:The sun was no more than a degree or so above the horizon, where it stays when it is the end of the world. From the still-heated surfaces of the water—not thoroughly cooled by the former blackness—a slight low mist begins to rise; hovering; a mist so thin it is invisible to human eyes, yet strong enough to make the pale sun indistinct and brighter, hot. The edge of this disc touching the longer more elliptical slate of the ocean turns it darker, into a frown: our ocean is now deeper, and hints, in this brooding, of the real presence of evil.
Kathy Acker, from Don Quixote
T: How are you feeling?
J: Scared.
T: Eyes open?
J: No, closed.
T: Open them.
J: That shit is blinding. I like sight.
T: You call that sight?
J: Blindness can’t be reversed.
T: I’ve looked a hundred times. I’m not blind.
J: Okay. They’re open.
T: What do you see?
J: Fuzzy buds on a tree. Black cars parked in a tidy row. Empty garbage cans. A temporary fence.
T: Nothing scary about that.
J: A worker in overalls with pine planks on his shoulder. Power lines. Gray sky.
T: You’re really scared?
J: Scared comes close. Sad is related. Panicky and guilty and unmoored, all balled up in a nondescript glob.
T: Come on, snap out of it. I’ll tell you a ghost story.
J: Nah.
T: I know a joke.
J: Nah.
T: Do you see a woman in a quilted coat?
J: Would she be walking a white pitbull?
T: Yeah, that’s Frankie. Good dog.
film clip is from Heavenly Creatures directed by Peter Jackson, 1994.