Hello,
my sweet studnuts, so nice to sort of see you again. Now, perhaps you are
curious about the case of Pepto-Brennan ™ I have just set on my desk? Yes,
little OperaKait with a miniature tape worm recorder at the back of the room, I
know you always look puzzled -- I think that’s because you are not supposed to
be in high school yet, but I begin to digress already. Well, my legitimately
enrolled studnuts (hoping just one of you is, indeed, legitimate), I do hope
that drinking my Pepto-Brennan will enable me to see you more clearly as I have
a terrible hangup after eating all my left over Halloween candies. For some
wicked reason, only two tricky treaters came to my abode, and when they saw me
dressed up as Celine Dion they ran away, screaming in High C. Leaving me with
all that dark Belgian chocolate! Well, waste not, want not, as Mother
Superioriosa always says, and so I ate it all last night. And dreamt of
Brussels sprouting in the Spring. But I just know I shall feel much better
after a bit of imbibing.
[imbibes]
Now,
classh, we are here to expunge upon one of the poetic creations of our dear
Roma, who gave away all of her chocolate to Enya, who came to her door dressed
as Madonna. Well, all those women singers with just one name do tend to look
alike in the dark of a Dublin night. But I digress once more, and we shall
obliterate all thoughts of candy to indulge instead on the sweetness of words.
Well,
dear Roma has brought forth unto us a seasonal poem, which she has called, for
reasons I hope to make perfectly clear, “Christmas Secrets.” And this shall be
our text du jour, and I want you all to now open your texts to 25/12. What,
Miss Hap? Your text was eaten by your pet reindeer? Well I happen to have an
extra text which you may borrow; do note that it is prescribed by Roma herself,
with the immoral words: “To Windy, thanks for all that hot air, Roma.”
First,
it is very important to impound upon you our fuzzy logic approach to “Christmas
Secrets” so that it will not be a secret at all. We shall use the “Seven W”
approach, meaning that I shall endeavour to have you answer these questions:
Where?
When?
Who?
What?
Why?
And,
of course:
Will
there be a test on this?
As
well as
Whatever
happened to Dubya anyway?
Now,
I should warn you, before we plunge into advanced exegesis, that this poem
works on many, many levels, perhaps even 500 layers of levels. This is not a
transparented poem; no, it is the child of one person with more riddles than a
contest at Unity, the bar where we all meet after school to recover from you
guys – er, from our lengthy school day. But no more about that, Brother
Abstemius is teaching right (or wrong) next door, and would not be amused – he
much prefers Mosh Pits, who is not related to Brad Pits. And he is not very
jolie, even at Christmas.
Lettuce
now beguin at the beguining, with a light foot who is not Gordon:
Aha!
Roma runs blissfully into her song with a thud, er, with “where” AND
“when” – how unlike her to be so helpful right off the old bat. Where and when
are we, Miss Chiff? Yes, you are absolutionly right: we are outdoors in winter,
which tells us right away that our poetic persona is either crazy or a
Canadian, or perhaps both. But better to be under the winter sky than over it,
in the vacuum of space, where no one can hear your ears fall off.
A
distant train sings out the miles
There,
in the far realms of our wintry whirled, a train is singing! “Now, weather
trains sing you may not have ever thunk / but they do when it’s 40 below and
the rails are brittle and clunk.” That was a wee poem, studnuts, Roma so
perspires me. Master Card, why are you groaning? Do you need to leave the room?
I did think that eating that egg vegemite sandwich was not a good thing.
But
wait! Roma tells us what the little, wintry, cold, quite frozen train is
actually singing: train miles! Train miles that can be saved for a free trip to
Saskatoon! Can you hear its voice going “one more mile/ let me make it one
more mile/ until I run into your smile/ for awhile/”? No, Miss Rhine, I am
not writing in Loxian – in Loxian that last “awhile” would be \\/^^v/\\, as you
probably should know; I’ve seen you taking after school lesions with Sister
Multilingua.
