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The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Gerard Van der Leun
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Back in the Sixties, when I was a wee sprat, my brothers or myself were the remote. French kings had human chesspieces, Ottoman caliphs had human footstools, and Mom and Dad had us.
Is it also a death ray?
Most modern remote controls use infrared, though I suppose some may be migrating to bluetooth or something similar. But I recall that back in the day I saw a remote control that worked on an audio signal. The remote had something like small tuning forks, rods of metal that would vibrate when you pressed one of the buttons. I can’t remember what brand of TV they were for. They were probably black & white sets.
Our first remote control TV was also our first color TV. I’m talking about the one my dad bought in 1970, one of those big wooden floor jobs by Magnavox. The remote was big, maybe 8″ x 8″ and it had to be pointed right at the TV, no bank shots allowed. Funny thing was that the wheels on my mothers vacuum cleaner squeaked and turned the TV on and if you dropped a dime, not a quarter, not a nickel, a dime, on the terrazzo floor the TV would turn off. Of course, as Monty described above, my parents had remote controls for everything from the beginning.
Bonus round: About 10 years later (1980) I was living in Redondo, CA and a friends wife worked as a receptionist for Magnavox in Torrance. She said Magnavox was developing an inter-office newsletter and they wanted the employees to come up with a name for the newsletter and whomever’s name they chose would receive a 100 dollar bill. Off the top O’ my skall I told her, “Video Sentinel” which she liked and submitted and won. When she got that C note her and her husband (an army buddy) and me and my skweez at the time went and chowed like big Dawgz at the 94th Aero Squadron. Nom, nom, nom. So there ya go, I have sort of a detached connection to Magnavox.