Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Snow Fractals

Psychedelic day in the post-Nor’easter varies the lanes in the road. Look too closely, the road’s edge fractals and there’s no out. I shut my eyes while driving. This is not what they taught me to do.

Another curious piece of mail appeared in my work e-mail inbox. This time
Osvaldo steers clear and Becky Bingham, a clear co-conspirator, sends the message. At 12:25 am on March 1, 2005, with subject line re[11], she writes:

Nelly in 1971 CDC: West Nile UFOs
Well, we’ve got it was Yes No

Just like this. Where was Nelly, rapper from St. Louis, in 1971, five years before my birth and only 100 miles away? I forego womb jokes about it being hot in there. And what does it have to do with the Center for Disease Control? Or does this crypt refer to
Nelly Sachs, poet having emigrated from Berlin to Stockholm, whose work has ties fast and slim to Nobel and the company that publishes the journal I work for?

Further study elucidates a flea in the bear’s fur. Nelly the rapper was not yet born in 1971 (not until 1978), and Nelly Sachs died in 1970. My Nelly knowledge is limited, and I have not the gumption to continue fruitlessly searching for birth facts on Nelly Furtado.

But
this. A microscopic peer at these West Nile virus photos reveals the same delic psyche behind today’s snowy road lines. Probably this is the work of UFO techs. Eureka! And, as Becky said, well, we’ve got it.

But no. There is ambiguity in the final three words. There is the past tense of being. That is, we’ve got the answer; the answer was both yes and no, or neither. Why was the answer yes, no, both, or neither? What is the answer now? The final three words render the entire message hopelessly answerless. Like god and snow themselves.

More to come.

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