Author: gabrielsmy

Corpses To Remember Him By

I hope I shall not offend you; I shall
certainly say nothing with the intention
to offend you. I must explain myself,
however, and I will do it as kindly

as I can. What you ask me to do I
am asked to do as often as one half-
dozen times a week. Three hundred letters
a year! One’s impulse is to freely consent,

but one’s time and necessary occupations
will not permit it. There is no way but
to decline in all cases, making no
exceptions; and I wish to call your

attention to a thing which has probably
not occurred to you, and that is this: that
no man takes pleasure in exercising
his trade as a pastime. Writing is my

trade, and I exercise it only when
I am obliged to. You might make your request
of a doctor, or a builder, or a sculptor,
and there would be no impropriety

in it, but if you asked either for a
specimen of his trade, his handiwork,
he would be justified in rising to
a point of order. It would never be
fair to ask a doctor for one of his
corpses to remember him by.

The typewritten message Mark Twain would send to autograph seekers. By Marika Rose.

Into what is the universe expanding?

Our universe
is all of space-time,
and space-time
is all of our universe.
Our language,
with the possible exception of mathematics,
is rooted in space-time,
and we have
no language
for that-which-is-not-space-time.
There is no what
that the universe is expanding into
because what,
where
and when
are properties of space-time,
not that-which-is-not-space-time.

So where does that leave us?

Unfortunately,
it leaves us with Wittgenstein:
What can be said at all
can be said clearly,
and what we cannot talk about
we must pass over
in silence.

From the Guardian’s Notes and Queries column, 13 April 2011. By Ailsa Holland.

Where Is Thy Sting?

Sweat bee; light, ephemeral, almost fruity,
a tiny spark has singed a single hair
on your arm. Fire ant; sharp, sudden, mildly
alarming, like walking across a shag
carpet and reaching for the light switch.

Bullhorn acacia ant; a rare, piercing,
elevated sort of pain. Someone
has fired a staple into your cheek.

Bald-faced hornet; rich, hearty, slightly crunchy,
getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
Yellowjacket, hot and smoky, almost
irreverent, imagine W. C. Fields
extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

Honey bee and European hornet;
a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
Red harvester ant; bold and unrelenting,
somebody is using a drill
to excavate your ingrown toenail.

Paper wasp, caustic and burning. Like
spilling a beaker of hydrochloric
acid on a paper cut. Blinding, fierce,
shockingly electric, a running hair drier
has been dropped into your bubble bath.

Bullet ant; pure, intense, brilliant pain.
Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal
with a three-inch rusty nail in your heel.

From the Wikipedia examples of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.

In the Merry Month of May

Arsenal missed
the chance to close the gap on Premier
League leaders—

Arsenal’s rapidly
deteriorating season
took another blow.

Arsenal—could
only earn a point as their Premier League title
aspirations were dented.

Arsenal’s Premier
League title aspirations suffered
a significant setback.

Arsenal kept
up the pressure—and maintained
their title hopes.

Arsenal’s title
hopes were left hanging
by a thread.

Arsenal’s Premier
League title hopes were dealt
another devastating blow—

Arsenal’s Premier
League title challenge is all but over after
they lost to a last minute goal—

Arsenal blew
the Premier League title race
wide open.

Stoke extinguished
Arsenal’s Premier League title dream
with a deserved win at the Britannia stadium.

Lines from the opening paragraphs of Arsenal football match reports on the BBC football website. The reports quoted cover a run of 10 games from Sunderland (home), 5 March, to Stoke (away), 8 May 2011.

Siamese

A kitten is so flexible
that she is almost double. The
hind parts are equivalent to
another kitten with which the
fore part plays. She does not
discover that her tail belongs
to her till you tread upon it.

A quotation from Thoreau, via Futility Closet, 25 April 2011. By Marika Rose.

Elysium

James Ensor, in a letter to his friend,
Jules Dujardin, mused:
To live in a big bathing hut
whose interior is clad
in mother-of-pearl shells,
and to sleep there
cradled by the sound of the sea
and an indolent
blonde beautiful girl
with salty flesh.

From the book Ensor, by Ulrike Becks-Malorny, published in 2000. By Robert.

For Whom The Earth Was Made

What great births you have witnessed! The steam press,
the steamship, the steel ship, the railroad,
the perfected cotton-gin, the telegraph,
the phonograph, the photograph, photo-gravure,
the electrotype, the gaslight, the electric light,
the sewing machine, and the amazing,
infinitely varied and innumerable
products of coal tar, those latest and strangest
marvels of a marvelous age.
And you
have seen even greater births than these;
for you have seen the application
of anesthesia to surgery-practice,
whereby the ancient dominion of pain,
which began with the first created life,
came to an end in this earth forever;
you have seen the slave set free, you have seen
the monarchy banished from France, and reduced
in England to a machine.
Yes, you have seen much —
but tarry yet a while, for the greatest
is yet to come. Wait thirty years, and then
look out over the earth! You shall see
marvels upon marvels added to these
whose nativity you have witnessed;
and conspicuous above them you shall see
their formidable Result — Man at almost
his full stature at last! — and still growing,
visibly growing while you look. In that day,
who that hath a throne, or a gilded privilege
not attainable by his neighbor, let him
procure his slippers and get ready to dance,
for there is going to be music.
Abide,
and see these things! Thirty of us who honor
and love you, offer the opportunity.
We have among us six hundred years,
good and sound, left in the bank of life. Take
thirty of them — the richest birth-day gift
ever offered to poet in this world —
and sit down and wait. Wait till you see that
great figure appear, and catch the far glint
of the sun upon his banner; then you
may depart satisfied, as knowing you
have seen him for whom the earth was made,
and that he will proclaim that human wheat
is worth more than human tares, and proceed
to organize human values on that basis.

From Mark Twain’s letter to Walt Whitman for his 70th birthday, written May 1889.