The ability to fulfill your potential,
depends entirely on your definition of fulfillment.
Category: Fame and ambition
“Blurtso feels good about his final exam” (III)
Final Exam – Greek 201
Name: Blurtso
1.) Why did Oedipus kill his father and marry his mother?
Because his friend, Sigmund, told him to.
2.) Who is the goddess Aphrodite?
Aphrodite is the barnyard goddess who visits donkeys in the spring.
3.) What lessons can be learned from the “House of Atreus”?
Don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t contradict your wife, and always lock the bathroom door.
4.) Why did Zeus become a swan?
Because Leda didn’t like woodpeckers.
5.) Why did the Greeks go to war against Troy?
Because Paris stole Helen’s pumpkin pie.
6.) How did the Greeks win the battle of Troy?
They built an enormous donkey that scared away all the Trojan horses.
7.) Why was Athena considered the goddess of wisdom?
Because she had grey eyes, and grey is a sign of strength, beauty, and extraordinary intelligence.
8.) Why was Prometheus bound to a rock?
Because trees can catch fire.
9.) Who was Homer and what did he write?
Homer was a poet who wrote a story about a hero named Ysseus who was very odd.
10.) What is a lyre?
A lyre is an ancient, string instrument that was popular until the invention of the trombone.
11.) Explain “hubris”:
Hubris is the idea that “pride comes before the fall”—like when you think you’re going to get an “A”, and then you don’t.
“Blurtso looks at the cars” (I)
Look at all the cars,
and the people facing forward,
living in the future.
“Blurtso considers Shakespeare”
My Shakespeare paper is due tomorrow, I’d better get started. I wonder what I should write? I guess it would be too obvious to say that Shakespeare knew a lot, even though he did. He knew more than I know, that’s for sure. I wonder how he learned all the things he knew? I wonder if he went to school? I wonder if he wrote papers? I wonder who students wrote papers about before Shakespeare became Shakespeare? If Shakespeare would have known how famous he was going to become, he could have written a paper about himself. That would be easy. Even I could write a paper about myself. But I don’t think I’m ever going to be famous. I don’t think Harvard is ever going to offer a class called “Introduction to Blurtso 101,” or “Advanced Blurtso 320,” or “Blurtsearean literature and the end of Enlightenment.” At least I hope not, because I don’t want to be famous. If I were famous, I wouldn’t have a moment to myself. People would be bothering me everywhere I went, even in the library, and I’d never be able to get started on my Shakespeare paper, or my Blurtso paper, and I’d really better get started, because it’s due tomorrow.
“Blurtso rides the elevator”
Doo dee doo dee doo, dee dee dee dee dee…
Hello, said Blurtso. Hello, said Blurtso.
I guess I should try to look less frightening.
“Blurtso considers puzzles”
Curse these clumsy hoofs! said Blurtso, kicking away his rubik’s cube and trying to fit two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They’re not good for anything! He looked at his hooves, then he looked at the puzzle, then he looked at his hooves. Well, he said, they have carried me down many roads and across many fields… maybe solving puzzles isn’t so important.
“Blurtso raps”
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
you can see him coming…
when you see his nose…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
he’s one with nature…
he wears no clothes…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
cloven-hoofed, dulce-toothed…
suave-duro, burro-puro…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
everything he thinks, everybody knows…
backward… forward…
take an inch… take a mile…
everything he does, does it with a smile…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
papi-fresco, don-juan-es-co…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
everything he thinks, everybody knows…
backward… forward…
take an inch… take a mile…
everything he does, does it with a smile…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
coming… going…
you’ll know it by his nose…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
burro-puro, suave-duro…
poco inocente, muy maduro…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
Blurtso comes… Blurtso goes…
everything he thinks, everybody knows…
“Blurtseau Lundif – Corsaire Extraordinaire” (XII)
“Another day,” thought Blurtseau, “and another night. The king is dead, and those who killed the king are dead, and Napoleon consolidates his power while those who would kill him wait in the wings. And the once-full moon that illuminated my vainglorious victory now wanes with a warbling light. Tomorrow the fighting will begin anew, the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Sardinian, Greek generals… and all the world spins with the bones of the living and the bones of the dead, so many dead, those who pursued a borrowed or inherited dream, white bones in the soil, white bones in the surf of the sea, bones as white as the flickering tail of the waning moon, sparking and submerging among the breakers, flickering water reflection of fleeting sun echoed upon half-eaten moon, half-eaten moon half-eclipsed by the globe it now reflects down upon… half-eaten glow that grows dimmer each day… until the moon, the day, the night, and all our blood-urgent exploits fall dark upon the darkness of the sea, and vanish in the low laving sound of the waves eating the rocks with their dance of disintegration.
