Telegrams of the Soul

Discovery

“The ‘most perfect woman’ on earth came to see me today at five P.M. at the café! Miss Mitzi Thumb.”

“Oh, I already discovered that number, two years before you on the Lido, Hotel Excelsior. So don’t flatter yourself in that regard!”

“Discovered, discovered? How did you accomplish such a feat? Wherein did your discovery manifest itself?!”

“Manifest itself?! It manifested itself quite simply in that I saw her in her silk bathing singlet with the red patent leather belt, and was enchanted by her perfection!”

“So that’s what you call discovery!? You kept it to yourself, swallowed your enchantment, deliberately made sure no one else noticed, especially not the lady on account of whom your pitifully cowardly instinct for self-preservation compels you to restrain yourself! You did nothing for this discovered perfection, just turned your head away from such splendor, which could only rock the boat of your paltry relationship! Do you know what it means to discover?!? To discover means to beat the drum for someone so that the whole world absolutely must take notice; it means to go all out for her so that everyone else grows pale, sick and poisoned with envy; to scream, cry and declaim, to disavow, demean, blot out and obliterate all others! That is: an exceptional, singular, complete discovery!”

“Peter, you’re the carnival barker of life! Not everybody is so inclined. It’s a profession like any other. But you have to have the nerve for it. You’ve got it.”

“Discovery means: to make the blind see, the deaf hear, to make the callous feel, and turn the greedy into squanderers! It means: to take the gamble that this goddess you discovered turns her attention to those who without you would never have ‘discovered’ her. It means: to see yourself all too soon abused and abandoned, the sole mark of gratitude that the discovered one will dish out! To suffer the destiny of the discoverer, ignominious as it is, that’s: discovery!”