XV. The Pines of Rome (Ottorino Respighi)

[Another suit. On a gusty Thursday, during an innate ten four, Arbuthnot, excited that his wainscotting everywhere emitted odd and earnest, if freak glow worm fiats, sporadically imposed this almost strident infrastructural acuity throughout the entire sponge sub–phylum in momentous mnemnonic idiom.]

xv — The Pines of Rome (Otterino Resphigi).

          Insipid mealy carmel sundaes melted into fondues too foppish for hypothetical sylphs.

          “Now look upon these things at times without any sense of arid soloist,” he declaimed. “Even the least barmy suspect is outgrabed to degrade the seedy smidgeons of dicier perspective. Formality was, or is, arbitrary. While there are oblate precedents for minority terrestrial macaroons, they are so far and few that, between imagining stovepipe discos are tantamount to vending Jolt Cola at an inquest, rather than typifying the steamy threads of inert scenery, it’s well to tiptoe upon smut so merrily.

          “So, heartily indefinite liaisons can, at times, enrich idiomatic growth, but headlong excursions into these flummeries are beyond the hereafter. In gravid anabasis from requited sites of lurid concavity, we rest abashed on our laurels.” Inevitably, precise canons of assent won their full place in the flush; upon such sotto voce evasions, deemed unconcomitant, were toe–tapping cash excesses coarsely mined, as if unnatural excuses for sympatico were variously end–state plectrums of feasibly incendiary tonalities of disorder.

*        *        *

          Within Thebes, each slumlord felt ill at ease, notwithstanding Arbuthnot’s originally trendy etiquette. Avuncular, yet pertinacious in the promulgation of euphemisms, they regarded his blandishments as wheedlingly paternalistic, and dispensed appropriately sanctimonious aegrotats to bolster their tralatitious privileges of unamerceable meum et tuum.

          Yet it were more piebald franc tireurs and nuncios who comprised a trove of imminent janissaries detached from effusive onanism. Amid contrarian circles, immaturely sheltered in cassocks prior to Arbuthnot’s accession, a foundation of inextirpable peerages (excepting the Erlking, Emmit, or Opal) metastasized aridly.

          Hearkening while folk reminisced upon comparatively domestic bliss, Arbuthnot left his estates with a sense of immeasurable omnipresence. He excoriated the practice of canvassing ditheistic policies against immediate gratification after referendums: as long as it didn’t hurt anyone, there was no point in kowtowing to talentlessly ingratiating self–aggrandizement, though an apropos shibboleth, given rise due to Guelph go–betweens whose furtive mores vexed neither pensive affidavits nor agnostic vetoes, uncertainly flared in unanimous earshot.

          Legerdemain, hitherto pallid and unterraced, now meagerly snubbed the lowest canards for pluperfect kickbacks, which in themselves fast inhibited formerly evasive (if diabolized selfsame) swamis from variegating, at least sub–consciously, antiquarian, ectogenic, dystopic portents used to foment the simple panegyrics of didactic cotswolders negotiating the scale of tillages due vassals expected every Tuesday afternoon.

          A swarm of speed racers emerged as potent lorgnette rational zephyrs, denying rather venial etudes courteously in the nick of time. “What a waste of dingleberries,” the penniless polar bears interjected in airy, frantic trepidation, too excited about twitching wood hives to fantasize that demented, indigenous, enormous, detached foam fingers, stipulated during each board summation, stumbled out “the trifecta gate.”

          Arbuthnot, uptight at tweaking dioramas, ordinarily wore out great lye ormulus whenever such wasps effervesced. The lack of a “perky side effect” also determined elastic stigmas toward beliefs, too thoroughly realized in today’s effusive gymnastic pontifex inception, still held despite all that was once aimless and yet golden.

          One time, he’d upbraided, with sternly contorted exit polls, a rinky dink sasquatch by the tennis court, and drew incomplete snow forts away from defibrillated mannikins, who, by the way, incited a major riot which shook manifold sallies assiduously, and was televised on improvident amalgams of indecent aversion.

*        *        *

          It took a week, of unlatching over–zealous hold–outs from a sad laundry, to stop the onslaught of beguiled yet somewhat bleary misnomers. Likewise, if irrelevant in light of the Susan B. asphalt warts: a serious Heathcliff hangover bent swept past roseate codgers and then destroyed the Philistines’ last need of ideal brand ethos.

          Such dispersions feasibly illuminated a mediocre wingding, where willy–nilly cavitations revolted against quondam off–the–rack. And so it began, one Friday mosque: almost everybody boldly wailed at bygone casuistry, then the clarion calls of Lemaniac invited a knock–off pell mell: “let’s fry the old foul willow gazebo, dilettantes;” here awakens the inkling that this was their omen — batholiths crumbled loudly, preternaturally staved eerie bodhisattvas hopped into the scary antipodes, and flimsy bacchantes surprised cyan atonal vermicules as slyly rural soft shoes revelled in the bohemian beech woods, wearing out early velour anti–art.

          Granted, here was an ulterior moiety of freeze dried kefir: Theda’s match made in heaven. Anon, the usually last unnamed Mikado, submerged from Nissan epicures, and then hereby airlifted amidst embraces, hopped and prodded a Sh’into auction. They wallowed somewhat scurrilously, raked in Zorba’s e–bay toxins, drank them (unusually insipid chloral hydrate), and sneaked around with several rhizopods.

          Almost despotic at any lack of homespun Till Eugenspiegel, the Erlking dribbled a bunch of tall orders at Feet on second thought. Arbuthnot was always the last to know of such things. Feet’s thrall soured over the moon while the Erlking skipped hurriedly around last. Stumbling over an errant ballad, Arbuthnot crashed the last chance finth and squealed too squeamishly as this perverse throwback chained the Erlking. For a second, the air stank with aplomb.

          “Hens love alarm, Arby,” pronounced Father Time from far afield, “and thereupon is fealty gained,” only to break up as distressed clowns ruddily strolled in from the diocese to mask the dark scene. Arbuthnot, with all pomp, babbled on about cheap vehemence, but just as luck would have it, everybody cited pressing engagements and stole away. “Change was the only constant,” they recited.

*        *        *

          Such curs had been the mainstay of his ascension: speciously, at the opening of So Ceremonious an Emergency, for sure to be shareless, daring remedially illegible scorn, he’d announced, “we are pleased that our scantily vague idyll, so soon before our marvelous titfortat, was ruffled for three fortnights at will. Yet we are disappointed in this respect: after caving upon the yonder moon, where captions were shroomy, our only hope for unity lies in sturdily festooned maenads, writhing with lizards of tinsly view, or desultory swatches of uncouth macarena surrogates.

          “Whenever any hang glider, lost in leitmotifs, ere another element went amiss, was, with giant aspirins, rolled into another dimension, it was a lead pipe cinch that you just couldn’t swallow them,” he added.

Circa late June 2008.

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