Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life. ***** Everybody talks about the horrors of drink, which are real enough, but not about…
Then do what? Talk? Talk about what? Some years ago I discovered that I had nothing to say to anybody nor anybody to me, that is, anything worth listening to. There is nothing left to say. So I stopped talking. Until you showed up. I don’t know why I want to talk to you or…
So anyhow I began my new life then when I stepped out of my life routine worn bare and deep as a cowpath across a meadow, climbed out of my rut, stopped listening to the news and Mary Tyler Moore. And strangely, stopped drinking and smoking. The second I left my old life’s cowpath, I discovered…
Catastrophe then—yes, I am sure of it—whether it has happened or not; whether by war, bomb, fire, or just decline and fall. Most people will die or exist as the living dead. Everything will go back to the desert. ***** Can good come from evil? Have you ever considered the possibility that one might undertake…
In New Orleans I have noticed that people are happiest when they are going to funerals, making money, taking care of the dead, or putting on masks at Mardi Gras so nobody knows who they are. ***** I like your banal little cathedral in the Vieux Carré. It is set down squarely in the midst…
A poor man sets store by good boots. ****** For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man. Even now I can diagnose and shall one day cure: cure the new plague, the modern Black…
Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile. Fix me a toddy, Lola, and we’ll sit on the gallery of Tara and you play a tune and we’ll watch evening…
They were a pair of rascals. What a surprise. No one ever expects the English to be rascals (compare Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, Chinese). No, the English, who have no use for God, are the most decent people on earth. Why? Because they got rid of God. They got rid of God two hundred years ago…
“Dr. More is going to diagnose me. Why not? He is going to measure, not my blood alcohol, but my metaphysical status. The device he holds there—correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor—is the More Quantitative-Qualitative Ontological Lapsometer.” . . . The students, spiritual pimps that they are, reassured that things are back on the track…
In popular culture, and especially in music, the days of the week of particular significance are Mondays and Fridays. The former has downbeat, dread-like connotations, as in “Blue Monday” (Dave Bartholomew, performed by Fats Domino) and “I Don’t Like Mondays” (Bob Geldof, performed by The Boomtown Rats). In contrast, Friday has an air of promise and…
manwithoutqualities 