Tristram Shandy. Chapter One.

 

In his foreword to the Modern Library Book edition of Tristram Shandy, Bergen Evans writes "The best of Sterne's humor -- and it is very great -- lies in the antithesis of his characters, in the absurdity of their preoccupations, the ludicrousness of their incongruity, and the pathos of their inability to communicate with each other.  Each illuminates the other's loneliness, the 'salt, unplumbed, estranging sea' that isolates us all."

"He has no superior in the art of presenting the minutiae of daily intercourse, of dramatizing the passing moment, and capturing the nuances of feeling that lend depth and shadow to our small talk."

I have always seen the world as ludicrous and incongruous. As ripe for drollery. And I have read Laurence Sterne's great comic novel twice already. Once on a long bus ride from Arkansas to North Dakota after being red-lighted from the Tarzan Zerbini Shrine Circus. The second time when I was a house husband in Wichita Kansas while Amy taught school -- it was something to do during those long sweltering summer afternoons while Madelaine and Adam were napping.

It seems that I am fated, no matter how hard I try to shanghai the limelight, to remain caught in the web of the 'minutiae of daily intercourse' for the remaining duration of my restless existence. I am in no danger of being hounded by the paparazzi.

 Amy will be working long hours at H & R Block as a tax preparer until the end of April, and so I am left to my own devices. And I prefer those devices to be the humorous written word.

My plan, if you can call such a nebulous conception a plan, is to read one chapter of Tristram Shandy each day, and then put down my thoughts about what I've read and what memories and whimsies it brings to the surface (like pond scum mayhap.) 

So this will be my daily journal, diary, confessional, soapbox . . . what have you.  At least until Amy is done for the 2023 tax season.  And then I foresee a trip and a very long stay at a farm in Idaho.

I will be sending only the link to my daily dispatches, so the recipient may remain blithely unaware of my deep (but narrow) thoughts if they so wish.

As Ben Johnson says in the 1973 John Wayne movie "The Train Robbers," 'Well, it's something to do . . . '

 

Chapter One.

Begins with the begetting of Tristram. Although just how he knows the exact details of the episode is left obscure. He tells the reader he wishes his conception had been under better circumstances. Because he believes how and when and why a man is conceived stamps him with an iron and irrevocable horoscope for the rest of his life.

As the son of a bartender, born into the lower middle class, it seems only natural to me that I was fated to become an itinerant gypsy and drunkard, as well as a subpar father and husband. Even though the Gospel pulled me up beyond myself, it took a long time before I could sustain myself in that airy purview. And the struggle still continues today.

"Pray, my dear, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?" 

This inopportune question by Tristram's mother during his conception is what blights our hero's prospects forever. 

I wonder if my mother asked my father if he had gotten new batteries for the clock radio? 

Prose Poem: Tim Carman and the Relish.

 

So I invented this relish, see?

I mean that I put together

certain ingredients in a certain

way that makes them stay

fresh in the fridge for a long time.

And it's a cheap food, but very

nutritious. And easy to make.

So I wanted to tell someone

about it.

Because I think it's just as

important as the invention of

mumbo sauce or the rise in

shrimp chips consumption

in the United States.

But the only food reporter

I could get to respond to my

emails was Tim Carman of

the Washington Post.

He was polite

but noncommittal.

"Please send me the complete

list of ingredients" he wrote,

"and I may be able to do something."

I hesitated, because what if he

simply stole the recipe for

my universal relish --

I could prove nothing in court.

But then I decided that perfect trust

casteth out all guile.

A week later he emailed:

"I tried your so-called universal

relish recipe. You have simply

re-invented chow-chow."

Crushed, I went to the fridge

and dumped all my universal

relish down the sink. 

Then went out to shovel snow

onto my neighbors driveway. 

Afterwards a thought hit me,

so I emailed Carman back:

"Did you remember to grate

the cucumber?"

Two days later he responded:

"Apologies. I remade your universal

relish with grated cucumber and

it is a world-beater. Congratulations."

Don't you love a guy who keeps an

open mind?

I felt so good I immediately went

out to sprinkle ground glass on

my neighbor's sidewalk.

 

**********************************

Tim Carman's Twitter response:

This is a first. The great Tim Torkildson, the man who brings joy to journalists everywhere, has turned me into a hard-nosed chow-chow reporter.

Prose Poem: The Courage of Kathleen Pender.

 

When I told my mother I wanted to be

a circus clown

she didn't bother to nag me.

She just shook her head

and silently walked away.

That was a crushing moment

in my teenage life.

So I became a janitor instead.

 

Until, that is, I met Kathleen Pender.

National security won't let me

tell you how I met her

or why she was interviewing me

for the San Francisco Chronicle.

All I can say is that her courage

in the face of daunting odds at

the time made it a bedoozling

day for me. 

