The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

April Fools’ Day Special:

Humor from more than just dead white men: some of them are still alive.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“One-line joke”

Wikipedia

A one-liner is a joke that is delivered in a single line. A good one-liner is said to be pithy. Comedians and actors use this comedic method as part of their act, for example: Rodney Dangerfield, Bruce Campbell, Groucho Marx, Jay London, Steven Wright, Emo Philips, Tommy Cooper, Ken Dodd, Mark Linn-Baker, Henny Youngman, Mitch Hedberg, Dan Mintz, Zach Galifianakis, Demetri Martin, Jimmy Carr, Anthony Jeselnik, Tim Vine, Milton Jones, Stewart Francis, and so on. Many fictional characters are also known to deliver one-liners, including James Bond, who usually includes short and witty quips after disposing of a villain.

Examples

“A baby seal walks into a club.”

“A dyslexic man walks into a bra.” —George Carlin

“I have nothing to declare except my genius.” —Oscar Wilde, upon arriving at US customs, 1882

“Race is just a pigment of the imagination” —Glen Highland

“Venison’s dear isn’t it?” —Jimmy Carr

“Take my wife… please.” —Henny Youngman

“Greguería”

Wikipedia

A greguería is a short statement, usually one sentence, in which the author expresses a philosophical, pragmatic, or humorous idea in a witty and original way. A greguería is roughly similar to an aphorism or a one-liner joke in comedy. It is a rhetorical and stylistic device used in Spanish and Latin American literature.

History

Ramón Gómez de la Serna is considered the father of the greguería, which he defined as humor plus metaphor. Gómez de la Serna first used the greguería in about 1910.

Examples by Ramón Gómez de la Serna

El par de huevos que nos tomamos parece que son gemelos, y no son ni primos terceros. (The couple of eggs we eat look like identical twins, and they’re not even third cousins.)

El pavo real es un mito jubilado. (The peacock is a retired myth.)

Las puertas se enfadan con el viento. (Doors get angry with the wind.)

“Paraprosdokian”

Wikipedia

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a form of syllepsis.

Etymology

“Paraprosdokian” comes from Greek “παρά”, meaning “against” and “προσδοκία”, meaning “expectation”. The term “prosdokia” (“expectation”) occurs with the preposition “para” in Greek rhetorical writers of the 1st century BCE and the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, with the meaning “contrary to expectation” or “unexpectedly.” These four sources are cited under “prosdokia” in Liddell-Scott-Jones, Greek Lexicon. Canadian linguist and etymology author William Gordon Casselman argues that, while the word is now in wide circulation, “paraprosdokian” (or “paraprosdokia”) is not a term of classical (or medieval) Greek or Latin rhetoric, but a late 20th-century neologism, citing the fact that the word does not yet appear in the Oxford English Dictionary as evidence of its late coinage. However, the word appeared in print as early as 1891 in a humorous article in Punch magazine.

Examples

“He was at his best when the going was good.” —Alistair Cooke on the Duke of Windsor

Kentucky Meat Shower Anniversary Special:

A classic Fortean mystery.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Kentucky meat shower”

Wikipedia

The Kentucky meat shower was an incident where large chunks of red meat fell from the sky in a 100 by 50 yard area near Rankin, Bath County, Kentucky, for a period of several minutes on March 23, 1876. The phenomenon was reported by the New York Times and several other publications at the time.

Identifying the meat

The meat appeared to be beef, but two locals who tasted it stated that it tasted like mutton, venison, or lamb.

Initially, the “meat” was identified by a Mr. Leopold Brandeis writing in the Sanitarian as Nostoc, which he described as a type of vegetable matter. When Brandeis passed the meat sample to the Newark Scientific Association for further analysis, this led to a letter from Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton appearing in the publication Medical Record stating that the meat had been identified as lung tissue from either a horse or a human infant (“the structure of the organ in these two cases being very similar.”) The makeup of this sample was backed up by further analysis, with two samples of the meat being identified as lung tissue, three samples were of muscle tissue, and two of cartilage.

Hypotheses

Out of the many theories for an explanation of this phenomenon, the most likely appears to be that a large pack of buzzards flew over the area after having eaten a couple of freshly dead horses, and when one of them spontaneously disgorged itself, all the others (as apparently is customary amongst buzzards) followed suit.

Spring Equinox Special:

Forbear, March.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Four Little Foxes”

Lew Sarett

Speak gently, Spring, and make no sudden sound;

For in my windy valley, yesterday I found

New-born foxes squirming on the ground —

Speak gently.

Walk softly, March, forbear the bitter blow;

Her feet within a trap, her blood upon the snow,

The four little foxes saw their mother go —

Walk softly.

