By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page turns Zen into a paradox of speech, arguing that the moment one tries to define it, one has already moved outside it.
The page works by undoing its own statement. It tries to name Zen only in order to show that naming breaks it, and the time-language of before and after pushes that paradox further. The closing note, 'Rose Marie's / Daily / Task,' gives the page a sudden domestic edge, as if this abstract problem were also part of ordinary lived discipline.
Titled 'Top Song', the page argues that 'the wonder' of ZEN is self-cancelling: to speak or indicate it 'makes all not ZEN', and 'when before is / After, And After is before', ZEN arrives only 'to say itself / does Not exist'. The closing tag 'Rose Marie's / Daily / Task' grounds the paradox in ordinary chores.