Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

Can you tell a heron from an egret at long range? Is there a connection between tensile strength and prehensile tail ? When did navies lose the term “armada”? Will you wear polyester clothes? Is a cupcake sufficient for you, or do you call for another? Are drunks in your view guilty of want of discipline or are they guiltless? What distance is required to stop a motor vehicle going 60 mph on dry pavement? I see “red feathers” and “mud-caked face” and possibly “red feathers on a mud-caked face” but I cannot formulate the question — can you help me with this one?

Have you ever heard The Blind Boys of Alabama? Are you a circusgoer? Do you like to lick stamps? Has there been an American coin as good in its design as the Indian Head penny — unless maybe it is the buffalo nickel, or maybe the Liberty dollar? Do you know what chenille is? Do you keep up with popular music? Do you polish your furniture a lot, a little, or never? Wouldn’t you like to have a grape arbor with beehives under it? Should politicians lie? Should mothers and fathers? Should children? Should I? Should you?

Would it be feasible to go to India and not be heard from again? Did you hear about the local couple who drowned in Nova Scotia? Did you know that I knew the man, and that I once saw him wrestle an emu into the back of a truck by himself, and that I am therefore skeptical that he drowned in Nova Scotia or anywhere else?

If you had the chance, and there weren’t the certain prospect of time in court or jail in these our litigious times, wouldn’t you like to participate in a rumble? Do you recall precisely how Santa Claus came apart for you? Is belief in Santa Claus, or disbelief, a kind of primer for belief, or disbelief, in God? Do you wear red? Does the having on hand of “spare parts” give you comfort or make you apprehensive a little? Do you feel closer to lizards than to snakes? This contretemps about children choking on small parts of toys — have children always choked on small parts of toys or have they only recently developed this predilection? Isn’t some charity to be extended the telemarketer? Is orotund a word? Can the spirits be lifted as, say, a quantity of wet laundry might be lifted, or would they need to be atomized and transported discretely to a higher plane and there recondensed (I am trying to evoke the model of molecular transportation)? Have you seen the expression “Unleashed is unloved”? And “If you love something, set it free”? Do you know the sport of so-called Indian wrestling? Did you know that I would like to have an early-model Ford and live on a dirt road and almost never check my mailbox for there would be, in this simple life I don’t have, almost never any mail in it? Would you like to have such a red-checkered-tablecloth life too?

Would a catastrophic global war be required to restore us to simple living? Do you recall my asking you if you approved of the terrier mentality? And, in certain other words, why dogs don’t (as a rule) bite us but monkeys (as a rule) do? May I now ask you if you approve of terriers themselves? Did your mother teach you how to sew? How far out of your way — I mean: you’d go a long distance to an obscure shop and spend a lot of money for it; you’d spend not more than, say, $50 at a garage sale if you happened to see one; you’d accept it if someone brought it as a gift into your house and set it up completely, with little trees beside it and real smoke coming out of it — would you go to have a model railroad in your house? Do you like fire? If you were to hear the phrase “does harm” in isolation, what might first come to mind?

Do you like feathers? Have you stood on an atoll? Are you familiar with horse tack and rigging? Are you barnyard oriented or is the barnyard a sea of trouble for you? When you wear white, do you insist it be spotless? Wasn’t the world better when the term “haberdasher” was current? For that matter, when butter churns were in use? How did we go so wrong? Wasn’t there a day on earth when not every soul was possessed of his or her own petty political and personal-identity agenda? Do you still do candles for your birthday?

Did you not have an uncle who was an artillery engineer in a war? Are you interested in the nuances of grease? Are you for or against canals, in principle? Is it hard for you to credit that dinosaurs flew ? Do you know the average career length of the top-flight runway model?

Were you a thumb sucker? Would you rather argue with people or not? Can you think of a musical instrument useful in murder other than piano wire? Have you studied the soft toes of geckos? Do you comprehend with complete certainty how bonds work? Would you sail an ocean on a small boat? Do people who purport to know what a fractal is have a leg up on those who confess they don’t? If you came upon a party celebrating something or someone with a yellow sheet cake and white icing, would you partake happily? Do you remember the candies called jawbreakers and Fireballs? Do you have a cutting-edge TV? What dead person would you bring back to life? Do you favor protecting the little wilderness remaining, or do you concede that there is so little left it might as well be ceded to the tide? Would a small red balloon cheer you up? A dog?

Are you fond of facial astringent? Have you ever heard the term, either in the area of philosophy or sex, “eggism”? Among these types of fences — picket, chain-link, and hogwire — which do you find most attractive? Have you ever worn a feather boa? Would you prefer to listen to a trumpet or a saxophone, both played equally well? Do you keep a personal bird count? Do you count calories? Whatever is meant by it, would you say you pad the nest or do not pad the nest? Do you have any formal familiarity with the architecture of arches? Can the slaughter of its own people, either directly (e.g., Byzantine Nike revolt) or indirectly (e.g., American “conflicts”), be regarded a legitimate tool of government? After what age do you think children are ruined by socialization? Given the choice, will you buy bread in a wrapper or not in a wrapper? What to your ear is the best-sounding language? Does the question of where all the garbage goes and how can it not soon not be able to go there bother you? Should I have put that a little more clearly? Will you wear a hat today?

What do you think might happen if “one animal, one vote” were conceived in the animal kingdom? How is it that ancient civilizations become buried over time? Why is oil oily? If you were credited with making a trenchant, lugubrious argument, would you be upset? Do you think there is really that much danger in putting a bird feather in the mouth? Do you prefer calm weather to violent weather? Are you fond of any board games? Does the notion of heresy strike you as serious or laughable? If your neighbors were a brick mason, a cobbler, and a butcher, and you were on good terms with them, would you feel secure in the world and buoyant? Do you grasp the principles of the thermocouple?

If you had a child, would you read to her every night? Do you own good silver? Do you regard yourself a connoisseur of anything? What is the most you have ever donated to a charitable cause, and what was the cause? Have you chosen the way you’d like to die? What profession to your mind most represents grown men being boys? Can you distinguish species of duck by their flight profiles? Is a red-checked tablecloth an agreeable unironic symbol to you or one that invites your cynicism?

If I said to you, “The sky today is beautiful, the white clouds and gray clouds and the way they are arranged, and the tops of the pine trees with their green needles silky and not stirring at all, breathless, though it is better, and would be better, were they, the needles, whipping and lashing in the wind of the hurricane we had, and this halcyon sky makes me long for that troubled one, but still, look at it, it is beautiful even today”—how much of this would you listen to?