 

Afterwards I summoned up

the gumption to quit my

janitor position.

After I applied to the 

Culpepper & Merriwether Circus

for a position as apprentice

clown and been accepted.

 

Now I make balloon animals

and sell coloring books during

intermission. I clean up

after the camels. And

water the flamingos. 

 

Turns out I'm allergic

to cotton candy.

And miss the smell of 

carnauba wax . . . 

 

Still, the example of

Ms. Pender's spunk keeps 

me going.

She told me that finding

your bless came after

much suffering. 

And I still have all that stuff

I took out of Colin Powell's

wastebasket -- which will

fetch a pretty penny

on the open market

I should think.

Verses for Nurses. Thursday, Feb. 16. 2023

 

Russian soldiers on the lam

mailed  their boss an aerogram.

"Dearest Putin, we resign --

with your crimes we won't align.

Take your ego-driven dream

and stick it where the sun don't beam!"

 

 

 

quarters for laundry

or for frozen chicken hearts --

the end of the month.

 I'm into saving money;

it's easier than pie.

Dog and cat food portions

can really satisfy.

The money that I'm saving

goes into T-bills, natch.

So what if I am homeless?

I'll just put up more thatch.

Prose Poem: Bret Stephens, the onlie begetter.

 

 

I took a night class from Bret Stephens.

About Shakespeare.

The first night I asked belligerently:

"What do you know about Shakespeare?"

"Not as much as I should" he replied frankly.

Which response won my heart. 

He continued:

"I'm actually a newspaperman."

The class gasped in Unison. Which

is an unincorporated village in Loudon

County, Virginia.

"The first thing we do, let's

kill all the reporters" said

a horse-faced girl next to me.

The class laughed nervously.

But Stephens didn't miss a beat.

"Buzz off" he explained kindly.

After that we settled down to

study the character of Falstaff.

"Who wants to explain why Falstaff

still fascinates us today?" he asked

the class.

We looked down at our desks

and shuffled papers. 

Nobody knew who Falstaff was.

I didn't. The horse-faced girl didn't.

Mr. Stephens didn't, either, I gather,

because he looked real disappointed

when nobody answered him.

"Okay, then" he said sullenly.

"Let's move on to global warming."

"What about Shakespeare, prof?"

asked a boy in a red cardigan.

"Drive that blasted cardigan out

of here!" Mr. Stephens yelled at him.

"It's a gas guzzler."

The bell rang just then,

so we gathered up our vellum

and quills.

But Mr. Stephens held up his hand.

"Before you leave" he said earnestly, 

 "I have just been informed that the Lemp

Brewery made Falstaff Beer for over a 

hundred years. That is all."

No wonder the guy won

a Pulitzer.

 

 

Prose Poem: Jared Goyette and the Dandruff Machine.

 

 

when people are television 

personalities

strange things happen to them.

 

take the case of Jared Goyette.

a noted celebrity on Fox 9.

he grew up on the wrong side

of the trucks

almost getting run over.

his parents were poor

but avaricious.

they sold their dandruff

to medical schools

to pay for Jared's 

education at Brown

Institute of Broadcasting.

 

once he became a star

Jared bought his parents

a home in Bemidji.

He also bought back

all their dandruff

and had it sprinkled

around their house one

dry winter to simulate

a snow storm.

 

but what i meant to tell

you about was the time

he lost his car keys and

had to walk home.

 

on the way he met a small

man wearing a red belt.

the small man asked him

for money to buy a crumpet.

 

Mr. Goyette gave the little

man with the red belt some

magic beans instead.

but the small man 

turned out to be 

the fox 9 station owner.

and he suspended Goyette

for egregious stinginess.

without pay. for six weeks.

 

if you don't believe my

story you can always

go read a book by

Deepti Kapoor.

 

***********************************

Mr. Goyette's email reply to the above poem:

"Amazingly nothing to do with me but still funny."

 

 

 

Prose Poem: A Baton for Amy Argetsinger.

 

the cost of a baton is outrageous.

they used to cost a dime,

back in the days when balsa wood

was still used as currency and

leprechauns hadn't traded in

their pots of gold for

cybercurrency.

 

just out of curiosity 

i stopped by the baton shop

the other day.

a basic no-frills baton

is now going to set you

back a cool one thousand

dollars.

if you want a fancy model

you can talk to the dealer 

about financing a loan.

 

so you can imagine why

Amy Argetsinger,

who likes to write crusading

pieces for the Washington

Post, got involved in the

scandal.

 

she's uncovered a lot of

good old boy connections

that artificially inflate

the price of batons --

most of which, 

by the way,

are made by children

in Bangladesh.

 

all my sisters had batons.

the good ones, from France.

they didn't cost an arm

and a leg back then.

so i'm glad Ms. Argetsinger

is finally getting to the bottom

of the baton cartel's scheme.

i wish her well.

i hope she's not bumped off

in the middle of the night

by some gunsel.

