Celestial Composition 101

The students sitting in the classroom looked at the clock that had numbers, but no hands.

“Is he late?” asked Samuel Beckett, tapping Jean-Paul Sartre’s shoulder.

“Does it matter?” asked Jean-Paul Sartre, turning his head to the man behind him. “Just hope that you pass this course.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Beckett.

“I was arguing with an angel in charge of the waiting area while the two of us were having a smoke,” said Sartre.

“Arguing about what?” asked Beckett.

“I was trying to convince the angel that we didn’t exist,” said Sartre. “Anyway, he told me that there is indeed a Hell and it isn’t other people. ‘This is a hint of Hell’, he said as he lit a match and held it close to my face.”

Thus, having discovered there was indeed an afterlife, Jean-Paul viewed his whole life’s work as a waste, which isn’t a bad thing for one who embraced nothingness with unbridled enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the prospect of burning in an eternal oven didn’t provide much comfort, either. The encounter with the Angel left Sartre a bit nauseous.

“Oh God, I feel so sick,” said Sartre. “I want to die.”

“You’re already dead,” said Beckett. “And we don’t believe in God, remember?”

“No, I mean ‘die’, you idiot,” said Sartre. “There’s more than death and I don’t want more! Particularly if it’s an eternal Auschwitz. And it doesn’t matter if we believe in God or not; what matters now is whether or not God believes in us.”

“The you’d better not fail this class,” chuckled Beckett, who couldn’t help but find Sartre sudden conversion humorous.

Beckett turned to Theodor Geisel, who sat next to him in the second row, second seat.

“I hate waiting, don’t you? And what are we waiting for? We’ll only end up waiting again?”

“I do not mind waiting. No, I do not mind it at all,” said Geisel. “It doesn’t matter if Twitcher’s short or tall, or even huge or tiny small. The fact remains I do not mind waiting. No, not at all.”

Beckett looked at Geisel and raised an eyebrow. “How’d you get in this class, anyway?”

“I wrote some books and that is that,” said Geisel. “And one is called ‘The Cat in the Hat’.”

“What kind of hat?” asked Beckett.

Geisel pointed to row four, seat three. “Like that.”

“Are you pointing at me, sir?” asked Abe Lincoln.

“No, just your hat,” said Geisel.

Ernest Hemingway tapped Lincoln on the shoulder. “You gonna let that twerp make fun of you, stringbean? Sock him in the nose!”

Lincoln ignored the brute behind him and turned to his left. “Do you know the reason we’re here?”

Shakespeare simply replied, “To be here or not to be here – what difference is it to thee?”

Lincoln turned to his other side and asked Franz Kafka the same thing. “Why do you think we’re here?”

“You don’t want to know what I think,” said Kafka.

Just then a door opened where a door wasn’t and just like that the door disappeared in a puff of smoke. When the smoke dissipated, a figure stood before the gathered students.

He was tall, but not that tall, and though not fat, he wasn’t skinny. He wore a tweed suit and eyeglasses were perched upon his nose. He had brown hair, too long to be a crew cut and too short to be combed, and his favorite film was the 1939 movie “Bringing Up Baby”, but that’s another story. He held a ledger in his hands.

“I am Professor Tylus Twitcher and I welcome all of you to this session of Celestial Comp. 101,” he said. “It is thought by some that each of you deserves to be here. I, however, will determine which of you will get to move on or get left back for a thousand years. And if there's too much back sass, some of you may even get expelled. And believe me, you don’t want that!”

“Now then, does anyone know what this is?” asked Twitcher, holding up the ledger.

A hand rose. “I know what it isn’t.”

“You are?”

“Joseph Heller, sir.”

“Mr. Heller, did I ask you what it isn’t? No, I asked you what it is, didn’t I? Anyone else? ”

Ralph Ellison’s arm went up, but Twitcher didn’t see it.

“Anyone?”

Professor Twitcher waited a bit, but no one spoke. So, Twitcher snapped his fingers and a desk and chair magically appeared. He placed the ledger before him and sat down.

