Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Computation of sneezes

Wendell Berry, in "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front":

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbor and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute....

Today I sneezed. While driving to work I sneezed so hard I almost had to pull over, and then I sneezed again. Fumbling for the Kleenex box I swerved all over the road sneezing and hoping I wouldn't die in such a ridiculous manner: Sneeze-Fest Leads to Smashed Nissan. Then in class while reading the above poem aloud, I had to sneeze so badly I thought my eyeballs would pop right out of my head and go rolling across the filthy classroom floor. Somehow I held it in and made it to the end, but then there was all that sneeze-energy bottled up in my head and it had to come out somehow. I could not begin to compute the number of times I sneezed today. Someone owes me a lot of Gesundheits.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit. Gesundheit.

Anonymous said...

I was going to say something, but after Joy's reply, there's really nothing to say.

Anonymous said...

God bless you, Prof. Hogue. u no u changed my life wen I was your farmer student and made me red literatur for my mind sake. good luk and al. maybe it was the atlaspere that made u sneze. cud be.