a word with a chud, and a chud-word from a sage.

Cheever, the Senator from Glaucon, was downtrodden, and lost of an unction to kick against the pricks; they had cat-called and hissed during his oratory, pronouncing him so much un-name-able this-and-that, sundry other things.

I reminded him that he didn't like most of those people anyway, and if his well-being hinged on their good report, he would forever be sad, no matter his own courses of action.

If he didn't like them, even, why give them such control over his person?  He could take a stone face when they approached him, and he could ignore them on the Senate floor, lest business intervenes.  In fact, they are inaudible, the jeers, from the CSPAN feed.

I told him that he had the full authority to decide what he should fret over, and with that pronouncement, he got up from the table and walked away.

I said, he has purchased freedom by trading in his frustrations; there went a happier person.

The rabble had scrawled crude drawings of Cheever before a prostrate Calpurnea.  Such talk was the rage for a time, and this too brought him no end of consternation, no end of throwing out his own peace like bathwater, but I illustrated to him on Facebook that his stick figure was drawn with an enormous Long Sword size of penis.  "Look at the gift they have given you", I told him, and he LOL'led the thing, of course, and noted that they always had a bigger penis for him, such was the way of frustrations and so forth in the halls of the legislature.

"You have ideas, and your ideas are worthwhile" I told him, trying to uplift his person.

"A million little fleatick ideas swarming about my scalp like late-summer gnats."

And he found his unction--he had even visited his old storage locker in Baltimore--he could scour the ends of the very earth, walk the earth, endlessly comb for his lost unction--meanwhile, Calpurnea stolen away, cooking a hare for his supper.

"But you have your place, like a finger between two other fingers" and I illustrated this by upraising a finger to him, and he smiled, some sour, wry, and leaned forward--this our third time having a drink in the afternoon: one can not be too lax about these things, that he had called me out of a dire need to hear my voice, because, as it were, he was not otherwise a bored man, just seeking to fill time.

Do not we all take for granted all the little hello's and so forth in the age of instant messaging?  Do we not realize he had taken the time to think and felt he needed a word; I could provide that word, I supposed, realizing there was some kind of need behind it.  I wonder else-wise how many friendships had run empty and dry for such lack of thought, or boredoms or screen binges or such.

Senator Cheever, of course, known for a taste for brown liquors, things that do so much harm to the body, and he did it so easily, as if his insides were made of something like iron.  That meant most of his weight was his basketball-sized old man pot belly, his guts, crowned by his belly button, not in other glory of his, and he walked with it pooched-out in front of him like a love-offering to anyone near his frontage.

The screw and the sticking place; I had even spat into so many drums of burning trash, once upon a time, watched animals waste away and so forth, so much of it not permeating the inner citadel--not even an eyelash circumference--and here, me taken as a sage for the wittled-over fellow, and me probably needing more of his worry, as of a lever and fulcrum, or one of those balance bubbles: between the two, he and I were probably possessed of all the pieces of a purely functional person, but these, such as it were, were otherwise scattered about here and there, with a part I lacked gracing CSPAN, and myself acting as a server, bringing plates of ribs to anyone with the money.

We're all sages and seem so well-adjusted when we give advice to our friends, I suppose--we put on that crown of righteousness and edict our way into pushing our familiars further into ruin, inescapable dissipation.