the viscosity project

He was found, staggering, on Charing Cross road, speaking in tongues.  The officer who gently arrested him, who silently guided him into a cell for the night, was not surprised.  It was a Friday, it was 3.00am, and this kind of thing was not unusual.  What was, if anything, was the complete lack of sense the drunk made.  Even in the worst cases, occasional ribbons of sense would pour out.  Not here, it seemed; he spoke a language entirely without nouns, but full of compounded adjectives.

Later, when at the university, he would occasionally return to this talk, in the midst of lectures.  The students, the first time, were awestruck.  This tweeded man, grey streaks of hair pulled forward over his bony forehead, talking in tongues.  The assembled mass, their noses red from the winter morning, stared.  That was the first few times.

Later still, even once the language had been well studied, it still stood as a pseudo-joke.  Something to be hinted at in the corners of pubs, where those used to talking in the upright, pub, drink, money nouns would, in their drunkeness, descend into the strange moonly-rising tongue.