A joke about a history class. Or else a look how education kills imagination. |
The Present Progressive (or… A Story of the Stars) Dreaming. Thinking. (But not really.) Not sleeping. (But might as well be.) The talking is just so boring, the lighting so (astonishingly) dismal, the world just so big. “I’ll begin talking about something… …won't have time for discussing in detail…” Drifting from the droning, imagining water falling hundreds of feet from some mossy cliff in South America. Imagining thousands of Hebrew slaves carrying thousands of tons of sandy-colored stone to the site of a young god’s grave. “Are you listening? Really listening?” The voice is asking, but rhetorically, so these lips are staying shut. “Are you catching the incredible significance of what I am saying?” Trying to remember what he is saying. Imagining a painting of a heroic young god crossing the Potomac. Standing in a boat. Sailing through a lucky fog. Except now it’s changing from a painting to a movie. The little boat is rising and falling. The wooden planks are creaking as the waves are gently lapping against the sides. Lap-Lapping. Ta-Tapping. Bu-Bumping. Tapping. And W. is peering left and right and back and right and looking (with love) on his few nervous men. “And many of the Tories were publicly wondering why those who were screaming the loudest for liberty were being so silent about the condition of the American negro!” Wondering why this isn’t meshing with the swashbuckling hero in the movie, in the painting. “By this, they were implying that the great patriots were only fighting for themselves!” Dreaming that the stars are watching the earth, great gods and kings, growing slowly further away, shifting redder with each passing day. “It’s all about the Tories!” That ever-aging thing is yelling. “Are you starting to grasp the amazing importance of these loyalists? Is it sinking in?” God, these stories are all just so (depressingly) boring. |