Preview — Incipient Amplifications (aka Pry Open!)

Incipient Amplifications — Aka Pry Open

(Two black crows have a conversation while feasting on fresh, juicy earthworms and grubs.)

Ovid: What’s that wee red thing there, on the ground, that kind of… crimson spot?

Catullus: This worm’s blast-furnace-shaped stool, or the Blue-Origin-like turd over there?

Ovid: No, no, the tiny dot to their right, just below the literary-critic-like thin caca.

Catullus: That miniscule… speck, the one that resembles Jürgen Habermas’ left nostril?

Ovid: Yes, that’s the one! Even if, to be honest, it looks more like his right nostril.

Catullus: Oh, alright. It could also be Matt McGinn’s middle knee… Anyway, it’s a mind.

Ovid: A what?

Catullus: A mind. A consciousness, An intellect. An intelligence… A mind: A puny one.

Ovid: What sort of… “puny?” Do you mean… Anaemic, haggard, out of trim?

Catullus: No, no, I mean small, little, petite… You know: Hidebound, claustral, sectarian!

Ovid: Square? Biedermeier? Milk-and-water? Genteel like the average US academic?

Catullus: Sure: Hesitant, bien pensant, blinkered, monomaniacal… Almost Victorian.

Ovid: Unbudgeable? Parti pris? Pooterish? Buttoned-down? Worse than al-Jibali?

Catullus: Absolutely! And holier-than-thou, meanspirited, decorous, one-dimensional…

Ovid: Excludent? Monotonal? Unadventurous? True-blue? Hard-and-fast?

Catullus: Almost caricaturally so! Negativistic, precious, comme il faut, opinionated!

Ovid: Then, well, despite being petit-bourgeois and all that, it means that… It thinks!

Catullus: Ach, alright, it may be… Still, you know, it’s more as if… it thinks that it thinks.

Ovid: Ah, I see… Yeah, right, cognition ain’t wisdom! So… does it know all that?

Catullus: What, that it’s so ridiculously conformist, hard-hat, and suburban: So limited?

Ovid: Yes, all that. Or at least, part of that: Enough to grasp it… to some extent.

Catullus: No, not really. It can’t even begin to suspect it, in point of fact.

Ovid: No? “Not really?” … Uh, that’s quite incredible, these days! Why’s that?

Catullus: I’ve asked around, and they all agree that it’d require too much imagining.

Ovid: Can the mind be shown that it is as it is? You know: That Patroclus is Patroclus?

Catullus: Oh, it has been shown all that, and that a spade’s a spade, and many times too!

Ovid: Has that helped? I mean… Spades ain’t colonnades, are they? Nor toothpicks!

Catullus: What should have… “helped” with what, hm?

Ovid: Making the mind confront its brassbound, partial, starchy humourlessness.

Catullus: How could you guess that it is actually… humourless?

Ovid: Any mind of that size, you know? Say, minds taking bawdy jokes for real insults!

Catullus: Yes, I know! Goodness, I’ve met so many lamebrained Lilliputians in my life!

Ovid: So have I, for that matter; and so did Age and Scarpelli! Still, has it or has it not?

Catullus: What “it,” sorry? I must have lost you along with Brancaleone da Norcia…

Ovid: Has the mind been confronted with its own chary, po-faced, mossbacked being?

Catullus: It has, sure! How couldn’t it? Amid so much beer and skittles: Of course it has!

Ovid: Often, then?

Catullus: More often than you could even begin letting good old Cantor count it!

Ovid: Has my friend Georg really been asked to do it, even if he was busy?

Catullus: Yes, as a matter of fact, even if he was busy!

Ovid: What did he say, then, eh?

Catullus: He said that he was busy… But I believe that he felt inadequate.

Ovid: Why?

Catullus: Because he felt that the mind had managed to do something that he can’t.

Ovid: And what would that be?

Catullus: To be infinitesimal… Beyond belief!

Ovid: I can’t believe it!

Catullus: You see? Amazing, right? That mind could work for P.T. Barnum, or D.O.G.E.!