“And when the moon goes black, the stars will mark my path to Montecristo where Echo, alone on her island, watches the same silver flicker on a different surface of the same sea. And the light that flickered in her heart? Has it fallen prey to the same dance of deterioration? Will I find the moon already extinguished in the sea of her breast? Eclipsed by the vainglorious sphere that was my haste to depart? The misguided course of this star-crossed corsaire pursuing a sinking star? Yesterday’s hero is the dark side of the earth facing the dark side of the moon, is darkness double, two-faced night’s faceless faces, an echo of existence which touches no ear, a shout across an infinite expanse, an unreciprocated smile, a source without destination, a word from the heart that never arrives.”
“My heart is an echo of the disintegration
of the heart of the universe
that penetrates and disintegrates my own heart.”
“Blurtseau Lundif – Corsaire Extraordinaire” (XI)
At this point we meet a British sea captain named Alecs of York, and an elephant named Arlan de Borneo. An elephant? said Harlan. Yes, said Blurtso.
As he returned to his post, Arlan considered the life he had led and the peril that lay in the offing. Dr. Arlan de Borneo had run a successful medical practice in Dover until the unlucky day he botched a routine tonsillectomy on the town constable, rendering him aphonic for life. As a result his practice faltered, and he was forced to seek employment at sea. The ships sailing under Captain Alecs of York had a long-standing reputation for being the most casualty-ridden in the fleet, and as a result the captain struggled to find physicians for his ship.
With no other options, Arlan accepted a post on the Manhattan, but because of his inordinate size and the limited crew that could subsequently be housed, he was obliged to perform the duties of a dozen men. Fortunately, it was a charge he was able to fulfill, for he could effortlessly clasp a line and pull with the force of twenty hands, and could labor for days without sleep. Although he was, by nature, a gentle soul, it was clear that if he were ever roused to anger, he would wreak more havoc than a regiment of Her Majesty’s finest.
Aboard the Manhattan he was given the store room at the stern of the middle deck in which to sleep, but as he rarely slept, the space soon became a game room in which he and Captain Alecs passed slow hours in contests of two-king chess. The contests pleased and frustrated Lord Alecs, for he had never encountered a player whose skill rivaled his own, and though he won more than he lost, it seemed that luck played an inordinate role in his victories. Arlan enjoyed the matches as well, though for different reasons. It had only taken him a few games to unmask his Captain’s strategy, a strategy based on aggression, in which Alecs was willing to sacrifice any number of pieces if the maneuver brought an element of surprise and led to the rapid and dazzling defeat of his opponent. Once Arlan understood this, he was never surprised again, and from then on he was forced to lose matches on purpose to keep the tally leaning in the Captain’s favor. The same aggressive maneuvers, Arlan understood, might be equally effective at sea, but only if Lord Alecs was unknown to the enemy. An astute commander who had engaged him before, and survived his first attacks, could redirect the aggression back to its source, and so, as the reputation of Lord Alecs and his tactics became better and better known, his career moved more swiftly to its end.
With all this in mind, Dr. Arlan de Borneo was not the least surprised when the Manhattan sailed directly past L’Isle d’If and straight toward the mouth of the Marseilles harbor, where it attacked the first ship it encountered, hoping to capture a crew member who would know the whereabouts of Blurtseau Lundif.
“Aaarrgghh!!!” growled Alecs. “Sixteen sheets to the wind!!!
Into the devil’s kiln!!”
“Blurtseau Lundif – Corsaire Extraordinaire” (IX)
The days came and went, and the weeks and months, and despite the rigor of his studies, Blurtseau’s mind wandered. In a real sense, he felt he was being torn in two. On one hand was his life as a warrior, defending his homeland and rising against injustice, and on the other was his growing love for culture and the arts, and for simple things. He reveled in the rhymed worlds of Dante and Petrarch, and the playful mischief of Boccaccio, and his thoughts often turned to Echo and the wisdom of her island. But it was too early to give up the physical rapture that had honed his body into a flawless fighting machine, a machine that fought without forethought, spontaneously parrying with a perfect balance of give and take. Yet now, had his instincts been altered? His equilibrium become unbalanced? Was he incapable of action without thought, without considering consequences beyond borders? Was this the price he paid for the loss of ignorance? For the joys of compassion? And as for his future, what did it mean? Fame and fortune now seemed empty next to a life of art, or a life of shared simplicity. Becoming a Renaissance donkey was not turning him into a harmonious whole, as he had hoped and expected, but was tearing him to pieces as the parts of himself vied, one against the others, for preeminence and control. And then there was his irrepressible sentimentality, as he continued to long for distant days with Pableau, Josette, and Echo.