Epic

 My friend, Fr. Mark, was telling me about his first day back teaching classes, and he recounted it in the style of Hemingway:

alone.

driving.

ill.

in the rain.

blank stares.

vacant minds.

departure.

alone.

in the rain.

I would conclude with another narrative voice, but if I adopt Melville I would have to offer seventy-five pages on the driving wheel I grasped while traveling in to the seminary, and eighty-five pages on the key I used to open the lock of the side door I entered, and one-hundred pages on the wood used to construct the door, placed on hinges, attached to the door frame by screws, using screwdrivers, twisted in a clockwise direction, by calloused male hands, slippery with sweat, laboring beneath the sweltering sun, in the South, near the water, brackish water to the north, in the Lake, fresh water flowing through the river, fresh but polluted, by agricultural combines and sewerage, from cities upriver, their waste flowing through the winding bends of the river channel, bisecting the continent, like blood flowing over gravel, twisting, turning, but ceaselessly flowing, from North to South, uncaring of the lives that exist because of it, on it, beside it, drinking from it, disposing in it, trash representing the detritus of civilization, a word spawned by hubris, the hubris of denial, denial of what is, what was, and what will be, the detritus in which all things return to the dirt, dry or wet, wet or dry, but still dirt, through the centuries, millennia, eons, ages, always dirt, at the beginning and the end, beneath the sky, sometimes filled with clouds, sometimes clear blue, blue because of the angle of sunlight refracted off the atmosphere insulating our elliptical home from the cold of space, icy cold, a vacuum, empty, void, dark, until one turns to the Sun, then overpowering light, and heat, and radiation, traveling ninety-three million miles, mile, after mile, after mile, after mile, after mile, after mile ........:

I thought this was so hilarious, I had to try it!  I mentioned the epic trip to get the flu shots, right?

Here is a fuller recounting done in the style of Beowulf:

 Long sat I in my lofty hall, yet was I wroth and sorely vexed. 
A pestilence had swept down from the frozen North and layed waste to many in the fair lands.
Noble thanes and hearty villeins alike fell before it's frosty gaze.
I pondered with my heart full sore, what was to be done? 

Then awoke my hero's heart! 
Was I to cower before this threat? 
Nay, I would see what strength and cunning I yet possessed! 
Loudly I called my noble thanes, and swiftly they answered my call!

"Be stout hearted!" quoth I.
"We know this evil afflicts out land. 
Shall we do nothing til it seize us in our beds
and wring our hearts blood from us?
No!  We shall track this evil to it's lair,
We shall strike it first, swiftly and sure!"
Who fears the bite of cold steel,
when glorious victory awaits?"

And my noble thanes would not go unrewarded! 
Much treasure would I, their noble lord bestow:
rich rings, curiously wrought of sugar and such sweetness,
crunchy cookies, filled with chocolate morsels,
all this and more I promised.

So we sailed, swift as the eagle to the doctor's office,
yet not knowing the horrors that awaited us.
For whose blood would not run cold,
surrounded by the scourge of plague contained within those walls?
For, swiftly though we came, slowly would we depart.

Hour after leaden hour passed as we waited in the vile room.
Neither victuals nor provisions could be taken into the realm of terror,
and the hour of feasting, when the mead should flow like rivers,
came and went to our empty sorrow.

Yet when we looked to return, empty in hand and belly,
then it was that the battle was upon us!
A giant nurse from days of old fell upon my first born son
and stabbed him in the arm!
Uttering no cry of pain, right manfully he stood the blow
with grim and noble mein.

Yet she stabbed again, and again,
striking to the left and right,
leaving wounds full sore amongst my brave and noble thanes!
Yet the evilest blade, her hideous battle cry,
"It doth not hurt AT ALL!"

In righteous rage I clove her head, splitting her from stem to stern!
"And this for you! "quoth I, "Fear not, it doth not hurt AT ALL."

Well...ok, maybe that's not exactly what I did.  But I felt like it!