Word: spindrift
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...opens in a hospital ward, where the gauze bandages turbaning every head suggest that the patients all have something wrong up there. In the case of Patient Edwin Spindrift, a Ph.D. and lecturer on linguistics, this seems to be indisputably so. His libido is dead. Ink smells like peppermint to him, hot fat like violets. At the least provocation, Spindrift takes off on obsessive journeys to the roots of words. "What's the difference between 'gay' and 'melancholy'?" asks the doctor. "One is monosyllabic, the other tetrasyllable," Spindrift begins. "One is of French, the other...
...Shelter. Fed like a pulsating dinner into the maw of investigative machinery, processed by robots in white coats, Spindrift nurses a wholly rational resentment of his conversion into a thing. "I don't think you really believe we're human beings at all," he protests to the young woman wiring his head to an electroencephalograph. "Do you mind?" she says. "I've got my work to do." This is clearly no place for a clear head. With his skull still gleaming from a preoperative shave, Spindrift swipes a wardrobe and steals back into the world...
...this distorted ambiance, the words that once sheltered Spindrift shelter him no more. To his gathering surprise, the world that exists behind the word is a far more rewarding place. His liberated spirit plunges into the joys of stealing library books, winning a baldheaded contest and resurrecting his libido...
Restored in the end to his hospital bed, Spindrift ponders, along with the reader, the ageless riddle of reality. Do Ippo and the others owe their existence to the anesthesiologist? Did he surprise Sheila, his unfaithful wife, in flagrante delicto? Was the tumor removed? Was there a tumor? Uncertain and yearning to know, he ventures out again and at once bumps into Ippo, a walking advert for JOE'S ALL-NIGHT SAUSAGES...
...were teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Not until 15 years later did Mies permit a portrait, and then Weber had to sketch while the architect worked at his desk. The blue of Mies's habitual business suit pervades a shoulder-swaying pose as slashing as icy spindrift. Weber still does not know if his subject was pleased, but Mies did buy one of his oils and three drawings...