I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought

"When you arrive at the structure, begin examining the structure from the top."
—Electrical Transmission in a New Age (2002)

Ask any person to tell you what missing teeth are — "real," everyday missing teeth, not the abstract extractions of theoretical dentistry — and he will likely elaborate upon abscessed absences, silver-filled nonentities, cavitied nothingnesses, fairy chattel.  How can it be that a baby's toothless smile is contagious?  Can a toothless smiler be preoccupied?

[Apologies to philosopher Roberto Casati.]

Dedicated to Gary Barwin.

"Still it is undeniable that behind all science and mysticism, behind all the approaches of West and East, there is but one area of reality and realization: the human psyche. Whatever preternatural realities might make themselves known to us, they must do so by way of the psyche or else go unnoticed." —Stephan A. Hoeller, "Wise Men from the East"

"Shouldn't we be speaking of something more important than life and death?"
—Gustav Meyrink, The Angel of the West Window

"A poet's work . . . to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."
—Salman Rushdie

"Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one."
—Salman Rushdie

"The poetic art is no more and no less than the repayment of old debts to life and to the mystery of life."
—Vítězslav Nezval, in his foreword to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

"The world we live in is a world of effects; the realm of true causes is hidden.  If we should ever discover it we would be able to perform magic."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

"If one man has an idea, that just means that many others will have the same idea at the same time.  Anyone who doesn't see that doesn't know what an idea is.  Thoughts are contagious, even if they are not expressed; perhaps most contagious when they are not expressed."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

"If I remember correctly writers usually find some excuse for their books, although why one should excuse oneself for having such a quiet and peaceful occupation I really don't know.  Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be ready by anybody."
—Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

"Every new invention, every new idea to appear in the world puts on a grotesque face as it develops."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

"Schoolmasters ... are like animal tamers; the latter think it is important for lions to jump through hoops, the former spend all their time getting children to remember that the late lamented Hannibal lost his left eye in the Pontine swamps; the one turns the king of the desert into a circus clown, the other a divine flower into a bunch of parsley."
—Gustav Meyrink, The White Dominican

"Nowadays everyone thinks they can organize; that shows how wrong it must be.  What is right is always the opposite of what the herd does."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

"Our teachers are like sorcerer's apprentices, who spend all their time deforming the mind, until the heart dies of thirst.  When they have accomplished that, they declare their students ready to go out into the world."
—Gustav Meyrink, The White Dominican

"All things are possible, and the longer they are in coming, the more probable they are."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

"People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats."
—Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

"All complaints about the supposed injustice of fate were silenced by the knowledge that we all follow the road we have chosen."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

"If we look at reality for more than an instant, if we look at the human beings passing us on the street, it’s not bearable."
—playwright Wallace Shawn

"Take life less seriously and dreams more so, then things will improve, then the dream can become your leader instead of, as now, going around as a garish clown in the motley shreds of our daytime memories."
—Gustav Meyrink, The White Dominican