from the article:

Dangerous Matter [Excerpt]

I

Her awareness grew like an apple: it was green and tiny at first, then its volume increased, bursting its own particles, stretching its very tissues to gain territory. She wouldn’t have realized if she hadn’t one day approached too close to the mirror and an ache manifested at her temples; she thought herself like that child with a swelled head whose mother took him to the parks in a wheelbarrow, not like how one carries their newborn, but like a circus freak. His head was largely deformed, his eyes elongated, and one of them almost closed. The pain in her temples grew as much as that apple, which was no longer green nor tiny; it grew so as she looked at herself in the mirror that afternoon that she became aware.

II

Some matter might be dangerous, an excess of light (for example) might provoke a temporary blindness or, on the contrary, might induce a state of clairvoyance, which if that were the case, is also temporary. The effect depends on the object that irradiates the shine and the capacity of response of the other. The other is you. You when you pull back and you look strange to yourself, when you don’t recognize your own body and its reaction, you when you speak sentences that seem alien to you, you when you’re at the precise moment of falling asleep and you resist, you when you’re struck by the light and for a few moments you feel yourself the prey of some savage animal, a sensation that seems eternal, but which in reality (as I said) is temporary and, if you’re lucky, will open a door for you.

III

Certain things should only be seen for a few seconds, otherwise too much is risked. Let me explain. There are glances whose strength can come to erode edges, surfaces and, in extreme cases, even entrails if the object had them. The effect is not limited to the exterior, a mirror phenomenon takes place. The observer’s inside can also suffer the erosion and therefore the warning, to call it one, is in both directions. With this I don’t want to say that the aforementioned should abstain from practicing contemplation (not at all). They are the ones who practice it with more insistence, perhaps also with better results. A brief glance, just fleeting, might be enough, might even be much more intense and effective than a prolonged one. It is not the same to look as to look. Carrying out this action implies, paradoxically, closing one’s eyes, turning within, and constructing the image.

from the article:

Dangerous Matter [Excerpt]

I

Her awareness grew like an apple: it was green and tiny at first, then its volume increased, bursting its own particles, stretching its very tissues to gain territory. She wouldn’t have realized if she hadn’t one day approached too close to the mirror and an ache manifested at her temples; she thought herself like that child with a swelled head whose mother took him to the parks in a wheelbarrow, not like how one carries their newborn, but like a circus freak. His head was largely deformed, his eyes elongated, and one of them almost closed. The pain in her temples grew as much as that apple, which was no longer green nor tiny; it grew so as she looked at herself in the mirror that afternoon that she became aware.

II

Some matter might be dangerous, an excess of light (for example) might provoke a temporary blindness or, on the contrary, might induce a state of clairvoyance, which if that were the case, is also temporary. The effect depends on the object that irradiates the shine and the capacity of response of the other. The other is you. You when you pull back and you look strange to yourself, when you don’t recognize your own body and its reaction, you when you speak sentences that seem alien to you, you when you’re at the precise moment of falling asleep and you resist, you when you’re struck by the light and for a few moments you feel yourself the prey of some savage animal, a sensation that seems eternal, but which in reality (as I said) is temporary and, if you’re lucky, will open a door for you.

III

Certain things should only be seen for a few seconds, otherwise too much is risked. Let me explain. There are glances whose strength can come to erode edges, surfaces and, in extreme cases, even entrails if the object had them. The effect is not limited to the exterior, a mirror phenomenon takes place. The observer’s inside can also suffer the erosion and therefore the warning, to call it one, is in both directions. With this I don’t want to say that the aforementioned should abstain from practicing contemplation (not at all). They are the ones who practice it with more insistence, perhaps also with better results. A brief glance, just fleeting, might be enough, might even be much more intense and effective than a prolonged one. It is not the same to look as to look. Carrying out this action implies, paradoxically, closing one’s eyes, turning within, and constructing the image.

from the article:

Witches

Tell me, oh! Old wise witches Saturday doctors, if awaits me good fortune or awaits me bad.

*******Seek for yourselves in nights of moon among the ugliest, among fistfuls of weeds, *******among the hidden *******who hide the strangest things: smoke rising from bats or terrifying toads, the dead-black wings of hapless owls, and undulating vipers: every bug that brings disgust *******Oh! Witches, Saturday doctors.

Let them growl in the pot, inside clay bowls pour in foul grease brought to you by dragons crawling out of the graves of the still-rotting dead, *******as howl hyenas in the fields.

And let them boil, let them roar after you’ve cast your conjurations after you’ve clad your faces with contortions demonic emulations, after the columns have begun to slither like snakes with fire and fatuous smoke *******that in the cavern speak predictions, *******Oh! Witches, Saturday doctors.

Stir in long shadows, with long fangs, *******and let frightful demons rise *******so that, in pale *******nocturnal assembly I can be told of the fortune reserved for fays, *******Oh! Witches, Saturday doctors. *******—Crac, crec, croc. Black cat, mewing. *******—Crac, crec, croc. Feeble dog, howling. *******croc, croc.

So that, in pale nocturnal assembly, I can be told of the fortune reserved for fays *******Oh! Witches Saturday doctors…

“What moon phase do you seek?” *******crac, crec, croc

The one shining over Cyprus amid the love of roses. Is there still one for me…? *******—Crac, crec, croc

“How long have you held life’s harm?”

Oh, I am an old man! Today I pressed my hand against the twenty eighth ledge…

“Oh! The horror!”

Smoke, rises, *******Croc, croc, croc Flees, the cloud. (And rose in flight the old women, *******the perverse doctors, like a famished flock of furies with sinister mocking and yelling, *******making a thousand twisted faces. Their long manes like ruffled feathers *******unfurled and black, like the long crest of long *******snaking smoke.)