 

i'd send her a donation

to help her crusade

but i just bought a dozen

eggs

and had to get a 

second mortgage 

on the house. 

Prose Poem: Mitt Romney Goes to the Library.

 

We never meant it to get out of hand.

We were a peaceful group.

A think tank, leaning to the right.

Academic and committed to the core

to scholarship.

What happened is a sunspot

on a dirty winter day.

 

It started when we read that

Mitt Romney had a nanny

take his kids to the library.

He never went himself.

We were outraged.

Flummoxed, really.

This seemed to us

the shipwreck of sound

parenting.

 

So we started an online petition.

To invite Mitt Romney to visit

the Seattle Central Library.

It's a beautiful place.

 

Well, our online petition

got out of hand,

as these things do;

and suddenly it morphed

into a referendum

to recall Mitt Romney

from the Senate.

 

Suddenly our petition

received tens of thousands

of digital signatures.

 

Things looked bad for Mitt.

Until he sensibly went to 

Seattle and spent a day

inside the library.

Reading to Ukrainian orphans.

The ruckus died down immediately.

 

But some members of our think tank

liked the taste of cyber blood.

So to speak.

Now they regularly create online

petitions to remove everyone

and their cat from office.

We are having a board meeting

this weekend.

And if the board does not put the

kibosh on this horrible trend,

I, for one, am resigning,

and returning to my teaching position

at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, 

Maine. 

Prose Poem: Happy John Schwartz Day!

 

John Schwartz Day is coming up again.

Real soon.

Tomorrow, actually.

So you better buy your sweetheart

a box of candy.

Or get some flowers.

A dozen bottle rockets would be nice.

Just get something for the one you

love.

After all, John Schwartz gave his

life so lovers could keep loving.

At least that's the story they

used to teach us in grade school.

See, there was this scribe named

John Schwartz back in the medieval 

times. Back when newspapers

were real, along with dragons

and unicorns.

One day Schwartz comes upon

a pair of young lovers weeping.

"Why weepest thou, young lovers?"

he asks them.

"Our parents forbid us to wed!"

they cry in unison.

"Well, I can fix that. I'm a big shot

scribe!" he assures them.

So Schwartz girds up his loins

and goes to see the parents.

But they have never heard of him.

They only ever watch Fox News.

So they chop off his head.

And now every year on February 14th

we commemorate John Schwartz's

heroic deed and senseless death

by exchanging gifts with our lovers.

And hanging Rupert Murdoch in 

effigy.

 

Prose Poem: The Adventures of Joe Palazzolo.

 

Now I'm not saying anything of this

is true.

And I'm not saying any of it is made up.

I'm just saying that in a world of 

infinite possibilities

some of this might just have happened.

And it might just as well have happened

to Joe Palazzolo as to anyone else.

 

Joe's a reporter. A damn fine one.

He works for the Wall Street Journal.

Well, one day a man comes into his

office . . . 

No. No; Joe doesn't work in an office anymore.

Hardly anybody does. Everyone

works from home.

So . . . let's see . . . 

Okay. Got it.

One day at his home

while tuning his accordion

Joe looks out the window

and spots a man

carrying a green pony

on his back.

Being a reporter,

this naturally incites Joe's

curiosity.

 So he puts on his reporter

trench coat

and follows the guy

at a discreet distance.  

 

This man that Joe is following

goes down a dark alley

to climb up a fire escape ladder.

And into a third story window.

Joe waits a minute, then follows

him up and in.

This is a terrible mistake on Joe's part.

When Joe recovers consciousness

he finds himself in a dingy room,

with the green pony staring

malevolently at him. Joe is

tied to chair.

"What's this all about?" Joe asks.

"Wouldn't you like to know" sneers the pony.

"Yes I would. I'm a reporter for the 

Wall Street Journal" Joe replies steadily.

This seems to upset the green pony.

It backs away from Joe, muttering:

"This wasn't part of the operation."

"I better contact headquarters."

 

The green pony bolts out of the room.

 Left alone, Joe manages

to gnaw through the rope tying his hands

and escapes.

 

Back home Sergeant Muldoon

from the police is waiting for him:

"Did you happen to see a green

pony or a man carrying a green

pony pass by this way?" he demands 

of Joe.

"Wouldn't you like to know" sneers Joe.

"Well, okay -- I was just asking. You

don't hafta bite my head off" says

Sergeant Muldoon, close to tears.

"Don't worry, Sergeant" says Joe

in a soothing manner.

"You can read all about it

in tomorrow's print edition."

"Gee, thanks, Mr. Palazzolo.

You're a swell guy!" And the

Sergeant bolts out of the house.

Happy as ham and eggs on Texas toast.

 

 

*************************************

haiku:

so who owns the clouds?

not federal property --

some guy in Dubuque?