comedy

Prophecy is easy. Comedy is hard!

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

To paraphrase a famous quote: Prophecy is easy. Comedy is hard.

Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut … We always say a picture speaks a thousand words, but isn’t the opposite equally true?

“I think,” the Father General said, “that I could be of more help to you if I knew whether you see all this as comedy or tragedy.”

            Emilio did not answer right away.  So much, he was thinking, for keeping silent about what can’t be changed.  So much for Latino pride.  He felt sometimes like the seedhead of a dandelion, flying apart, blown to pieces in a puff of air.  The humiliation was almost beyond bearing.  He thought, and hoped sometimes, that it would kill him, that his heart would actually stop.  Maybe this is part of the joke, he thought bleakly.  He turned away from the windows to gaze across the room at the elderly man watching him quietly from the far end of the beautiful old table.

            “If I knew that,” Emilio Sandoz said, coming as close as he could to the center of his soul and to the admission that shamed him, “I don’t suppose I’d need the help.”

If you can't stand the heat, use an easy bake oven.

Then I was eighteen again, literally, hitchhiking in a bewildering zigzag from Toad Suck Park, Arkansas, to Big Bone Lick State Park, Kentucky, to Hungry Mother State Park, Virginia, to Intercourse, Pennsylvania, through the Shenandoah Valley to Sweet Lips, Tennessee, and then on through the Bible Belt bound, as best I could tell, for Climax, North Carolina.

Welcome to the herd. You are now following the lead bull.