Dear reader,
I’m sorry to hear that you, whoever you are and wherever you live, are doing so poorly. I understand that you can’t get your window open and thus are barred from audibly greeting the passing children, because the sill and the whole entire frame got welded shut.
But, since they’re nearly free of charge, I’m sending hopes & prayers to you, from the place where I live. Here, everything is great: I have all that I need, plus abundant luxuries. I am in perfect health. And the way that I spend my time is as follows.
I like to swim in the nearby river, whose water is crystal clear. I like to go for walks in my garden (my garden is the size of more than fourteen football fields, and it contains all sorts of exotic plants); also I enjoy going for romantic walks on the beach at night with various female ski-instructors. I have a thing for beach-walking with ski-instructors; something about the combination of their snowy, icy profession and the warm, sandy shoreline brings a smile to my face.
I own ample torpedoes, so all my enemies are subdued: I believe in the doctrine of “peace thru strength”. I keep all the vicious wildlife that haunts the perimeter of my favorite tower (where I spend most of my days reclining, reading novels) barely fed, so that they are more desperate to eat intruders. For I get a fair amount of intruders where I live. But that’s not bad: it’s good — that’s the fun of it; I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I own many castles, and there are long bridges connecting each one to all the others. Actually they’re not bridges but more like tubes that are partially filled with liquid — it’s that same substance that they use in lava lamps: it moves really smoothly and dreamily, like it was filmed in slow-motion — so I can surf thru these tunnels from tower to tower and hang out wherever I please, instead of having to hike thru the woods of the surrounding jungles’ wildernesses or the burning waste-fires.
What are my castles made of? (I’m assuming you’re wondering this.) Well, one of my castles is made of emerald, which idea I got from The Wizard of Oz, a 1939 fantasy flick — in that movie, they have a place called “Emerald City”; but I just changed that to a castle (cuz I don’t need a whole metropolis made of emerald; plus I already have a sizable town of topaz, and, of course, my ruby district). Another of my castles is pure gold — solid gold, from its keep to its moat; so that’s pretty fun. Yet another castle is made of diamonds: you must wear special slippers to walk around in it, or your feet will get bloody.
And I have many other castles made of various other materials, but I’ll tell you just one more, cuz I don’t have a whole lotta time this morning — as Captain Andy sez at the start of his funeral speech for Officer Sunshine, in the film Wrong Cops (2013):
My wife’s right in the middle of giving birth, so I’m not gonna be able to hang around here forever.
My second-favorite castle is the one made out of sapphires. And my absolute favorite castle is the one made of copper.
I actually like my wooden castle best, tho. Not because of anything about its architecture; I just like the people who live there.
Each of my castles has numerous rooms inside, and I’ve arranged for families and individuals to reside there. So that’s why I surf from castle to castle, using the lava-tube system: I like visiting people.
When I arrive at a given castle, I shelve my kneeboard and pace leisurely from room to room, and check on all the inhabitants. For instance:
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mouse,” I shout into the first room on the left. “Are you enjoying your giant wedge of cheese?”
They nod. Then I ask them about their kids; & they tell me their ages & which schools they’re attending (every castle has its own complex of competing universities). Then I proceed to the next room:
“Hello, Mrs. Evilman.” I say. “Been on any adventures lately?”
“Yes,” answers Mrs. Evilman; and she hands me a hyperlink.
So all these chambers in my castles contain every type of person or family known to science. Some divisions have more than ten young first-woman-presidents living together as cheerful roommates. Some house a number of surly males who never speak. A few of the suites have large families containing up to four generations of parents and children living within them; and some rooms are occupied by only one single or recently divorced individual, like Mrs. Evilman above.
Additionally I found a way to summon all my favorite characters from my most-loved novels to come & live in my castles. So Miss Brooke and Miss Archer and Miss Vye, and many, many others are here as well; and I can visit them and talk to them whenever I desire.
And we don’t have any prisons in my kingdom. All the criminals live in the rooms next to everyone else: they’re entirely integrated into my castle-based society. Since they like how I treat them, and they get to choose their own decor, they don’t commit any crimes; they just live happily ever after, like all married couples.
But we do keep a set of cages out by the waste-fires. But they’re not for prisoners or zoo animals (we don’t have any zoos; all animals run wild thru the surrounding wastelands and eat any intruders); and these cages aren’t positioned in the fire, like they do in Hell, or even close enough for the flames to cause discomfort. I keep the cages air-conditioned, in fact: so they’re a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit, like the Great Pyramid; cuz I want their gods to be comfortable. What happened is this:
After I figured out how to magnetize into my castles all the finest personalities from classic novels, I went on a mission to hunt down the gods from all the poetic tales of the past. First, I looked around in ancient times, using my time-travel machine, but I found nothing. This initially led me to assume that the priests from those bygone days must have been lying, and that I had proved them wrong at last. But then I decided to take a look into the more modern literature of the Americas; and THERE I found them! What a stroke of luck:
I was able simply to cast a big net and capture them all, in the last place where they had been seen — the whole group was gathered together, occupying the top of the 41st section of “Song of Myself”, the famous poem by Walt Whitman. So I hefted them back and put them all in cages. You can go up and talk to them now, in person, or even taunt them. I’m pretty sure it’s really them — each god acts just like he was rumored to have acted back in the past; and they all have the same powers and traits, whether it be a strong arm for throwing thunderbolts, or the gift of being able to kill and to make alive. Look: I have Kronos & Zeus right there; also Isis, Osiris, Belus, Brahma, & Manito, over yonder; then lastly there’s Odin and “the hideous-faced Mexitli”.
So these god-cages are a prized possession. They’re also a pretty big tourist attraction, which is why my kingdom has so many intruders.
The only gods that I couldn’t find in the above locale, despite the fact that Whitman listed them, were Jehovah, Hercules, Buddha, and Allah. They’re the ones that got away. I’ve heard rumors that they’re haunting other texts, so I haven’t given up searching for them. Perhaps someday I’ll add them to my collection . . . except for Hercules — I’m starting to think that I myself might be Hercules.
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