Obskuristan » Lo!

Fort für euch 9 – The Revival

nachtstrom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:50:11 +0000

Liverpool Echo, Jan. 18 — “Wales in the Grip of Supernatural Forces!” This was in allusion to the developing frenzies of the revival, and the accompanying luminous things, or beings, that had been reported. “Supernatural” is a word that has no place in my vocabulary. In my view, it has no meaning, or distinguishment. If there never has been, finally, a natural explanation of anything, everything is, naturally enough, the supernatural.

The grip was a grab by the craze. The excitement was combustion, or psycho-electricity, or almost anything except what it was supposed to be, and perhaps when flowing from human batteries there was a force that was of use to the luminous things that hung around. Maybe they fed upon it, and grew, and glowed, brilliant with nourishing ecstasies. See data upon astonishing growths of plants, when receiving other kinds of radio-active nourishment, or stimulation. If a man can go drunk on God, he may usefully pass along his exhilarations to other manifestations of godness.

There were flares where they’d be least expected. In the big stores, in the midst of waiting on customers, shop girls would suddenly, or electrically, start clapping hands and singing. [...] There were confession-addicts who, past possibility of being believed, proclaimed their own wickedness, and then turned to public confessions for their neighbours, until sinful neighbours appealed to the law for protection. In one town, a men went from store to store, “returning” things that he had not stolen. Bands of girls roved the streets, rushing earnestly and mischievously into the more sedate churches, where the excitation was not encouraged, singing and clapping their hands, all of them shouting, and some of them blubbering, and then some of the most sportive ones blubbering, compelled into a temporary uniformity. This clapping of hands, in time with the singing, was almost irresistible: some vibrational reason: power of the rhythm to harmonize diverse units; primitive power of the drum-beat. Special trains set out from Liverpool to Welsh meeting-places, with sightseers, who hadn’t a concern for the good of their souls; vendors of things that might have a sale; some earnest ones. Handclapping started up, and emotional furies shot through Wales.

(Aus “Lo!“, 1931)

Fort für euch 6 – Die fliegende Schlange

nachtstrom — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:24:44 +0000

I don’t know what will be thought generally of our data, but in the New York Times, July 6, 1873, the writer of General Notes tells of something that he considered “the very worst case of delirium tremens on record.” This was before my time. He copied from the Bonham (Texas) Enterprise — that a few days before the time of writing, a man living 5 or 6 miles from Bonham, had told of having seen something like an enormous serpent, floating over his farm; and that other men working in the fields had seen the thing and had been frightened. I suppose that, equally delirious, inhabitants of the backwoods of China, would similarly describe one of this earth’s airships floating over their farms. I don’t know that this one account, considered alone, amounts to anything, but, in the Times, of the 7th of July, I found something else noted. A similar object had been reported from Fort Scott, Kansas. “About half way above the horizon, the form of a huge serpent, apparently perfect in form, was plainly seen.”

(Aus “Lo!“, 1931)

Fort für euch 4 – Besucher von anderen Welten

nachtstrom — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:53:00 +0000

I should like to think that inhabitants of other worlds, or other parts of one existence, have been teleported to this earth. How I’d like it, if I were teleported the other way, has nothing to do with what I’d like to think has befallen somebody else. But I can’t say that our own stories, anyway so far, have the neat and convincing finish of the conventional stories. Toward the end of the year 1850, or I should say a “mysterious stranger,” was found wandering in a village near Frankfort-on-the-Oder. How he got there, nobody knew. See the Athenæum, April 15, 1851. We are told that his knowledge of German was imperfect. [...] The man was taken to Frankfort where he told his story, or where, to pose as a linguist, somebody told one for him. It was told that his name was Joseph Vorin, and that he had come from Laxaria. Laxaria is in Sakria, and Sakria is far from Europe — “beyond vast oceans.”

In the London Daily Mail, Sept. 18, 1905, and following issues, are accounts of a young man who had been arrested in Paris, charged with vagrancy. It was impossible to understand him. In vain had he been tried with European and Asiatic languages, but, by means of signs, he had made known that he had come from Lisbian. Eisar was the young man’s word for a chair: a table was a lotoba, and his sonar was his nose. Mr. George R. Sims, well-known criminologist, as well as a story writer, took the matter up scientifically. As announced by him, the mystery had been solved by him. The young man, an impostor, had transposed letters, in fashioning his words. So the word raise, transposed, becomes eisar. But what has a raise to do with a chair? It is said that true science is always simple. A chair raises one, said Mr. Sims, simply. Now take the word sonar. As we see, when Mr. Sims points it out to us, that word is a transposition of the word snore, or is almost. That’s noses, or relation to noses.

(Aus “Lo!“, 1931)