Go lightly, Spring, oh, give them no alarm;

When I covered them with boughs to shelter them from harm,

The thin blue foxes suckled at my arm —

Go lightly.

Step softly, March, with your rampant hurricane;

Nuzzling one another, and whimpering with pain,

The new little foxes are shivering in the rain —

Step softly.

“My Mother’s Curse upon White Settlers”

Zitkala-Ša

One black night mother and I sat alone in the dim starlight, in front of our wigwam. We were facing the river, as we talked about the shrinking limits of the village. She told me about the poverty-stricken white settlers, who lived in caves dug in the long ravines of the high hills across the river.

A whole tribe of broad-footed white beggars had rushed hither to make claims on those wild lands. Even as she was telling this I spied a small glimmering light in the bluffs.

“That is a white man’s lodge where you see the burning fire,” she said. Then, a short distance from it, only a little lower than the first, was another light. As I became accustomed to the night, I saw more and more twinkling lights, here and there, scattered all along the wide black margin of the river.

Still looking toward the distant firelight, my mother continued: “My daughter, beware of the paleface. It was the cruel paleface who caused the death of your sister and your uncle, my brave brother. It is this same paleface who offers in one palm the holy papers, and with the other gives a holy baptism of firewater. He is the hypocrite who reads with one eye, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and with the other gloats upon the sufferings of the Indian race.” Then suddenly discovering a new fire in the bluffs, she exclaimed, “Well, well, my daughter, there is the light of another white rascal!”

She sprang to her feet, and, standing firm beside her wigwam, she sent a curse upon those who sat around the hated white man’s light. Raising her right arm forcibly into line with her eye, she threw her whole might into her doubled fist as she shot it vehemently at the strangers. Long she held her outstretched fingers toward the settler’s lodge, as if an invisible power passed from them to the evil at which she aimed.

1920 North Dakota Blizzard Anniversary Special:

Thirty-four people killed, one of them a folk-hero legend.

⁓The Voice before the Void

Hazel Miner and the 1920 North Dakota Blizzard

compiled from Wikipedia

The 1920 North Dakota Blizzard was a severe three-day blizzard that killed 34 people from March 15 to March 18, 1920, in the state of North Dakota. High winds and an eight-inch snowfall stopped rail service in Bismarck, knocked out telephone service between Devils Lake and Fargo, and left only one functioning telephone line between Fargo and Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is one of the worst North Dakota blizzards on record.

Among the victims across North Dakota were Charles Hutchins, who lived north of the town of Douglas; the 12-year-old son of Matt Yashenko, who lived five miles south of the town of Ruso; “Chicken Pete” Johnson, an eccentric who was found dead in his dug-out on South Hill in Minot; the young mother, Mrs. Andrew Whitehead; the four Wohlk brothers; and Hazel Miner.

Mrs. Andrew Whitehead was driving a horse and buggy between Devils Lake and Fort Totten with her 3-year-old son when the blizzard hit. When the horses became too tired to continue, she stopped the buggy and set the horses loose. Mrs. Whitehead was found frozen to death in a snowdrift, holding her son in her arms. The hands and feet of the little boy were frostbitten, but he survived.

The Wohlk brothers were four young brothers of the town of Ryder who died during the blizzard as they made their way home from school. Herman, 9 years old; Soren, 10 years old; Ernest, 13 years old; and Adolph, 14 years old, were the four oldest sons of Gust Wohlk, a German emigrant from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Gust Wohlk was the former bodyguard to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. The boys, who were the only students to attend school that day, decided to drive their horses and sled the two miles home from their one-room school. They made it to within three quarters of a mile from the farm, but had to stop when their horses could pull the sled no further. The eldest brother, Adolph, bundled up his siblings and left them to find help. Gust Wohlk found his 14-year-old son’s body within a quarter mile of their farm. He found his three younger sons curled up together in the box of the wagon; one of the boys was dead and the other two were dying.

Hazel Dulcie Miner, 15 years old, of the town of Center in Oliver County, died while protecting her 10-year-old brother, Emmet, and 8-year-old sister, Myrdith, from the blizzard. After her death, she became an American national heroine. Her actions were celebrated in a folk ballad and paintings and were published in many newspapers, magazines, and books in the subsequent decades.

Hazel was the daughter of William Albert Miner, a farmer, and his wife, the former Blanche Steele, both originally of Iowa. In addition to Emmet and Myrdith, Hazel’s siblings included 21-year-old sister Zelda, and 5-year-old brother Howard. Hazel was an eighth-grade student at a one-room school, the same attended by Emmet and Myrdith. The Oliver County Register of Deeds, whose daughter had played with Hazel, recalled, “Kind of a quiet girl she was,” and described her as “sort of motherly, for one so young.” Hazel’s father considered her highly dependable. Her obituary described her as “quiet and loving,” with a “sunny, cheerful nature” and having a liking for children. Hazel had planned to start high school in Bismarck that fall.

