it is amazing that a single line of words from so far away can strike chords so deep within you; like chords in a chapel, arranged in an imperfect, incomplete cadence; issues unresolved and tensions unrelieved, hanging heavy in the air and reverberating obstinately.

and yet, there is also this feeling of having been disabused before, your head telling you, firmly, that even while you are in the city of dreaming spires there is no point pursuing nebulous fantasy and elusive illusions; illusions elusive and ephermeral as the mist that rises from your breath on a cold foggy night and disappears even before the wind picks up to draw the last vestiges of that expiration into the darkness.

let the spires dream, you think, and please, please, let me finish my work on king george iii.