Sublime

But behind the volcanoes themselves he saw now that storm clouds were gathering. “Sokotra,” he thought, “my mysterious island in the Arabian Sea, where the frankincense and myrrh used to come from, and no one has ever been—” There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

Around Scotts Valley, the dear fog appeared, and suddenly the season was different, the hour less determinate. Most evenings in June, a great paw of Pacific fog reached into Santa Cruz, over the wooden roller coaster, along the stagnant San Lorenzo, up through the wide streets where surfers lived, and into the redwoods on the hills. By morning the

caustic

soliloquizing

pernicious

splashing in a bog of hesitation

There were no lights anywhere on the ground. The ruin of a runway slanted across most of a narrow neck of the island. The helicopter landing circle was a faded smear. Ancient planes rotted against a black tree line. The plastic siding of the main building was peeled away like scales torn from a dead fish.

unknown landscapes. Again and again a man full of years is merely the corroboration of the dreams of his youth. The sense of fancy growing out of the sense of fact—which makes all healthy personalities and gives a touch of romance and glory to all of life—first appears as the unrestrained imaginings of youth.