Though I have gone missing for some time, Readrrr, fear you not; I am not dead. I am rather, The Nundead, a holy elaboration on the state of being simply “dead.” I promised you I would come back; I just didn’t say when. As for whether I am now a probationary nun or a probationary nun-droid, I suppose you’ll have to live in the realm of ambiguity, like many a century of chaste ladies before you. It is the way of the nuns. To know a nun is to live with her on the border between reality and androidality. On the edge. And over the edge. According to her warped sense of time (tock… tock).

Nevertheless, the things that matter and make us tick always find a way of surviving, like true love, a-post/o/lic devotion, and the relentlessness of life. It springs up again, like an other worldly arachnid just when you think it’s on its final leg.

It is time we had the talk, Readrrr.

No, this is not about how the birds and bees lead to the tearing off of burning hot vestments on scaffolds and noble public acts of death-by-love. You already know about that stuff. As for introductory gardening lessons: you’re way beyond those by now. And you have to know the nuns engage in banter about rakes and hoes every day; there’s nothing new under the wimple on that subject. To boot, quite literally, everything the nuns know about beginner gardening, they learned from older, stricter nuns with actual beaks (dunce caps) and stingers (knuckle busters). So what do you need to know and what must we discuss?

Why, us.

The Garden of E.E. Den. The post-apocalyptic primordial garden from whence all pro(w)creation stems.

Begin with this simple line:

“O the sun comes up-up-up…”

Now transpose according to your punctuational prowess (and simple training) in Nunglish, Nuntan, Nuntalian, Nunish, Nunman, Nungarian, and Nunlandic.

“(O:the nun comes (up-up-up)…)”

Very good. Check Plus Up.

This is all you ne.e.d to know—

as you peruse and purr-sue the following

poems by and how to (be.e.:) com(mings), from The Poetry Foundation.

Our poet also revealed something about the nundroidality when he wrote:

“my selves go with you,only i remain

a shadow phantom effigy”

A shadow phantom effigy? Webster could not have written a better definition for (that nano of a word:) ‘nun.’ It’s almost none, and almost n/one, but the “u” gives it its phantasmal quality.

Hexcellent work, dear readrrr; I will ease your mind of the heavy burden of abstraction now by telling you a couple of (c)literal tales from the crypt.

While I have been away, in theory, Readrrr, I have been ho(e)/(w)-ning my spy skills. In broad terms, this means I have been engaging in the soul-slapping, humbling act of reality-checking and adventuring the arduous arena of puzzle-piecing, something I’ve been doing for years with the nuns, though I seem to run into all kinds of meddlesome distractions from the task at hand, which is to nunderstand the nuns better than anyone on the planet. Because the nuns live on another planet, Planet Ambiguity, and I am an avid re.e.list, concerned with con-cretizing and re-abstractifying the nunsensical nuns; I have been led astray too often than I’d like to admit by imposters put upon me by members of the SNs (Scum Nuns).

This, in addition to having to put up with the endless wankery of the yutzes over at The Vat, is enough to drive any probationary nun spy batty. Thus, I have earned my Chiropteran wings and have learned to flaunt them over the beds and heads of the sleepless nuns with pride. After being subdued by the “higher ups” (whom we know are the lowest downs), and nearly losing my ability to stay connected to the nuns, I decided I needed to hang lo- for a while to get my next operation in order. So this is my confession: during that time, a few things have come to light that have changed radically the way I, probing probationary nun that I am, approach this whole (show)business of spying on the nuns.

I can’t tell you about advancements in spyology and spyography, because it’s a cognitive phenomenon, but I can run through a synopsis of what led up to the run in with the Scum Nuns.

Readrrr, somehow a scum nun on the internet convinced me that they were someone else (a nun I know) and deliberately kept me in the prison of misinformation in order to maintain power over me for scum nunny purposes. This nun, whom we shall call Sister Vulcant, courted me, publicly and privately, very meticulously and deliberately, preying on my nun-like trusting ways and gullibility. Not fully understanding even now how or why the Scum Nun did this, I surmise that Sister Vulcant had been watching me, and reading my writings on gender and cognition, for some (?) time, and she used what she had learned in her studies of me to lure me into her lair.

