Hi. Before I took a break, I was working on a piece about a fantasy house-of-worship which catered to all faiths. (And no faiths.) I'm sharing a handful of passages with you---some unfinished---which I hope you find engaging. Please know: The dark scenes at the start are just the beginning: The piece gets brighter as you read on... I have one more day to go of comments. It's always a joy to come back here. Thank you for your reception and love: It makes coming here special every time. (And get well, Steve---I'm so glad you're home!) Have a fine week, all Mark (if you find my fantasies rough, don't worry; I don't expect everyone to read these!) * * * Scenes from "The Great Cathedral" ...it sat there, half-sunken in seething earth, with steam shooting out and emitting the most bone-chilling gurgles and gasps, as if it were sunken in the tar-pits of hell. It was a cathedral: But it looked like a gargantuan sunken ship, with a hellish pit heaving and roaring all around it; and disease and slime bubbling at its sides. It was, in fact, a death-knell of a once-great house of worship, now struggling for its very existence in the most gagging pit-of-slime I'd ever encountered. "How far the mighty have fallen," I thought. It let out a roar: So it's complaining now too, I thought. It wheezed, sunk back into the mire, and sizzled away... But when the cathedral heaved out of the mire, it was beyond imagination: Its nave---it's longest part---stretched nearly the length of a city. And it must've stood high as a mountain: The chronicles from this region said that it once stood almost as high as the Alps. And they added that the mists and clouds surrounding this beast were so impenetrable, you could only catch glimpses of its breathtaking presence before the clouds obscured it once more. I caught such a glimpse, and you could not only see its sky-high arches and massive flying buttresses, but its astonishing statues dancing and swirling around the facade, like maddened spirits. The chronicles warned that if you got "too close," the statues would attack you. And, every so often, they'd eye you, and you'd run: Their eyes were set in stone, they could "burn through granite" (say the writings), and, if you caught their gaze "too long," you could "go blind"... from "The Entrance" ...it stood before me now, many miles high, its rose window---the great rose-shaped window that sits atop all cathedral entrances---was an actual rose: Let me repeat that: This wasn't a rose shaped window: It was an actual rose: I.e., a rose the size of a castle, undulating and unfurling like a massive ballet dancer opening its massive limbs to the moon. And it emitted a fragrance so breathtaking and piercing, you hallucinated from it, for hours. The chronicles said that, directly beneath your feet, there were mausoleums for the souls who'd become so intoxicated from its fragrance, they whirled and died in ecstasy before ever entering the cathedral itself. As I approached its doors, they roared: They bellowed in a deep, from-the-bottom-of-the-soul, wrenching screech, which shook the land and made it impossible to stand on. The doors shook as well---as if they were made of tar: They rippled and bulged, while deep dark ooze gushed out of their seams. I froze: But since I needed to find my long-lost friend, I had to keep going. But, before I took another step, the cathedral leapt out of the ground very suddenly, exposing its foundations to the world: My god: The foundations were filled with tentacles, covered in slime, and dripping; deep roars came out of the chasm left in their wake; and gargoyles above---those grotesque creatures who sat atop all cathedrals, as warnings to any 'sinners'---now glared down at me, thank you, cackling and spitting and hissing, its exudate stinging your skin as it hit---it burned!---followed by gales of laughter. Believe me, I would've run as far away as I could, but I had to go in; I just had to. So I sneered back at the gargoyles (like that made a dent in their searing, vicious smiles), and plunged forward... from "Inside" ...I'd seen countless pillars in countless churches, but these were beyond words: Made of translucent marble, light traveled through them as through thick cream, giving them an otherworldly glow as if each pillar were made of frosted glass with a huge light within. To see them lined across this city-sized hall, it was an infinite lineup of strobe lights, in the most luminous hues. Further: Each pillar had veins. Let me repeat that: They had veins. I don't mean "marble veins," which are common enough: I mean as in blood veins. They were identical to the veins inside of us, except these carried molten marble, ready to replenish the marble wherever it was deteriorating: a kind of marble delivery system for ailing stone. And you could hear the molten stone rush through these veins with deafening whooshes and high-pitched scrapes; and they filled this vast cathedral with drumbeats---massive drumbeats as if this place were filled with a percussion ensemble the size of 20 orchestras. And the beats, layered on top of each other in infinite configurations, were so