I arrived in Washington, D.C. yesterday morning. As I stepped from my car in the parking lot, I was surprised to see so few people, and the few I did see were holding handkerchiefs to their faces. Some were moaning, some were crying. Something was seriously wrong here.
I had first noticed the smell as I to the ramp onto the Beltway, at first a faint underlayment of odor, like a musical theme in a symphony where the piccolo introduces the melody beneath the bassoons, but then growing stronger. It reminded me of something I had smelled many years before on a trip to the northern woods. I vaguely remembered that trip twenty years previous. I was doing a little backpacking near the Canadian border, leaving civilization behind and enjoying the solitude and the quiet. I remembered the smell, too, but I couldn't remember what caused it. It was rank, acrid, and penetrating, an ugly foulness in the nose. It had been strong that day among the birch and pine, but it was nothing compared to this. It was the same smell, but this time it seemed to have infiltrated the entire city, like a precursor of evil, a taste of a coming darkness.(more)
So brilliant it hurts.. Today's MUST read.
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