Category: story

The blunders of man will end with me.

Oh the frivelous little things you say, darling, you simply must write them down! Write, write, write away my little turtle tart.

I am a conceited tart! A conceited tart!

Oh you do worry so, oh you simply do worry so. Don’t worry! Why worry?

A conceited tart I say, woman!

Woman? Oh my, don’t talk dirty.

A conceited tart, that looks a treat but turns to sourdust in the mouths of anyone but the tart.

A tart with a mouth? Well I’d gobble myself up.

Yes that’s precisely the point! I’d gobble myself up into oblivion! Oblivion. Where I will drown in my own seed.

Oh you do talk salaciously when I’m trying to gather up your self confience. Quite salacious.

Far from salacious, it will be a catastrophe of megalomanic proportions.

Such words, such interesting use of phrase, you belong on the stage!

No the stage will be my undoing. You think me a mess now, wait until I hear an audience groan when I step on stage. It will unwind me, my spool will runeth over.

Okay, so why won’t you write. You shan’t have to show it to a soul.

I have learned no lessons in my life, all the great writers in the world come with divine writing forged in the fiery torments of strife.

Now that’s a bit too wordy but you could always get an editor for a second opinion of your writing.

I know writers who won’t show anyone a thing and you only know they’re writers because you see them on the blue bird complaining of the block.

On the blue bird? Such fanciful phrasing.

Stop complementing me! Stop it! I can’t bare it! I’m a frivelous little man with frivelously little to say.

You seem to be dreadfully afraid of yourself, of becoming a sort of narccisus. I don’t see that in you at all.

Ah no, but In my mind, I see thoughts that compare, that judge, that raise myself above so many.

That can’t be true. You belittle youself too much out loud. It can even get a little embarassing.

Ah, it’s manipulation! I preempt any criticism! To be my own worst critic is my only respite.

Sorry I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation about about sub-Saharan African aquatic mammals. Did you know hippopotamuses communicate through snorts and grunts? It’s true! These snorts and grunts cause subtle vibrations in the water. Other hippos can tell who’s snorting this and who’s grunting that by inhaling the bubbles that are in the minute water vibrations. The gas reaches their tongue and the taste determines the sender. Hippos can taste another hippopotamus from a mile off! This wine tastes great, doesn’t it? In fact, their sophisticated taste makes hippos perfect sommeliers. Who said they can’t tell a merlot from a pinot noir?

I knew a hippo sommelier, they were a terrible drunk and they would only spit out the wine at people’s faces. But a hippo sommelier was such a curiosity that they got away with such awful manners. I think they chose this evenings wine selection…

Oh you have to make a call? Take care, and if you see that hippo tell them the wine tastes rather dry with this fish. If there’s wine on their chin, be on guard for a spit!

My husband abandoned me and became a monk.

These monks didn’t believe in the idea of an inherent self, a witness behind the thoughts. This belief led them to drop their names, labels and all identities they once assumed. They had trouble organising themselves and soon couldn’t tell each other apart. When I called even the monastery didn’t know if he was still there or not because he had no name and no traits.

After a while, I became lonely and joined the nameless order as a nun to find my husband. I never found him. I abandoned everything searching; my name, my gender, my nationality, my beliefs, my hair, my possessions. I became no one in search of another no one. I thought even though all the monastics had adopted the same appearance, the same mannerisms, the same plastered expression of peace that I would still be able to recognise my husband.

I realised that I could pick any one of the nameless and make them my husband for they had dropped their memories just like everything else. If there was no self, who did the memories held belong to? No one. So they let them go as, eventually, did I in an act of voluntary dementia. I saw that these memories I had were not my own. I never had a husband, he never had a wife, I never had myself and he never had himself. The body and mind that was once “mine” drifted in the ocean of nameless monastics. Just an experience of awareness that had shed everything.