On March 15, 1920, the first day of the blizzard, the school dismissed its students early to enable them to go home before the storm arrived. Many of the students, like the Miner children,

Christianity as a weapon of subjugation.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Soft-Hearted Sioux”

Zitkala-Ša

I.

Beside the open fire I sat within our tepee. With my red blanket wrapped tightly about my crossed legs, I was thinking of the coming season, my sixteenth winter. On either side of the wigwam were my parents. My father was whistling a tune between his teeth while polishing with his bare hand a red stone pipe he had recently carved. Almost in front of me, beyond the center fire, my old grandmother sat near the entranceway.

She turned her face toward her right and addressed most of her words to my mother. Now and then she spoke to me, but never did she allow her eyes to rest upon her daughter’s husband, my father. It was only upon rare occasions that my grandmother said anything to him. Thus his ears were open and ready to catch the smallest wish she might express. Sometimes when my grandmother had been saying things which pleased him, my father used to comment upon them. At other times, when he could not approve of what was spoken, he used to work or smoke silently.

On this night my old grandmother began her talk about me. Filling the bowl of her red stone pipe with dry willow bark, she looked across at me.

“My grandchild, you are tall and are no longer a little boy.” Narrowing her old eyes, she asked, “My grandchild, when are you going to bring here a handsome young woman?” I stared into the fire rather than meet her gaze. Waiting for my answer, she stooped forward and through the long stem drew a flame into the red stone pipe.

I smiled while my eyes were still fixed upon the bright fire, but I said nothing in reply. Turning to my mother, she offered her the pipe. I glanced at my grandmother. The loose buckskin sleeve fell off at her elbow and showed a wrist covered with silver bracelets. Holding up the fingers of her left hand, she named off the desirable young women of our village.

“Which one, my grandchild, which one?” she questioned.

“Hoh!” I said, pulling at my blanket in confusion. “Not yet!” Here my mother passed the pipe over the fire to my father. Then she, too, began speaking of what I should do.

“My son, be always active. Do not dislike a long hunt. Learn to provide much buffalo meat and many buckskins before you bring home a wife.” Presently my father gave the pipe to my grandmother, and he took his turn in the exhortations.

“Ho, my son, I have been counting in my heart the bravest warriors of our people. There is not one of them who won his title in his sixteenth winter. My son, it is a great thing for some brave of sixteen winters to do.”

Not a word had I to give in answer. I knew well the fame of my warrior father. He had earned the right of speaking such words, though even he himself was a brave only at my age. Refusing to smoke my grandmother’s pipe because my heart was too much stirred by their words, and sorely troubled with a fear lest I should disappoint them, I arose to go. Drawing my blanket over my shoulders, I said, as I stepped toward the entranceway: “I go to hobble my pony. It is now late in the night.”

II.

Nine winters’ snows had buried deep that night when my old grandmother, together with my father and mother, designed my future with the glow of a camp fire upon it.

Yet I did not grow up the warrior, huntsman, and husband I was to have been. At the mission school I learned it was wrong to kill. Nine winters I hunted for the soft heart of Christ, and prayed for the huntsmen who chased the buffalo on the plains.

In the autumn of the tenth year I was sent back to my tribe to preach Christianity to them. With the white man’s Bible in my hand, and the white man’s tender heart in my breast, I returned to my own people.

A young Dakota girl deals with Christian culture as it is thrust upon her.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Devil”

Zitkala-Ša

Among the legends the old warriors used to tell me were many stories of evil spirits. But I was taught to fear them no more than those who stalked about in material guise. I never knew there was an insolent chieftain among the bad spirits, who dared to array his forces against the Great Spirit, until I heard this white man’s legend from a paleface woman.

Out of a large book she showed me a picture of the white man’s devil. I looked in horror upon the strong claws that grew out of his fur-covered fingers. His feet were like his hands. Trailing at his heels was a scaly tail tipped with a serpent’s open jaws. His face was a patchwork: he had bearded cheeks, like some I had seen palefaces wear; his nose was an eagle’s bill, and his sharp-pointed ears were pricked up like those of a sly fox. Above them a pair of cow’s horns curved upward. I trembled with awe, and my heart throbbed in my throat, as I looked at the king of evil spirits. Then I heard the paleface woman say that this terrible creature roamed loose in the world, and that little girls who disobeyed school regulations were to be tortured by him.

That night I dreamt about this evil divinity. Once again I seemed to be in my mother’s cottage. An Indian woman had come to visit my mother. On opposite sides of the kitchen stove, which stood in the center of the small house, my mother and her guest were seated in straight-backed chairs. I played with a train of empty spools hitched together on a string. It was night, and the wick burned feebly. Suddenly I heard some one turn our door-knob from without.

