"Norman Spinrad - He Walked Among Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

It was an unseasonably warm autumn evening for the coast of central California, and so Amanda had
moved the proceedings out of Xanadu's auditorium to the back lawn of the main building.

Here, she wouldn't be upstaged by the magnificent view of sunset from a Pacific seacliff afforded by the
front veranda, but the surf breaking on the rocks below could still be heard as a rushing rumble in the
background, and the stars could be seen beginning to emerge at the crown of the purpling heavens, and
the perfume of the surrounding redwood forest seemed to sound just the right note of olfactory languor
for the subject at hand.

Amanda began pacing in small circles a beat before she started talking, her simple white caftan and long
unfettered black hair flowing in the wind of her passage, her dark brown eyes and aquiline nose forming
the visage of a bird of prey whose gaze she kept fixed on the same central point in the audience.

тАЬThere are paths that you never see until you discover that you are already on them,тАЭ she said, тАЬthere are
doors you can never find until you have already passed through them."

This was more or less the standard costume she used for тАЬWalkabout Through the DreamtimeтАЭ and the
standard opening.
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тАЬI'm talking about the blinding flash that transformed Saul on the road to Tarsus, right, Joan of Arc
awakening in mid-conversation with her voices, Albert Hoffman peddling his bicycle as the LSD he has
unknowingly absorbed alters the world around him...."

This was also pretty much the usual group she drew with this one, and as usual Amanda had checked
them out during the cheese-and-chablis preliminaries. There were twenty-three of them sprawled
comfortably on piles of assorted cushions, split roughly evenly by gender, median age in the early forties,
a lot of professional creators, many of them in various states of blockage; screenwriters, painters, a
sculptor, poets, a composer, the usual dilettantes and seekers, but no performers.

тАЬMoses confronted with the Burning Bush, yes, Mohammed finding himself frantically taking dictation
from Allah...."

Pacing faster and faster, making them track her.

тАЬTranscendent experiences wherein the everyday mind is transformed by powers from elsewhere before
it knows what happens! Where the transformation comes first and the perception that it has occurred
only in time-delayed hindsight! I'm talking about the rare peak experiences of prophets, and visionaries,
and God-struck saints!"

Amanda suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, arced a prophetic finger in the collective face of her
audience, her visage stern and a bit feverish, as if about to summon the ineffable from the vasty deeps
before their very eyes.

тАЬRight?тАЭ she demanded in a voice of thunder.