“Hey, what am I – invisible?” Ellison yelled out, waving his arm.

“You are now,” said Twitcher. “No one talks without being called on.”

Twitcher snapped his fingers and Ellison did indeed become the invisible man, but not before saying, “The black guy’s always the first to go.”

“Anyway, this is a record of all the writings all of you have done in your lifetimes,” continued Twitcher. “Some of you will move on to Celestial Publishing. Others may end up at ‘The Angelic Newsletter’ or ‘The Spiritual Times’. And perhaps two or three of you may even join you-know-who’s speechwriting staff. But before any of that takes place, it is my job to separate the weeds from the flowers. Any questions?”

“Professor Twitcher, where do we go if we get expelled?” asked Fyodor Dostoyevski.

“You Russians don’t have to worry about expulsion, Mr. Dostoyevski,” said Twitcher. “Except for Mr. Tolstoy, that is.”

“Why me?” asked Tolstoy. “I am considered the greatest writer of all time by many; have you not read ‘War and Peace’?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I had to; worse forty years of my life,” said Twitcher. “It’s fortunate for you that I also read ‘The Death of Ivan Illyich’.”

Brecht snickered and chuckled when Tolstoy received his comeuppance.

“You think I’m funny?” asked Twitcher with a scowl. “Do I look like a comedian? Do you see Hope or Burns or Fernandel in this class? Or is it that you think I’m a clown? Is that it? You think I’m a clown? Do you see a big red rubber nose on my face?”

Brecht sunk in his chair and shook his heads.

“Well, I’ve already had my fill of strudel for breakfast,” said Twitcher, snapping his finger.

And just as the playwright feared, he disappeared.

“To answer your question, Mr. Dostoyevski, expulsion usually means an eternal stint as a hack at ‘The Tabloid of the Void’ or ‘The Inferno Tribune’, places where burning questions and fiery speeches are not metaphors. Many of you, however, will be left back like Mr. Ellison and Herr Brecht. They'll have another chance to take this class in a millenium or two, but those rare cases of expulsion must be approved by you-know-who and they are irreversible.”

Sartre turned to Beckett and whispered, “See, I told you so.”

“Mr. Sartre, would you like to share with the rest of the class?”

Sartre faced Twitcher and gulped. “Sorry, sir.”

Twitcher opened the ledger and ran a finger down a column.

“Ah, yes, here it is - ‘Being and Nothingness’. Well, Mr. Sartre that was quite a huge book, wasn’t it? Hundreds and hundreds of pages about nothing. How French of you. You’re in the wrong class, Mr. Sartre. You should be in the big fat book section of Meaningless Philosophical Dribble 101, which is co-taught by the Germans Marx and Nietzsche with guest lectures by Schopenhauer. The good news is that if you fail the course, you get to take it over and over again until you pass.”

“Is there any bad news, sir?” asked Sartre.

“There’s always bad news,” said Albert Camus.

“Mr. Camus is right, Mr. Sartre,” said Twitcher. “And in your case the bad news is that you have to take the course over and over again even if you pass! Auf Weidersehen.”

“For how long?” asked Sartre.

“Well, let me put it this way,” said Twitcher. “Mr. Camus’ Sisyphus may be a myth, but Meaningless Philosophical Dribble isn’t! It just goes on and on and on. Think of it as your rock and you’ll be fine.”

Camus looked away as Sartre sheepishly made his way to one wall and then another. He tried two other walls.

“Professor Twitcher?”

“Yes, Mr. Sartre?”

“There’s no exit.”

“Oh sorry,” said Twitcher. He snapped his fingers and, poof, Sartre was gone and Camus smiled.

“Mr. Camus, I could arrange for you to join your fellow countryman, if you’d like,” said Twitcher.

“No thank you, sir,” said Camus, quickly erasing his grin. “He’s a stranger to me.”

“We do not like fibbers here, Mr. Camus; I suggest you brush up on your German fast,” said Twitcher. “Bye-bye.”

And, poof, Camus was through.

“It is not fair what you do to the French writers,” said Victor Hugo.

