Donald K. Cervantes and Stan
Please Give Me A Break
Part One
“My hope is that this season we can all take the time to reflect a little less.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know that memories and self-examination ever did a thing for us other than weigh the moment down.”
“More long-falling, then? Like dream-somersaults?”
“It’s kind of funny. Well, I don’t know about funny, but, the word ‘benighted,’ I only just finally looked that word up the other day, in a dictionary, I don’t know, I was reading something, came across it, but I searched out the definition. And it meant the polar opposite of what I had, I guess forever now, always assumed it to mean. The difference, in fact, is vast. Ridiculously telling. The word ‘benighted’ means ignorant, unenlightened.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I guess there ain’t no ‘k’ in there.”
“No ‘k,’ Jackie Kennedy.”
“. . .”
“But even if there were.”
“To knight yourself is ridiculous.”
“I had long kind of assumed the word, or the sense of the word, as something of a mantle, too.”
“Well, you can still do that.”
“I can certainly still do that.”
“Now more than ever.”
“Now more than ever.”
“The benighted one.”
“. . .”
“In fact, a greater pride can be taken.”
“Truer words are spoken every day.”
“Can a pyramid of beer cans stand as a testament to human endurance, ingenuity?”
“How big is the pyramid?”
“We worked for what felt like generations.”
“One wrong move and you will get a leg crushed under one of those blocks.”
“You'll get a head crushed.”
“How, as a people, do we gather ourselves to do this?”
“More dictionary, less photo album.”
“I am not sure I agree with that. But the spirit in which you say it.”
“There is also an archaic sense of the word which means something like to be overtaken by night or the dark.”
“That's even better.”
“Slack-jawed yokel.”
“A slack-hoped jaw-full.”
“A jack-sloped awful.”
“Slack-jawed hopeful.”
“Ben Boyer said jack-slawed heart-case.”
“. . .”
“What might be called the din and the dang of the situation. The din forever balances the dang and vice versa.”
“Without which we'd fall out of bed.”