By the time the supply of jokes had been
replenished, it appeared our meeting had adjourned
without anything like a good gavel pounding
having called a stop to the proceedings.
It was inevitable that our original
purposes would afterwards end up in complete
disarray, I suppose. One can only
speculate as to why we were so quick to lose
the thread that had guided us through the initial
morass of confusion. Many people
decided at last to act on the sentiment,
frequently expressed, that the time for words had come
to an end. Why continue to debate
and deliberate on whether to continue
to debate and deliberate? It’s always been
my opinion, however, that this view
credits us with far more than we deserve, and that
our attention was simply not up to the tasks
with which the very fact of our coming
together had demonstrated we were now faced.
I needn’t summon much in support of this view –
the evidence is rather all too clear.
I cite as a good example the subsequence
to our foray into the delicate problem
of humor. My experience was not
at all atypical. After all the trouble
we had put ourselves through, the apparent outcome
was that no one could recall precisely
what a joke was without referring to the list
of criteria. We couldn’t even be sure
whether either the original jokes
or the myriad that were collected after
the first few rounds of joke-tellings were indeed jokes.
For didn’t there have to be something like
a spontaneous and physical reaction
to such things as jokes? Weren’t they, in other words,
supposed to cause the listener to laugh?
It had us wondering if there wasn’t something
wrong with the criteria; perhaps we had missed
something essential. But we had taken
great pains to preserve the criteria as well
as the original twelve jokes. Surely we had
ensured their incorruptibility.
They really had made us laugh at one time; that much
we could recall of ourselves and – remembering
the looks on each other’s faces – of each
other. Through mutual assurances we were
convinced as to our former jollity and mirth.
As we puzzled over this, we were soon
forced to take cognizance of a turn of events
that nobody had anticipated – the fact,
namely, that the youth among us had come
to view The Breach (as it was now designated)
in an entirely different light. Precisely,
it had predisposed them to different
sorts of satisfactions and dissatisfactions.
That was an interesting subject…how the bare
timing of things had served to divide us
into two camps. That is, it was easy enough
to feign that we were all of a single accord.
Yet anyone who bothered to ponder
somewhat further into things might clearly perceive
that two accords, in fact, had unraveled themselves –
a greater and a lesser. We believed
that we were within our rights to claim the former
appellation for ourselves, if only because
we were greater in years, experience,
and perhaps also in number – but moreover
we were the first to bring into recognition
the fact that the original accord
had sublet a sizable portion of itself
for the purposes of…But who, indeed, could guess
as to things like purposes anymore.
In any case, we were much astonished to find
that this lesser accord – to put it plain,
the youth among us – had not forgotten
as we had the elusive art of letting go
of oneself, one’s shades and one’s charades in laughter.
That they had and we hadn’t, however,
didn’t strike us as so particularly odd
in itself. They were young, after all, and had learned
to make merry from the very event
that made the rest of us forget how to do so
(I nearly phrased it “that made us learn to forget” –
and from a later standpoint it did seem
as if our initial intransigence towards mirth
didn’t just happen of itself and had to be
cultivated through perhaps unconscious
imitation). But what was so striking was that,
while agreeing with us that the originals
(“The Dozen”) weren’t particularly
funny, the youth clearly perceived more than we did
what had once caused us to laugh at them. Morever,
they laughed uproariously at the jokes
that were produced in the joke-tellings. Truthfully,
they never failed to laugh. They thought they were funny.
That was quite consoling for us at first.
What for us had been conducted out of a grim
necessity and even seemed to have to do
with survival – yet what in addition
had divested us of any capacity
to please ourselves that we may have once imagined
we were born with…the outcome of all this
was this row of little tokens in which the youth
could delight. The troubling thing, however, was that
before long they became fully absorbed
in the study and almost rapt contemplation
of these odd makings of ours to the obvious
neglect of nearly everything besides.
In a very short while, they were scarcely able
to pick up after themselves, carrying around
a stench due to neglect of personal
hygiene. And, most disturbingly, they had begun
distributing amongst themselves a secret herb
that they fancied possessed relaxative
powers and other medicinal benefits.
God knows where they got it. Before long, they began
to assert (if not in so many words)
that the mere fact of possession (rather than age)
entitled one for membership in the “LA”
(Lesser Accord), as they proudly fashioned
themselves. And they took great precaution to make sure
that no one of the greater accord came within
so much as a whiff or a scent of it.
And this was what was meant at the very outset
by the understanding that our tales, our stories,
had to be generated? What indeed
was this pernicious breed with their horded substance
that had so been generated in this story?
And was our story in fact one story?
Yea or nay, could it be reclaimed with one accord?
[Next: A Confusion Beyond Sound]