“Pardon,” said Twitcher, looking up over his spectacles. “Who said anything about being fair?”

“I protest.”

“Well then,” said Twitcher, with a snap. “Victor, you go, too.”

And Victor was through.

Twitcher then flipped some pages in the ledger and called out a name. “Geisel, Theodor?”

Theodor Geisel raised his hand. “That’s me, sir?”

“You wrote a book called ‘Horton Hears A Who’, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” said Geisel

“Mr. Geisel, I didn’t get to read that particular book; tell me a bit about it. Who is Horton and what does he hear?”

“Horton is an elephant, sir,” said Geisel. “And a ‘who’ is what Horton hears.”

“A ‘who’ is what?” asked Twitcher.

“It’s the thing that Horton hears.”

“What is it called?”

“Who.”

“The thing Horton hears.”

“Who.”

“Mr. Geisel, are you back sassing me? You don’t want to back sass me, Geisel, you really don’t,” said Twitcher. “Now then, who is the name of the thing Horton hears?”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Mr. Geisel! What is the name of the thing Horton hears?”

“No, it isn’t, sir,” said Geisel. “Who is the name of the thing Horton hears.”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out from you! Who is the name of the thing?”

“Yes, it is.”

Twitcher slammed his hand onto the desk. “Pretend I’m an elephant named Horton, Mr. Geisel, and I hear something. It sounds like a poof and you know what that poof means?”

A puff of smoke appeared where Geisel was and, before he could speak, he wasn’t.

“Perhaps a thousand years of waiting will temper Mr. Geisel’s back sassing. Anyone else want to back sass me?”

The pages of the ledger were flipped once again and all the students fretted nervously. Then the next victim’s name was announced.

“Lincoln, Abe. Where are you?”

“Here, sir.”

“Mr. Lincoln, I assume you’re here for that small speech you wrote. Quite a good one, I might add. It does raise a question, though, which I’ll ask you now. If you get it right, you stay. Wrong and it’s so long. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then. How much is four times twenty?”

Lincoln pulled at his beard and thought. “Eighty, sir.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Yes, absolutely, sir,” said Lincoln.

“Honest, Abe?”

“Yes.”

“Wrong. According to your own words, four times twenty is four score.”

Twitcher snapped his fingers and Abe found himself sitting next to Geisel in one of many waiting rooms.

“Did I mention I like your hat,” asked Geisel.

“Here,” said a depressed Lincoln, removing his hat. “Take it.”

Meanwhile, Professor Twitcher used Lincoln’s error to illustrate his first rule of composition. “Write it as you say it and say it as you write it! Write that down, everyone.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald?”

“Mr. Hemingway keeps throwing spitballs at me, Professor, and he keeps calling me a daisy.”

“No one likes a tattle-tale, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said Twitcher and, poof, Fitzgerald was gone. “Now then, Mr. Hemingway?”

“Yeah?”

“You will stay in class during recess, understand? So, do not ask for whom the recess bells toll,” said Twitcher. “Just remember - they do not toll for thee!”

“They won’t toll for any of us,” said Kafka to himself, but also aloud and within the Professor hearing range.

“What’s that, Mr. Kafka?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Kafka. “I just have a feeling we’re all doomed, anyway.”

“Mr. Kafka, I am a fair man and this is a fair proceeding - I mean class,” said Professor Twitcher. “You can’t just get booted for nothing.”

“That’s not been my experience, sir,” said Kafka.

“Pessimism is one thing, Mr. Kafka, but pessimism coupled with contradiction is intolerable; you know what that mean?”

Kafka didn’t get a chance to say ‘I told you so’ because the Professor quickly did his snap and away went Mr. K..

“I’m glad that creepy guy’s gone,” said Edgar Allen Poe, tapping his desk with his fingers. “He was bugging me.”

“What’s that tapping I hear,” asked Professor Twitcher.

“It’s me, sir,” said Poe, quickly putting his hands in his lap. “Sorry, I’m a bit nervous.”

“Nervous about what, Mr. Poe?”

Poe’s heart starting thumping hard and beads of sweat began forming on his forehead.

