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On the road for Christmas, minimal update.

So one final concept from Cathcart and Klein's "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes" that I've been milking so much this week... they quote William James, who was convinced that the feeling of cosmic knowledge that being on nitrous oxide provided might be worth investigating... but he would always forget those deep thoughts on the come-down. So he decided to write things down, and typical of what he was coming up up with was:

"Everything has a Petroleumlike smell!"

Deep, man. The thing was, he couldn't be quite sure if it was just the normal, non-high James who was deaf and blind to these cosmic truths, or if it was the high James who was just babbling.

I couldn't too many references to the Petroleumlike observation, but I did find bits like this:

What's mistake but a kind of take?
What's nausea but a kind of -ausea?
Sober, drunk, -unk , astonishment. . . .
Agreement--disagreement!!
Emotion--motion!!! . . .
Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same!
Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!
It escapes, it escapes!
But--
What escapes, WHAT escapes?

...well, as free poetry goes I've heard worse.