Monday, August 14, 2006

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

' Dust - Meanwhile dismal sheets of dust constantly invade earthly habitations and uniformly defile them; as if it were a matter of making ready attics and old rooms for the imminent occupation of the obsessions, phantoms, spectres that the decayed odour of old dust nourishes and intoxicates'.

Georges Bataille, Documents issue 5, 1929

''. . .The olden wizards knew him, and named him Quachil Uttaus. Seldom is he revealed: for he dwelleth beyond the outermost circle, in the dark limbo of unsphered time and space. Dreadful is the word that calleth him, though the word be unspoken save in thought: For Quachil Uttaus is the ultimate corruption; and the instant of his coming is like the passage of many ages; and neither flesh nor stone may abide his treading, but all things crumble beneath it - atom from atom. And for this, some have called him The Treader of the Dust'. —The Testaments of Carnamagos.'

Clark Ashton Smith, Weird Tales, august 1935

Certainly, Quachil Uttaus is one of those spectres Bataille mentions. Having been allergic to dust for many years, I know the spectre's suffocating grasp around my throat.

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