2 min read
Word play
Nonsense and numbers
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For you can spring into march like a soldier or a lion, since you leave it like a lamb. Soldiers march and lions roar, but today is the 32nd or the 60th if you prefer, because it’s not a leap year. It is the day after Friday and the day before Saturday, to be perfectly opaque. Just what kind of fool do you take me four? For fools and four fulls, not a flush but a house. A full house of cards beats a pear tree whose blossoms were lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed.
Or, if Ellie has her cake today can she eat it too? She has it. She eats it. It goes up so it must come down except when it’s your age. Or, Shrodinger’s cat in a shoebox, both with cake and without. So a fool is full and a pool not a pull and drool is dull and cool not a cull. Let’s ask but it’s not an axe. It’s a hatchet to take down the cherry tree of life which is short. So carpe diem are koi dimes in a pond for fortune seekers in cookies. The lucky numbers are 91, 13, 4122. Four divisible by one is two and two.
Old Man limericks abound so how’s this one sound. There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, ‘It is just as I feared!–Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard! To laugh at nonsense is hard for those who have sense. We are searching among the branches for what can only be found in the roots.
Like this which is both a root and a square, of sixteen and two. Then, the loneliest number. Looking for patterns in nonsense is a ruse, a pin in a haystack. The great guru of nonsense, Edward Gorey said the world is not what it seems–but it isn’t anything else, either. A self-proclaimed Taoist, he felt that now and then life is a crock and if you’re doing nonsense, it has to be rather awful. Who ever heard of sunny nonsense, oh how boring, boring boring. A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears. Gory Gorey.
Silly fool, is this writer too.
Footnotes – the Easter Egg of the TreeHouseLetter
*Beware of answers. The title of this section is timely, the egg a symbol of birth or rebirth.
*A nod to Whitman’s poem (lilacs) since this is poetry month, thought experiment Shrodinger’s Cat, Washington’s Cherry tree myth – yes it is a myth, Rumi on roots, limerick from Lear’s Book of Nonsense.
*Best small book ever, Edward Gorey’s Epipletic Bicycle and the nonsense of day before/after. Ok, Doubtful Guest and Gashly Crumb Tinies are up there, the latter a morbid abecedarian of wee ones. Ascending Peculiarity, Karen Wilkin, 2001
* Number play: it is the 91st day of the year or the 60th day of February or the 32nd day of March. There are 13 letters in the holiday and common format is 4-1-22. The square of the month is 16 and the root of the month is 2. Larks and wren and owl and hen take flight in spring, that dubious and unpredictable time which gave flight to fools.
*Otice-Nay the paragraph initials.
*Happy Spring!
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