When I was not quite 14, my adoptive father died of a heart-attack, as it happened on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1958. From that day on for about a year and a half I had at least three lucid nightmares per night, the kind you fight to wake up from because otherwise some thing will get you and -- well, you know how it goes. It got so that if my nightmares weren't memorable, I'd be bored stiff, I was that used to them. A lowering malefic presence surrounded and hovered over me at all times; I had no idea what it was, but I didn't dare tell my adoptive mother about it, nor anyone else, for fear of being locked up in a madhouse for the rest of my life. Ditto those horrific nightmares.

But a few days after my adoptive father's death, I discovered a collection of H. P. Lovecraft's stories in a paperback rack at a news vendor's. I purchased it and read it through within a week. The stories scared hell out of me -- but while I read them, that lowering, evil presence withdrew from me, retreating to a far distance, and I felt a protective presence all around me.

We find our angels in strange places, don't we? I want to thank Howard Phillips Lovecraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft), wherever his spirit may be now, for being one of mine, and one of the best. Whenever things get really bad, I read some of his work, and the terrifying shadows retreat, cringing into the far distance, for quite a while.

I think that depends on how fast you can run.

Cremate it and( Read more... )