Ovid: I’m genuinely impressed! Crazier than a peacock who ain’t cocky: Wow!

Catullus: Yep. Crazier than that: In-fi-ni-te-si-mal! No ruse, none; and beyond belief!

Ovid: So, does this mind, say, lose itself because of a tendentious joke or a paradox?

Catullus: If the mind misinterprets it, yes—as with all sexual or religious japes, typically.

Ovid: Can the mind be… cured? Or is it bound to go on like that, worsen, break up?

Catullus: You’re assuming that it’s sick, diseased, ill, grim, ailing, unwell… poorly.

Ovid: That’s true: Maybe it’s just plain thick, not “sick!” What a rookie mistake!

Catullus: Who doesn’t make blunders, eh? We’re all so imperfect: It’s our basic default!

Ovid: Sure, sure, we are… And who doesn’t assume lots of… stuff, all the time, hm?

Catullus: Everybody does it. Some forget it, though. That’s why they invented poetry…

Ovid: …comedy and tragedy—whether Greek, Oscan, Roman… or Argentinian…

Catullus: …history and philosophy—whether Continental, Analytical, or Baruchellian…

Ovid: …music and cinema—whether French, Korean, Quebecois: Even American!

Catullus: And the fine arts at large—hence, gauging reality from many unique angles!

Ovid: It’s a pity that, today, nobody really cares for that kind of… instructive lore.

Catullus: Yeah. Most people use it to score points, at best, or feel superior to others…

Ovid: Not for self-scrutiny… Nor for reconsidering their… assumptions, ah?

Catullus: Most people are scared of it, lest they realise that they ain’t what they think!

Ovid: What about us, though, hm? What do you think about that?

Catullus: “Us” two, do you mean? Do you think we’re… forgetful?

Ovid: No, no. I mean black crows in general—like, say, “Dicks” ain’t just Nixons.

Catullus: What about “us” and “Dicks,” then? I’m not sure I’m getting your point.

Ovid: Are we capable of… “self-scrutiny?” Or “reconsidering” our premises?

Catullus: Sometimes, yes... Sometimes: More than Nixons or… McNamaras, for sure!

Ovid: Isn’t it… a given? You know, like being born with two wings or a big beak?

Catullus: No, it’s not. Wisdom doesn’t come easy… Not at all: It takes plenty of time!

Ovid: Are the worst idiots self-assured, then: Cocksure knobheads? Cocky wieners?

Catullus: Yes, they are. Normally, there’s a direct proportionality between the two things.

Ovid: Between idiocy and self-assuredness? Like, say, between jingoism and inanity?

Catullus: Yep, it’s been seen again and again; in Washington D.C. as much as Reykjavik!

Ovid: So… Sustaining doubt, juggling with apparent contradictions, being nuanced…

Catullus: Yeah, that’s the game. It ain’t easy at all. But it’s the path toward real wisdom.

Ovid: What do you do once you’re… there? What changes once you’re… there?

Catullus: “Wise,” you mean? Cleverer than… Dicks, or their Pentagon-trained staffers?

Ovid: Yeah—or at least cleverer than Johnsons, anyway. Like… Dropping no bombs!

Catullus: I have no idea about that, not even the slightest one: Like a brainless nematode!

Ovid: Why not?

Catullus: Isn’t it obvious?

Ovid: What should be… “obvious,” eh?

Catullus: Come on, poesy’s dead, and you’ve known me for years…

Ovid: So what?

Catullus: Haven’t you noticed it, yet?

Ovid: What should I have… “noticed,” uh?

Catullus: I’m not wise, comrade, that’s “what:” I’m as vapid and as lost as everyone else!

Ovid: Well… You’re self-ironic, witty, well-read but unpretentious, and… You’re wiser than most!

Catullus: That’s not hard!

Ovid: Why?

Catullus: ’Cos most of them pricks are but a bunch of bloody cuckoos, that’s “why!”

Picture: Anonymous/Naturalis Biodiversity Center, "Corvus corone corone Linnaeus, 1758 - Corvidae" (ref. RMNH.AVES.2923 2), CC0, public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).