My mother and the woman hushed their talk, and both looked toward the door. It opened gradually. I waited behind the stove. The hinges squeaked as the door was slowly, very slowly pushed inward.

Then in rushed the devil! He was tall! He looked exactly like the picture I had seen of him in the white man’s papers. He did not speak to my mother, because he did not know the Indian language, but his glittering yellow eyes were fastened upon me. He took long strides around the stove, passing behind the woman’s chair. I threw down my spools, and ran to my mother. He did not fear her, but followed closely after me. Then I ran round and round the stove, crying aloud for help. But my mother and the woman seemed not to know my danger. They sat still, looking quietly upon the devil’s chase after me. At last I grew dizzy. My head revolved as on a hidden pivot. My knees became numb, and doubled under my weight like a pair of knife blades without a spring. Beside my mother’s chair I fell in a heap. Just as the devil stooped over me with outstretched claws my mother awoke from her quiet indifference, and lifted me on her lap. Whereupon the devil vanished, and I was awake.

On the following morning I took my revenge upon the devil. Stealing into the room where a wall of shelves was filled with books, I drew forth The Stories of the Bible. With a broken slate pencil I carried in my apron pocket, I began by scratching out his wicked eyes. A few moments later, when I was ready to leave the room, there was a ragged hole in the page where the picture of the devil had once been.

International Women’s Day Special:

Glorious romance, if a bit fishy.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Mermaid”

Ben King

Sweet mermaid of the incomparable eyes,

Surpassing glimpses of the April skies.

Thy form, ah, maid of the billowy deep!

So rare and fair, but to possess I’d creep

Where the old octopus deep in his briny haunts

Comes forth to feed on anything he wants;

Where mollusks crawl and cuttlefish entwine,

There on crustaceans be content to dine.

What ecstacies in some calcareous valley,

Had I but scales like thee ’tis there we’d dally,

There seek each peak and let no other bliss

Be more enchanting than one salt-sea kiss;

There sit and bask in love, and sigh, and feel

Each other’s fins throb, or perhaps we’d steal

To some lone cavern. I suppose you know a

Place where we could pluck the polyzoa,

Or in your boudoir by your mirror there

I’d comb the seaweed from your auburn hair.

But hush! A red-haired mermaid sister comes this way,

And lashing with her tail the wavelets into spray.

Cometh she alone o’er yonder watery pampas?

Oh, no. By Jove! There comes the white hippocampus.

So that we know who this man was.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Hugh Clifford”

Wikipedia

Sir Hugh Charles Clifford, GCMG GBE (1866 March 5 – 1941 December 18) was a British colonial administrator.

Hugh Clifford intended to follow his father Henry Hugh Clifford, a distinguished British Army general, into the military but later decided to join the civil service in the Straits Settlements, with the assistance of his relative Sir Frederick Weld, the then Governor of the Straits Settlements and also the British High Commissioner in Malaya. He was later transferred to the British Protectorate of the Federated Malay States. Clifford arrived in Malaya in 1883, aged 17.

He first became a cadet in the State of Perak. During his twenty years in Perak, Clifford socialised with the local Malays and studied their language and culture deeply. He served as British Resident at Pahang, 1896–1900 and 1901–1903, and Governor of North Borneo, 1900–1901.

In 1903, he left Malaya to take the post of Colonial Secretary of Trinidad. Later he was appointed Governor of the Gold Coast, 1912–1919, Nigeria, 1919–1925, and Ceylon, 1925–1927. He continued to write stories and novels about Malayan life. His last posting was as Governor of the Straits Settlements and British High Commissioner in Malaya from 1927 until 1930. He wrote Farther India, which chronicles European explorations and discoveries in Southeast Asia.

Clifford died peacefully 1941 December 18 in his native Roehampton. His widow, Elizabeth, died 1945 October 30.

Several schools in Malaysia are named Clifford School in his honour.

A lurid story of headhunters in colonial Borneo, yet a story of engaging complexity, with an ending that almost makes the reader complicit in the horror, followed by our breathless analysis.

Read by Brent Woodfill. Brent is an archaeologist who specializes in ancient Maya cave complexes of Guatemala and the Yucatán.

“There’s a lot on the other hand.”

Authors and works referenced in the discussion include: Mark Twain, Clifford Geertz, Gilbert Herdt, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, editor Milton Crane, “A Distant Episode” by Paul Bowles (anthologized in The Granta Book of the American Short Story Volume Two edited by Richard Ford), “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson, The Earth (La Terre) by Émile Zola, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España) by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Diego de Landa, and Charles Dickens.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Quest of the Golden Fleece”

Hugh Clifford