And
so we know that the persona of the poem, standing outside, freezing his or her
bippies off, can hear a train singing bravely about frequent trainer miles (or
kilometers for y’all foreigners). What more does Roma have in store? Hark:
Yes,
classh, our persona ingrata does not know what the train that sings underneath
the winter sky is really doing! S/he is thus tossed into the pond of
wonderment, hopefully wearing ice skates or a survival suit like the one Miss
Begotten is now modelling for us for some totally inexplicated reason.
Now,
note carefully, Miss Taken, that Roma writes “can it be” – this is a most
clever segue and illusion to her immoral song “May It Be,” as anyone who is
anywhere is able to see. “Can it be a distant train sings out under the
sky?/ Can it be that distant train has not a reason why?/ It rides those frozen
rails / until its bearings fail.” A brilliant tour de force!
And
to preclude the first stanza, Roma then gives us:
Will
every mile bring you to me?
And
so the last line of the first stanza ends with a deep metaphysical query: will
the miles, after listening to the plaintiff voice of the little train that
could, finally bring “you” to “me”? But who is “you” and who is “me”? Yes,
little OperaKait, “me” is indeed the persona of the poem, the voice that sings
along with her train of thought. But who is “you”? No, dear, you are still not
the walrus, but do Try Again!
Enigmatic,
no? Our poetic persona is thinking about someone who is not there, who is
riding the miles, maybe on a train, in the dread cold of winter in Saskatchewan!
Now who could that possibly be?
Roma
now confounds us further with:
The
Promise! Yes, Roma here makes one of her leather patented “obscurae
referationes” to a melody composed by her good friend Enya some time ago, when,
we think, it wasn’t winter in Canada for a change – which means in the time
frame of July 15 – August 10.
Be
all that as it may it be, we now know that our persona holds in her left
ventricle a promise that she hopes will still come true. What, you ask, could
that promise have been? Warmer weather? A trip to Southern Ontario? Trains with
perfect pitch? So many questions, so few answers.
But
let us snow-shoe onwards:
So
I am waiting here for you
Yes,
dear studnuts, we already know that from the opening stanza – clearly
the cold weather has frozen her left frontal lobe. Or maybe not: could it be
that Roma here teases us, as she is wont to do, with the literary advice of
“repetitio obviosa”? She must have been a teacher once, I think, but that was
before she found her true calling as a mooning shepherd with a unique watermark
who loved a day without rain as much as the Celts of old, who had fondled their
memory of trees as they painted the sky with stars, singing “love is love is
love”. Please do not confuse this with “all you need is love” by Mr.
Lenin, Miss Herd.
As
so, our persona remains waiting, waiting patiently, but alas with a twinge of
concern, or maybe it’s just neuralgia:
May
it be that the person for whom she yearns is not actually going to come at all?
Ah, the cruelty of Life, the injustice of the Universe, the uncertainty
Principal, Mother Superoriosa, oops – where did that come from? Sorry, I shall
emulate the little singing train and get back on track.
If
the person for whom she waits is busy travelling the backwoods of Outer Loxia
(aka Saskatchewan), and hence not coming at all, what will our poetic persona
do? Stay there and freeze her right frontal lobe as well? Move to Manitoba?
Visit Viagra Falls? How wide are the possibilities with Roma at the wheel,
robbing the dickens out of us, wouldn’t you say so, classh?
Ah,
but then we come to the occluding line of this stanza:
Now
we see, truly and clearly see for the very first time, that our enigmatic
persona has SECRETS. I believe it was the geek philosopher Harry Stotle
who once wrote: “there are secrets in this Universe that are priceless, for
everything else, there’s MasterCard.” I think he never got a Visa to visit
Canada though, nor did he meet our Master Card – pity, eh?
Now
think about it, classh: we all have secrets; yes, even you, OperaKait. And, to
release the trauma of keeping our secrets, to obtain what Harry Stotle called
“Cathartics,” we all need to spill our beans! When we keep our beans backed up
inside, we may explode and add to global swarming, which is something Sister
Acidia Reign teaches you about in her climaxtology course.
To
summary up so far, I must read you my latest ode, inspired by Roma:
When
keeping secrets yet to be told
avoid
standing out in the winter’s cold
even
though trains are singing near
you’ll
just end up with a frozen rear.
