Festschrift For "The Happy Tutor" of Wealth Bondage

Festschrift, festschrift, festschrift.

Say it twenty-one times out loud real fast, and it's almost as much fun as saying "Bushist fascist, Bushist facist, Bushist fascist," as if one could find true happiness in saying such things.

One could of course say, "Bushist fascist festschrift, Bushist fascist festschrift," which has its own kind of possibilities, but that's not really the kind of festschrift this festschrift is, is it?

One stumbled onto Wealth Bondage long ago.

It may have been the very first blog one stumbled on to. One does not specifically recall.

One does recall an instant sense of wondrousness, or wonderfulness, or some deep inner sense of -- hey, wassup with this dude, in fact, as if, if The Happy Tutor of Wealth Bondage were truly there, and did in fact in some sense truly exist, there might in fact in some sense be hope for us all?

But perhaps not. For apparently The Happy Tutor may not toot his hapful horn much longer, therefore it is up to oneself now, here, here and now, to protest too much, or just enough, or, like, what-everrrr.

Anyhow, my idea of celebrating the very existence of The Happy Tutor is to bring to light here and now the wonderful, wondrous Russell Edson. I knew him once. I know not what has become of him. His work is wondrous. Troubling, yet wondrous. Not unlike that of The Happy Tutor. But in quite a different way, is it not?

Prose poems one and three are from "The Very Thing That Happens" and number two is from "The Brain Kitchen, as one's festschrift offering that The Happy Tutor may remain and prosper.

A Chair

A chair has waited such a long time to be with its person. Through shadow and fly buzz and the floating dust it has waited such a long time to be with its person.

What it remembers of the forest it forgets, and dreams of a room where it waits -- Of the cup and the ceiling -- Of the Animate One.

The Dead Fish

There were some dead fish living in a man's house. Oh do not not live in a man's house because I am the man whose house you are living in, said the man.

The fish are quite willing to say nothing because they can say nothing; and so conclude it is better to continue what has been up to this time a most successful approach to all the man's rantings.

If you are dead, screams the man, say so, you have only to say so.

To admit the obvious is only to be disbelieved in the end, so the dead comrades think.

Oh God, let dead fish find other places to be dead, cries the man.

When the Ceiling Cries

A mother tosses her infant so that it hits the ceiling.

Father says, why are you doing that to the ceiling? Do you want my baby to fly away to heaven?

The ceiling is there so that the baby will come back to me, says mother.

Father says, you are hurting the ceiling, can't you hear it crying?

So mother and father climb a ladder and kiss the ceiling.

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More of Russell Edson here. And here. And here. (Thank you, Google).