"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams."
He was silent for awhile.
"No... it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch in one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - it's subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible....We live, as we dream-alone."
_________________________
"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brillance of sunshine. The long stretches of waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of distances."
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Walter S. Ryman, 1st edition translation from original German, 1927
The following is the english translation of the first part in a series of Walter S. Ryman's third published biography, "The Marvelous Travels of A Von Fleck". 1st ed. Frankfurt: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1927.
The Marvelous Travels of A Von Fleck.
By Walter S. Ryman
“Equipped with only a knapsack, a magnifying glass and her warmest pantaloons, the Courageous and Adventurous A. Von Fleck steps into the Great Unknown in search of the rare Homoanima-Spiritus, a creature long lost to the Western world and assumed to be mythological by the most cynical of non-believers. Today marks the farewell of A Von Fleck and the beginning of her Great Journey. This station wishes her all the luck in the world, though with her stalwart methods and punctilious ways, we think she hadn’t need it.”
The broadcast hit the airways nearly the same moment the plane took off. Her plane left the second week of September at approximately nine minutes after 9 o’clock and, ever the superstitious steadfast, departed from the ninth runway with only nine people present on the small engine plane. The plane consisted of: A Von Fleck and the two pilots, a family of three searching for a lost branch of their family tree, a successful guava merchant seeking out fertile lands for expansion, A Von Fleck’s trusty and loyal assistant Daryl McDormand (naturally), and A Von Fleck’s small cousin included for the sake of promoting their sense of adventure (or, in the humble opinion of this narrator, included soley for the entertainment of A Von Fleck on long, stodgy, humid days in river transit. However, if I may, there could possibly have been one last and final person on board the flight that September day, bent and obscured between two large and uncomfortable luggage containers in the hull of the noisy plane. Truly, by imagination only, I posit this hypothetical. This theoretical tenth passenger’s presence may have been hidden from the media by digging a tunnel the night before beneath runway nine, I’d imagine, and by stowing away in one of A Von Fleck’s alleged oversize hat boxes until the flight took off. His presence withheld from the other nine passengers for ten is the Pythagorean symbol of completeness and with ten onboard, heaven forbid, a nascent journey is destined to reach completion so quickly it ends in disaster. I will, however, state for the parenthetical record that A Von Fleck’s awareness of this tenth passenger will never be denied nor confirmed. If any agreements were possibly made between A Von Fleck and this alleged tenth passenger, it was originally made with God alone as witness, and both parties are sworn to a lifetime of secrecy lest their eyes be gouged out with crocodile teeth. Thus, in light of the sharpness of crocodile teeth, the story continues with nine…)
For ten hours, the tiny plane careened in and out of a blue cloudy sky, tilting this way or that for a better look at a particular cloud of interest.
“Notice how cirrocumulus clouds to your left are scaled just like a fish,” Von Fleck said. Her little cousin leaned closer to the window.
The Marvelous Travels of A Von Fleck.
By Walter S. Ryman
“Equipped with only a knapsack, a magnifying glass and her warmest pantaloons, the Courageous and Adventurous A. Von Fleck steps into the Great Unknown in search of the rare Homoanima-Spiritus, a creature long lost to the Western world and assumed to be mythological by the most cynical of non-believers. Today marks the farewell of A Von Fleck and the beginning of her Great Journey. This station wishes her all the luck in the world, though with her stalwart methods and punctilious ways, we think she hadn’t need it.”
The broadcast hit the airways nearly the same moment the plane took off. Her plane left the second week of September at approximately nine minutes after 9 o’clock and, ever the superstitious steadfast, departed from the ninth runway with only nine people present on the small engine plane. The plane consisted of: A Von Fleck and the two pilots, a family of three searching for a lost branch of their family tree, a successful guava merchant seeking out fertile lands for expansion, A Von Fleck’s trusty and loyal assistant Daryl McDormand (naturally), and A Von Fleck’s small cousin included for the sake of promoting their sense of adventure (or, in the humble opinion of this narrator, included soley for the entertainment of A Von Fleck on long, stodgy, humid days in river transit. However, if I may, there could possibly have been one last and final person on board the flight that September day, bent and obscured between two large and uncomfortable luggage containers in the hull of the noisy plane. Truly, by imagination only, I posit this hypothetical. This theoretical tenth passenger’s presence may have been hidden from the media by digging a tunnel the night before beneath runway nine, I’d imagine, and by stowing away in one of A Von Fleck’s alleged oversize hat boxes until the flight took off. His presence withheld from the other nine passengers for ten is the Pythagorean symbol of completeness and with ten onboard, heaven forbid, a nascent journey is destined to reach completion so quickly it ends in disaster. I will, however, state for the parenthetical record that A Von Fleck’s awareness of this tenth passenger will never be denied nor confirmed. If any agreements were possibly made between A Von Fleck and this alleged tenth passenger, it was originally made with God alone as witness, and both parties are sworn to a lifetime of secrecy lest their eyes be gouged out with crocodile teeth. Thus, in light of the sharpness of crocodile teeth, the story continues with nine…)
For ten hours, the tiny plane careened in and out of a blue cloudy sky, tilting this way or that for a better look at a particular cloud of interest.
“Notice how cirrocumulus clouds to your left are scaled just like a fish,” Von Fleck said. Her little cousin leaned closer to the window.
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