How long I have been kept away from you, Readrrr!

Detained, really. For that is me: a detainee, a refugee— feared and maligned and banned from the border, always (n)unsuccessfully, due to the epic host of misunderstandings surrounding the vast subject of my nunconventional mind and its cathartic carriage of linguistic chaos.

Nevertheless and lessthenever, I long have been kept, aw-aye, from you. How lo/ng is tew long! (I know you know I know you know I know you…)

In jest, I speak, as is tradition; so, being the good student you are, you know I have not been away from you, truly; I have merely been kept. (Away from you, I would never be. That is what allows me to lament: I’m kept. Aw-aye from you, aw-aye from you! The more aw-aye from yew, the nearer Aye be. E-ven now, I’m kept. A-w/aye! With the.e.)

I am also (n)unkempt, which my audacious students at the Lavender Academy’s (Mood) Indigo Branch Camp-us so graciously reminded me yesterday with an emboldened, “Are you having a bad day, Sistrrr Grim?” To this, I crooned, “Do you mean my hair,” with telepathic knowing that was confirmed instantly: “Yes, you are having a bad hair day.”

(Between you and me, Readrrr… a bad hair day, alas (and that’s not all)!)

Oh, but my speakeasy student, who failed to notice that she, herself, was having a good hair day and as such, naturally, had a sparrow’s nest of steel wool tied in a knotty lump at the lower back of her tactful neck, has not yet (i.e., will never have) learned about the hexual politics of Sistrrr Grim and her Philosophy of Juxtapositional Polarity. To Sistrrr Grim, a “bad” hair day is always a “good” hair day and a good hair day would, indeed, be atrociously bad. I am a (n)unkindly hexmistress to my Miss. guided students, so it is always with grave patience that I allow them to exercise their right to indignant polarities without the faintest idea of the power below the surface, and, even more, of reversals. As such, I hexercise (and cis-ed) my right to linguistically go clear (that is, foggy) over their head (we were talking about hair; were we knot, though I am a Carrollian hare when it comes to talking, as my Tortoise Readrrr know-eth).

In front of a desk I share with slight and rule-abiding Sistrrr Dusty, who teaches a class before me, I stood, staring down at my attendance book, and thought, “If this student thinks I am having a bad hair day, well, then, I must be looking rather dapper.” And I ruffled my hairfeathers to increase the badness, and said, “Disheveled is the look I aim to achieve. I am glad I have achieved it.” To this, Readrrr, my student, who is quite a bit older than two thous and year old me, calendrically speaking, became awkward but no less audacious, and I aided her audacity by attributing the rest to the fact that I was born in the 1980s (or was it 1890s– good luck doing the math on that, Readrrr!), and that I’m hyper-nostalgic when it comes to remaining, so to speak, “forever young“, whilst journeying on my way    home.

These students of mine, Readrrr, are not young: they are, like you, ageless, ancient and long-bearded as a hatchet-yielding amazonian warlock, and pointy, smooth-cheeked and wee as a newborn elf, like me; yet they are not hip to my tricks– at least not in the way that you are, Hip Readrrr.

Speaking of hip-readrrrs; I once asked Sistrrr Hippolyta (that’s her last name–) to give me a hip reading. I told her my palms were occupied by a chronic stigmata, hence the need to use my hips, and she seemed quite convinced, so much so that her cheeks were more than blush when I held my dripping palm up to her face.

That is to say, she had some qualms, but nothing that would not be resolved by my bleeding palms. Plus, she didn’t even know she, or anyone else, had the power to read hips, but she was the rose hip fanatic in our garden club, back in the day, so I thought to myself: unearthed potential lurks about her, and I knew, too, that unearthly potential lurks about my hips. Match made in heave(n)? A rose is a rose is a rose, a Stein is a Stein is a Stein, and a nun is a nun is a nun. Therefore: a readable hip is a readable hip is a… logic, no? Readrrr, I know you know this story all too well, but let me gloat with regard to its surprise ending, as you know I feel that a hippy ending can never be dwelled upon long enough.

Sistrrr H, who is a bit of a hippo (a foxymoron of one, too) and a bat of a haply hipster, took to my hip-reading proposition like a nun to a chalice. So what that I told her she would be reading my rose hips. So what that she came expecting rose hips. In my defense, I gave them to her. Eventually. I cannot help it when a sistrrr is actin’ all afool and takes me literally: she should have known my rose hips were metaphorically real. But I must admit, with my head bowed in shame for I know my Heavenly Fathrrr knows how I delight in reliving a sin through the oral tradition (storytelling, Readrrr!): I pulled one over her!

Do you want all the details about my rose hips, Readrrr? Sistrrr H sure did! Damnation or no damnation, it cannot be argued that Sistrrr H did not learn ALL that there is to know about rose hips from reading my hips. Of course we held our rosy posy reading retreat after class, but it was still a learning experience. Better yet, it was a learning hexperience. If you, Readrrr, were there, you would have been enlightened, perhaps to the point of needing a rose hip replacement. And that’s just what happened to Sistrrr H. But I am jumping ahead of My Pet Snail Readrrr.

Am I getting a head of myself, Readrrr? Am I repeating your name too many times? And am I a liturgical gossip, sopping up the vain and trivial details of befogging nun life at the Shabby Abbey?

But you still want to know what happened with my rose hips. Of course you do.

Hush, hush. <— Yes: That’s exactly what happened with my rose hips and my reading by Sistrrr H. (If I told you all the details, then it wouldn’t be a hexperience, would it? I am a sorceress of words, in addition to being a probationary hex nun, and I am wicked. What did you hexpect. (Well, even a relentless blabber mouth can be persuaded into strict sorcery, given the right instructor.)

If you predicted this urn of events, bat yourself on the pack. And if you did not predict this, then you might want to ask someone who knows how to read hips… but there is only one hip-readrrr in all the world and she, Readrrr, is nunoccupied at the moment! Pity, pity, pity.

As you fall asleep at quarter to 9 PM tonight (I assume your convent has a “loose and reasonable” curfew, like ours), please hexercise your brain to the mmm-ax and try to think of the linguistic and transformative possibilities that I have set before you in this nunsensical cacophony of scintillectualism. I want you to know everything about what happened when Sistrrr H came to my dormitory and read my rose hips but I want the story to arise, and cock-a-doodle-blood-red-dew, in you. I would not dot your ayes, nor would I blank in the fills for you.

Here is a titillating definition to get you started (hold out your rose bowl, Readrrr)…

Hex Linguistics: the subversive practice and phantasmic fantasia of an intentional re-sssociation of phonetics that places, for the purpose of advancing, through educational erotics, hyper-associative and meta-associative theme- and concept-first language uses.

Do you get me, Readrrr? If you need clarification, ask yourself if you have crossed oceans of time. And then, read my hips.