Monday, January 05, 2009

Day 34 - In with a chance?

It's Monday the 5th of January so, naturally, it's Reader's Request Day. Today's question comes from Mrs C. H. Greahams of Reading, Arizona:

"What do the titles of your blog posts actually mean? They never seem to be very relevant to the actual post. [Long, boring middle section cut out.] Please let me know."

Well, Mrs Greahams, that's a valuable question, and one I thought would be coming up around now (I'm sure you know why!) The answer is quite simple. When I was eight years old, I was visited by one of the travelling wise old sages that seemed to frequent my house a lot around that time. This one was different from most of them, however, since he was awake, and taking an interest in me.

For one blissful afternoon, he took me under his (figurative) wing and taught me many things - of sailing ships and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings (turns out they don't). All too soon, however, it was my teatime, and he had to go and fight...something...or possibly stop somebody else from fighting something. To be honest, Power Rangers had just come on, so I was fading in and out.

As he left, he rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a crumbling tome; its bindings were loose and the pages moth-eaten, but I somehow felt that this was something very important. I reached out a trembling hand for this treasure trove of wisdom. He leaned forwards, and then suddenly pulled his hand back, holding the book close to his chest. He peered at me, and teared a couple of pages from the front.

Winking with both eyes, he gave me those pages, and tucked the tome back into his backpack. Looking down with disappointed eyes, I saw that he had only given me the table of contents. Five hundred chapters, and all I had were the titles. He smiled, said "Like the rolling monk, everything circles the sun," and left.

I was not sorry to see him go. Twelve years later, and converting these chapter titles into blog post titles is the best I've been able to come up with so far. Jerk.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Funny. Must be something in the zeitgeist. I was wondering just the same thing yesterday.

Keep going, Mr. Bloom. These snippets into your life and thoughts are wondrous.