Monday, November 4, 2013

the schools need your support

Another one of the intermediate students hoping to move up into advanced again expressed a sincere wish for before or after school private instruction, if I have heard anything resembling truth.  Let your own conscience instruct you.  Let the internet guide you.  Thanks be to heaven that our traditional nature hikes are still all the rage, the online newsletter Idea Festivals Are the Answer is still all the rage, BBQ sauce on everything, cottage cheese, lettuce salad, leaf burning edicts and pamphlets, swimming holes, Dogberry's antics, Occupy Wall Street, the Ranger Rick television program and print magazine, a Netflix original series based on thirteen dark rooms in twelve nights, three cheers for the Senate, down with Barney, and so forth.  For the sake of all plain dealing, I sincerely hope here be truths!  Waterfront property, curb appeal, Starburst, Skittles, brussel sprouts ice cream, etc.  I'm probably a fool for wishing it, an errant knave for just mentioning it, a villain for bringing these matters up in a delicate forum like LinkedIn or Facebook... and yet, in spite of everything, the four seasons, etc, the people gathered, out in nature, at some sort of "idea festival", talking a mile a minute about eco/ psycho/ techno/ bio/ financial meltdowns, deep into the night, out in nature, living like the desert hermits of yore. I sincerely hope here be truths!  And yet, indeed, it is patent folly to wish it.  Gazing up, gazing out, gazing thru the veil of nothingness, almost all of these intermediate students turn in their homework ON TIME!  But above all, Carl Brown.  Support young Carl Brown.  A solid and reliable fellow.  A scholar.  Give him ear.  Let him move up into advanced.  A merrier fellow, within the limit of semi-becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's conference withal.  Here be serious truths. His eye begets occasion for his insatiable wit, for every object that the one doth catch the other turns to hilarious jest, which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, honed in primordial wilderness, delivers in such apt and hilarious phrases that aged ears play the truant, and younger hearings are completely and totally ravished!  So sweet and bizarre is his discourse!  In the classroom we engage in what he terms "give-and-take conversation."  It helps us to master the material and prepare for our trades.  We look forward to the future.  It is a bright and encouraging future.  We will work hard at our various trades well into our 80's, God willing.  Work is the most important factor of the human experience.  Think tank after think tank, newsletter after newsletter, Pew study after Pew study has indicated this vital social reality time without number.  May medicine continue improving, and may our work lives keep extending.  It's ok to dream big, right?    

Here be strange truths, indeed, and not the sort that.. oh well, people.  People, please... let that pass.  Give-and-take conversation will reveal all in the end.  Ok, let me see here; what am I to buy for our idea festival?  (Reading from shopping list) Three pounds of sugar; five pound of currants; rice- what will Carl Brown do with rice? But the teacher hath catapulted him into advance, and like the rest of us, he enjoys many spectacular foods.  His wish is my command, essentially. He hath made four and twenty nosegays for the idea creators.  Shall they sing psalms to hornpipes?  Here be incredible menus!  Ok, let me see: saffron to color the pies; mice, dates, nutmegs, ginger, prunes, pythons, raisins, circus peanuts, clam chowder, Cheetohs, banana bread, Tombstone pizza, rats, Snickers bars, and watermelon flavored 5 hour energy. Well, we enjoy food, no question.  We enjoy school, no question.  I hope here be truths.  I hope the student body respects us!  Our teacher is one in a million!  Mr. Jeremy, from Vienna.  He hath been since an ape-bearer; a cobbler; he drove an ice cream truck for awhile; he sold sunglasses, then worked as a roofer, until he had his accident and became useless for all manual labor.  At some point he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and then married a porn star who was trying to get her life back on track; and finally, after having flown over many other knavish professions, he went back to college and got his teaching certificate. Some predict that he will be a Senator someday, and put give-and-take conversation at the very top of the list.

-You mean we must all master that skill?
-Aye, we must.
-What!!!  Would you make me insane? Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom.
-Well, If he does become Senator, we needs look out for our futures.  The marketplace is uncertain.  The currency exchange, quite unstable. For the rumor goes that no kind of folly would Carl Brown, our fearless leader, admit!  No name of entertainer.  Literature?  Why, simply unknown!  Undiscovered!  Riches, poverty, use of service, welfare, social security? Zero! Contract, succession, bourn, bound of land, tilth, playgrounds, amusement parks, vineyards?  None at all!  No use of metal, corn, wine, or oil.  No occupation; pure idleness.  Just sitting there, day and night, gazing out into the nothingness!!!
-OMG!  That would be crazy!
(a commotion within)
-Who calls there?
-Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Carl the lunatic. -Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady.
-Out, hyperbolical fiend! How vexest thou this man! Talkest thou of nothing but ladies?
-Sir Topas, never was man thus wrong'd; good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad: they have laid me here in hideous darkness.
-Fie, thou dishonest villain! I call thee by the most modest terms; for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy. Say'st thou that house is dark?
-As hell, Sir Topas.
-Why, it hath bay-windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction? 
-I am not mad, Sir Topas; I say to you, this house is dark!
-Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzl'd than the ancient Egyptians in their blasphemous fog.
-I say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say, there was never a man thus abused. I am no more mad than you are; make the trial of it, sir, in any constant question.
-Ok the, let me see here...what is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
-That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
-What think'st thou of his opinion?
-I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
-Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness; thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.
-Good fool, help me to some light, ink, and paper. I tell thee, I am as well in my wits as any man in America.  Christopher Sly will assure thee.  We were trained together in childhood; and there rooted betwixt us then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now. Since our more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of our society, our encounters, though not personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies, souvenirs, balloons, tokens, fancy electronic devices, that we have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced as it were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue our loves!
-Well... what is the gross sum that I owe thee?
-Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money besides!!! Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? Coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath: deny it, if thou canst.
-My lord, this is a poor mad soul; and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you: she hath been in good case, and the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress against them.
-Carl Brown, O Carl Brown, I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration: you have, as it appears to me, practised upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses both in purse and in person.  Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done her: the one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.
-Where's Monsieur Cobweb?
-Ready.
-Monsieur Cobweb; good monsieur, get you your weapons in your hand and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, monsieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior.  
-What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love? 
-I have a reasonable good ear in music; let us have the tongs and the bones.
-Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat. 
-Truly, a peck of provender; I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.
-I have a venturous fairy that shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.
-I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.
-ok.