“You, sir,” he told the Professor.

“Me? Well, I can quickly cure that, Mr. Poe,” said the Professor, holding his forefinger and thumb together.

“Please don’t, Professor,” pleaded Poe. “I’ll be good evermore.”

But unfortunately, snap and poof, and Poe was nevermore. Well, at least not for another thousand years.

Professor Twitcher then flipped some pages and came to Mr. Heller. “Joe Heller?”

“Sir?”

“You requested to drop out of this class, is that right?”

“Yes, Professor Twitcher, I did.”

“No problem,” said Twitcher. “Anyone can drop a class at any time. However, according to Clause 17, you can only drop a class before it begins by asking the Professor of that class. Understand?”

“Yes,” said Heller. “Okay, then I respectfully request to drop this class, Professor.”

“Well, Clause 17 also states that a class officially begins when the Professor makes his appearance. And, since I am here, the class has officially begun and you can no longer ask to drop out.”

“That’s the stupidest Clause I’ve ever heard,” said Heller.

“That’s back sass,” said Professor Twitcher. “And Clause 17 also says back sass gets you out of class. See you in a millennium, Mr. Heller.”

Poof! Something happened and Heller was gone.

All the remaining students looked at each other with a twinge of fear. Finally, William Shakespeare raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Shakespeare, you have a question?”

“What does it matter if Heaven unfolds its’ grandeur of bliss when all around not a single Miss? To be or not to be, what matters the question if there’s not a she?”

Professor Twitcher smiled. “Well, finally someone noticed.”

“What a bunch of crap,” said Hemingway. “Wouldn’t you think that the guy critics call the greatest English writer of all time actually wrote and spoke in English?”

“Is that a bit of resentment I detect, Mr. Hemingway?” asked Professor Twitcher.
“Now, guess for whom the fingers snap.”

And, snap, Hemingway went away.

“Mr. Shakespeare; you get a star. The second rule of writing is watch and observe. William is the first of you to notice that there aren’t any females in this class. Would any of you care to speculate why there are no women here?”

“That damn Englishman,” muttered Moliere. “Always with the showing off.”

“Now, now, Monsieur,” chastised Professor Twitcher. “Jealousy is a no-no.”

And thus, poof, Moliere wasn’t there.

Ayn Rand raised her hand and said, “I’m a woman! Didn’t any of you twits notice that?”

James Joyce just shrugged.

“I noticed,” said Truman Capote, “but if you weren’t telling, neither was I.”

“That’s cold,” said Rand.

“I can’t help it,” said Capote, “It’s in my blood.”

“Ms. Rand, I am so sorry,” said Professor Twitcher. “A terrible mistake has been made. Please join the ladies’ class down the hall.”

Twitcher snapped his fingers. Rand found herself in a room sitting next to Virginia Woolf on one side and Agatha Christie on the other side with Simone de Bouvier in front of her and Flannary O’ Conner behind her. Jane Austin was in the fourth hour of reading selected passages of her work in front of the class.

“What bourgeois dribble,” groaned de Bouvier. “Does it ever stop?”

“How much longer is this Austin broad going to read,” Rand asked Woolf.

“If I were you, I’d enjoy it,” said Woolf. “Jacqueline Susann is next.”

“What is Jacqueline Susann doing in this class?” asked Rand.

“It’s a mystery to me,” said Agatha Christie.

Rand dropped her head to the desk and just moaned while down the hall Professor Twitcher was explaining why men and women were separated.

“We had some unfortunate incidents last semester with D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller concerning the affections of Dorothy Parker and so we decided to avoid future friction by separating the sexes,” he said. “We don’t want unnecessary distractions for either sex. Isn’t that right, Mr. Gide?”

Unfortunately, Andre Gide was too busy being distracted by Truman Capote’s seductive glance and Tennessee William’s jealous glare to hear Twitcher’s explanation and thus all three both disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“Twitcher’s third rule of Celestial Comp 101 is ‘Pay Attention’!” said the Professor, after doing a triple finger-snap.

