Coincidance - Principia Discordia

COINCIDANCE 227
Doctors have feared for their sanity. But what are we to think of adult
males who have never outgrown this superstitious narcissism and still
verily believe the magical Willy to be the very Emblem and Significator of
the divine upon earth—The alchemical Medicine of metals, the Philosopher's
Stone, the Sumum Bonum? Have they remained entranc'd or enthrall'd—
virtually Mesmeriz'd—by the object of their first ardent erotic feelings?
By 1779, the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale was debating in public
whether women had intellectual capacities equal to men. (Phi Beta Kappa of
Harvard that year was debating whether Adam had a navel.) By 1792, the
Modest Enquiry was followed by Mary Wollstoncraft's somewhat less radical
Vindication of the Rights of Women, which had the demerit of being discussable in
polite society and therefore had less real effect than the banned, shunned,
forbidden and loathed Beckersnif f blasphemies, which everybody really read.
Interface coordination communication adds a piece of cheese jumping
around: Major Strasse has been shot in the basement.
General Washington found time to visit the Quaker hospital, despite the
distraction of supervising yet another retreat. He sat by Major General
Lafayette's bed and talked, gravely and with great sincerity, about the debt
America owned the Marquis, who had shed his blood in the cause of a
nation not his own, and he said that the United States would never forget
what it owned to the de Lafayette family of France.
Seamus discovered that Washington, like himself, seemed to be three
men. The man who spoke of national gratitude to Lafayette was not the
roaring foul-mouthed disciplinarian Seamus had seen most often, nor was
he the absent-minded philosopher of two days ago in the tent. He was a
Statesman, and he knew how to use unction and lubricating oil.
Later, while Seamus was walking in the garden—he had gone out to
allow Washington and Lafayette some privacy—a giant shadow fell
between him and the sun. There was only one man in Seamus's experience
who could cast a shadow that huge.
"Good afternoon, General."
"Good afternoon, Colonel."
They walked a few paces. Today Washington did not seem to have the
peculiar lurching gait that had afflicted him in recent months. An American
robin circled above their heads, landed in a tree, and loudly announced that
he could lick any bird in the garden with one wing tied behind him.
"You saw a rock fall from the sky," Washington said. "And you believed
your own eyes, instead of popular opinion."
"I did that, General." Seamus was not going to pour out his heart about
his other soul, the one that was a star. The falling rock business was queer
enough.
The robin announced shrilly that he was half-horse and half-alligator, ate