Saturday, September 11, 2010

"It's great entertainment for everyone, a game, this game that is still a battle." -Paul Reverdy, from Prose Poems

Island



I am the foremost scholar in Arbitrary Thoughts in the world. My dissertation was called Potato Chips, Accompanying Dips, and The Accompanying Television Shows That Houseflies Prefer, which received the highest acclaim a scholar of my stature can achieve. I won a government grant and some sort of fellowship to spend ten years working on my craft, which I did, and what I learned was this: bicycles are skillful travelers, and don’t mind snails (literal and figurative) along for the ride; umbrellas make the best friends, both for raindrops and the umbrella’s user, but only after you agree not to ever stick it in the oven (umbrellas are deathly afraid of ovens); trees can cast shadows whether you need a shadow at that moment, or not, but, this has nothing to do with the sun, or the sun’s position in the sky (it more has to do with the atmospheric conditions of that day); deer avoid death by eating grasses and other foods, but still sometimes die at the hands of wolves, hunters, cars, or time (this also applies to feral pigs, squirrels, goats, bears, and giraffes); red pencils aren’t the greatest when making corrections, rather, surprisingly, green pencils are (purple pencils are fine too, although there have been some cases of aneurysm); and, finally, that ten years spent at my craft has left me more confused than ever before, and I feel smaller than the skin that wraps around me.

1 comment:

  1. On the quote: what is the entertainment? The people laughing at struggling writers with bleak futures? I don't think anybody but the writer cares enough to be entertained. Or the game is any creator producing a creation and it's fun to see what other people come up with. Then the word "entertainment" hints at the creators real pain and how he feels mocked by the rest of the world. Here's a book of poetry I worked years on, cried over, lost myself, etc. and then someone says "it was interesting," then they forget about it forever.

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