"Charles de Lint - Spirits in the Wires" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

Panic came rolling up through my body, quickening my pulse, making me sweat, creating a
worse confusion in me than I was already feeling.
Let it go, that small calm place inside me said. Stop thinking about it for the moment. Give your body
controlтАФit knows what to do.
What did I have to lose?
I took a deep, steadying breath. Another. I donтАЩt even know how I did it, but somehow I
managed to step back from the panic and confusion and follow the voiceтАЩs advice.
I was like a passenger as I made my way to the bathroom, peed and showered. Back in my
bedroom, I looked in the closet and was momentarily overwhelmed by the choices. ItтАЩs not

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/de%20Lint,%20Charles%20-%20Spirits%20in%20the%20Wires%20(v1.0).html (11 of 346)8-12-2006 23:50:50
SPIRITS IN THE WIRES by Charles de Lint


that there were a lot of clothesтАФbecause there werenтАЩt. But there was still too much choice.
I was still confounded by knowing exactly what all the various materials were, but not what
it would be like to touch or wear themтАФtheir texture, their weight, the feel of how the fabric
would hang.
I took another steadying breath and let the decision go. I watched as I chose a cotton T-shirt
and a pair of jeans, enjoyed the sensation of the cloth as it covered me. Slipped on a pair of
moccasins and wiggled my toes in them.
It wasnтАЩt until after IтАЩd made toast and coffee and was still drinking the coffee at the kitchen
table that the immensity of my disassociation began to ease. It came and went throughout
the rest of the day, like the ebb and flow of some inexplicable tide, but the troughs and
crests began to even out and calm.
The oddest thing was how whenever I had a question about something, that calm voice
would speak up from the back of my mind in response. Like when I took the coffee from
the fridge and I wondered about the beans as I spooned some into the grinder.
Coffee, the voice in my head said. ItтАЩs a beverage consisting of a decoction or infusion of the roasted
ground or crushed seeds (coffee beans) of the two-seeded fruit (coffee berry) of certain coffee trees. It can also be
the seeds or fruit themselves, or any of various tropical trees of the madder family that yield coffee beans, such
as Coffea arabica and C. canefora.
It was like I had an encyclopedia sitting in the back of my head. One that knew everything.


I didnтАЩt leave the apartment all day. I didnтАЩt dare. I explored its four roomsтАФbedroom,
kitchen, bathroom, and the final all-purpose room that looked to be a combination of study,
library, office, and living room. I opened the patio door that led out of that last room, but I
didnтАЩt go onto the balcony. I simply stood in the doorway and studied the street below, the
buildings on the other side.
Mostly I poked through the books and magazines I found, studied the contents of my purse
and the wallet inside it, turned on the computer and explored its various document files.
It turned out I wrote poetry. A fair amount of it. IтАЩd had three collections published, with
enough in these files for at least a couple more, though some of the poems were obviously
works-in-progress.
I also did freelance writing for various on-line magazines and wrote some op-ed pieces for
Street Times, a little paper produced mostly by street people for street peopleтАФto give them
something to sell in lieu of asking for spare change.
I found a financial program and saw that while I wasnтАЩt rich by any means, I had enough
money banked to keep me solvent for a few months. When I thought about where that