Monday 8 October 2007

Non-progressing vaccuum-filled cherry pickers

Bessy was practising how to be a cat, having recently seen a performance of Ionescu's Rhinoceros. Margaret was cooking an egg that had no yoke or white inside it. It would appear that she was trying to see if there was a meaning to an egg, she told me, when it is no longer an egg. I looked at Bessy and wondered what she would be if she wasn't a dog anymore but a cat, and then wondered if we were anything that we thought we were.

Felix tells me that a vacuous egg is an inconspicuous weapon in some parts of the world on account of the vacuum inside when appropriately treated. Apparently, on shattering, the vacuum pulls the feet of anyone standing within a ten yard radius, thus arranging them like a star on the ground and immobilising them. I gulped as I thought of the consequences of that egg of Margaret's slipping from her spoon.

George walked on eggshells for the duration of a cherry harvest some years back. I asked him if he'd fallen out with the other cherry pickers. No, he said, he was nowhere near the cherry trees but in a pod at the bottom of the sea. We looked at each other for some moments before I asked the obvious question: what did he dress in? He didn't dress, he said, and smiled diffidently.

Cookie seems to have developed an interest in hanging loose thoughts on periodic progression of the non-progression of lifeless people. This makes for an interesting, though somewhat dispiriting, display. I complimented her on the volume of thoughts and wondered aloud if anyone really progressed, indeed, if progression wasn't just another myth made up to give life meaning. Cookie put that thought up with the others and we got on with the day.

There's not much to add. Only to reflect that the empty egg may one day be a cat, which would be paradoxical.

2 comments:

Banno said...

I know now what's happened to me. A vacuous egg hit me, and I didn't know it.

Anonymous said...

You've got to watch out for those vacuous eggs.