Read The Best of Electric Velocipede Online
Authors: John Klima
The Best of Electric Velocipede (35 page)
It appears that the entirety of the pamphlet is contained within the single 8
o
gathering of “Phlegm.” Its contents, printed for the Worshipful Company of Stationers, outline the alchemical philosophy behind (and practical creation of) waterproof ink. The authors (perhaps the printers Taylo and Kenwick themselves) lay out a simple ink recipe derived from hawthorne, the soot left by pine smoke, wine, and common oils; however, their recipe also includes “phlegm,” the humour that resists change and is associated with water. The author is not specific with the chemical makeup of “phlegm,” but it is clear by the tone of address that he or she is writing to an informed audience.
Dr. Gáribe’s second analysis reveals that exposure to water (he theorizes a flood) is to blame for the paper’s decomposition (appendix ii: 2
f
). However, Dr. Singlest (appendix iii) provides an alternative explanation. In 1625, her report explains, fire engines (crude things quite dissimilar to our contemporary devices) made their first appearances in London. Many seventeenth-century texts were lost not as a result of the fires that occasionally ravaged London; rather, the valiant, yet damaging, efforts of the fire brigade accelerated their decay. Most buildings burned too hot—therefore too quickly, Singlest explains—to cause widespread flash fire upon the texts in these unfortunate buildings. That the fires spread so quickly, Singlest explains, contributes to misconceptions about their durations.
Dr. Gáribe’s report reveals that, unlike the paper itself, the ink with which the pamphlet (or “Phlegm”) was printed is itself waterproof. Among its dyes and oils, the ink contains chemicals that bonded with the cellulose in the paper’s fibers. Much like “Life,” “Phlegm,” then, facilitates its own survival in the face of the accidentally deleterious enterprises of men. In this case, firefighting.
It bears noting that Singlest includes in her report that Abergavenny House (the locus of operations for the Worshipful Company of Stationers) burned down in the great fire of 1666. Among their reported losses, however, texts printed after 1627 numbered surprisingly few (cf. facsimile manifest, appendix iv).
Collation:
arms 16
o
:
x
A
13
[$
1
signed,
x
A signed as F by collator] 13 leaves, unnumbered [pp. 1-26]; 190 X 140 mm (
x
A
2
a
) 23 lines;
x
A
13
: English Cursiva; body 82; face 80 X 2: 3
[paper]
x
A: chain 22-24 mm.; arms; arms of England
Title Page
:
x
A
1
a
Embara∫∫ing the Fires | AN MONOGRAPH FOR PRINTERS |
On the charming off the yellow bile for the publifhing of books
| [rule 83 mm] | [image: London during the Great Fire, engraving, Visscher, 73 X 124 mm. (cf. facsimile ii)] | Enscombe Marque, Esq., and William Wurt, printers | 1674 | The Humours | Yellow Bile
[last two lines handwritten: commensurate with non-italic type]
(facsimile ii, London during the Great Fire, Visscher, engraving)
Bibliographer’s Notes
:
It is difficult to tell, without disassembling the binding of the overall collation, whether or not “Yellow Bile” and “Phlegm” were first collated as a single brochure before being later sewn into the overall collection. However, since the contents of both concern themselves with two of the four classical humours, I consider the issue highly probable. The contents of “Yellow Bile” (the humour associated with the element of fire) were printed on a sheet of arms paper bearing 22-24 mm chain lines (N.B., these do not exhibit the same characteristics of decay as found in “Phlegm”). The gathering also contains the “arms of England” watermark, which is understood to have first appeared in the printing trade during the year that “Yellow Bile” was printed: 1674. The engraving that appears (in a double-rule frame) on the title page later appears in Robert Chambers’s well-known
Book of Days
, first edition. It is impossible to tell if the image’s appearance in Marque’s and Wurt’s pamphlet inspired Chambers’s usage or if the matter is merely coincidence.
