{"id":462,"date":"2011-08-18T23:40:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T23:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=462"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:22:02","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:22:02","slug":"baudelaires-dream-on-the-opium-couch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/baudelaires-dream-on-the-opium-couch\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8230;[Baudelaire&#8217;s Dream on the Opium Couch]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I dream of icebergs. Impossibly white, blank-sided pyramids rising from the gorge of the brine, as hope arises from faith, as clarity comes from freezing one&#8217;s tears with a mistress&#8217; wintry, heartless stare. With enough practice, when one looks inward at oneself, one only needs the perfected mirror of a practiced self-hatred to see the self&#8217;s damnable essence&#8211;that nothing which God and the Devil eternally thumb-wrestle to obtain; it is a pewter spittoon of nothingness voiding the nightmare of life onto one&#8217;s skeleton.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, monstrous perambulation! How I long to enter the invisible catacombs of the ice and freeze there, a spiteful spit of poet-mote launched into God&#8217;s crammed eye!<\/p>\n<p>I abandon all worlds, all wonders to this present numbness of ice. Locked in a landscape of frozen vodka, this is my eternal crucifixion in the tundra. Time recedes to a shriveled snow pea lost in the whiteness&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>And yet&#8230;. How pleasantly I lie on the plush couch of orange velvet paisleys&#8230;. Why did I ever want to die when I could lie thus crucified at a rate of a few francs per hour? It&#8217;s an oblivion dungeon here at madame Tsu&#8217;s. Here at Madame Tsu&#8217;s, the client is always right&#8230; until his wallet runs out of frittery francs. And mine have run. Yes, Madame Tsu, this magic-carpet is reserved for another dreamer at four o&#8217;clock. Yes, I understand I have been too-long a-tarrying. But here, in your yellow arms, Madame Tsu, I have been at last abandoned, at last set adrift without the crosswinds of eager terror or tedious conversation. Only here, on this ratty couch, could I crouch in my arctic emptiness, with no auguring object for my randy eye to affix itself upon&#8211;other than my own abominable sins. This is my masterwork: a disaster divinely conceived&#8211;but not of God!<\/p>\n<p>You do not see, I see. Yes, I see it is past four o&#8217;clock. Tso witty, Madame Tsu! You are a most punctual warden of my dram of dreams. You keep your corner of the creation as strictly patrolled as a death-rictus&#8230;. Tstiffly tschime the tserrible tsgongs of Madame Tsu!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dream of icebergs. Impossibly white, blank-sided pyramids rising from the gorge of the brine, as hope arises from faith, as clarity comes from freezing one&#8217;s tears with a mistress&#8217; wintry, heartless stare. With enough practice, when one looks inward at oneself, one only needs the perfected mirror of a practiced self-hatred to see the <a href='https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/baudelaires-dream-on-the-opium-couch\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil-interludes","category-12-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8413,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/8413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}