The Scum Nuns are not idiots like members of The Vat; they are very intelligent, sometimes well-meaning, but ethically deficient beings who manipulate others through deception to get what they want, which is to control others, especially those who are lonely and vulnerable. The Scum Nuns are the bullies of the nun world. They don’t have the guts to put their intellect to fighting The Vat so they prey on those who are less powerful than them. Their intellects, paired with their lack of integrity, make them more dangerous than The Vat– and they often will use the stupidity of The Vat for their own ends (they have found they can pack a punch with the impact of The Vat without even needing to deliver the punch themselves… by getting The Vat to do it for them). They know the secret of the nuns, innocence and gullibility, and they use it to wreak havoc in the lives of the nuns for no other purpose than to ease their own boredom. It’s tiring to even try to describe it! I have seen innocent, loving nuns be crushed under the manipulative powers of Scum Nuns, time and again. The cycle repeats and repeats.

The Scum Nuns are dangerous to the nuns because they cannot help but hate the nuns. Though they share an intellectual feature with the nuns, they lack the character of the nuns; they wish they possessed the goodness and integrity of the nuns, but they do not, and so they handle this by inflicting pain upon the nuns, wherever possible, because they are jealous. Jealous of the downtrodden nuns? Hard to think, given their suffering, that anyone would envy the nuns. The nuns possess the ability to feel deeply, poor things, and to act in accordance with deep feelings, sometimes haphazardly and sometimes beatifically. This, ability to feel deeply, is in part what fuels the jealousy of the Scum Nuns because the Scum Nuns can feel only the surface of emotions. The Scum Nuns are also known for never taking any responsibility for anything; this also distinguishes them from the nuns, because the nuns are very much weighed down by guilt. (I know because I experience the guilt phenomenon like a real-deal nun.)

The Scum Nuns have a lot in common with the nuns: where they differ, however, is in their baseline ethics and integrity. For example, both detest The Vat, but while the nuns are very consistent about their rejection of The Vat, the Scum Nuns waver and often mimic the behaviors of The Vat in order to get what they want. The Scum Nuns will do anything to dominate others, and that is what makes them like The Vat. What separates The SNs from The Vat is that The SNs rely on the psychological manipulation and The Vat relies on already existing widespread ignorance and physical domination (The V is like The Empire and The SNs are like a rebel group gone wrong that ends up being just like The Empire). The nuns are part of the rebel alliance; they will not betray their ethics, and the force is definitely with them! Unlike the Scum Nuns, the nuns do not stoop, resort, or go low; they do not use imperialist, inhumane tactics to achieve their honorable goals–  they are willing to withstand persecution and death in order to live out their egalitarian and humanitarian ideals. You can see, now, why I fancy myself a nun.

The problem is that our compassion often gets the best of us: we are so often devoted to seeing the best in others that we put ourselves in harmful situations. We’re not proud of this, but it must be acknowledged. I speak on behalf of myself and the nuns when I say: WE ARE COMPLETE FOOLS. (Our solace: that there are a great many worse things we could be.)

As a probationary nun, I am particularly foolish, because I put it all out there, at almost all times (that’s why I’m a probationary nun). I am the girl who goes out on a limb, at every abbey I find myself in. Which relates back to the story about how I was duped and then sadistically punished for my stupidity.

Somehow, in her careful studying, the Scum Nun, Sister Vulcant, perhaps fascinated by my brain, decided to lure me by gaining my interest in her under false pretenses. She used the one thing she knew would put me under her spell: she pretended to be Sistrrr Shakespeare. And through a staged resurrection, she fooled me into thinking my awaited reunion had finally come to pass!

