Excursus

 Excursus 

In which the blogger, like the narrator in a Henry Fielding novel, steps aside from the action to tell the reader what he thinks might be going on. Not ought to be! The blogger doesn’t have Fielding’s temperament, or his assurance. Thus, a parable, not an essay on form. 

It is as if ... 

It landed there when there was nothing but pasture and a few sheep. Later, grass would grow up around it. At some point, the field would flood, and the plane would sink. Someone would take the wings and dig up the half-buried wheels to take them, too, and it would sink farther into the ground. And more grass would grow up around it. Still, there it was, not far into the field at the end of the street, the half-buried fuselage, a two-seater where the pilot sat in the back and the passenger sat in the front. And you could still sit in it on the iron skeletons of the seats.

When the lion lies down with the lamb.

The pilot had started off not expecting anything to go wrong, though not expecting anything to go right either — just going, in ever-widening circles, figuring the center would hold, or if it didn’t, another center would take hold.
     Then, there was weather or a mechanical problem, or the plane ran out of gas — depending on who spoke the parable — and the pilot was forced to land. [This is the way of parables, as opposed to allegories, especially painted allegories. There are details in them, the parables, that do not matter. So, the same parable can be told in different ways at different times to different audiences, as Jesus does. And the teller doesn’t need to be always busy making everything fit. Because everything doesn’t fit. Jesus knows this if anyone does. Scientists are like allegorists. They have the allegorist’s imagination. As do apocalypticists. All three are interested both in how everything must fit (dammit!) and in doom.]
     The pilot bumped the plane down in a field of nothing but grass and a few sheep. He climbs out of the cockpit and limps away from the plane that has limped to a halt in a sheep pasture, dazed. The plane is dazed, and the pilot is dazed. Or, he thinks he should be, so he limps away.
     He sits down under a tree, and he wonders where the nearest roadway might be—in which direction the road might be? And where might the road take him?
     A sheep comes up and asks if there is any way the pilot can move his plane. Under it is just the grass, the sheep finds, it has a taste for. The pilot shakes his mazy head. “No speaka d’ Ovino,” he bleated. He shook his head again, swung his feet under him, climbed to them, and limed away. He still isn't hurt, but he limps for sympathy, even if only sympathy from an uncomprehending sheep.

It’s as if that. What you just heard.

 09.13.21