> 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.
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