Dear David:
Does it appear (to you) that Mimo is now somehow closer to the ineffable
core of Nay-chah, and thus better poised to give voice to its inner truths?
To get even more philosophique, is Mimo still yet part of Nay-chah or is
all that remains of that connection lodged in our minds?
The mind - of your readers - boggles.
Do go on.
Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld
Poland / Norway
https://www.torgeirfjeld.com/
On Sun, 24 Apr 2022, 20:01 david ritchie, <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As you know, the world is a crazy place, made crazier by shots and
non-outrageous fortune.
Backing up for a moment, I was this close to zero, convinced on Saturday
morning that I would have nothing to report this week. My wife had shot me
and I was horizontalized, lying down with feverish thoughts going round my
brain, which is how I’d spent the night. My brain and body, hot from the
shot, were doing their best, but I was exhausted.
When I write that my wife shot me, I mean that I went for a booster, which
my wife administered at a walk-in clinic. She did not have a bad reaction
to the shot she got. I was the one lying on the bed realizing that I’d
committed to tennis and to going to the theater and was unlikely to manage
either. Meanwhile my brain was going, “Now that you’ve got Kierkegaard
sorted, how about that idea for a children’s book about elephants…”
“Shut up,” I said. What I wanted was sleep. Of which there was an
insufficiency hereabouts.
So I’m lying there not staring at the ceiling because my eyes hurt, and
I’m thinking, “Poor Mimo.” I mean she’s all alone in a new environment.
When daughters leave for foreign shores or Allentown, you can call them up,
help them adjust. But the dead? Can they be reached from bed?
As I said, a little heat and the brain teems and seethes, mucked up like
compost in a midden.
I made an effort, got up, went outside to sit in the sun, taking with me
the fortune cookie I’d found. Probably stale.
Me, “I’ve no one to give these to any more. Or crumbs.”
Mimo, “You could put them out for the birds. Or the dog.”
“Give a dog a biscuit? Good idea. But wouldn’t the fortune then be his?”
“Read it and see.”
“I’ve a deadline. May 1! Got to get Kierkegaard into the ether by May
1. I think I’ll manage, but I should try to work right now.”
“What’s a deadline?”
Me, “A date before which you must get something done.”
“What’s the connection with dying?”
“The web says it’s to do with the notorious Confederate prison at
Andersonville, Georgia, which developed many of the horrors the wider world
would later see. Anyone who passed a line marked on the ground, would be
shot by guards… What that’s got to do with work getting done, I’ve no
idea.”
“Did we have lines, and guards, in our yard?”
“Are you kidding? Everything was arranged for your protection.”
“And yet I jumped the fence. Maybe there should have been a deadline.”
“You survived.”
“I did. But I think a deadline would have been a reasonable thing.
Provided you are a poor shot.”
Me, “What else did I do wrong? Would you have provided more eggs if we’d
given you production quotas?”
“There are only so many eggs within a chicken. When they come out is up
to Nay-chah.”
Me, “I knew that.”
“Have you found the hidden stash?”
“The what?”
Mimo, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. We decided to bury eggs against
an uncertain future.”
“Your nest eggs, then?”
“We never had a nest.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
Mimo, “You might want to warn me when you do that.”
Me, “So there are eggs buried somewhere, like pirate treasure?”
“Not buried, but hidden from view. Would you like me to give you a clue?”
“So I can find eggs that have been aged to perfection?”
Mimo, “They might be worth something.”
“Like art from an estate sale?”
“No idea what that is. I mean in the scheme of things. You could be a
paleontologist of eggs, expert in oofypaleontology.”
“What a fine idea. But first I have to lie down and get my brain right.
Again.”
Mimo, “You haven’t read the fortune.”
“It says…’you are a leader.’”
“Keep that from the dog.”
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