compelling, the statuary ripped from its stone and danced. Once in this astonishing place, everything danced. You felt like a dumb intruder for not moving; and even dumber because you didn't know the steps. Then massive birds flew under the arches---birds the size of cars, now---and they carried quotes from the poetries of the world in their claws, written on banners in the most exquisite calligraphies I'd ever seen. And, as you passed under each arch---way in the clouds---chants from every place on eart, jumped out at you and shouted their supplications. And the floor shook, and the ceiling shook, and it was as if the entire world were in celebration... It was hard to believe that this interior---blasting with musics and poetries and statuaries and carvings of all history---was, to the outside viewer, a vast beast sunken in horrid mire, heaving and sinking like a great valley-sized coffin. Why the discrepancy between interior and exterior? Why so??? I didn't know! I just knew that this interior glowed and beamed with life, and that somehow---somehow---every culture on earth had converged here at one time or another. In fact, the stained glass windows---the so-called "clearstory" of every cathedral (so-named because it was the part of the church that was 'clear', as it was made of glass), and which, here, hovered way into the clouds, as this cathedral was so high---these windows depicted not just the lives of the saints of this faith---what most stained glass windows did, in Christianity---but of the lives of all faiths, and of no faiths, a compendium of the entire human race, in essence; and these figures (carved in stained glass) moved about the windows through pane after pane, and greeted each other and hugged each other, sharing wisdom, secrets, instructions, what have you. And the statues below cheered. And in languages from across history... ...But the most astonishing sight was the 'reckoning of all diseases': a ceremony played out every night in this cathedral, which---say the chronicles---brings all the diseases of history face to face with their victims. This is how it worked: The diseases---rolling down the nave in huge rolling clouds, one after the next---rolled down this vast nave, until they faced---at the other end---rows of countless humans who'd been felled by these diseases throughout history. It was boggling. These victims spread as far as the eye could see, well beyond the cathedral itself, clawing to get in, shoving to get a glimpse of the clouds that had felled them; and they all got in: Everyone got in. And they knelt to their clouds, and they conversed with them, and exchanged private secrets, and they wept and they hugged, and they made a peace that was beyond my comprehension. All I saw was an endless array of souls kneeling at their diseases, whispering and whispering for hours. In fact, this was the reason my friend came here in the first place: She'd been struck by one of these diseases; I never learned if it 'took' her, just that she was struck low by it. And, against all our urgings, she was determined to confront her disease at all costs, and so she came here... ...And at the altar, many blocks long, was a gigantic heart, standing a mile high, whose beats were so loud, you had to cover your ears; whose beats were so deep, they said that tremors were felt many miles away. And crimson waterfalls (its blood) flowed out of the top of this heart; and people---naked and ageless---bathed in it. I had no idea...I had no idea...but these souls, straight out of a Sistine Chapel fresco, were in ecstasy; and they sang psalms and prayers from every tradition on earth, while this heart kept beating away... from "Outside" ...standing in the field---the cathedral now behind me---a statue came out of the church, picked up a gigantic bucket of paint, picked up a gigantic brush, and, with massive vertical strokes, painted the cathedral out of existence (!), painting it the color of the sky---now filled with the most exquisite early dawn hues, obliterating the church with each stroke. Stroke by stroke, the cathedral was 'painted out of existence'. And the insects in the hillsides---now visible---were the size of boulders, and had stained glass wings, and moved slow and sacredly, singing otherworldly songs. And the sun's reflections, bouncing off their wings, projected images of every painting in history across the mountainsides. For a moment, I was viewing the entire history of art across this single valley, the mere 'whisper' of the cathedral now undulating in the background, as all its substance had been painted out of existence, and all that was left was its 'aura'... ...and, in the distance, a great table; and many souls gathered at that table; and, at its center---laying food out for all who came, and in an attitude of great giving---my friend, glowing in the distance like a star and whispering in each newcomer's ears with words I couldn't understand. When I called to her and waved, she glanced up and saw me; and she bowed: Then she waved a kiss, and cried---in more languages than I could count: "I'm fine. I'm fine. Be at peace..." ------------------