02 On Loneliness

And No one said, speak to us of loneliness and excessive masturbation.
To which he replied:

Wouldn’t it be much better to have this conversation with your father?

My father was gone ere even I entered this world, and in her desperation, my poor mother gave me a foolish name.

And so he answered:
Should one pity the demented bag lady who converses with shadows and holds council with her own self? Though she be lonely, she is not alone, for even in her solitude, she has someone to talk to.

Let me ask you, dear people of Orphalese, a strictly hypothetical question. Imagine what it might be like to be the smartest person in the world. To know all there is to know in this universe, and to bask each day in the general idiocy that surrounds us all. That would be, I can only imagine, the loneliest perch in the world, far more so than the top of this oil drum.

I have crossed the ocean many times, and always I have made loneliness my dearest companion. With loneliness by my side, I was never cold, and never alone.

Your ancestors have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness. And so I left. And some have said: “He holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with men.” It is true, I did once get into a philosophical argument with a Douglas Fir, but as we were alone in the forest, we made no sound. And if I was drunk at the time, then it was not of aloneness that I was drunk.

Fain would I get sloshed with my aloneness.

Who are we to judge the peculiar sensibilities of a Douglas Fir?

And is it not solitude herself, that gives flight to the imagination? Thus in many a dark and smelly hour, holed away in the hold of a leaky bucket, with not even rats to keep me company, (for the rats had long fled to the upper decks), I pressed loneliness especially tightly to my bosom.

And through my minds eye did I gaze over her immaculate nakedness, and though I may have had to beg of my imagination for her gentle caress, my own busy hands over the soft contours of her breasts, and hers gently stroking…

A gasp went through the crowd, even as his voice trailed off in a fog of lost memories. Thereupon the crowd fell silent, in rapt attention causing the prophet to look down shyly, as if searching the oily puddles for remnants of his flowing discourse.

Meanwhile, more people had gathered, for if there is one thing the people of Orphalese could not resist, it was a loony old fart preaching from a rusty oil drum, especially one who absentmindedly scratched his balls as he spoke of masturbation.

And even as the drizzle gave way to rain, and the rain started to give way to a downpour of biblical proportions, the population of Orphalese continued to flock near, unable to tear themselves away from a prophet with a beard long enough to touch the ground, from his perch high atop the oil drum. Their eyes and ears existed for Almustafa alone.

Unnoticed by the people of Orphalese were the two hundred illegal immigrants who formed the backdrop to this gathering. Like the prophet who had stowed away among them, they too had survived the treacherous passage in the unsanitary, unseaworthy bucket that was now straining to be free of it’s screaming leash. They too looked on in utter amazement, for although they understood not a single word spoken, their souls drank freely from the fountain of discourse that was the prophet’s wisdom. They dared not leave the boat for fear of interrupting the glorious spectacle in progress, even if there was a very real fear that the ship, as it was now moored, might yet sink, driven down by the relentless rain. Collectively they dared not even to make a sound for fear that it could silence the prophet, or else, cause their ship to disintegrate.

More and more people joined the gathering, their eyes unseeing of the shivering migrants, their loving gaze bathing in the prophet alone.

Among these newcomers was a frail Methuselah, to rival in years the prophet himself. He was the tax collector of Orphalese, still active after countless years as a dedicated public servant. He now spoke:

Speak to us of…
But his modest words emerged merely as a faint croaking sound, unheard above the general din, easily drowned out by the hum and the haw.