2/4/98 — It is nice to have someone to converse with in public so that I do not look as if I have recently died which is usually the case.

wix — A Hardly Endemic Last Liaison with Posterity.

          The vox populi, Pier Gynt, called the elders of Thebes mercilessly onto the tiled parquet of the Temple of Cynthia. Fortnights had elapsed and it seemed, as far as everyone was concerned, that the city was content to wind down its four year pledge to the Athenian League offering smoking sacrifices at the altar of Artemis and waiting for local reincarnations to come through.

          Pier Gynt didn’t seem to agree with these perceptions, and finally asked them what in Sam Hill was going on. The Archons, nettled by this unsolicited criticism of their immaterial contributions, charged that this concern was motivated by far more than earnest humanist sentiment.

          Sisyphus told without reservations of his rolling struggles over hill and dale in search of karma, a tale of erased hopes and general disillusionment with mankind. “Well said,” Pier Gynt applauded, “but if that’s all you need is a theorem, hell, Pythagoras can cough up something to that effect.”

          The latter gasped in disbelief, flabbergasted that his hitherto impervious calculations had become a matter of public record, but outwardly managed a calm air of acquiescence. Iaeptus promised, all but genuflecting, to bring out the scrolls forthwith, a stare decisis unbiased by mellifluent albatrosses.

          All amanuensises aside, their effort to feed the golden geese, picketing around circuitous berms (a seedy and sadly flaunted lot), involved playing hard to get at thick Lollapalooza Festivals in the park, achieving tofu waffles from the slimy woodwork, and infusing airy duets at the best of times. Beforehand, all of their indigo genius beatitudes, undermined per se by a frumpy viewpoint of How I Wasn’t Going to Spend My Summer, bred pink glow worms, though indistinctly and effusively regurgitated, until Legion resuscitated into a mensa retreat, a far, far, better place.

          In a fresh outlook, unsedated, of wispy aspect, and with all wares consigned to the peerless, he metastasized into the ranks of the truly fortunate, insofar as he wasn’t immediately prodded out of the clouds to fend formlessly.

*        *        *

          The elders of Thebes were singing Opryland haikus at the local hibachi festival when, least indeed, the tolling of Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick on a golden euphoric andiron epitomized leftovers.

          These toe tappers, themselves unrequited, were only marginally communicable about the whole scene, inciting the intervention of one more apparatchnik, who said “comrades, thither sits your oppressor! Let’s each dash to the loofah bus (from a safe distance), so Theda can place a collect call to Nineveh’s last dim sum canteen.” She curiously splurged for spring rolls toasted in brackish pesto and wrote off the whole meal, as sanguinely as possible, unwillingly beginning a whole new round of Ginzu chopping.

          Still, this unsolicited largesse rankled them. Were they being too complicit? Should they dig down and pay out the last farthing? They quickly decided against this, and buttoned down their gingham slickers against the protracted whirlwinds outside, while Sisyphus argued that fighting Sparta was the only way to attain one’s total self–actualization.

          This had seemed vaguely self–evident before now, though they’d discounted it as contrary to their three strikes law. Although Thales retorted that power and self–interest bred a thing of misanthropy towards the rest of the world which was out to lunch, they overcame their traditional tranquility, and a resolve to repeal Thebes’ hysterical impartiality left everyone wondering if there was an easier way to survive.

          For the time being, the Archons were impatient to make amends with Agrigentum, whose fashion police had unfailingly called Thebes’ high water breeches an affront to usual decorum. A groundswell of polka dot wainscoting seemed to also kindle passionate fits. The council tabbed Thales to work the Agrigentum ambassador, the Supreme Eminem, over petit–fours.

          “You heard us right,” the latter insisted. “You can have all the wild hemlines you want for your uninsured speed queens,” he suggested, “but against all of this, crazy Persepolis sneers! But I feel less adamant,” he intimated.

          Parabolically, Thales recounted the adventures of the immortal Ptolemais. “Whilhomes,” he began, “somewhat on a cashmere day, our hero was supine on the strand when this siren went off and ridiculed him, ‘what, for a change, shaves with Occam’s razor in the morning, sheds no light at noon, and later, goes to Denny’s for the midnight breakfast special every Whitsuntide?’

          “Ptolemais was so stumped with all this Algonquin second guessing on the cheap that he wept for two years, and” — “and she never happened by again,” the ambassador supplied? “You got that shit right,” Thales chuckled, “so you know the feeling you get when you’re only admitted through the emergency room, after inflating your inward skittishness expressly to the level of aggrandized facades?”

          “A favorite bagatelle,” the ambassador agreed. Thales insinuated, “then perhaps Thebes is the El Dorado of total fashion honesty that you are searching for; the place where pentothal fetters are disconnected.”

Circa February 2008.

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