Skip to main content

The Metaphysical Circus

An Allegorical Poem Based on Real Events


Brutus woke up suddenly on a rock next to the lake.

He looked around and felt strange. The lake shimmered and the sun burned on his skin.

What was this? Brutus didn’t know what he was doing here. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking or feeling things. He felt very alone. He didn’t know who had put him here, and he didn’t know where to go. He wasn’t like all the other brutuses who went busily about their days, buzzing to the next task and desire until they fell asleep.

He wanted to go somewhere. He needed to go somewhere. He wanted to feel comfortable and whole. He wanted to latch on to something, but there was nothing to latch on to. He couldn’t be with his own mind.

Where was his home? He wanted to go inside, but there was no inside on the rock. He walked to the shady trees, but he got there and he was still Brutus. There was no crevice to crawl into. Only pounding sun and open sky and existing.

Maybe he could get it out from inside of him. He vomited. And vomited again. He was still Brutus.

Why was he here? Where could he go? Who could he be with? How could he feel OK?

He tried to speak these things, but the words came out funny. They felt like they were through thick glass. They didn’t seem to match up.

He stood on the rock and screamed.

BRUTUSSSS

…

BRUUUUUTTTTTUUUUUSSSS

The sky and lake were silent. There was no exit.

BRUTUSSSS

Brutus dipped into the lake a bit. Maybe this would help. He lay on a rock in the sun. He still didn’t know why he was here, or who was out there to hear him. But this felt good at least. He then understood the manatee, and the nobility of its ways. A wet rock in the sun is as good a way to encounter the strangeness of existence as any.

Brutus got up. He still felt strange. The heavens were still silent.

While he frantically paced on the rock an intelligence deep within him called out. He hadn’t felt its presence in years.

He evolved. He became Count Dewfunkel. He was called Count Dewfunkel now, so he giggled a bit. Since he was Count Dewfunkel he put his hand in the air and started strutting. He giggled a bit more. He realized that wherever Count Dewfunkel goes it’s always a party, all the time. He started really laughing now and dancing a bit. He laughed more and more, learning that Count Dewfunkel’s fuel is laughter.

Count Dewfunkel looked around him and realized everything he’d learned was bullshit. The coolest person was the one who could move their body in the most weird way. He decided that he would hold daily wiggle hours and weird dance contests. Him and the other dewfunkels on the rock started bopping and twisting to their own rhythms. They all looked so interesting and they all laughed harder and harder at each other.

Count Dewfunkel started making noises, and realized that sounds and words are fun. He especially liked how you can invent new ones that sound funny. He tried out a few and laughed even more. Zigamorph. Squeenana. Loopuu. He looked up at the sky. It was a big blue monkey.

Another dewfunkel on the rock handed The Count an orange. “It’s a party in your mouth,” the dewfunkel said. The Count bit in and felt the orangey explosion zing around his mouth. He knew the other dewfunkel’s statement to be a deep metaphysical truth.

Count Dewfunkel was now jiving around the rock with a bounce in his step. Wherever he went it became a party. The count was a jolly fellow, but he had two enemies: a serious mind and a still body. He was the revolution and the cure. He wanted a funk train and play emporium, and would soon choreograph a Dewfunkel Ballet. He knew that everyone was a dewfunkel, he just had to show them. Why do anything when you can Dewfunkel? he thought.[1]

Eventually Dewfunkel was tired from all his wiggling and giggling, and from all the vomiting and screaming Brutus had done earlier too. So he went to bed.

As he was falling asleep Dewfunkel hoped that he would wake up as Dewfunkel. Then, it would be a party wherever he went the next day too, and the next after that. He would get to dance and make funny noises and walk with a bounce in his step. That would be great.

As he fell asleep Brutus was slowly becoming a brutus, and he didn’t feel so confused and lonely anymore. He felt so much love for all the other Brutuses he knew that he almost cried. He knew that even though they were busy bee brutuses now, deep within they were Brutuses too. He wanted to call them all right now and tell them: “I love you. Thank you. I feel you. I gotchu.” He knew that a Brutus sounds a bit crazy to all the other brutuses, but he would call and tell them anyway. One day or another they would wake up on a lonely rock as Brutus and scream to the sky for answers, look for someplace to go. Maybe there were no answers and no place to go, but at least they would know he was on the rock with them. Perhaps he could even introduce them to an old friend of his…

Brutus smiled.

The end.

[1] Ed note: Dewfunkeling may break objects, clothes, and social barriers. Please proceed with reckless abandon

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wisps of Smoke

“Everything teaches a lesson.” I was feeling disappointed and anxious in the days following an ill-advised wrestling match and concussion. It was the end of a summer spent working at a boy’s camp, and my plans to lead a culminating backpacking trip were now in doubt. My head buzzed with headache if I tried to read, listen to music, or raise my voice. “Everything teaches a lesson.” These were my friend Nemo’s words of consolation. I don’t want lessons — I want to be healthy, to go on this trip, to be able to do everything I enjoy, I thought through tears. His consolation was spotless in its truth and logic, yet, in the moment, unable to console me at all. I’ve now learned that the average concussion heals in two weeks; my concussion experience was not an average one. There are various reasons for this — whiplash, hypochondria, poor management. But what matters is that, over the next three months, instead of recovering, my condition declined. The list of stim...
4 comments
Read more

Miseducation/Re-education

It is difficult for me to submit to joy. It comes clunkily. I look around, abashed. I don’t want to dance too excitedly, sing too loudly, joke too freely—extend myself too much. My joy could be another person’s lame, weird, gross, strange .   This is a lesson I, and almost all of us, have subconsciously learned from a young age. It is difficult to give into free, unabashed, wacky joy because we have been miseducated. As ‘childhood’ ended, and we began to learn math and writing in the classroom, on the playground we began to learn the rules of the game. We learned how to fit in, how to play it cool, how to not be the weird one, how to not give in to joy.   We were miseducated to cringe at the free expression of those kids, either without social sense or wise beyond their years, who did express themselves freely (“band kids” or “theater kids” maybe, guys who moved their bodies a little too much like girls). We cringed for them, already seeing the social consequences of their fr...
1 comment
Read more

Toward a Planetary Society: Outline of a Strategy

COVID-19 has been a planetary crisis. And though the subjective experience of COVID has differed wildly depending on geography, culture, class, race, and belief system, at least a small part of the experience of COVID has been shared by all humans. This is unique in world history, though as commentators point out it is only the first of many such a globe encompassing trials. Given this inevitable future of planetary crisis (and I don’t just mean near-term global warming, I also refer to other existential risks such as pandemics, asteroids, and AI), I wonder if we can find a silver lining in this first experience of planetary crisis.  It is well known to anyone with a bad boss or who has gone on a difficult journey that suffering is a powerful means of creating group cohesion. ‘The trial’ is one of the most ancient means of forging the social bond through rituals and rites of passage that reduce all members of society to a common substance. Anthropological thinkers argue that the pe...
2 comments
Read more