Well,
we must now place our frozen noses firmly on the grindstone of even higher
education by side tracking whoever is stuck on a singing train somewhere
between Winterpeg and YellowedKnife. For our persona now begins to hear
something else besides singing trains, as her blood begins to thicken in the
–40 C weather:
Bells, she hears bells! How the
words of the immoral Edgar Allan Moe now resound in my echoing head:
A
paean from the bells!
And
his merry bosom swells
With
the paean of the bells!
And
he dances, and he yells;
Keeping
time, time, time,
In
a sort of Runic rhyme,
To
the paean of the bells
Of
the bells:
Keeping
time, time, time,
In
a sort of Runic rhyme,
To
the throbbing of the bells
Of
the bells, bells, bells
To
the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping
time, time, time,
As
he knells, knells, knells,
In
a happy Runic rhyme,
To
the rolling of the bells
Of
the bells, bells, bells:
To
the tolling of the bells,
Of
the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells,
bells, bells
To
the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
But
I digress….
Ah,
yes, Master Works, Roma’s bells are CHRISTMAS bells that our lonely
persona hears as hallucinations born of frigidity begin. And they are not just
moaning and groaning, as if in the embrace of a young, hot-blooded, er….but I
do not wish to digress again. No, they are wringing out their CHIMES, which
must have gotten very, very dirty from all that awful coal-fired steam our
little engine that maybe might has put out. And we all know that sooty bells
are unhappy bells, awaiting the Tide that shall make them sparkle like new once
again.
But,
aha! There is more to come – otherwise the poem would end here on an unresolved
note, a B-flat most likely, although Roma has been known to hit some High Seas
at times, isn’t that so, Miss Rhine?
I
hear them echo through the miles
So,
our Lady of Perpetual Frost Bite, here speaking in the First Person
Singularity, now hears the bells echoing through the miles – thus her hearing
is not yet impaired by the cold – what a sturdy Canuck she must be! But DO
bells echo, one may ask, ask, ask, ask , ask…. Apparently they do, do, do, do,
as Brother Vacuum found out when he climbed to the top of a leaning tower of
pizza to drop a bell. It echoed all the way down, until it came to rest upon
the head of a tourist from abroad, probably from a Broadway. I suppose she was
fleeing New York City in anticipation of massive riots at the NBC store as
certain fans rush to get their 50,000 items autographed by one very astonished
woman. Who shall need more pens, pens, pens, pens….
Roma
then offers up:
A
familiar theme now reasserts itself, as the “moon” – symbolizing a chunk of
rock orbiting a planet – comes into our picture. Do you remember, Miss
Apprehension, all those mooning shepherds? Bet THAT wasn’t done in the depth of
a Canadian Winter! And did we ever find out who it was that the Moon loved? Ah,
Roma, you are such a tease!
Yes,
our Roma adores the Moon– in her bright, clear-skied homeland she oft sees it
beaming down Scotty. As well as shining upon the roads – a good thing, as my
friend Martha might say, given the obvious lack of street lights way out in the
middle of Nowhere, Canada.
Thus
our persona beholds the light of the Moon, but she beholds even more, for this
moonlight shines upon the road
And
trembles on the falling snow
Now
we must ask why the moonlight is trembling on the falling snow. Is it
trembling because it has just lost its poetic license? Do any of you know how
much it costs to replace a poetic license? I thought nought.
In
any event or case, we do learn one impotent additional factoid here: our
persona is standing out in the Middle of Nowhere, Canada, in a bloody blizzard!
I imagine she desperately wishes that a Tim Hortons was nearby so she could get
a double-double with a triple fudge. So sad, isn’t it, Mister Woof?
Perhaps
the moonlight trembles not because snow is falling, but rather because
it knows that this poor persona will soon be buried in snow and carried off by
a snow plough, to be deposited in some vacant lot at the End of the Universe.
Well, at least there’s a restaurant there.
