Great story, Stephen, & thanks for passing it on....
Only in SF?
Doug
On 21-Feb-07, at 6:15 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
>> Oh, _that_ traveling salesman. And, enthused, I
> bought away from the
>> long procession of vowels in pajamas.
>> (John Ashbery)
>
> On the street on Sunday I encountered a slightly drunk black man in a
> black
> t-shirt with a grid of twelve variably empty black squares among white
> squares with black block-shaped letters (D, N, P, X, etc).
> Under the grid - in white scripted letters - was the query:
>
> Can You Sell Me A Vowel?
>
> Presumably, if he could 'buy' the right vowels, the grid could be
> turned
> into 'real' words and there would be order in, at least, his universe
> and,
> perhaps by extension, ours!
>
> I asked him where got the great shirt. It looked brand new.
> "I got it at some festival 10 years ago. Finally decided to put it on
> today."
>
> I was tempted to buy the shirt off his back. But he looked so great in
> it
> and I liked the idea of him continuing, I assume, to puzzle everybody
> on the
> street. Without the vowels, instead of order, one could imagine that
> the
> singular emptiness of the un-conjoined consonants gave 'reality' a
> certain
> edge.
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> Currently re-introducing the 'homeless blanket' series.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Some speak of a return to nature --
I wonder where they could have been?
Frederick Sommer
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