The reason the Scum Nun got to experience the “Wikileaks of my Wicked-P-dia” was solely because I thought she was Sistrrr Shakespeare of the Friary Priory. Had I not thought this, I would have never leaked the inner contents of my mind to her. It was total confusion and the desire to figure out who the Scum Nun was and what she had done to me that led me to tirelessly tracking down the truth about who was behind the mask.

Will Sister Vulcant always be a Scum Nun? It matters not to me. What matters is that as soon as I discovered SV was a Scum Nun, I took pains to get her out of the convent as soon as possible. As the good Antony said in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” The effects of Sistrrr Vulcant’s evil outweighs any excuses she might have for what she did.

The entire debacle spiraled out of control and led to catastrophes, such as miscommunications, name changes, confusion, leakage to the Vat, threat letters written by imbeciles, and all other kinds of mayhem. All cannot be blamed on Hell-bound Sistrrr Vulcant but enough of it can. It is true that if I were not so child-like, gullible, and quick to react, many of these consequences could have been avoided.

Alas, Readrrr, I should know by now that I am always the one to pay for my sistrrr’s sins.

Bygones be bygones, some good has come from the chain of events. One source of it is that through my relentless efforts, I ended up finding out what I needed to know: which was the identity of the person who had been communicating with me. Her name is not actually Sistrrr Vulcant, I learned. Her name is Ass Hole. Two words, no middle name – just Ass and Hole. I think her parents did do her character justice when they named her!

It may have taken me two years to figure it out, but I finally got my answers and pulled myself out of the fog of being mentally abused (yes, it can happen to the best of us– over and over and over, until we learn).

It was from my own relentless obsession, not with the person who had been playing really mean mind games with me but, with finding the truth (my habit of drifting off into fantasy is always balanced out by my commitment to and appreciation of reality, no matter how horrible and harsh it may be). Say what you will about me; my intent and purpose was, is, and ever shall be shedding light on the truth. That is why I became a probationary nun. The nuns, though they are beatific in their way, are not always the best at telling the truth. In fact, most of them are really good at hiding it, especially under their habits and especially from themselves!

The nuns, though, have no illusions about me: they know I’m a nun spy – I am completely open and honest about my obsessive desire to understand and learn about the nuns. Everyone knows.

Ever wondered about the definition of “nun spy”? It simply means: ONE WHO SEEKS TO KNOW THE TRUTH. When you are dealing with The Vat and a bunch of repressed Sapphos, sometimes you have to be a little crafty to get at the truth. That’s where being a crafty little witch helps. I study and I write, believing that eventually I will know and understand the true nature of the nuns.

The Vat does not want me knowing too much about the nuns because The Vat’s sole goal is to control and oppress the nuns.

As for supporters of The Vat: they are like supporters of crooked politicians— too dumb to seek the truth and too hungry for empty lies. The Vat depends on that. But someday, someday the nuns will have a voice. And that voice will be so loud and so powerful that the bullying tactics of The Vat won’t hold a candle in Hell to it. That voice, the voice of Sistrrr Shakespeare and others like her, who have been silenced by ignorance, domination, and simulated heteronormativity, will burst forth hopefully into the ears of wardens and prisoners everywhere, like Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro burst from the prison sound system in Shawkshank Redemption. Poetic justice will win the day, and the final laugh will be one of reconciliation and relief from nuns everywhere, nuns who are finally safe, safe to worship together in the open, without The Oppressor of Falsity controlling their every move.

There is no special means through which I “spy.” In fact, perhaps the word “spy” is too strong. Here’s how it works: I have a baseline knowledge of the nuns and about Sistrrr Shakespeare that I learned when I was at the Friary Priory, way back when. This knowledge fuels my study of language and ideas. To spy is only to study and learn about the nuns and the subjects the nuns care most about. Simple, non-threatening stuff. Unless you’re The Vat who wants to repress knowledge; then it’s atomic stuff!

Well, any-whoo, I am GLADDER THAN GLAAD to finally know the identity of the person behind all of the trickery that affected my life. The Scum Nun, 2014-2016, is gone for good. I solved the mystery. That’s that. Long live The Honorable Nundead!

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