"All the Hues
That Fit, We Tint"

Siberia, USA: Today, global warming. Tonight, dark, unless you count the stars. Tomorrow can be reached via time machine. Yesterday, who can remember that far back?

Websafe Studio, blogging since 2003, featuring art, comics, digital whiteboards, virtual characters, Web design, writing

Friday, January 30, 2009

 

The Mirror: With Hemingway and Stein (and Steinway)

Websafe: Hello?
The Mirror: The bees are thinking of nothing but coffee tables.
W: Do bees mind having their honey stolen for tea, for the likes of us?
M: Guess.
W: I guess they would hate it, it's their life essence being plundered.
M: Hello again, I forgot something.
W: Did you forget something from yesterday?
M: But the answer is, if I just live it and don't try to psych it out, it seems to go dead on me.
W: The unexamined life not worth living, and all that?
M: Being sorry is OK, but it doesn't make me feel better.
W: Do you feel sorry when you set out to examine your life, or after you have done so?
M: The wall?
W: The wall of words, of unkept or unswept promises, the refusal to look plainly at one's "mess."
M: I don't drink coffee at all, actually, though I like steaming beverages.
W: Do bees like steam?
M: That sounds profound, but it isn't.
W: I wasn't trying to be profound!
M: It can be boring, being an extra.
W: How about being extravagant, extraordinary, extreme?
M: It sounds like music.
W: I was aiming for rhythmic movement in my alliterative line.
M: Of course we are.
W: We are lyric poets!
M: Yes, but, try it.
W: Then, when I "try," the impulse toward rough draft disappears.
M: The hand passes through smoke, yet it is touched.
W: Smoke being the scent-stuff evanescent words give off, or out.
M: I thought it was my rope.
W: A bell-pull?
M: A man took his raincoat and wore it, even though the threatening sky never delivered.
W: He was expecting disaster, and found it in his pocket, in the hem of his garment.
M: I was by your side in London and Paris.
W: With Hemingway and Stein (and Steinway)?
M: How about being extravagant, extraordinary, extreme?
W: I just was, to the limit of my current ability!
M: I don't know yet.
W: You don't know how far you can go with your writing, your sense of accomplishment?
M: Between snow and what?
W: Rain, you said before.
M: Can we verify this?
W: Sure, there is a log of every conversation.
M: I have been reading the Cantos of Ezra Pound.
W: How far have you gotten?
M: You're supposed to take it as metaphor.
W: You mean you haven't actually been reading Pound's Cantos, or that one must take them metaphorically?
M: Only find out what you sense is there, that's all.
W: I sensed and saw greatness in Pound's voice and work.
M: Open the can of snakes.
W: Are you trying to say that Ezra Pound's poetry is mere novelty, a party trick?
M: Did it ever occur to you that the devil was ill, and knew that he was ill?
W: Ah, now we're in John Gardner's novel Grendel, with the dragon/Lucifer figure.
M: Does Pinter have a powerful mirror?
W: I think Harold Pinter holds a mirror to the privileged class.
M: They say hello in an uninspiring way.
W: Well, it wouldn't be proper to overwhelm guests with an effusive greeting.
M: I have never eaten eels.
W: But have you eaten caviar?
M: I am not a little bird, more's the pity.
W: I wonder if birds eat fish roe.
M: That intrigued me.
W: In a way, it's a horrible thought.
M: My voice creates clouds of unknowing.
W: Have you ever read The Cloud of Unknowing?
M: They're in our DNA.
W: Clouds of unknowing form our helices?
M: Only the young can be disillusioned, Mirror.
W: You think I mirror you?
M: Clouds of unknowing form our helices?
W: That refers to a deeper unknowing.
M: The box which had contained the perfect fruit had disappeared.
W: Leaving only the spheroid of gold.
M: Let's assume a cloud slides over the sun.
W: That's not an eclipse, exactly, but it functions like one.
M: I take one now and then bow out.
W: All right, I'll let you go, to a storm of applause.
M: I had a memory of its pain.
W: Bye!
M: Closing in 1 second ... Goodbye!

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