A Visit To Père Lachaise

Au Revoir, Jewelled Alligators And White Hotels, Hallucinatory Forests, Farewell.

Trying To Exhaust Himself, Vaughan Devised An Endless Almanac Of Terrifying Wounds And Insane Collisions: The Lungs Of Elderly Men Punctured By Door-handles; The Chests Of Young Women Impaled On Steering-columns; The Cheek Of Handsome Youths Torn On The Chromium Latches Of Quarter-lights. To Vaughan, These Wounds Formed The Key To A New Sexuality, Born From A Perverse Technology. The Images Of These Wounds Hung In The Gallery Of His Mind, Like Exhibits In The Museum Of A Slaughterhouse.

God Was A Clever Idea ... The Human Race Came Up With A Winner There.

It Was An Excess Of Fantasy That Killed The Old United States, The Whole Mickey Mouse And Marilyn Thing, The Most Brilliant Technologies Devoted To Trivia Like Instant Cameras And Space Spectaculars That Should Have Stayed In The Pages Of Science Fiction . . . Some Of The Last Presidents Of The U.s.a. Seemed To Have Been Recruited Straight From Disneyland.

Civilised Life, You Know, Is Based On A Huge Number Of Illusions In Which We All Collaborate Willingly. The Trouble Is We Forget After A While That They Are Illusions And We Are Deeply Shocked When Reality Is Torn Down Around Us.