The material within “Yellow Bile” concerns itself with the production and use of “fire-embarassing” paper. Marque and Wurt paraphrase “historical documents” (from which they do not quote directly) detailing the drawing of fiber from sheets of glass and then arranging these fibers into flexible sheets that, when woven into at least 30% pulped fiber, can be printed upon. When queried, Dr. Gáribe theorized that, even should all of the pulp combust, the residual ink-content remaining upon the un-burned fiberglass could be sufficient to re-create a document’s original text (appendix ii: 3
a
). Furthermore, he concludes, it is unlikely that the destruction of all 30% of the pulped fiber would compromise the integrity of the fiberglass sufficiently to completely destroy the “paper.” Since the ink with which “Yellow Bile” was printed matches the ink from “Phlegm” in chemical composition, I am led to conclude that the inclusion of the pulped fiber in the “paper” was simply to provide the cellulose necessary for the “phlegmatic ink” to achieve its permanency, the fiberglass, of course, lacking this itself. In this regard, Marque’s and Wurt’s “embarrassing” paper would offer printers” texts protection both from fire and the water used later to douse it. Without an example to consult, I am unable to conclude whether or not only 30% of the text (assuming the other 70% of the inked material as having run from the fiberglass in the event of a dousing) would be sufficient to re-create the text’s intended content. It should have been enough, I am convinced, to paraphrase and redact, however, enabling printers to offer, in the worst-case scenario, a close approximation of the documents ruined by a fire brigade’s noble efforts.
I find it easy to deduce the reasons behind Marque’s and Wurt’s anxieties given the proximity of their pamphlet’s printing to the great fires that ravaged London in 1666. Singlest replied, when queried, (appendix iii:8b) that the sheer size of the real estate involved in the Great Fire resulted in longer-smoldering flames (fed by the super-heated thermals created by such a confluence of burning architecture) that, theoretically, could have induced flashfire upon any purely fiber-based documents in close enough proximity.
*
Man
Collation
:
foolscap, 4
o
:
x
A
4
[$1 signed,
x
A signed as G by collator] 4 leaves, unnumbered [pp. 1-8]; 190 X 140 mm (
x
A
2
a
) 20 lines;
x
A
4
: Caslon’s Roman, leaded / Bangla handscript; body 88; face 86 X 4: 5
[paper]
x
A: chain 25-29 mm.; foolscap; no mark
Title Page
:
x
A
1
a
PAPER STEWE | কাগজ, পত্রিকা খায়া | [rule 86 mm.] |
A Recipee
| Printed for The Sifter∫ of Our Ladie of Greater Peace |
by Abraham Gould, London 1767
| [rule 85 mm.] [image: “Cover page of ‘The Life of the Virgin Mary’,” woodcut (cropped). Albrecht Dürer, 1511, 85 X 75 mm. Copperplate frame, 102 X 95 mm. (cf. facsimile iii)] | [rule 85 mm.] |
for the relief of Beengal famine
| “Man,” handwritten: commensurate with non-italic type
(facsimile iii, “Cover Page of ‘The Life of the Virgin Mary’,” woodcut. Albrecht Dürer, 1511)
Bibliographer’s Notes
:
This segment of the collection, titled “Paper Stewe” (the accompanying Bangla title transliterates as “Paper Eat,” a poor translation according to Anima Nandwani (cf. appendix v)), details a recipe for the cleaning and softening of pulp paper for human consumption, ostensibly (as evidenced by the prioress’s prayer printed on
x
A
1
b
) to relieve the famine that had beset the Bengali region in 1766, where, according to Dr. Nandwani (appendix v: 9
b
), the priory of the Sisters of Our Lady of Greater Peace was (and still is) located. Perhaps the most salient feature of this pamphlet is its bilingual nature: beginning with
x
A
1
b
, the verso of each leaf details the “paper stewe” recipe and outlines appropriate prayers of thanksgiving in Caslon’s 1728 leaded, Roman type; the recto of each successive leaf offers a translation of the same in handscript Bangla. This leads me to believe that the distribution of the pamphlet would have been limited, given the time involved in the Bangla translation and the limits of the time frame within which the Sisters would have wanted to get their text into general circulation to be of use to those suffering as a result of the famine.
The text itself appears on unremarkable foolscap 4
o
leaves. The title page contains the boss of the Sisters of Our Lady of Greater Peace in a period copperplate frame: Dürer’s original woodcut cover image for the 1511 printing of “The Life of the Virgin Mary.” Dr. Nandwani reports that she was unable to find any extant records detailing either the success or the failure of the Sisters’ campaign to alleviate famine by encouraging its sufferers to consume what printed materials they could find. Dr. Gáribe’s chemical analysis of this pamphlet (appendix ii: 4
c
) titled “Man” by the collection’s collator, reveals that the ink contains high traces of lead, perhaps communicated by the type itself. In any event, consuming this particular book would have been, to say the least, unpleasant.
