Friday, July 24, 2009

Public Investigation

(or: keeping your wits about you)

The case is everything that is the world.

If only you could be sure a crime has been committed. That your suspects really exist. You stand by the window, dusting the rain for fingerprints. Your partner insists on the facts, the facts, but you have your own suspicions. An old man in a white beard tells you the grass is evidence, though he dare not say of what. You arrest him on the spot and hand him to the executioners. They singe his body electric. Later, it turns out that History had an alibi. When you wake up in the morning the sky has been cleared.

4 comments:

Equivocal said...

"singe his body electric" -- nasty pun, but that along with the capitalised History and old man in a white beard with his leaves of grass seems to suggest that this is about more than that what it appears to be about. But I can't figure out what. Were you driving towards something or just improvising?

Falstaff said...

equivocal: Mostly just improvising - free association between Whitman and Wittgenstein (hence the alternate title) - with the general idea of philosophy as the attempt to 'solve' the mystery of existence.

Space Bar said...

free-associating


Also (and this might just be me) Dire Straits (title).

Falstaff said...

SB: Yup, that too.