American Ghosts and Old World Wonders 精彩片段：
Alice in Prague or The Curious Room-1
This piece was written in praise of Jan Svankmayer,
the animator of Prague, and his film of Alice
In the city of Prague, once, it was winter.
Outside the curious room, there is a sign on the door which says "Forbidden". Inside, inside, oh, come and see! The celebrated DR DEE.
The celebrated Dr Dee, looking for all the world like Santa Claus on account of his long, white beard and apple cheeks, is contemplating his crystal, the fearful sphere that contains everything that is, or was, or ever shall be.
It is a round ball of solid glass and gives a deceptive impression of weightlessness, because you can see right through it and we falsely assume an equation between lightness and transparency, that what the light shines through cannot be there and so must weigh nothing. In fact, the Doctors crystal ball is heavy enough to inflict a substantial injury and the Doctors assistant, Ned Kelly, the Man in the Iron Mask, often weighs the ball in one hand or tosses it back and forth from one to the other hand as he ponders the fragility of the hollow bone, his masters skull, as it pores heedless over some tome.
Ned Kelly would blame the murder on the angels. He would say the angels came out of the sphere. Everybody knows the angels live there.
The crystal resembles: an aqueous humour, frozen:
a glass eye, although without any iris or
pupil -- just the sort of transparent eye, in
fact, which the adept might construe as apt
to see the invisible;
a tear, round, as it forms within the eye, for
a tear acquires its characteristic shape of a