the destroyer > text > Brian Blanchfield & John Twice Myers

WEATHER BALLOONS.

I always look it up. Is a weather balloon sent
is my first question like a satellite, sent or circulated.
Is the data it’s seeking about wind. You don’t have to
be severe.
                      All the information is inside the balloon. Like a nested doll.

The famous party balloon invariably pops,
and the shower on the participants
is the opposite of what Roland Barthes chastises
in empire of the signs as constipation.
Far afield aren’t we. Which way is the wind
                blowing, and where a vane couldn’t go,
                whirring: this is the modality of the balloon.

I think the balloon is pulled down for its data.
On the floor, a balloon is no balloon. It goes up
for definition, for better weather, rarer air. For lift
the balloon requires an excitable gas, an idea.
                                                                                                   Is retrieval necessary first
                                                                                                   for understanding
the experience of the balloon. The Information packet
when lost is a black box, a spice cachet. They don’t try and do
what satellites already do. Satellites already do
what sacrifice is needed.
                                                      Cluster ballooning is a manner
of traveling ensemble. A weather balloon is like a salesman.
If there’s a gun in the first act, it’s going to go off.
The people who misunderstand a weather balloon unidentify it.
A weather balloon itself is reported. A strung canyon funicular,
a lateral escalator, look again, an air travel deterrent not a toy.

Does a weather balloon have to pop—have to or get to—
or disintegrate to give us what it knows. The weather
people and amateur meteorologists collect the data
on the ground like metaphor. Nor is meteorology the study of fallen rocks
into atmosphere, and it’s not a kind of metrics. So
put the extra intermittent o in and thread the spindle.

            The national weather services launch the balloon,
in conjunction with other nationals. Targeted launch
was a temporal term. How you can get it to go
where you want it to go is: I don’t think you can.
Some balloons take pictures up there. A weather balloon
exceeds in size what you might imagine, typically the area
of a human egg, if adult humans were hatched
in precortical latex and if no larval period
                                                                                          were observable.

The unit hangs below the balloon and collects information,
opposite of a testicle. The balloon is merely
a vector. A vehicle. A fixed receiver down on the ground
is also the person who coordinates the synchronized launch, or
was trained with her and has her on speed dial.
Detonation denotation. A million implicit is’s.
Another several at the ready. First act, reset. So that one
might track the tradewinds. They launch independent
and without fanfare, confetti, far from the parade.



[authors' websites: Blanchfield, Myers]