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PrinceMyshkin
02-21-2009, 04:18 PM
In deep outer space
a telephone rings
and here, on earth,
who knows how many
race to answer it?
Il Penseroso
02-21-2009, 04:23 PM
I think I like it? I'm not sure if I'm getting it though. It's interesting nonetheless.
PrinceMyshkin
02-21-2009, 04:32 PM
I think I like it? I'm not sure if I'm getting it though. It's interesting nonetheless.

Answer the bleeping phone! Maybe the voice on the other end would explain it to you (else I will after I see whether anyone else explains it). But my explanation would only be what it means to me. So many of these arrive without any explanation or the sender doesn't stay on the line long enough for me to ask.
~Sophia~
02-21-2009, 04:33 PM
Prince, did you actually mean "how many race to answer it"? It would make perfect sense to me that way. Another brilliant cliff hanger.

Edit: just saw your reply. In that case, I think there is a typo in the poem.
PrinceMyshkin
02-21-2009, 04:36 PM
Prince, did you actually mean "how many race to answer it"? It would make perfect sense to me that way. Another brilliant cliff hanger.

Edit: just saw your reply. In that case, I think there is a typo in the poem.

Yes, I've gone and corrected it. Thanks for catching that.

Il Pensero: My apologies. Of course it didn't make sense the way I originally entered it. Must have had a faulty phone connection...
Il Penseroso
02-21-2009, 05:01 PM
Oh, I see now. I thought "enter" was purposeful, meant to be paradoxical.
PrinceMyshkin
02-21-2009, 05:03 PM
Oh, I see now. I thought "enter" was purposeful, meant to be paradoxical.

Nah, I do love it when I spontaneously come up wth a paradox, but I don't think I'd know how to deliberately construct one.
a_little_wisp
02-22-2009, 12:53 AM
... I feel lonely now, but in a cool way. Was that the intention? Who's calling? (Can I have their plan? Because my signal sucks everywhere) I like this, Prince!!! It makes me ask questions.
PrinceMyshkin
02-22-2009, 02:14 PM
... I feel lonely now, but in a cool way. Was that the intention? Who's calling? (Can I have their plan? Because my signal sucks everywhere) I like this, Prince!!! It makes me ask questions.

Was written rather a long time ago and as you may know our cells are completely changed via a process that completes itself every 7 years, so it's somewhat like plagiarism for me to post it over my name, but since it was before I became a lapsed atheist, it may have been aimed at passionate believers who are always imagining that that phone is or will soon be ringing? But that is to take away some of the magic that could otherwise be in the poem: that there is such a telephone and it is ringing and we're always hoping to reach it before they hang up...

Now that I think of it it fits with a fable I was trying to write, "Message En Route," in which those words mysteriously appear in the sky all over the world in the appropriate languages, and people wait and wait... but nothing more ever arrives. The message is forever en route.