Gr translation: crackling-tower

[David Morris]

The overall image is very grim and so poetic and obscure that translation
will have to be speculative.

The image begins with "... or is held in staring postures, long gowns,
fringe and alchemical symbol, veils flowing from leather skullcaps padded
concentric as a bike-racer’s helmet, with crackling-tower and obsidian
helix, with drive belts and rollers, with strange airship passages that
thread underneath arches, solemnly, past louvers and giant fins in the city
mist. . . ."

The gowns and skullcaps are of clerical origin. Tower and helix, belt and
rollers are all aspects of DNA.  Obsidian is solid and shiny black and
hard, not malleable? Sounds like a priesthood...  And then the image shifts
into a cityscape and sky....

I think translation should be word for word as much as is possible.

On Sunday, November 3, 2013, Mike Jing wrote:

> V482.13-28   It was always easy for men to come and tell her who to be.
> Other girls of her generation grew up asking, “Who am I?” For them it was a
> question full of pain and struggle. For Gretel it was hardly even a
> question. She had more identities than she knew what to do with. Some of
> these Gretels have been only the sketchiest of surfaces—others are deeper.
> Many have incredible gifts, antigravity, dreams of prophecy . . . comatic
> images surround their faces, glowing in the air: the light itself is
> actually crying tears, weeping in this stylized way, as she is borne along
> through the mechanical cities, the meteorite walls draped in midair, every
> hollow and socket empty as a bone, and the failing shadow that shines black
> all around it . . . or is held in staring postures, long gowns, fringe and
> alchemical symbol, veils flowing from leather skullcaps padded concentric
> as a bike-racer’s helmet, with crackling-tower and obsidian helix, with
> drive belts and rollers, with strange airship passages that thread
> underneath arches, solemnly, past louvers and giant fins in the city mist.
> . . .
>
> What is "crackling-tower"?
>
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