Recklessness

oh ageless what a lovely story of the search and rescue, yes ageless i ammm cheered up now

but i ammm still down here dangerously, and i know you do not like pierre ( or do you? ) but she is down here dangerously as well.

this is how, it is not a long story. she tried to help mmme and she tummbled down into the mmmetal bowl, now we are both waiting for a search and rescue.

pierre is pinning all her hopes on the mmmmanifest stone, but i do not believe in it, she is annoying mmme by saying all the timmme ommmmmm.

ommmmm is not the thing to say, if the stone hears it the stone will think she is alright, i think she should say help!

not that i think the stone can hear it, it's a stone. you and mmme agelesss we believe in different things but we are agreed that what pierre believes is stupid.

i know we are. however she is mmy bosommm friend so i ammm praying too but insincerely. ommmmmmm. and in between the ommmmms i'm thinking about going down the hole.

i hear water gurgling down the hole agelesss, water,

you live in the water mmaybe i would find a way to you.

i have not told pierre what i ammm thinking what do you think ageless shall i take a plunge?? i think i will...

your reckless friend,

kobo

The Miracle

We shouldn't laugh at Corky's owner for her god thing. I had a god thing happen to me once, well it wasn't really a god thing, let's say it was inexplicable.

It was about fifteen years ago it happened. I was wearing yellow rubber gloves.

We'd had bacon for dinner and there was bacon stuck to the bottom of the pan, hard baked-on bacon, difficult to get off. I was doing the washing up. I scraped at the hard baked-on lumps of bacon with my finger encased in the finger of the yellow rubber glove.

I finished the washing up and took off the yellow rubber gloves. And then I saw it. A piece of disintegrating bacon stuck under my fingernail, the one I'd used to scrape the bacon with. But the fingernail had been covered at all times by the rubber of the glove.

I was astonished. But I thought perhaps there had been a hole in the yellow rubber glove. I examined it closely. I couldn't see a hole. I looked and looked. There wasn't any hole. The only possible conclusion was that the bacon had travelled through the rubber.

For half an hour I was in a state of believing the miraculous. It was regrettable that my miracle only involved the transmission of bacon through solid yellow rubber. But a miracle was a miracle, nonetheless.

So there you have my god thing. As I said it wasn't really a god thing, but it was inexplicable.

Turned out it wasn't even inexplicable. There was a hole in the finger of the yellow rubber glove after all, I had just missed it. But I haven't forgotten the feeling of being faced with the ineffable. That is why I would not laugh at Mrs Corky.

Wholeness

That dead crab, said Pliny the Elder.

What about it? I asked.

The one you wrote about at Aldinga reef that was tastefully arranged inside a hole, he added helpfully.

Yes, I know which crab you mean, I said patiently. Do you have a question about it?

I do, said Pliny. Was it all in one piece or was it in pieces?

Didn't I make it clear? I asked.

No you didn't, said Pliny. You said most of the crabs were dead and in pieces. Was the one in the hole whole or in pieces?

The one in the hole wasn't whole I said, trying not to laugh. It was in pieces.

And how big was the hole ? asked Pliny.

The whole crab?

The hole the crab was in.

It was, I said grandly, the exact size of the crab.

But you said that the crab was in pieces.

The pieces fitted perfectly into the hole.

How then, did you know that the crab was in pieces?

Pliny, I said, do you not know the works of Picasso?

Only his Blue period, said Pliny.

Aha. Picasso painted people with their parts unusually arranged. Their noses on their foreheads, both arms on the same side, I said, inventing wildly.

I see, said Pliny. I see. But crabs have no noses.

This one did, I said.

Augmented Reality

So, first things first. I have to trim my nails. But they're already really short. I ask Pliny if toenails will do as well. He says the ants will probably like them better.

That's easy. Now I have a little handful of toenail parings, I need to find my ant hole. It's been raining a lot and the ants are underground. But later in the afternoon the sun comes out and I find a promising ant hole. I scatter my toenail parings near the hole and wait to see what happens.

An ant comes out and looks around. She goes back in. This is lucky really because I haven't made a proper plan to catch her yet. I run inside and find a glass. The ant emerges once again. This time she goes up to the biggest toenail clipping and starts to drag it towards the hole.

Quick as a flash, I drop the glass over the labouring ant, who is now my prisoner, along with a piece of toenail. Now all I have to do is extricate the toenail from the ant and the ant from the glass and then suspend the ant by some means or other around my neck.

A thought occurs to me. Does the ant have to be alive to effect a cure? I ask Pliny. He thinks it probably does. Otherwise, he says, the disease cannot be transferred to the ant.

What! I say. Does this poor ant have to take on my disease? Of coure it does, says Pliny, don't you know how sympathetic medicine works?

Well, I'm none too happy about it but I've gone too far to give up now. And my sore throat isn't really all that bad, I tell the ant. The ant looks at me as if to say, whatever, but you'll never take this toenail away from me.

So, to cut a long story short, I go out that evening to a lecture on Augmented Reality, of all things, wearing around my neck an angry little ant pendant that tickles and scratches and scrapes and nips, in a most distracting fashion, and I fail to learn anything useful.

Later Pliny tells me he's remembered that the ant cure is only good for malaria.