Sunday, March 3, 2013

P.S. I Love You



I thought it would never happen
even after the Pope left his Post
after I wrote for more post-its and
received a box of post-hits
Let's not drop the subject:
everyone is posting, that's not the point!

I cometh here to address the
P.S.
Not the Picosecond that counts the paddle steamers progress
steered by a Palestinian Captain who is writing Psalms
to the French Parti Socialista
as his son plays on the Play Station
Indeed!


A real P.S.
When did the first P.S. appear?
Well before the Titanic when the navigator said:
"By the way, did someone forget the binoculars?"
Before Frankenstein said: "Should I have not also created a valium for Monsters?"
And even before Rubens quibbled "I could have painted Anne of                     Austria's dress yellow."



If these post scriptums seem opaque to you then surely you are         familiar with Qin Shi Huang, who in 221 BC ordered         the construction of the Great Wall of China.






Only centuries later have historians discovered in a post scriptum found near his gravesite,
"Maybe we should  build the wall North-South."  (Qin underlined the N and the S, a rare treatment in Chinese writing to show emphasis.)


And so, whether we follow the precepts of P.S.s or not, P.S.s have been with us and an integral part of our history. Nevertheless, it seems P.S.s are waning; lovers rather copy and paste than use a P.S. Rare the Romeo to P.S. Juliette. 



In l901 Victor Hugo wrote a Post-Scriptum and his poem you can listen to thanks to Bruno Lalonde in Quebec. Pay attention, Frenchies, to his P.S. before reading P.S.

Which brings us to the final question, can a P.S. appear at the beginning of a text, should not we be able to place them at the top of a letter's heading, call them "Pre-Scriptums", let's do something, or else, P.S.s will disappear from the face of this planet!






POST-SCUIPTUM DE MA VIE, Victor Hugo
La logique est la géométrie de l'intelligence. Il faut de la  logique dans la pensée. Mais on ne fait pas plus de la pensée avec de la logique qu'on ne fait un payasage avec de la géométrie.

P.S.S. By the way did anyone find my missing sock?




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