Monday, February 27, 2023

Q W E R T Y U I O P ~ concerning a typewriter’s exploratory travels from right to left on a particular plane (written in March 1968)


Blankly I stare: Q stares blankly back at me. Gradual intensification. We coalesce. I am Q, Q me.

Everything looks different from the right where Q really is, not left as she appears to be if you aren’t Q. But

I am Q and I need you: can’t exist meaningfully without you (except in qintar, qantas, qoph and similar foreign nonconformists).

Just you I want, must have to live: but someday I hope they’ll let me marry doubleyou. Qwite understandably some will consider this the qwintessence of qwixotism; and the inevitable qwestion will spring forh qwietly in the minds of men and women alike -- ? But

why? is the pivotpoint, the center key, and by and by we shall know why; but as it is we are moving from right to left unless you aren’t Q and insist on deluding yourself that left to right is right, and right to left is wrong. (Rong and wong are wrong, only wrong is wright: argue all you want. This is an established and accepted wrule.)

The Rules say Loitering is unLawful, so we may not linger as long as we like: the longer we linger the less the likelihood of our getting to know Why. 

We have outlived ourselves, doubleyou has eloped with Q, and ere Why is known E shall demonstrate his essentiality, having been in existence for eons in every form (Official or Otherwise); typewritten or clearly printed, in blackblue, blueblack, grey, green, turquoise, turple or purpoise, but never in pencil or crayon or ballboing, nor in red nor tempera ochre (so says Officialdom or Otherwisdom)… 

but returning to the key under scrutiny, taking into account his especial elasticity; as emphatic as an elephant, as elusive as an eel, as everywhere as in eerie… The emphasis is on elusion, with particular emph on el – El being also essential though obviously on a lower level but… remember Love begins with El, and so doth Life, both of which end with, grimly, E… grit your teeth, say eeeee and easily you will see, still saying eeeee, that: elephants and eels may not be executed, never electrocuted, for eels are electric and elephants expansive (both eat and everything is edible).

The answer is no if you want to know Why immediately. We is or are very close to why?, slightly right of it, or rt. if you are an obsessive abbreviator. But

this is the truth. And soon we shall come to the truth, you and I, and oh, peace/power/purity, nothing prurient/pornographic/or picayune; but before all, to do the rt. thing we are, aren’t we, we are too. Rrrrrrright!

To reason is rong (remember, wrong: sowwy). It is wrong, it being not right to reason – ridiculous to imagine a radical radicle renouncing its right (or left) to ravish the earth! – realize, you who aren’t R, to rationalize by ratiocination is redundant and retrogressive, but you know it’s de rigueur to probe and ponder like roots that rape the radius of their rhizosphere, surrounded, alas! by truth and why? at left, and the everpresent everything and What for? When? Where? Who? Which? well, and related qwestions at right – Lord and Lady and Son and Daughter! Impossible, inconceivable, with parched throat and dehydrated tongue to rrreason rrrightly as do the Irrrish and the Iberrrians. Relent to rapture, lubricate your larynx with reasonability, for the tyme is come, I am now crucified, and presently shall know why? and Why.

Tea time, tic toc, tok tok, tick, pick pocket times pock picket equals (approximately) tock tock, tic, ticket talk talk; time is a thief. It may steal Your life before You get to know Why, so finish your tea and see Me as tee, as tyme with a why?, as truth with a you, as three crosses on calvary and a thaumaturgist aged thirtythree who was between a why? and a rogue, for I am in truth, the terminus, the turnstile before you and why? and the answer to Your qwery which, ultimately, ought to be if You’re thoughtfully thinking, what is this truth...

Like tourists who arrive in omnibuses to view the hippopotamuses in the river: three (or four or five) hippos swimming slowly upstream on their broad backs occasionally grinning for the colorful, happy tourists who make bad photographs with good cameras and tell the folks back home about the swimming/grinning/cleanshaven hippos with friendly armpits. 

And that’s the truth (they think). But the truth is there – where, don’t ask me, I’m here (at the typewriter) – don’t ask them, they’re neither there nor here nor anywhere… too much! i’ve had of totem, theology, and transistorized truth; too little! tyme with a why? to proceed to you and I, and oh, peace…

Why! why?, a man with arms held high above head, an upsidedown person in Chinese: I can’t tell you Why when I am why? but all I need is you and oh and I am not Me but You. I am a key (and even keys ask why?) and when depressed I come up with ? a coat hanger, a pearl earring, an inverted fishhook, a contortionist on a ball – don’t ask me, I am why? 

Qwery, qwery without the important truth; you and I must pray (to whom to what) or merely hope for that eventual final qwerty to end all qweries, before oh (despair/resignation), purity/perpetuity/or putrefaction marks our period –

What is left is left, the right is done with for now unless you still persistently deny that you are a key or different keys at different moments in different situations. But let me be you now: I stand apart, i separate you from perfection just as You stand stubbornly between Me and my panacea… you, imperfect ellipse, unconnected unround, uncircle, will your poles touch and discover perpetuity? 

Again the why? After all, You begin with a qwery and end with an unfulfillment; i stand between you and completion, Your incompletion bars Me from my peak. Surely, for the benefit of You, Me, and Us, we must coalesce, or at least seal the space between our keys, but how, how, how when i am a pillar and you are a You. Though I pretend to be You I cannot, will not accept You as Me, not even if you humbly dot yourself too and pronounce Yourself i. Oh, oh, oh. Close to perfection but somewhat hollow, somehow empty. Oh, oh, oh. An orphan with open orifices, an outburst of outright surprise, a long-overdue orgasm…

The Prize is precious, pregnant with promise; at tea time it seemed so near, but never, it’s impossible for Me to be protoplasm and perfection until I have mastered metempsychosis or some such perversion. Pain, pressure, pain is the only key I play at present; and I don’t play it with pride – I hate being a pawn, prawns keep asking why? as they are shelled, masticated, and digested; prawns just don’t have It. Neither do I, who knows about You. I hope You do (know, I mean).

Pelagius was no pessimist, optimism was his peduncle (rhymes with carbuncle): I wonder if he drowned. No, let’s not wonder; that would take us back to doubleyou, rrright back to What for? When? Where? Who? Which? well, and related qwestions. And everybody is much too weary by now (I hope). So from oh I gaze longingly at peace, plenty, pleasure, purity, permanence, and other paradisiacal platypus eggs.

Many things unaccomplished, sixteen more lives to lead, all on lower levels, different planes. Planes, planes: that is significant. Up, down, below, above, toward, away, play with planes or let them play with You and Me and Everybody. But 

that is another story.






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Please, Mr Marrel, release me now and I shall travel to the end of the page


Termite-eaten remains of the original typewritten homework submitted to 
Joseph F. Martino Jr, creative writing teacher at West Essex High School, 
New Jersey, in March 1968