Might I Recommend The Duct-Tape
In Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s book, “Good Omens”, we encounter Sister Mary Loquacious, a nun of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl. According to Mr.’s Gaiman and Pratchett, the Chattering Order of St. Beryl was founded by,
Saint Beryl Articulatus of Cracow, reputed to have been martyred in the middle of the fifth century. According to legend, Beryl was a young woman who was betrothed against her will to a pagan, Prince Casimir. On their wedding night she prayed to the Lord to intercede, vaguely expecting a miraculous beard to appear… instead the Lord granted Beryl the miraculous ability to chatter continually about whatever was on her mind, however inconsequential, without pause for breath or food.
According to one version of the legend, Beryl was strangled by Prince Casimir three weeks after the wedding, with their marriage still unconsummated. She died a virgin and martyr, chattering to the end.
…The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl is under a vow to emulate Saint Beryl at all times, except for Tuesday afternoons, for half an hour…
Where am I going with this? (aside from a potential lawsuit for putting up a few paragraphs of a published novel without the writers’ expressed permission, or at least not having bribed them first with money and banana daiquiries.) Well, yesterday I encountered someone who might very well have been a member of the Chattering Order.
They, whoever
They are, say that silence is golden. If Plato’s dichotomic order of the universe is to be believed, then the polar opposite of silence is nigh-unending noise; and the opposition to gold is, debatably, gravel. If all such things are the case, then this woman could have supplied contractors with enough unpaved driveways in rural Mexico about ten times over.
I’m usually amazed at how some people can keep quiet, but for the first time I was amazed (though not in the pleasant "newfound discovery of knowledge at a museum" amazed) that this woman simply could not shut up. Compounding my growing desire to imitate the afore-mentioned Prince Casimir was the fact that while she talked an awful lot without really any sort of pause, she had very little of worth to talk about. Most of what she babbled on about were third or fourth repetitions of previous babble.
I was almost tempted, aside from merciful strangulation (strangulation as in her, and merciful as in sparing everyone else), to think that she was terrified of silence, that somehow an absence of noise would cause a horrific pressure imbalance inside her brain, causing her head to explode.
If I recall my book of Proverbs correctly, there’s a proverb in there that goes something along the lines of "A fool loves to hear the sound of his own voice." A finishing paraphrase might be, "and a wise man knows when to shut the hell up."
This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to a rant inside my Little Bit Of Nowhere. Odds are it won’t be the last, but ideally all the others after it will come off as quirky and somewhat silly as this one.
Today’s Lesson: The world will not end if your talking does. Shhhhhhhhh….
posted by Phillip at 5:28 PM
