INVISIBLE MAN
What did I do
To be so black
And
blue?
39
At first I was afraid; this familiar music had demanded action,
the kind of which I was incapable, and yet had I lingered there
beneath the surface I might have attempted to act. Nevertheless, I
know now that few really listen to this music. I sat on the chair's
edge in a soaking sweat, .as though each of my 1,369 bulbs had every
one become a klieg light in an individual setting for a third degree
with Ras and Rinehart in charge. It was exhausting-as though I
had held my breath continuously for an hour under the terrifying
serenity that comes from days of intense hunger. And yet, it was
a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the
silence of sound. I had discovered unrecognized compulsions of my
being-even though I could not answer "yes" to their promptings. I
haven't smoked a reefer since, however; not because they're illegal,
but because to
see
around corners is enough (that is not unusual
when you are invisible). But to hear around them is too much; it in–
hibits action. And despite Brother Jack and all that sad, lost period
of the Brotherhood, I believe in nothing if not in action.
Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a
more overt action.
Besides, the drug destroys one's sense of time completely.
If
that happened, I might forget to dodge some bright morning and
some cluck would run me down with an orange and yellow street
car, or a bilious bus! Or I might forget to leave my hole when the
moment for action presents itself.
Meanwhile I enjoy my life with the compliments of Mono–
polated Light
&
Power. Since you never recognize me even when in
closest contact with me, and since, no doubt, you'll hardly believe
that I exist, it won't matter if you know that I tapped a power line
leading into the building and ran it into my hole in the ground. Be–
fore that I lived
in
the darkness into which I was chased, but now I
see. I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility- and vice versa.
And so I play the invisible music of my isolation. The last statement
doesn't seem just right, does it? But it is; you hear this music simply
