Saturday, March 9, 2013

Otis' Dream, parts 1310 - 1313



1310. You could avoid these sorts of problems in the stories you tell if you would just employ some useful qualifiers. For example, you could say, "Otis had a dream something like this", or you could begin with "Perhaps he dreamed a dream..."  If you would be indistinct in that way you could avoid trouble making literary critics like myself pouncing on you and finding fault with your narrative.


1311. "Perhaps is a word I despise," said the Duck with almost angry conviction. "And you will never hear  me use the words 'something like', when in the process of narrating a factual history. I will not soil my scientific narrative with weak-kneed qualifiers of use only to political commentators looking to hedge their hedged bets in advance just so as to avoid angry letters to the editor.

1312. One does not say 'perhaps two times two is four', one does not say the earth is round 'as far as I can tell.' That is all the talk of cowards. Your mistake Buboni, is persisting in thinking Otis is some piece of fiction, when he is not. Let me tell you this. Somewhere in China right this very instant, there is a carpenter who is drinking a cup of cold water, and thinking about a birdcage he saw once as a child.


1313. You will never see the carpenter who is drinking the water, you will never know anything about his birdcage, but a thousand years from now that drink of cold water will still have happened, and in a sense still exists. Nothing can ever turn it into fiction or a figment of someones imagination. It happened, so therefore it will always have happened. Unfortunately, it is only death that ever makes us fully cognizant of this simple fact. Death, which makes us finally appreciate every tiny  thing.

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