Keepin' It REAL Since 198Fizzour!: From 'The Unsilvered Glass,' By Phillippe Soupault

Friday, October 21, 2011

From 'The Unsilvered Glass,' By Phillippe Soupault

Prisoners of drops of water, we are but everlasting animals. We run about the noiseless towns and the enchanted posters no longer touch us. What's the good of these great fragile fits of enthusiasm, these jaded jumps of joy? We know nothing any more but the dead stars; we gaze at their faces; and we gasp with pleasure. Our mouths are as dry as the lost beaches, and our eyes turn aimlessly and without hope. Now all that remain are these cafes where we meet to drink these cool drinks, these diluted spirits, and the tables are stickier than the pavements where our shadows of the day before have fallen.

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EXUBEROCITY OR BUST

"Well exuberance is in essence an abundance of something. Typically joy, but could be food stores as well. Assuming these exuberites are stored the exponent has to involve time, so the first part of the exponent is T for each year of exuberocity. And I am sure you know as I do that the happier you are the more likely you are to be happy in the next second because happiness in essence makes you happier. So this is where the natural log comes in. The growth of happiness in someone of pure exuberence is continually compounded and grows exponentially upward.So there you go, the exponent of exuberance is e * T. If you want the full equation of happiness it is (H^et)+y - (U^t)-x." J. BOYCE

Exuberance = The timeless (and this is the key) glow that surrounds Sahara, the wonder dog (see photos on CS.org), as she races off the pier, a mighty leap of abandon, to fetch and retrieve the ball thrown by the passing child, who will remember that glee is something that need not be fleeting. TRANSMOGRIFIER

Hamlet (The Pimp on 95th and Wabash)

To be, o' not t'be--dat be de quesshun:

Wheda' 'tis nobla' in de mind t'suffer

De slin's and arrows uh outrageous fo'tune

Or t'snatch arms against some sea uh troubles

And by opposin' end dem. WORD! To die, t'sleep--

No mo'e--and by some sleep t'say we end

De heartache, and da damn dousand natural shocks

Dat flesh be heir to. 'S coo', bro. 'Tis some consummashun

Devoutly t'be wished. To die, t'sleep--

To sleep--puh'chance t'dream, dig dis: ay, dere's de rub,

Fo' in dat sleep uh dead whut dreams may come

When we gots shuffled off dis mo'tal coil,

Must cut us pause. Dere's de respect

Dat makes calamity uh so long life.

Fo' who would bear de whips and sco'ns uh time,

D' oppresso''s wrong, de proud man's contumely

De pangs uh despised love, de law's delay,

De insolence uh office, and da damn spurns

Dat patient merit uh d' unwo'dy snatch'd,

When he himself might his quietus make

Wid some bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat unda' a weary life,

But dat da damn dread uh sump'n afta' dead,

De undiscovered country, fum whose bourn

No travella' returns, puzzles de will,

And makes us rada' bear dose ills we gots

Dan fly t'oders dat we know not of?

Dus conscience duz make cowards uh us all,

And dus de native hue uh resolushun

Is sicklied o'a' wid de pale cast uh dought,

And enterprise uh great pitch and moment

Wid dis regard deir currents turn awry

And lose da damn dojigger uh acshun. -- Soft ya' now,

De fair Ophelia! Right on! -- Nymph, in dy o'isons

Be all mah' sins remembered.

MYSELF AND MY PERSON

NIKOLA TESLA ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis [WWI], is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only thru annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbariam and strife.

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
The Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're fromMichigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice or fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no back up plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

- Bob Hicok