The Continuing Facebook Feud

Card For The Commonwealth (as published on Facebook)

I wish you a good day people, here’s a card to you all. I took a short vacation from our commune, yet I returned. This in no small part due to some rational guidance and kind words I received from dear friends, and to something I read this morning in a book of intelligent and fair being. In this book, a man, troubled by similar worries as I, spake to another man. The first exclaimed how he be distraught by experiencing the impossibility to stay and proclaim his own ideas in a way that they would be heard and produce results, and that he therefore chose a wandering life, all kept to his own.

So then the other bloke says: “If evil opinions and naughty persuations cannot be utterly and quite plucked out of their hearts, if you cannot even as you would remedy vices which use and custom hath confirmed, yet for all this cause you must not leave and forsake the commonwealth. You must not forsake the ship in a tempest because you cannot rule and keep down the winds.”

And there you have it, folks. I must not forsake this ship.

On the Good Ship Makebelieve

Whether or not this trip was made under the guidance of benign Gods is not for me to say. There was darkness. There does Man.

The wind howled in the rigging fore and aft. The ship was tossing about. Warm was the coke and the TV heavily distorted. The cook got sick, barfing abaft. Some hands lost their minds. Many got lost in the fog. But all the way, our figurehead stood firm and proud, leading us bare-breasted with a smile and a wink.

The journey took us to lands far and near, real and makebelieve, through mist and dreams, rain and typhoons, shite and onions. There we saw meadows in bloom, where brown-eyed cattle stood lazily blinking in the sun. We saw unclothed girlfolk, pure and righteous. They made us lie down in green pastures. Leading, restoring our soul. Priests of perversion they were, giddy gals. They were laughing, playing with purple veils and perilous skateboards.

We climbed over hilltops, laughed hysterically, we asked for forgiveness. We crawled through jungles, oozy, dying of thirst. We met druids, knights, whores and pirates, advertisement salesmen and mariners in various states of intoxication. They gave us riddles, they smote us with confusion. Creepy vines obscured our way. In a clearing, we were attacked by cigar store Indians. So we fought like lionesses, then skulked in the undergrowth till we heard bloodthirsty sirens breaking in shining song.

Scratched and bleeding we stumbled upon some ancient ruins. And some new ones too. Two hundred and sixty five thousand stones. Jubilation, rejuvenation. Yes.

Up

Time crept forward in the cramped, dusky room. The silence was so absolute, you could almost hear the dust draping itself onto the polished faux plywood cabinets. A slight, regular ticking noise came from the corner of the office where the partially dried out leaves of the large potted plant quivered in the airflow that was caused by the blasting radiator. Nobody spoke. Every once in a while though someone’s chair would creek. Søren stirred his coffee as quietly as possible, carefully watching the metallic surface being sucked into the vortex of the liquid. Å, let’s descent into this Mælström… ‘t was the sixth cup of the day already. Søren made a note of that on the appropriate form.

He saw Mette winking at him from across the room. Mette had greasy hair that looked good on her. She also had greasy spectacles and vermillion sneakers. They had gone out one time. He had made a fool of himself. ”The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved,” he thought as he looked at the wall. The 2 o’clock shadow fell just above the one from a week earlier. Søren made a mark of it in pencil. Connecting the dots and... voilà! There you go… Heliocentrism? Not in here mate! I’m the son of modern observational astronomy, Søren thought, but a bad son.

A big pile of documents, stapled together in bundles of four or five sheets, lay on one end of his desk. Søren took one of the bundles and with an experienced flick of his crimson destapler he took out the staples which he then placed in a transparent plastic receptacle. The paper was chucked into a grey plastic bin. After every 20^th staple he made a note of it on his report chart. When he was done, he sighed. Almost a record for this week. Well done Nosferatu my trusty old tool, he thought and glanced over to Mette to see if his enthusiasm hadn’t been too obvious and flamboyant and might have produced what could be considered unnecessary sounds.

The rest of the afternoon was occupied by doing this month’s add & subtractions, the checking of customers’ telephone numbers, to establish a pattern and the Leprechaun file. It was hot in here... Mette’s lips were red and shiny. She had a little golden crucifix dangling on her bosom. And yet it moves... Søren pondered on this for some time. He must have dosed off. The writing was on his forehead: Y T R Ǝ W Ơ Ѭ ҉.

Søren picked up the phone and called the time service. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he always did before putting the phone down. He made a note of the time on his form and got up.