My detractors have accused me of being a heresiarch, of being arrogant, and of being a liar. I have been dismissed as being nonexistent, while others fancy that I am immortal. (Because I was never born, it is supposed that I can never die.) Absurd rumors of my history fly from every front: People say that I am three hundred years old and grew shepherding a fleet of black sheep through the open country, shearing its wool to weave funeral shrouds and selling their blood to black magicians in trade for instruction in the dark arts; that I earned a living in Bombay by scaling the walls of Zoroastrian death towers, fighting off flocks of buzzards to rummage rotting skeletons in search of treasure; that I lived an entire year eating nothing but pomegranates, or that I caused darkness upon the entire earth by staring at the Sun. They say that my hands have never once touched currency, and that I traveled the entire world sleeping in soft silken beds, drinking of the finest wine—solely by the grace of my mesmeric charm.
Others have speculated that I were an inter-dimensional detective sent from another universe, having been contracted to solve the great mystery of life, or that I worked for some extraterrestrial opium den, smuggling strange drugs through the cosmos.
There has been much literature written about myself, much literature written by myself, and much literature not written by myself. “Mingus Dustman” is, as any observant reader would have already guessed, a pseudonym, but rumors pass that I had assumed other names, writing such unremarkable texts as “The Transparent Topography of Kabdihilinan ” or “The Book of Hidden Doors”. Still others claim that in my verse is encoded a hidden prophesy, predicting a world of genderless thought beings drifting through silver pyramids as tall as the stars.
Critics have stated that no mortal man could write poetry as I do, and that I had built in my basement a great machine full of blinking lights to compute my verse, or others, still doubtful of my talent, had compared me to Shakespeare, supposing that my work was produced by the efforts not of one man, but of many. (This, if anything, is closer to the truth.)
Many false profits scribble away out of lust for fame, for myself it is the exact opposite. I write this only because I wish to be unknown. I only wish to demystify myself, to be considered not as a god or a demon, but a simple man. (The delusions surrounding me are infinite; I met one man who believed that the entire earth, including himself, were produced by my own imaginings, and that when I died, the world would end.)
I, like my father, and my father’s father, am none but a humble scientist. Though it is true that my methods unusual and my laboratory seem strange, I can think of no field in which I have dabbled that lies outside the realm of science.
My peers treat me with skepticism; they ask if I truly believe that I can invent a new kind of time, if I truly believe that it is possible to formulate a new kind of love. One mathematician met my notes with astonishment, calculating that there must be over seven billion compounds of love in the known universe, our world being damned with the very weakest kind. To all of these questions I have no answer to give, I am only a curious soul, the world just as mysterious to me today as it was the moment I was born.
Others have speculated that I were an inter-dimensional detective sent from another universe, having been contracted to solve the great mystery of life, or that I worked for some extraterrestrial opium den, smuggling strange drugs through the cosmos.
There has been much literature written about myself, much literature written by myself, and much literature not written by myself. “Mingus Dustman” is, as any observant reader would have already guessed, a pseudonym, but rumors pass that I had assumed other names, writing such unremarkable texts as “The Transparent Topography of Kabdihilinan ” or “The Book of Hidden Doors”. Still others claim that in my verse is encoded a hidden prophesy, predicting a world of genderless thought beings drifting through silver pyramids as tall as the stars.
Critics have stated that no mortal man could write poetry as I do, and that I had built in my basement a great machine full of blinking lights to compute my verse, or others, still doubtful of my talent, had compared me to Shakespeare, supposing that my work was produced by the efforts not of one man, but of many. (This, if anything, is closer to the truth.)
Many false profits scribble away out of lust for fame, for myself it is the exact opposite. I write this only because I wish to be unknown. I only wish to demystify myself, to be considered not as a god or a demon, but a simple man. (The delusions surrounding me are infinite; I met one man who believed that the entire earth, including himself, were produced by my own imaginings, and that when I died, the world would end.)
I, like my father, and my father’s father, am none but a humble scientist. Though it is true that my methods unusual and my laboratory seem strange, I can think of no field in which I have dabbled that lies outside the realm of science.
My peers treat me with skepticism; they ask if I truly believe that I can invent a new kind of time, if I truly believe that it is possible to formulate a new kind of love. One mathematician met my notes with astonishment, calculating that there must be over seven billion compounds of love in the known universe, our world being damned with the very weakest kind. To all of these questions I have no answer to give, I am only a curious soul, the world just as mysterious to me today as it was the moment I was born.