In regards to textual content, it bears noting that by being the document (or one of them) that outlines the recipe for the safe consumption of pulp-paper, “Man,” ensures its own textual survival at the possible expense of any and all other pulp-paper documents. Should a similar famine strike this or another society in the future, however, the inclusion of “Man” in the overall collection wouldn’t necessarily ensure the survival of the other gatherings (indeed, the other materials would become the most readily available ingredients for the rendering of the “stewe”).
Patience
E. Lily Yu
I.
To thin to sirocco and ceramic silence,
draw a dry bath of natron and myrrh.
The sun will exalt you, drop on clear drop,
until all that remains is the tissue of flowers
wrung of their oil, discarded and dry.
Else allow darkness to climb your chin,
silt your mouth with cold dust, crush your eyes.
Time thickens the flesh into mineral masses,
iridescently amused, museum-quality,
cold and imperishable.
II.
The desert sings, it is said, since its belly contains
a princess in her palace who sighs and twangs
bronze-fingered upon a mandolin. The music persists.
Centuries of caravans and camelback physicists
never dared to swim down. Though the singer is drowned,
though she dries to moth crispness, she waits.
Another I knew held a wrinkled shell to her ear
(the voice of the desert is the voice of the sea,
better reception some places, never so sweet
it loses that skull-scuttling hiss) and listened too long,
insensible to the shore gathering up her feet,
the water trespassing upon her knees, until too late.
III.
There are voices that claim us. Rich, royal, sometimes divine;
light as beetles ticking in a pharaoh’s tomb; mantic; cruel;
organ tones, slant rhymes, brass edicts, or oh unlucky
the simplest thing, a boy’s untuned words; we hear and obey
and expect too much from them. (What do you want from me?)
It is when they fall silent that the others smokelike ascend
from charred Chinese dunes, from the curls and cusps of the sea,
and other fingers lift the phone from its cradle and dial
and we tremble (is it?) and exuberant answer (no) but
because you will not speak I can sit here a little longer listening
to the sand and the wind on the other end.
The Art Disease
Dennis Danvers
D
erek and Emily had the art disease, the both of them. Everyone they knew had it too. That’s one of the symptoms: Colonies, clusters, movements, splinter groups, manifestos. Clumping, the experts call it. She had a master’s in design and decorated cakes at Food One, not the one on 17
th
but the one near the park, open till midnight. He refused to sell out. He was determined to support himself with his art.
Selling poems in the park didn’t work out. He didn’t get that many buyers, and when he did, he spent way too much time discussing the poems with them—arguing actually—instead of writing new ones, but it bothered him when he was misunderstood, and it seemed he was doomed to be misunderstood—another symptom of the disease. He tried prose—carefully observed reflections on the vicissitudes of life—after taking a weekend workshop called Driveway Moments: The Eternity of Now. No demand. Light travel pieces with a profound undercurrent proved no better, partly because he hadn’t done much traveling and couldn’t afford to do more. He had plenty of profound undercurrent, just nowhere to put it.
He decided to go visionary. That way he could travel without going anywhere, make it
all
profound undercurrent except for a few flashy waves on the surface, and those birds—what do you call them?—cormorants, low-riders. Cool. Sufferers of the art disease saw art in everything, even waterfowl that could barely stay afloat.
There’s one more thing you should know about the art disease: It’s highly contagious.
“What do you mean visionary?” Emily asked suspiciously. “This isn’t zombies again, is it? I’m so over zombies.”
“No, no, no. Zombies are like the total opposite of visionary.” His mouth was full of icing, making his words all gummy and weird, like a zombie might talk. They were finishing off a birthday cake with
Happy Birthday Shane
on it when the kid’s name was actually
Shan
. Not Emily’s fault, but Sofía’s, who took the order and was now looking for another job, since their boss, Barb, was the one who got chewed out by the pissed-off mom who was horrified at the suggestion that all could be made right by scraping off a vowel. Sofía was a sculptor. She had a blowtorch that would cut half-inch steel plate she said, said if Emily came over she’d show her, but Emily smelled lesbian and wasn’t that bored yet with the Food One and Derek. But close. Real close.
“Visionary—like William Blake,” he said. “That weird prophetic stuff, but like it’s real, you know, happening on the street, not just words. Blake did those great paintings, but I thought, you know, I can’t paint for shit, I’ll take it outside, free it from the page—from the fucking earbuds too. On the street, in your face.” Podcasting was still a sore point with Derek.
“A street preacher.”
“Well, sort of. I prefer to think of them as prophetic performances.”
