The Strange Recital

"In an idle moment, I recently punched in the power button on my television set. Something curious happened..."   Is your TV a time machine? Can a wild party be entirely digital? In Woodstock, anything is possible.

"Three horses cantered across the plain: a grey Arabian, a Palomino and a Roan. Their riders wore spacesuits... but this was not the moon."

  Books and old instruments. Extinct beasts. Can there be a wealth of detail but a paucity of meaning? Where is the border between sense and nonsense?

"Giovambattista put his foot down on the accelerator as he left the crowded streets of Paris and headed southwest towards Versailles..."

Why is an 18th-century doctor driving a Jaguar? A deeper question: where is that space in which we meet those who are long dead?

"The model is finished and the boy regards the day’s effort with quiet, contemplative satisfaction.... He studies the span of the wings and the four mounted engines."

Where is the borderline between imagination and reality? Does such a boundary even exist?

"Following the application of the voltage, he had found himself possessed with the ability to hear color -- the sound of color. Painting became obsession."   A late train, electric hum, conductor-artist, a canvas and a girl... and finally... haiku. Am I hallucinating?

"She is offering her wings to me; isn’t that what I came down here for after all?"

If you see something strange, should you just keep on driving? Or stop for whatever adventure awaits at the edge of the road?

"Anyway, until the final darkness closes in I shall keep on whistling. I shall read fairy stories and muse on the intricacies of parallel worlds...."   When did that cup of coffee become an orange? In a resigned but insightful monologue, an aging man reflects on the gradual onset of dementia.

"I am over one hundred years old.... And I say that what you are doing,” he paused for effect, “is wrong. It is bad for you.”   Is the old man in a poncho telling the truth? What will happen if you take his weird advice? 

"In the final year before the onset of Destruction, on the blessed anniversary of my birth, there will occur in the heavens an astrological Grand Cross. Yea, verily, He hath spoken!"

There are many kinds of messengers in this world. Hmm... should we heed the messages, or not?

 

"Do you see that man over there, the one perched on that park bench fiddling with that envelope in his hand?"

We can never know exactly what we will do tomorrow... how we could change everything. If we knew, could we alter fate?