Omens, Then & Now

Been reading some of the more obscure writings of Francis Bacon, and was floored by how closely this matched my present mood, despite it being penned some four hundred years ago:

Hark, of late, when I do enter a shoppe, a mercantile house, or some manner of trading place—be it a market of victuals or a house of sundry wares, such as that great hall of trade men call Target—the presence of others, those wretches called customers, doth weigh upon mine own spirit as a yoke upon the neck of the ox. Yea, their very presence doth oppress me.

This selfsame affliction doth seize me not only within the confines of such houses of trade, but likewise in those foul taverns of hasty victuals, and upon the crowded thoroughfares where the multitude doth press and jostle without cease. Yet mark thee well! This malady troubleth me not within the hallowed hush of a library. Nay, nor doth it beset me in a bookseller’s shoppe, though therein it lurketh as it doth in all other places of exchange. For these be the places wherein I chiefly go.

Yet lo! Amidst this throng—this heavy and loathsome tide of human flesh, vile as meat left too long upon the butcher’s block—there be, as salt cast unto a dish most rank, a scant few women whom I should desire to know in that most carnal wise. Women slender of form, be they lofty or of lesser stature, golden-haired or dark of tress, ruddy as flame or even she whose locks bear the hue of some strange artifice—yet ever they be thin. Thin women of all ages. And verily, I do believe that should I have but one of them, take her in such manner as nature ordaineth, this grievous oppression would be lifted from me. Yet such relief is not granted. And thus, whilst I linger in the shoppe, the mart, or the house of wares, I do yet remain oppressed.

These customers—they do seem sinister… Nay, not sinister, but something fouler still. They are ominous, yea, they are dread portents. But what doom do they foretell?

Hell.

And so it is no marvel that when I step within a shoppe, a mercantile house, or some such den of trade—be it a market of victuals or a place of sundry wares—the presence of others, these so-called customers, doth weigh upon me as the very shadow of damnation itself.