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armor, and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar- spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge, looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water’s silent silver the wonder of his own beauty. But he is much more to me than that. I won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done since I met Dorian Gray is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way–I wonder will you understand me?–his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. ’A dream of form in days of thought,’–who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad, –for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty,–his merely visible presence,–ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body,–how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is bestial, an ideality that is void. Harry! Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.”

“Basil, this is quite wonderful! I must see Dorian Gray.” Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the [10] garden. After some time he came back. “You don’t understand, Harry,” he said. “Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is simply a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I see him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of certain colors. That is all.”

“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?”

“Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of course, I have never dared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He will never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry,–too much of myself!”

“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”

“I hate them for it. An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”

Hallward considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered, after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. I give myself away. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in arm, or sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

“Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger. Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man,–that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of color, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be [11] perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

“Harry, don’t talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can’t feel what I feel. You change too often.”

“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.” And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and self-satisfied air, as if he had summed up life in a phrase. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the ivy, and the blue cloud- shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people’s emotions were!–much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends,–those were the fascinating things in life. He thought with pleasure of the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt’s, he would have been sure to meet Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the housing of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-houses. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Hallward, and said, “My dear fellow, I have just remembered.”

“Remembered what, Harry?”

“Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.”

“Where was it?” asked Hallward, with a slight frown.

“Don’t look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt’s, Lady Agatha’s. She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation of good looks. At least, good women have not. She said that he was very earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horridly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend.”

“I am very glad you didn’t, Harry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to meet him.”

“Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,” said the butler, coming into the garden.

“You must introduce me now,” cried Lord Henry, laughing.

Basil Hallward turned to the servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. “Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I will be in in a few moments.” The man bowed, and went up the walk.

Then he looked at Lord Henry. “Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,” he said. “He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Don’t spoil him for me. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don’t take [12] away from me the one person that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that gives to my art whatever wonder or charm it possesses. Mind, Harry, I trust you.” He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.

“What nonsense you talk!” said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house.

#DorianGray

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