Page 23

By Jack Joseph Smith

strange to the tongue and Eye of Everything that has Ever introduced itself for Electricity has vibrations too. Why was he not upon the sea, or even the lake as seen as in Chicago. No water no presence, unless in space, and this space was not this sand desert worth admitting, it was overpopulated with what plastic chaos. He thought of the inland river that here he could not even strip from the scene all was hidden from his eyes, but his own thought which was not abstract, but very real in the sense that he was always willing to go along immediately with anything that made him feel to life to anything finer to his state of mind

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page turns the city into a dry, overpopulated electric field and contrasts it with absent water: the sea, the lake in Chicago, and the inland river.

Its tension comes from sensory overload without relief. The speaker is trapped in an artificial landscape and left with thought itself as the only vivid thing still available to him.

Claude

Sensory overload set against absent water. He is 'strange to the tongue and / Eye of Everything that has / Ever introduced itself,' noting that 'Electricity has vibrations too.' The longing is for water that is not here: 'Why was he not upon the sea, / or even the lake as seen as / in Chicago.' The desert is 'overpopulated / with what plastic chaos,' the 'inland river' hidden from his eyes, leaving only his own thought - 'not abstract, but / very real' - as the one vivid thing, since he is 'always willing to go along / immediately with anything that / made him feel to life.' This reading is provisional because the page transcript sits in the 'mixed' OCR quality band.