The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell Read Free Book Online Page B

I hasten to add that this image is not mine but that of a girl or woman of my acquaintance who wrote of it? Do you know the delicate powdery tinfoil used to wrap individual sticks of chewing gum—is it notthe case that this foil is very slightly quilted? At what point in human life would you say the nostril transforms from a cute thing to a not cute thing? Have you noticed the penchant of some birds, notably in my experience shore birds, to stand on one leg with the other fully retracted so that you think for a bit you have a remarkable incidence of one-legged birds who have adapted very well to their deformity? Do you think it plausible that a girl twenty years his junior could seduce a man by telling him of a garter snake eating a Christmas ornament and dying from it?
    Is the altering of the trajectory of bullets entering water related to the bending of light entering water? If you could live in a culture where rugs are still hung out and beaten, as opposed to a culture where they are not hung out and beaten, would you opt for the rug-beating culture? Do you ever devote yourself to making a cake and then sit down and eat it? Were the Sunbeam bread girl and the Coppertone girl related? I have asked you before if you have used a torque wrench but cannot remember your answer: if you have, did you find knowing the torque gratifying or did knowing it strike you as fussy and recherché? Do you take pleasure in drinking from anold-fashioned waxed-paper cup as opposed to a plastic cup? Will you nibble a little at a waxed-paper cup? Do you know any dogs that have a pet stuffed animal into their maturity? Would you rather see a show about a military campaign or about a ballet? Can you knit? After what age do you find pothead jazz enthusiasts tiresome or embarrassing?
     
    DO YOU LIKE A smooth pond or a ripple upon a pond? If you were to participate in a spice war, what spice would you fight for? Of which lost or destroyed culture are you most fond? Does sadness or irony reside for you in the delicacy of a rodent’s nest, and in the pink hairless babies? If I said to you “tree wound” and “blood type,” would you think there was a connection? Do you like a loose or tight inseam in your pants? Have you ever kept up or do you now keep up with a comic strip? What is your longest stay in a hospital as an inpatient? Can you eat a green orange with the same pleasure as an orange orange? Are “wooly bully” and “wooly booger” related, and do you know what is denoted by either term? When you play chess, are you tempted to call the rook a castle? Would you rather read about aleveraged buyout or the firing of a football coach? Have you ever heard the malaprop “brain truss”? How many jokes can you tell?
    Were you ever involved in a seduction of, or by, a babysitter? What color most flatters you? In your opinion, who makes the best optics in the world? Have you ever hiked a little nervously in grizzly country and been assured along the way by the mildest-mannered and theretofore most sensible woman in the company that there is nothing to worry about because she intends to strike any bears molesting the party with a hammer? Are you anywhere near as strongly drawn as am I to the notion of the rogue water moccasin without having any real idea what defines such a creature or his behavior? Have you ever given a child a pet? Do you know if the bark in the crotches of trees is specialized and called specifically crotch bark? What is the term opposite to “economic downturn”? How often would you say you burn food? What is the cruelest lie you were ever told? Have you ever heard a woman screaming on the street and looked for the source and not found it? That question I asked earlier about the tinfoil chewing-gum wrappers—are you aware that the edge of the wrapper is pinked, if I am using the term correctly?Do you wish to be in a thunderstorm or not to be in a thunderstorm? Do you like sheet cake? Does any one holiday annoy you more