The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  The blurb on the magazine title page read: THE ETHER BREATHERS RETIRED, AND THE PERFUME MAGNATE WANTED TO SMOKE ’EM OUT. HE DID. A REALLY GOOD PERFUMER OUT TO MAKE A FOUL ODOR CAN ACCOMPLISH MIRACLES!

  Look About You!

  A purple dog casts orange shade,

  A black moon hangs in a silver sky,

  My arms bake white in the brown sunlight

  And I feel sounds with my eye.

  Fish with feathers swarm the sea

  And convex caves build the liquid land;

  Three great whales and a horse with scales

  Dance on the scarlet sand.

  We each live in a wonderland;

  A blue to you is a red to me,

  A shade is seen, and we call it green—

  I wonder what you see?

  I know my world. It bores me so!

  And I must bear it until I die,

  While your every day is a land of fey—

  And you’re as bored as I!

  Theodore Sturgeon

  [First published in Unknown, January 1940.]