Refracted Neurons

In front of her was a river, frothy white with rapids, and a wooden boat, oars still engaged in the oarlocks. “There must be a mistake,” Latona looked up at the achingly blue sky.  The last thing she could remember was the screeching of metal as her car crumpled around her.  Fabric or paper twirled in the air like confetti.  Then pain. She was dead, she was definitely one-hundred percent dead, and there was truly a man wearing only a loincloth standing in front of her.  She pinched herself, but it didn’t hurt.  She was dead after all. “I am Phelegas, ferryman of the dead.  You must pay your fare to pass into Hades,” he held out a pale hand. “Where’s the white tunnel?  And Hades?  Like hell?  I must have really messed up,” Latona tried to look only at the man’s face.  He was nearly naked, and far too old for her taste. “Hades is the Greek afterworld.  Your name is Latona, the hidden one, daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, sister of Asterius, mother of Apollo and Artemis . . .”

The longing bursts inside you for choruses of gloria tua from lungs too choked with smoke to sing and even though icons hold sway among the ashes, sound doesn't travel the same. As if Miserere was never misprinted, and the shivers trickling over and off you, are solely unfallen rain. But mercy is never what you wanted to ask for, and this fall hurts because in it, you see yourself. ------------------------------------ As a sort of a side note, the story of Allegri's Miserere  is the chocolate chip cookie story of the choral music world.  If you've never heard Miserere performed live in a cathedral, well, first of all, you should; and second of all the arrangement commonly heard is a result of a mistake.  Read the link if you're interested. Recently I've been having skin problems, you know, the kind of problems where the dermatologist speaks to you in Latin and chops off a chunk of flesh.  Just to make matters even more bizarre, I have to