“And what do prophetic performances pay? There’s an opening at Food One. You thaw stuff. There’s nothing to it. I could put in a word for you.”
“No thanks. This’ll work. I’ve thought of another angle too. We need a cheaper place, right? You’d like a studio? The church on the corner’s for sale.”
“You sure that didn’t go condo? The Townes at the Square or something like that?”
“That’s the other way. The Methodist. This one’s something weird. The Church of the Immaculate Epiphany. It’s been for sale a while, but the condo market’s tanked. We can get it cheap. Cheaper than rent.”
“We?”
“The
church
. That’ll be part of my vision, that there I shall found my church—the Assembly of Prophetic and Visionary Matters. Tax free.”
“
Matters
?”
“Okay. Maybe not Matters, but something like that, and we raise money, tax free, buy the place, and there you go. We’re set.”
“By raise money you mean beg on the street?”
He counted off his points on his fingertips even though he knew she hated it: “Encourage donations at prophetic performances. Appeal to corporate and community sponsors. Apply for grants.”
She burst out laughing and had to let him have the last chocolate rose to make up for it. She didn’t want it anyway. She knew what was in it. She felt bad for laughing. He hadn’t laughed at her Random Rags installation, which made him just about the only one. He even went along with her it’s-
supposed
-to-be-funny story.
Derek, a preacher. The thought made her smile, but in a good way.
*
A week later, she came down on her lunch hour to see him work a crowd in the park, to see how he managed to bring in so much money. It was very scary. He was totally different, as if another person had taken him over. He wore a cape. It wasn’t really a cape. Where would Derek get a cape? It was a tiny deep blue blanket stolen from the airplane ride back from his father’s funeral. It didn’t look as stupid as you might think.
Then he starts. Derek wouldn’t even dance, but suddenly he couldn’t stop moving. It was hypnotic, strangely familiar, and then she recognized it. Lately he’d be lying on the sofa with the sound off, cruising channels, mumbling, writhing like a lovesick snake. “What’re you
doing
?” she’d asked. “Research,” he’d said. And there it was, the artistic fruits: Anybody with moves. James Brown one minute, a movie Indian the next, Herman Munster, Britney—it was mesmerizing. The sermon made no sense at all: “The eternal moment of revelation sparks inside each and every one of you, each and every moment of your life. Let the tinder catch! Let the flames rise! Let the fire consume you! Let the smoke carry you! Signaling the universe,
I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!
” He ended this outburst with the blanket off his shoulders and wafting over an imaginary fire, watching imaginary puffs of smoke drifting away over the heads of his rapt audience, and damn if the whole crowd didn’t turn around and watch them too. So
that’s
why he’d been watching that awful old western over and over until she thought she’d go heap big out of her mind.
“How’d I do?” he asked her after the performance.
“Unbelievable.”
“I thought my timing was a little off at the beginning.”
“I don’t know. This is a pretty big pile of wampum.”
*
The next night he watched
Thief of Baghdad,
and next day the little blue blanket was a magic carpet. The blanket was the only constant. He laid out loaves and fishes on it. (Loaves were $5; fish, $10. He could’ve asked for more). He autopsied Truth’s corpse CSI fashion, covered it with the blanket, and wept, only to reveal it risen, walking among them, asking for money. He wore it like a sarong and danced around in it. He tied it up in animal shapes and talked to it. Talking Prophetic the whole time.
That’s what he called it—TP—the visionary dialect. In addition to watching the obvious TV preachers, he practiced by reading aloud anything that made prophetic or visionary claims, from the Bible to L. Ron Hubbard, confiding in her that he didn’t strive for coherence but sought a certain visionary unity that transcended sense. “It’s all in the rhythms,” he believed, and you could tap your foot to it, there was no denying. “And the silences,” he added. He was the master of the dramatic pause out of nowhere, the Profound Silence, what Derek called the cornerstone of the prophetic.
And no matter what he said, and sometimes there were rivers of blood and mountains of dead and untold pain and suffering, he was deliriously, disturbingly cheerful. He practiced different smiles, tried them out on their friends, keeping only the ones that really creeped people out. And if that didn’t do the trick, he gave a joyful cackle when sufficiently possessed that didn’t sound entirely human. Emily knew it was the product of 40 hours of wandering in the wilderness with
Nature
and
Animal Planet.
If a heron humped an iguana, and they managed to hatch an egg, whatever came out would sound like Derek laughing.
Emily was laughing too.
