Hungarian Union of Jurisprudent Negotiators

February 2008: This month’s case: Sixsquare and Five

 

Hereupon another portent, more fell and more frightful by far, is thrust upon us, unhappy ones, and confounds our unforeseeing souls…

— Aeneid ii.199

The pontiffs of industrial munificence, the bag ladies of Byetown, the beggars of Ottawa, the shopping-cart sailors of the great prairie ocean, the south-bound dishes scanned by their dutiful Dagwoods, the lumbering barons with a hide full of trappings, the organ grinders in drawers of water, the pucksters, the pollees — in short, the nation.

The mare, champing at the bit, is eager for the chase. How goes the struggle? We awaken with the stars, shining in the Big Room. With their spiral arms, the Pointer sisters show us the milky way.

Behold, the nations are a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance.

— Isaiah 9.15

We awaken with the earth, doing the neutron dance at the radioactive hot springs, and add a centimeter of plutonium to the deposits of the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

These are not Canadian rivers that rise at the height of land and seek their level in the deep salt sea, across whose silty waters swim, in utter silence, the cunning climbing pigs of the Robson Valley, although one hunter bagged two of the hams with his twenty-two, back in the days before his house was washed away.

Beings who sit by the sidewalk, hoping that if they stare at their lottery tickets hard enough, the numbers will transmute into the golden ratio. Who raise their head at the wheeze of a whirlwind, and smile as the royal entourage passes in pomposity. Who suffer the wind to blow in their ears, and lay therefore many wind eggs. Who huddle around their sets, watching a picture within a picture within a picture, while under their bed a case of dynamite crystallizes. Who have a corner on the garbage market, and guarantee satisfaction or double your garbage back. Who blew a donair out her nose, the last time she saw Jon Whyte.

When will they awake from the hypnotic waving of flags and daily newspapers; from the choked chanting of stock market quotations, supermarket specials, and K-Tel collections? When they have had a dose of castor oil poured on their troubled breakwaters.

As in praise of nations, we sing of their individuals, so in praise of individuals, we tap out our own tune. When we say that some great deed has been performed, or that some great soul has blown on the mother of all trumpets, we mean, that deed would we do, or that mother would we blow, but for the grace of the worm that turns in the tomb.

National wealth is identical with misery of the people.

— Marx

Those nations whose wealth is increasing are, we are told, joyless ant-farms, and all their people have spiders in their ears. They take their greatest pleasure in sneaking out at night and shifting the surveying stake six inches onto their neighbor’s property.

Like the holy man who was partial to the gussied-up woman, we can rely upon the mass media, until its requiem too is tolled, to keep the poor working stiffs mad as hatters while the upper crust strut in their beavers.

Forget this rotten world; And unto thee
Let thine one times as an old storie bee.

— Donne, The Second anniversarie
of the progresse of the soule

Urban legends, of the cuckolded teamster who filled with cement the convertible parked in his driveway, or the Mexican bandito whose photos you’ll find when the film is developed.

Representatives of certain of the native nations met Jacques Cartier on his voyage to Hochelaga in 1535. They were astonished to see men that lived in houses on the water, and mortified to observe that they traveled in groups without women. Cartier asked of them, why do men hunt in packs? Because, said Chief Powderface, you need help with your makeup.

D’entre les quelles frere Jan achapta deux rares et precieux tableaux… et les paya en monnoie de cinge.

— Rabelais

“From [the natives] Brother John bought two rare and precious paintings, and paid for them with monkey money.”

Monkey money, that is to say, Brother John grimaced and stuck out his tongue, so we may say that our good brother came by his goods at face value, and that he had an eye for quality, and could smell a bargain. Brother John was the first in a succession of merchants to pay homage (and little else) to the natives. Said Champlain in 1616: “As for the country south of this great river [St. Lawrence], it is very thickly populated, much more so than on the north side… but, on the other hand, there is not so much profit and gain in the south from the trade in furs.” On their return to France in 1607, two of the crew, fancying the seas to be green fields, jumped overboard and were lost.

From our lofty eminence on the breaking wave of the future, we approach the turning of the millennium, like the turning of the tide, with nostrils flaring. The times are fragrant with prognostication, and every trend that catches the breeze — be it poppies, or clover, or wild mountain thyme — can be extracted, bottled up, megafied and cashiered. I speak not of divine prophecies, nor of heathen oracles, but only of prophecies of certain memory, and hidden cause. When François I — who had commissioned Cartier — had his nativity cast under a false name, the astrologer said he would be killed in a duel. This report caused the Queen Mother to laugh, thinking her husband to be above challenges and duels: but he was slain at jousting, the splinters of the staff of Montgomery going in at his beaver.

Despite such examples, our most acute philosophers, in their most obtuse writings, despise prophecies as being mere winter talk for the fire side, for the fame of fortune telling resides in marking the hits, and never the misses. Almost all of them, being infinite in number, have been contrived after the event by idle and crafty brains. So too do I despise prophecy, and fear that, as most councilors need serious help, most prophets need someone to look out for them. Yet what do we make of the cast-off crutches at St. Joseph’s oratory, on the top of Mount Royal? Into the fray we hobble!

A major ore body will be found after the flood by someone who buys his dowsing rods at Costco. He will get the gold bug after hooting on a chillum.

A split-level float home will be built with styrofoam left over from the prop scow.

The federal government will share its drug money with local authorities, increasing the inquisitiveness of the narcotic squad, driving up prices, and enriching the Mafia.

The best man will drop out of the sky on a parasail, rather than be hit by lightening.

There will be shady deals at the oddfellows reunion by someone who has a government contract.

A cowboy with mushrooms in his jam will fall asleep in your attic. When the house burns down, you will save the mop and miss the silverware.

The oak will spurt when struck by the spear, when eventide falls on a neap year. The sticker will spasm when squeezed.

When the cabbage patch doll rides the Bennet buggy, then things will be in the saddle, and Fanny Brite be by your side.

The big country will go fission when its heavy water dries up. What with the weather the men will find it easier to slip into the pond.

The person who puts on the siding will end up owning the restaurant, which he will sell to a religious organization.

A burly man with hives will be given forty whacks by the tin woodsman.

In the town where everybody can talk while they burp, people will buy lottery tickets instead of shoes. In the groves, children in winding sheets will tend the sacred oaks.

The Nubian will marry an old goat who delivers pool tables by helicopter.

Gumboot diplomacy will fail he who bogarts the joint.

These are stories that my people tell. They came in on the fax, while we were sitting around the campfire.