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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Anna And Her Sisters


I received a comment from AnnaMR the other day. It was very nice. I had not heard from anyone in quite a long time, so I had begun to feel as if I were a main character in a Alexandre Dumas story: a man in an iron mask or a count of Monte Cristo or the like.
I frequently hear from my audience of algorithms and bots. The Mechs took a fancy to my fancy some time ago, and they continue to deluge me with letters and texts and e-mails and other superior flights of fantasy.
Mango V. Baleful Porch, an Amazon Turk - or Turkette, so I am informed- sent me a snifter full of perfume samples from the Scratch N' Sniff company. She bade me have a nice day. So nice. The mechs are very polite in a subdued way.

The humans are a bit different.
Humans act in a very random manner.
For example, a large Christian fellow has set up shop in a disturbing proximity to the front door of the nearby grocery store. He is tall, wears a rather large chain with some sort of device heavily hanging from it ( probably a cross, but I do not dare look too closely). He is collecting money for a local Christian charity, all with the permission of the store owners who seem to mistakenly believe that setting various groups to prey upon its customers to be an enlightened form of capitalism.

His teeth seem to flash large, but they also seem to threateningly fill his mouth, spilling over across his lips. His beard is pronounced; a 5 o'clock shadow...or perhaps a skin condition that prohibits too close a shave. His clothes are subdued...but only just recently tamed and domesticated! They are redolent of the 80's and seem designed for another age...or planet...or, more to the point, species.

All in all, he has the appearance of a muscular mantis looking for a shady nook to hide in. In fact, his roost where his table and literature are situated is below a large overhang, and when he comes forth, he does jut threateningly into the sunlight, flashing that tooth-filled mouth, enticing us back to his cool parlor of Christendom. I have never passed close enough to determine whether he wears some sort of scent or not, but given his general demeanor, it's a sure bet that he does. The whole idea of a mixture of sweat, scent, and sanctimony is too much to bear.

It would be the general effect of being in the caves in the Malabar Hills in A Passage To India. When you pass by him, he bellows "Praise the Lord! Have a good day!" Boom-boom-boooom!!
"Praiiise thu Loooord!" A thunderous Jehovah bidding me to have a good day and daring me to find fault with it. I do not know whether he smiles when he does this. I affect to be deep in thought and pretend that this benediction from the blue has called me back to reality. I do not look. Someone once told me not to look the devil in the eye.
Now, I know this is a bit much: he's just a good old Christian trying to do some Christian charity and I should not act like this. But...he is wearing a golden chain! A thick golden chain. For all the world, a golden chain that is the last remnant of the adamantine chains that held him in the pit with all the other pals of Lucifer! I do not think that it is a cross that hangs from it. I distinctly glimpsed a jagged edge, a pagan continent, a diseased moon......

You think me to be mad! Ha! If I were to upset his table, the same table with the sign stating his purpose embellished with runes and mantic symbols about which he paces like a caged dog, overheated, perspiring from his tongue...if I were to knock that table over, I bet you'd see another side of him!

The foregoing was all an aside to the main topic of this posting: Anna and her sisters. I do not know whether Anna has any sisters. When I write or say "Anna" my mind pulls up "Anna", "Ann", "Anne", "Hannah", and even "Hanaan". For some unknown reason, "Hannah" lends it self to further text-ploitation shall we say, and I cannot write "Anna" alone, but must write "Anna and her sisters"...and this is because of Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." That's all. The longer sentence just sounds better. It goes ' - ' - ' - or ' - - - ' - ( using ' for accented and - for unaccented syllables). In short, Anna and her sisters are Pure Poetry.

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