┌ abstract of the human condition ┘

[Random]

"My sweet Chuvenal, would you fetch me the Kashmiri spice? It's the red one."

"Yes, mother."

"My sweet Chuvenal, would you help your father with the harvest? His cold fingers hardly caress me anymore!"

"Yes, mother."

Chuvenal, in the latest hours of the night, sets ablaze the lamp at his bedside--beacon to guide his boaty words across the serene waters of his yellowed pages. A little rustic journal bound by chicken wire, he starts to scribble. This one he dubs, "Ode to a Red Herring".

Oh, it is not so bad to wait,

Living purgatory, eagerly anticipating fate,

Oh Father, Mother, you mustn't fret

I am a happy little boy, beet farmer just like you,

Day in, day out, night sleep, night's end

[Plate 2 Missing]

Oh, sorry, I lie!

What malady beckons me to imagine!

Sick ungrateful little boy, they will say,

Leaving the farm, leaving his nest

To Hel with this ode, no ode this is!

This is misery of my condition.

Would you, who has birthed me,

Damn me for exploring, the Nature,

That thou have made me love, or

Would you, who has made me strong,

Damn me for lifting the burden,

That thou, have carried for me so long

But if to dream is malady, then

I don't want to be sick anymore,

But there aren't doctors here.

Maybe I will, dream some into existence.

Chuvenal closes his journal. . .