Things that fascinate me: the Transfiguration of our Lord, the Annunciation and Assumption of our Blessed Mother; ghosts, witches, practitioners of the occult, the frauds of Simon Magus reported by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, the obscure beliefs and practices of the Boxer Rebels, the Old Man of the Mountain; remote places—the steppes of Central Asia, the crofts of the Hebrides, Bear Island, Hokkaido; the saints of Anglo-Saxon England and Cornwall and Wales; very long books, beautifully decorated books of devotion, dull diplomatic papers and letters full of gossip unread in dust-filled archives; late spring rain, early autumn snow, the abscission of leaves, fields of lavender, vast bodies of water covered with ice, dark forests; experts in obscure languages (though not the languages themselves) and academic works on obscure subjects; the courtiers of the nineteenth-century papal court, eccentric clergymen, starving men of letters who write out of desperation; withdrawn, world-weary pious maidens, celibate knights riding forth in search of the Holy Grail, hermits blessed with visions; the Heavenly Host, guardian angels, the burning sword of Michael at the gates of Eden; references to elves or goblins or fairies in the works of poets; the rings of Saturn.
Things that repel me: tone-deafness; men with leering eyes; tattoos; impiety and secularism; monsters; slugs, spiders, dogs with foul breath and slobbering tongues; logistics; the self-satisfied language of improvement; the dark.
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