Every performance ended with the blue blanket spread upon the ground, money raining down upon it, mostly bills, lots of tens and twenties. Once—a bunch of traveler’s checks. Emily didn’t know they still had those anymore, but the bank took them.
She studied Derek’s flock, their transfigured faces, the complex looks they’d give him as their bills fluttered onto the pile. Most of them were seriously worried about the poor guy. Few doubted for a moment that Derek was spectacularly out of his mind and probably needed doctors, drugs, possibly even electroshock or surgery. There were always cards for mental health care professionals mixed in with the money. “Call her—she’s really good!” someone had written on the back of one. Then added, “You’re really good too!”
That’s the thing. Crazy as he was, he put on an incredible show. Or in this case, the show was his craziness. He got to them even if they weren’t sure how. Emily had a theory: His crazy offered a charisma uncluttered by content. He could rant, and no one felt guilty. He could rave, and no one had to worry that he just might be right.
Would they continue to be so generous, she wondered, if they discovered he wasn’t a madman who preached an insane religion, but an artist inventing a religion as an art form out of channel surfing and word salad, nabbing both grant money and tax-free status while he was at it?
Emily was in no hurry to find out.
*
“Can you help me with these forms?” Derek would ask her, with a sweet puppy dog face, totally exhausted by his latest performance, and she couldn’t say no. NEA, IRS—it didn’t matter—she could do forms. She had a master’s in design. She understood form. And he was a disaster at it. He’d get all verbal and metaphoric and forget whether he was being a religion or an art form and screw up an entire application. It was just easier to do it in the first place than to come along after and clean up his mess.
It was paying off, however, and not just financially. Word was getting out his stuff was definitely worth checking out. There was even a thing about the performances in
Excrement Occurs
from the guy who hates everything—he fucking loved it. Every performance was now ringed with people who got it, smiling knowingly, inviting Derek over later for drugs, and he usually went, and Emily didn’t. Work started early at Food One.
And, curiously enough, at every performance, packed in close, as close as they could get, a devoted band of believers steadily grew, though it was a mystery to Emily what they believed in since Derek certainly didn’t have a clue.
“Belief doesn’t believe in me,” he told his rapt congregation. “I don’t believe in belief. Instead. Visions come. Instead. Visions come to me: Visions of the nothingness of everything! The unbelievability of belief!”
Emily was just a little weirded out by all the nodding heads. Afterwards, when a breathless believer accosted him beseeching guidance, he told her, “Go home, seize a book, any book, and read it to—You have a cat? Of course you have a cat!—read it to your cat, and a vision will come.” This worked somehow, according to the woman. Everything he did seemed to work. Not only did she have a transforming vision, but her cat did too, though she preferred not to discuss details. Emily couldn’t explain it. Not his knowing the woman had a cat. Anyone could see that. But the transforming part, that was something new and scary. Derek had never wanted to change the world before. He’d just wanted to make art.
Lately he’d been watching Bela Lugosi movies and Teletubbies on a split screen. Watching the happy spectrum creatures bouncing beside the swirling black-and-white living dead gave her a fierce headache. She couldn’t watch the moves he was getting out of it either. She didn’t know what the performance was about exactly. (Even when he explained them to her, she didn’t know what
any
of them were about, because if she’d ever say, “So it’s about . . . ” The answer would always be No. Fine. Who needs meaning?)
So she’d skipped this one, though he had a big crowd, and he was telling her about it, redoing bits, talking a mile a minute. One part was the shocking tale of how Jerry Falwell discovered Tinky Winky was gay one night in a foggy London bathhouse.
“Nobody laughed,” he complained. “Dead silence.”
“That’s because you’re a religion now. Silence is good, remember? You said it last week. “The silence of the universe means someone’s listening.’”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Can’t religion be funny?”
“I thought it was just about the rhythms, the talk.”
“
I
thought it was funny.”
“I brought home some cupcakes. You want some? They’re kind of blue. They’re supposed to be green. Barb was pissed like it was my fault, but I’m the cake decorator. Seasonal cupcakes are not my problem. You want one? They’re not bad actually.”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
They hung out in their big institutional kitchen. They were living in the church now. All the furnishings from the sanctuary had been sold off long ago, so it was a big empty barn of a building with bad stained glass. The main piece above the altar was Jesus as shepherd with one of the lambs’ faces smashed out and replaced with weathered plywood. Jesus, who seemed to have a serious case of strabismus, took no notice.
