The Flighty

The Flighty

      

       By Dr. Do Right

                        Wobble on your way to work

                        Wobble also after

                        Wabble after the lake trout

                        Scramble up the rafter

                        Whisper love to rasta girls

                        Snake  oil men and buttons

                        Sniff the lace on the bodice

                        Fill her life with laughter

Take the ego out of it and it’s good. That is, rest on the seventh day. Let them know you need to sleep. We tend to wish to be in charge of not our reception but the direction of the reception. Telling all is typically not in our intentions. Telling as little as possible and making them figure it all out and come to startling discoveries is more what we do. But, resist. Fall on your knees and pray. Ask for forgiveness. Let the Holy One into your heart. Be civil and kind, not masterful. There are plenty of masters. Be strong, instead. Read Nietzsche, and then discover that Chaucer already knew this. “The Pardoner’s Tale” is seen by most senior scholars and their rivals, recent appointees, alike as a tale of corruption. “The great Chaucer,” they say in effect, and in the theses of their most valiant scholarly efforts, “wrote here a lively and entertaining story with this simple theme: ‘the Catholic church in the middle ages was corrupt and the Pardoner was the most dissipate of the dissipate’.” On the contrary, the Pardoner told us all about himself without hesitation. He hid nothing. All ambition, all “goodness,” all university morality is a “hiding.” Now, when He had suffered them patiently, He went out on a boat and spoke to them from the waters. Use restraint when being secretive. Open up yourselves to those who wish to feed on you. Open up yourselves to those who do not wish to feed on you. Nothing good will come of this. Bad is not likely to come, either, except when those who do not wish to feed on you but to keep you from acting say you are bad. Regulate everything without pausing to ask why. Seldom pause to ask why, just let time develop certain habits in you so that your daughters and sons ten generations from now will have your regulations inscribed on their bodies. Never hurry. Only the weak and manipulative hurry. There is no need to race anywhere. Play hockey and darts. Apologize to none. Don’t wrap yourselves in cellophane and wait by the door. Wrap yourselves in cellophane and wait by the door if you wish. Willing is pleasure. Sex is sadness. Never let anyone see your naked behind. Worse things could happen. Recognize the willingness of students to love you. Do not chill out. Seldom dramatize and overdramatize your kindness and your fineness of sentiment to those who necessarily adore you for your position above them. Hug them instead. Take yourselves seriously. Feed the hand that bites you. Bite your hand. Feed yourselves. Bite and feed at will. Whine to get your way if you must. Leave truth to the big hitters. Do not get involved with the melancholic for they suck. That is, they provide no easy means of escape. Relate seriously to none but the ones who, when they are irritated with you, will kill you and that will be your only escape. Make no friends. Friends will revile you and abhor you for their own sakes. Read Lamentations twice each year. Do not open the Book of Revelations. Glue shut the eyes of the Barbie doll your sister got for Christmas all those years ago. If lost in the woods go in circles until you get home. Do not build a quincy if you find yourselves trapped in the woods in winter and night coming on. Lay down in the snow, cover your body with your parka, and sleep peacefully. If you are right with God you will wake comfortable and refreshed in the morning after a good night’s sleep. On a regular basis, strike out into the woods on snowshoes for many hours until you are too exhausted to return, set up a bivouac, start a fire, make a pot of tea, sleep, wake, go another day’s journey further into the wilderness, rest, sleep, drink tea, and do that again until you are too weary and too lost to find your way home. Reread your favorite two or three books each year but do not bother with any others. The educated read little and think much. Refuse to fritter away your time in newspapers, so take your coffee and bread and butter mornings to a location where the paper is not laid out for you to pick up. Wear the clothes to bed in which you worked that day. Change your socks Christmas, Easter, July 1^st, and Labor Day. Do not wear underwear unless you have the need to enhance your profile and improve your stature. Gift your wife to others, as Luther did. Above all, write much, revise little. Your mind always already knows what it wishes to say. Act now.