I realize I missed Friday’s post; I was busy breathing warm sunshine on the Buffalo River in Northern Arkansas in a slapdash, spontaneous escape from an icy, drowning death in Minnesota’s dreary winter cold. This blog will cause less heart-break if you accept the fact that I will break my promises. If my unreliability bothers you please send me hate-mail, I would love some hate-mail. Or friendly encouragement, that would also be nice.
The Balloon Hoax (1844) and Mesmeric Revelation (1849)
http://poestories.com/read/balloonhoax and http://poestories.com/read/mesmeric
The balloon hoax is a more believable version of The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall. Written like a news bulletin and intentionally urgent, it’s easy to imagine this story being believed upon its publication at the time; no preceding balloon journey across the Atlantic had been successful and balloons were something people were crazy about at the time. Poe uses real names in his fake story to emphasize and convince. The published journal method is used in the same fashion as in “Unparalleled Adventure.” A fairly large number of people who read this story believed it at the time. Similar to how occasionally we will see engineering/graphic design students putting out hoax videos of self-propelled, simple flying machines. Hoaxes seem to have been a way to trick people into reading science fiction.
Mesmeric Revelation is an example of Poe’s interest in metaphysical phenomena and the exploration of things beyond human comprehension which, in his stories, can be unlocked through simple procedures and pseudo-scientific proceedings. Mesmerism is a form of hypnotism which utilizes an idea of magnetic energy existing in each person and the “proper” connection of that energy in one person to the energy in another can open a window into the depths of the unconscious mind, “the hive mind,” or even God. Poe opens this window by mesmerizing a dying man. The main idea behind this story is that, “there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser.” This idea of halving and halving forever or infinite divisibility, or Zeno’s paradox for you nerds who already know what that is. This is the hat from which Poe, in this story, pulls God. The mind, or thought itself, is god. the housing of god in many meaty, human bodies could be viewed as a form of wealth dispersion; God still exists un-bodied in an ether wholly inaccessible to us, awaiting our deaths and reintegration. “God is in the details,” or the devil or whatever; something infinite lies in the many tiny details. The dead, er I mean dying, man speaks with certain clarity and connection to something “other” which seems to be providing him with the answers. If you haven’t read the story yet, definitely do it; it is one of my favorites so far.
*****
As promised, here’s something of mine which started as a stream of consciousness story about a boy and his unique way in which he deals with the heavy gloom of winter, was edited into a piece of flash fiction, became a long poem, and was pared down to its current form as a short poem; no longer does the plot center on a boy and his imagination…or does it?
Once and Again
Daily paintings; strokes laid
with light through every leaf.
Secret dances, delicate steps;
wind’s partner golden shines
a wood ablaze with falling fire.
Frost’s touch halted
music’s last show.
Whispered words bled
into life’s fabric,
“Death,” spoken soft.
Seek the speaker,
fear the finding.
Hope; memory,
a fleeing ghost.
Knowledge grasps at comfort
against her will, our will.
Life’s rasping breath rises
from beneath fetid, steaming fungus.
Void voices spring from a chasm,
shot upwards on flaming wings,
shedding ashes.
Legs carry joy’s greetings
to sun rising meadows,
and fields dyed pink.
Zephyrs in the wake of youth,
dance and sing
with wheat and leaf.
Truth eternal buds
in moments undiscovered.
thecereallife 