This is the sorrowful story
Told as the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding their neighbours’ tails
Rudyard Kipling, The Legends of Evil
My fellow exile, investigator into wordly (and worldly) crafts, F. G. M. presented me with his research paper entitled “Tempori Cedo” with the idea that I made some constructive comments on the text. After due deliberation on said text I decided to be as honest in my appraisal as is humanly possible though, I have to admit, I do not know exactly where I stand on the issue of scientific criticism (being investigator rather than critic) aside from the observation that I take his part on the stand he has made.
“Pass the syringe....Ah, mmm, thank you kindly.”
My first reaction was that there was far too much use of the first person singular “I” as the subject of the verb, but then, half way through the paper, it dawned on me just why this was so. I am the first to admit that my “I” is simply a fleeting crossing of flight paths where isolated images come together for just long enough to cause sufficient friction, friction enough such that the temperature warps a connection in the memory and, in that memory, we sense we have captured a fleeting identity. Yes, there are too many “I”s but it is the same. That is how it is. You have your “I”s, I have mine. They have their “You”s, we have yours and when the virus decides, its first word is “I”, to inform me that I exist. Then “You”, so that you can put the finger on them.
I suggested the Jesters should not sound so apologetic, for, after all you are an exile too. Let your characters apologise I offered, avoid at all costs putting humble, apologetic attitudes into the mouths of your writers. “Introduction” is the wrong word. Monkey does as monkey is. Make it more cynical, more cutting, call it “Irrelevant Apology” or “No Thanks to You”, but they were having nothing of it, so I gave up on that count. They insisted, “We are finally ready to break our silence!” And that was it.
“We are finally ready to break our silence!”
“The antidote?”
“There is no known antidote, sir....”
Little rocks, little lumps of ice, little old bits of space junk, exiles, young and old alike and I am, near Willowtown Creek, weeping willows, orbiting. The field is launching me into orbit. It all orbits and it all has only, has solely a slight physical effect as becomes shooting stars, as we become shooting stars, electric threads, fleeting frictions, beauty.
Friction. Me on my back in the black grass in a pasture in a place I have only just invented, in a field, near Willowtown Creek. Willowtown Creek, Taylor County, Kentucky, U.S.A. Weeping, for my ideas are threadbare thoughts, shooting stars never on a collision course to let me know that they exist, and if ever they did, of course, my “I” would scream to the universe, “I....I can’t sew....”
I be a pure thread of white cotton fine
But not ‘till lovingly woven
Do a funeral shroud I weave sublime
David F. Brandon, A painter
“Hand the monkeys the loom, my good man!”
