SECRET PASSAGE TO MALIBU

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From the sidewalk where I stood....
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I looked more closely I saw over the portal a bright shield, on which, it seemed to me, there was something written....
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...letters dancing and then disappearing, returning and vanishing once more....
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But wait, at last I succeeded in catching several words on end. They were:
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MAGIC THEATER
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY

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I tried to open the door, but the heavy old latch would not stir. The display too was over. It had suddenly ceased, sadly convinced of its uselessness. I took a few steps back, landing deep into the mud, but no more letters came. The display was over. For a long time I stood waiting in the mud but in vain.
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Then, when I had given up and gone back to the alley, a few colored letters were dropped here and there, reflected on the asphalt in front of me. I read:
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FOR MADMEN ONLY!

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My feet were wet and I was chilled to the bone. Nevertheless I stood waiting. Nothing more. But while I waited, thinking how prettily the letters had danced in their ghostly fashion over the damp wall and the black sheen of the asphalt, a fragment of my former thoughts came suddenly to my mind; the similarity to the track of shining gold which suddenly vanishes and cannot be found.
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—STEPPENWOLF (Hermann Hesse)
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