From the Royal Society of Aoughle (1)
So this evening I received a rather cryptic bit of mail. It was addressed to me by hand so I must assume I was the intended recipient (as to why that might be, at this point I can only conjecture). I knew something was up before I even touched the thing. It smelled faintly of fair trade coffee and thrift store linen. Upon the back was an address in Brooklyn, so I can only assume the entire text is a cipher of some sort. Drawn across the seal of the envelope was a glyph that looked something like this (|) which is either the number one within a circle[serial] or some nondescript glyphic anus[freud] Upon opening my suspicions were confirmed, nothing made a damn bit of sense. There were two unlined sheets of white letter covered one side each in something approching english and folded roughly into thirds. Furthermore enclosed were a return label from the Royal Society of Aoughle (some ugly library in Brooklyn I assume). And a cut and burned segment of corner store brownbag scrawled over with what appears to be a cartesian earth in a tesseract cage and some apparently runic script.
Following is a transcription. Any information on the origin of the letter and the meaning of the symbols enclosed would be greatly appreciated. Considering the incomplete [incoherent] nature of the text I can only assume that more such [weird shit] exists. I will soon upload photos.
---- blue return lable ---- “from the library of Royal Society of Aoughle please return”
----marginalia---- “and lines which cross each other in dash into ways” not sure if this is correct the writing is atrocious
----------------------------------------------[pg1]---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kind of tabby cat is afraid of eating a fly? think of the cats of Isfahn [a-- diacritic macron], the childhood cats of my home. Think of the flies there, thick as masks! Think of it all and try not to collapse groaning into your bed, try. Try not to think of the planets. What do they have to do with any of this? Nothing, but think of them anyway. Think of them and speak what comes, the string of numbers which no doubt flows into your head, and of that?[underline] Think nothing of the sure confusion on the absent forces of your nonexistence audience and think of the speaking they will listen your audience of they wait and as they will they will form their own meanings or none, this we know, standing at our window split third wise into bars of darkness flanking that central golden third width column oh terrestria, think only of this. And think too of lines which intersect each other in such interesting ways, have you thought of them? Have you thought of such orthoganalities of horizons meeting window panes, irridescent contrails and tree trunks and shivers of light, to say nothing of the petty infinite scatter of scrimshawed limbs and twigs and leafs and veins and cells and starches and helites, helixes boundless, these I have penetrated with my mind here in my castle-prison, here with my oniontop hat I have pondered these things and the insights, oh dear world I speak to you this insight nothing of language no, nothing yet of what there instead runs into numbers, to numbers yes, to numbers and numbers of things each in their valence, their graceful orbit, each grooved and dancing! Yes! A Spotlight as
----------------------------------------------------[pg2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
big as the sun (oh I see you there) and then I collapse on my bed holding my head in my hands for we cannot take it, no we cannot take it for one second longer, and yet it continues.
Scarlata visited me yesterday. She brought letter on a piece of tree bark, the words inscribed on the inside against the curl of the wood. The missive made no sense to me of course and I did not try to read it and I will not read it today. Rather I have placed it here within the folio which contains all such messages I have received since my incarceration, all those numbers [strikethrough] those integers![underline] masquerading as letters on the stems of leaves, and the stretched skin of dried frogs ( and so a river must lie nearby) and birchskin and inside the soft rinds of hard melons and other such ephemera of a not quite permanent world. They tell no story and yet I am pleased to arrange them and will often do so for hours at a time, this mute and mutely confused library, at the moment nearly all I have in the world save the invisible orrery in my head and the memories of the distant cats of Isfanh,[a-- diacritic macron] which join my library stretching now from one wall to the other and nearly to the ceiling, where I sometimes fix my eyes and watch or imagine I am watching the spiders (if that is what they are) enact the geometry of the heavens in their fine and fragile way, stepping ever so lightly, ever so gentle until their self-laid aetherous net twiggles and they
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------