sawyl | Ariel Hawksquill goes to work

I've been dawdling over John Crowley's astonishingly wonderful Little, Big for a couple of weeks now, and loving every minute of it. Here's a striking description of Ariel Hawksquill, a modern disciple of Giordano Bruno, preparing herself for work:

Already she felt her thoughts becoming ordered as the undifferentiated light of heaven was ordered by the colors and marked degrees of the Cosmo-Opticon; she felt her own Theatrum Mundi within open its doors, and the stage manager strike the stage three times with his staff to signal the curtain rising. The enormous engine, star-founded, of her Artificial Memory began to lay out for her once again the parts of the problem of Russell Eigenblick. And she felt, sharp-set for the work, that there had not ever been among all the strange tasks her powers had been bent upon a task a strange as this one, or one which was more important to her herself; or one that would require her to go as far, dive as deep, see a widely, or think as hard.

My God, but the man can write.