sIR pAUL'S lOBSTERsKIN cOAT

I AM Not the Walrus

(March 04/06)
I am just to the left of you, a wee smidgen out of the frame, the frame of reference, the ontological cadre, if you will, which you mightn’t, but just the same, there I am, or not, as the case may or may not be. I am frame-less, having neither a point of reference nor scaffolding on which to erect myself, had I a self to erect, which I don’t, nor could I imagine having if I did, have one, a self, an ontological point of reference. I have no jumping in point, no entrance into the ‘into’, the ‘thing’, the me but not me, the other but not other, the otherly.

I have neither an other nor an other, other, the other-ness of others. I have neither other nor others, nor have I one of each, all or a coalition of all others. I have neither either or, nor or either neither or, or not or, no-nothing, nothingness, a flat paneled screen, a tabula raga. I am neither this nor that, or those or these, I am none and all of these. I regret nothing, except having nothing to regret, regretfully so, I regret regretting that I neither regret nor regret the regretting. Perhaps I am regretful, yet don’t know that I regretfully regret regretting ad nausea.

I am a seal pup clubsman, crackles and graylings of gray marrow gray bone, like chattering teeth, cutting swaths in the crisp eastern ice-flow flow. I am not Sir Paul, nor am I a walrus or an eggman, I am none of these, or them or him, or a Sir, a Sir Paul, the walrus, the eggman man. Sir Paul is a walrus, has the brain of a walrus, albeit a rich, paunchy all-knowing walrus. Sir Paul has the answer to poverty, hunger and shoelessness. He will, Sir Paul, save the economy of the Eastern flow with his harsh rich man’s blathering about the improprieties of clubbing poor baby seal pips. He will soar homeward, leaping the pond in one fell swoop, home to orchards and castles and dogs fed on grade A meat, the flesh of other poor animals, but no seal pups, who by virtue of their pelts are poor helpless creatures.

Paul, no longer Sir Paul, but the walrus, is a rich man with a rich man’s attitudes and beliefs, having never had to eat millet and grain seeds and wrap his frost bittern feet in sac cloth and boxing twine. He has not stood by, hopeless, as his children cry and wane for proper footwear and meat, any meat, animal flesh, fish flesh, a bean soup with day-old bread, cusps and heels of dry hard bread. So long Sir Walrus, and be wary of what you cram down your gullet, your rich never hungry rich man’s gullet, fed on Macadamian nuts and apple crisp Chardonnay. Tarry forth clubsmen, and may the gods be with you, and your children’s bellies brimming to the full, and their feet shod in Librium rubber and saltless calfskin hide.