Electricity, The Peril The Wind Sings To

From The First Place Of Liquid Darkness, Within The Second Place Of Air And Light, I Set Down The Following Record With Its Mixture Of Fact And Truths And Memories Of Truths And Its Direction Toward The Third Place, Where The Starting Point Is Myth.

The Idea Was To Have A Basin Inverted On His Head And His Hair Cut To The Shape Of It. Skill And Money Were Not Needed. Then The Idea Grew That It Was More Convenient To Leave The Basin On His Head. Stray Thoughts Were Trimmed Along With Stray Hair; Brain-vines, Tentacles Of Thought, Were Not Encouraged To Wander. Then, In The Interests Of Human Economy, The Head Of Adaptable Man Became A Basin Of Uniform Shape—a Basin, A Crash Helmet. Safe At Last; No More Thought-cuts.

When Our Thoughts Revolve We Are So Often Deceived Into Supposing That Their Violent Movement Is An Indication Of Their Vigorous Originality, The Upheaval Of Prejudice And Fixed Ideas, When All The Time It Is More Likely That The Machine Which Contains Them Is Only An Elaborate Cement-mixer, And When The Thinking Is Finished, Those Whirling Thoughts Are Smoothed Into The Unchanged Conventional Mould And Seeing Them Set Solid Enough To Dance, To Build, To Travel Upon, We Would Never Dream Of Their First Deceit, Of The Hope Once Roused By Their Apparently Violent Reorganisation.

I Had A Cousin Once Who Lived In Your Dictionary, Inside The Binding, And There Was A Tiny Hole Which He Used For A Door, And It Led Out Between Trichotomy And Trick. Now What Do You Think Of That? It Was Only A Few Minutes Walk To Trigger, Then Over The Page To Trinity, Trinket And Trional, And There My Cousin Used To Fall Asleep.

She Grew More And More Silent About What Really Mattered. She Curled Inside Herself Like One Of Those Black Chimney Brushes, The Little Shellfish You See On The Beach, And You Touch Them, And Then Go Inside And Don’t Come Out.