So
we must now leave our persona in extremis – that is, Miss Rhine, in a terrible
place at a horrible time. We must wait for her story to reach its predestined
end. Only then can we prognosticate the deep, insightful, and universal lesion
that Roma is here departing unto us.
There
she stands, looking up at the sky at midnight, as if told to do so by an
oracle! Her skin freezes and turns a brighter shade of blue, perhaps even
Caribbean Blue – now on sale, at 50% off, on OyVey, the Internet Filene’s
Basement site. Where I am in my Habit of Shopping, given the peanuts I am paid
here, but I digress. So, we now ask, what does our fast frozen persona
experience at this momentous moment?
Yes,
Miss Understood, you are indeed correct: our persona has an epiphany!
Now, what exactly IS an epiphany, you ask, classh? First, here are the
possibilities that must have marathoned through our beloved Roma’s head while
she was really smoking:
1/
Ephipany: A Christian feast celibating the manifestation of the divine
nature of Jesus to those sweet Gentles as represented by the Magi, when they
were smoking too;
2/
January the sixth: the day on which this Epiphany epiphanates, and in
the month of our Roma’s birth as well – what an astounding coincidence;
3/
A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something; a
comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive
realization;
4/
^\\//^VW\\^^//M.
Well,
the answer, my dears, is blowing in the wind, as Robert Dylan once declaimed.
So let us move on in search of a more illuminated manuscript:
Yes,
indeed, studnuts, what our persona epiphanates are in fact STARS. STARS
she never knew – like Madonna, Britney, Paris, Elvis, Cher, Pink, 50Cent,
Eminem, Bono, and, of course, Enya – all so famous that they disposed of their
last names in the Trashcan at the End of the Universe.
But
perhaps our frigid persona will one day get to meet these stars, even if nebulously,
perhaps at the NBC Store in New York City even. Meanwhile lettuce hope she will
see Orion or Aldebaran – notice that they only have ONE name too! But then, so
do I – you don’t know my last name, do you, classh – mwahahahahahaha.
We’d
best move on (sorry about that last operatic inburst):
Now
there’s a really existential query: yes, our beloved Leader of the Pack waxes
philosophical as this ode to standing around and doing nothing while your flesh
turns blue resumes its weary way unto Climax. A small town in Newfoundland, not
far from Dildo. But I most certainly should not digress in that direction…..
To
return to the path of all time, our persona might consider getting out of the
cold, and thus might save her life; perhaps hail a taxi or a horse, whichever
comes by first. Building a fire would also be well advised. But our persona
seems fixed in her obsessive need to spill her beans:
Perhaps
Dr. Phil or Oprah? Perhaps her cat would be willing to listen – one never knows
about cats and secrets. Perhaps, on her way home, she could go tell it to the
mountain, over the hills and everywhere, or perhaps in the magic of the night
she could find an Opera Ghost in Box 5? Maybe even an OperaKait, like the
little girl with a tiny tape recorder at the back of the room, who seems to be
the only studnut with eyes open at this moment? Perhaps our persona could
simply stand amid the fallen snow and scream at the futility of Life, the
Universe and All That? Maybe Godot WILL finally come!!
But,
alas, that poor, bean-filled woman is so distraught that she even repeats
herself (as beans are want to do) in the final stanza of our poem:
I
look into the midnight blue,
so
many stars I never knew.
If
you don't come, what will I do?
Who
shall I tell my secrets to?
Yes,
Master Piece, this is indeed a superb example of “ultima repetitio” – using the
final stanza to hammer home the nail that is at the core of this query. So many
of us, sayeth Our Roma, feel so helpless in the larger scheme of things, unable
to move forwards (or even backwards) with our lives, as she has earlier stated,
in another immoral poem:
“Forever
searching; never right,
I
am lost in oceans of night.
Forever
hoping I can find memories,
Those
memories I left behind.”
Or,
in this case, tell secrets.
But,
at the end of the proverbial day, we are left hanging, with one vital question
not yet answered (thereby eliminating all of us from the riddle contest):
“Whatever
happened to the little singing train? Did it meet Happy Feet and dance happily
ever after?”
Please
write a 20,000 word essay on this question for our next classh!
Ta
till then!