Happy Rabbit Hole Day

Listen, my babies, for this is as opposite as Mama can go...

I didn't want you to know, I wasn't prepared to acknowledge my hunger for its existence, but now, chastened from the long journey, I must tell you, that I have returned to the ways of my religious forbears, and I have embraced the purifying wonders of ascetism. A chaste lifestyle. An abstinent lifestyle. A lifestyle free of the hedonistic double pleasures of the sexually and alcoholic stupefying underworlds of physical being. Now, I know I made fun of the self-flagellators in an evil past life...

The Ghost of Christmas Past had quite a time with Evil Editor, as Ed wasn’t eager to revisit the monastery where it had all started. But in the end, the story unfolded…as if in a dream. Yeah, that’s it. A dream.

As a member of the Monks of the Order of Maximus, Edward had grown used to self-flagellation as a means to cleanse himself, body and soul. He and the other young monks-in-training, why, they’d have weekly sessions with Brother Tony, and in these sessions, they’d traipse up and down in absolute silence along the gravelled paths inside the monastery walls, feeling all holy and tingly inside.

But this beating up on himself, this flailing himself over the shoulder onto his back with his… uh…flail…well, it got old after a few years.

And as Edward grew older, this flailing stuff got all mixed up in his mind with those wet and messy pubescent dreams he was having, (and you know, you can flail until hell freezes over, but puberty is gonna have its wet ole’ way with you,) until the pleasure of flailing around in his bunk bed most nights, and the pleasurable pain of flailing around on the gravelly path with Brother Tony and the other young apostolates, well, the combo plan, it drove him half crazy.

Then one day…(isn’t there always a ‘then one day’ in these stories?) Edward heard a voice on the other side of the garden wall. A female voice. Reading poetry. And the voice was so beatifically beautiful, it was like listening to a songbird singing.

Suddenly, all those crazy night dreams slid straight into focus. And Ed knew what he had to do. Leaving Big Tony and the boys behind, he climbed over the wall, arms outstretched, ready to, as they say, seize the day, or at least have his way with, the bird.

He saw her standing there, smiling at him. She looked him up and down, and then she said…

“Do monks store sausages down their robes or are you just happy to see me?” And she started laughing. Well, that did it.

Edward became Evil Editor in that moment, that day. He left the monastery, and, with his insidious intelligence (and other good stuff) in tow, he set up shop, and would-be authors from all over flocked to him for a flailing. (Especially those birds. He had a flock of those birds now, just hanging on his every word.)

And now he really feels all tingly inside, although that holy part, well, that’s all gone now. Yeah.

But as for now, for me, worldly pleasures are now shackles. For me, the wonders of the spirit, of the reflective life, abound, and I will partake only in that which will enlighten.

For me, self-flagellation is a glory train.

Yay, verily my children, I say unto you, go forth, and do thou likewise.