He looked around the classroom at the remaining five faces and smiled. “Let’s see now. Yes, here we are. Mr. Beckett?”

“Yes.”

“You like small sentences, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.

“Good.”

“But.”

“But what?”

“I don’t like small sentences myself,” said Professor Twitcher. “I like big long rambling sentences that go on and on. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Bye?” asked Beckett.

“Say it twice,” said the Professor.

“Bye-bye?”

Poof!

“Anyone else like small sentences?”

“I don’t like small sentences,” said James Joyce.

“No, you don’t, do you, Mr. Joyce? From what I gather, you don’t like sentences at all, do you? You don’t like structure or punctuation that much, either. You just spew thoughts onto paper as they come into your brain, don’t you? And nothing is too trivial for you to share with us, be it phlegm or snot – thank you, BUT NO THANK YOU!”

Joyce braced himself.

Poof! And then there were three.

“I want the rest of you to pair off and write a 20,000 word essay about what you hope to achieve in this class,” said Professor Twitcher, burying his nose back into the ledger.

Dostoyevski and Tolstoy immediately moved their desks towards each other, leaving Shakespeare all by himself.

“Sir, there’s no thee to be with me,” said Shakespeare.

Professor Twitcher looked up from the ledger. “Hmmm. Well, we can’t have that, can we, Mr. Shakespeare? There’s only one solution – even things out.”

And, poof, Will was nil.

The two Russians huddled over a legal paid, alternately writing a paragraph each. Dostoyeski’s first paragraph alone exceeded the 20,00 word limit, but Tolstoy demanded equal time and worked furiously to exceed Fyodor’s output. But, alas, it was all for naught.

Professor Twitcher walked up to their desks with a sad look on his face.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “But Clause 17 states that no two writers of the same nationality may team up with each other. You know what this means, gentlemen, don’t you?”

Neither could get a “but” out before, poof, their butts were out.

And then there were none.

Professor Twitcher scanned the empty room and smiled. “Well, I guess it’s time for another tea break.”


*******


Twitcher was very pleased with his scam. After all, if there were no students, how could he be expected to teach a class? He lay on a divan in the Teacher’s lounge reading Socrates’ editorial in “The Spiritual Times” and next to him was a small table with a pot of tea, a cup, and a small plate of biscuits. He was very content and very relaxed, all set for a nice long nap, when a Voice boomed from the intercom on the wall.

“Attention, attention! Professor Twitcher, your next assignment is ready.”

“That can’t be,” he said to the intercom. “It’s only been four years; I’ve got 996 more left until my next class.”

“Not that assignment, Professor. Someone else has been designated to take your classes. And everyone you kicked out of your last class has been reinstated,” said the Voice. “Tylus, I warned you about this.”

‘Oh-oh’, thought Twitcher. ‘That’s not the voice of the normal PA announcer; it sounded like you-know-who, but it couldn’t be, could it?’

“Yes, it is, Tylus,” said the Voice. “You haven’t been doing your job again and you know what that means, don’t you?”

Tylus jumped out of the lounge chair and dropped to his knees. “Please, sir, I won’t do it again; I promise. I’ll teach like I’m supposed to, I swear.”

Tylus, however, made two mistakes. One, he swore. And, two, he had made the same promise before. What he heard next from the intercom wasn’t a voice; it was, you guessed it, a snap.

And, poof, Twitcher found himself standing in the offices of “The Tabloid of the Void” where heated arguments were erupting all about him. He tried to avoid the flames by hopping over and around them.

“The Editor will see you now, Mr. Twitcher,” said a grotesquely deformed receptionist who had once been a Queen of England. “Please go right in.”

Tylus entered the door marked ‘Editor’. His knees almost buckled when he saw the person sitting behind a huge desk with a sinister grin on his face. He was the only student Tylus had ever permanently expelled from Celestial Comp. 101.

“Come in, come in. I’ve been expecting you. It won’t be as bad as you think, ex-Professor Twitcher; IT’LL BE A LOT WORSE!” said the Marquis de Sade, waving a riding crop and punctuating his pleasure with a maniacal laugh.

“MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”




End