Two Holiday Parables to End a Split Personality Year
Randy Ray
2006-12-21
Peaches En Randalia #10 Well…time has a way of clarifying many imagined fixed points in space.
- quote on my illusionary homemade T-shirt while sitting in the prison cell of my mind The Yummiest Yummer in Yummerland Once upon a time, there was a man who couldn’t seem to do anything right. Always picked on. Always. The people of Yummerland where he lived teased him. Daily. He just didn’t have the ability to please. Couldn’t give them what they wanted. He decided to continue to try to make people happy. He ran in the rain. Jumped into piles of leaves. Laughed out loud at his own jokes. Swung from tree branches onto the back of a large horse, which would let him ride from sunup to sundown. Bathed in muddy water, drank warm wine, ate cold food, slept during the day, woke up in the middle of the night to tell stories to the flies buzzing inside his cave.
This Yummer was content that one soul pursuing a course without direction could produce results unknown and satisfying. One day, he grew discouraged after years of persecution and threw all of his clothes in a field, ran home, and cried in frustration. He fell asleep. Woke up and decided to go for yet another walk, another chance to make good in his village. He walked alone. Yes, he did. Always. One day, he walked alone like so many other days before him. Got up from the sand where he had constructed a castle meant to fall as no empire lasts forever—the sea washes away all activity, yielding her own formula, intelligence, creativity, love for diverse life. He walked alone. Took a path without prints.
Away from the dirt road, he saw an old man under a tree. “Oh, my stars,” he thought.
The king of the village sat quietly. Under a tree. An old man. Away from the dirt road. Oh, my stars…the village sat quietly, and so did he. “Welcome,” said the king. “Am I?” asked the Yummer. “Indeed,” replied the king.
“I have failed in all of my tasks,” he complained to the king. “I am usually attempting something in depressed solitude, but I don’t know what. I seek the Holy Grail which holds the liquid called ‘peaceful-loose-free-time less-imagination’. No one will join me in my quest. They think I’m a lost cause. Have I failed?” “You want to help, is that it?” “I think so. Everyone laughs at me. Ignores my examples. Doubts our fate.” “You’re the town songsmith, correct?” “Right. I’m a musician. I see. I feel. I play.” The king remained quiet for a time, looked to the heavens, closed his eyes, opened them again, and smiled before rising from his seated position where a coat lay. Without the coat, the king would have a wet backside, as the ground was still damp from a prior rainstorm.
The coat belonged to the lowly Yummer standing in front of the king. The musician betrayed sheepishness with a blush. The king sipped bemusement with a burp. The coat remained dry. “Do you understand, my friend? I found this garment during my daily walk earlier. I veered off the path into undiscovered land and thought of all the great things our village could accomplish. I pondered the shortcomings of my people. Chewed on your work. Tasty, yet incomplete. They need something to wrap around the childishly endearing, but thin frame. Came upon a coat on the ground. Apparently, some time in the not so distant past, you cried, tore off your clothes and ran home, probably to weep a little more. The coat here? If you hadn’t tossed it aside after your brief struggle, would I be able to sit here with a dry rump?” “I understand.” “You have chosen the path without a map. I knight and give thee the title of The Yummiest Yummer in Yummerland.” With that, the king gave him the cup that produces the Holy Black-On-White. “Go forth, and continue to help in the way best suited to your skills. Observe, ponder and document the elusive echo of epiphany.” And he did. The Yummiest Yummer in Yummerland never again doubted his purpose, and the village respected that which was decreed by their king.
DISCOMBOBULATER: Episode One and a Half “A Fly on the Wall Cannot Travel Without Wings”
“Everything they say I did is true, and
everything they say I didn’t do is false.”
-stranger in the cell’s corner
You must die.
Why? There is no place on our planet for such ideas. That could change. I could help. Your flight is not only in question. What is also on trial is the fact that you could be lying. I ask again: Why would I make this up? Why, indeed? Let’s cover all of our ‘bases’ here, using your own vernacular. You say that you left this planet (which is a very serious crime, let me remind you), and went out in pursuit of beings (another no-no) in another galaxy (plausible, but doubtful) and now you ask me to believe that you also not only visited another galaxy, but that it was in another universe next to ours? That’s right. The universe that contains the Milky Way Galaxy is connected by a black hole, which joins our two interstellar bodies like a tunnel. Space sex, in a way. Impossible. Not exactly. Treason. Because I sought that which is foreign? Incomprehensible? The Great Unknown?
Randy Ray stores his work at www.rmrcompany.blogspot.com.
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