A roaring sound is heard throughout the hollowed
halls of Roma Ryan’s High: it's like a humungous tornado coming closer and
closer! Papers start to fly, blackboards shatter, bells ring, chandeliers rock
so violently that even a phantom of the OperaKait would get a tummy upset, much
to the delight of our sponsor, Pepto-Brennan™.
The door to Room 007 is pushed open with the energy
of lightning, and there, surrounded in her usual halo of light, is Sister
Windy! Who speaketh thusly:
Well, how wonderful to see the usual bunch of
suspects, er, I mean studnuts, assembled here and behaving
so angelically! Master Card, please do not strangle OperaKait even though she
just dropped a water balloon on you. We do need her here to record, for
prosperity, my lesions.
Now, today we are going to excruciate "Storms
in Africa" by our beloved patron, Saint Roma of Dublin. So let us begin
with a very elementary question, dear Watson: Where IS Africa?
No, Miss Placed, it is not a sheet of ice at
the South Pole, but nice try. Yes, Miss Namibia 2008, it is indeed a continent in
the Southern Hemisphere, jolly good for you! And, my my, classh, it is a very
BIG continent, so Roma provides our canvas here with a palette of immense size!
Now, has everyone got their crayons out? Good; your first assignation for
tomorrow is to colour in all the countries on the map of Africa you will find
hidden in your tuna fish sandwiches in the coffeteria at high noon.
In this pulsating poem, Roma quickly inveigles us
with these convocating lines:
Though I walk through
Now, someone, let us call her "Enya" just
for the fun of it, is walking, and not just around Killiney with Bono --. Enya
is walking, all alone, through the entire continent of Africa! Now, why is she
doing that? Master Piece? Yes, indeed, because Roma told her to, very
good. But note: the sands she perambulates through are WARM. Now, why is that,
studnuts?
Yes, Miss Rhine? Because she is not in Canada? Well,
close enough. You see, classh, Africa is WARM and dry, its climate quite unlike
that of Ireland, which is precisely why Roma stuck Enya down in a pile of hot,
dry sand. Why, perhaps, as a child, poor Enya never had a sand box! Can you
imagine the deprivation that would bring? The suffering? The pain of playing in
Irish mud, especially in the Irish Spring, all the time. Sigh, one's heart just
weeps.
In any convent, "Enya" - our poetic
persona du jour - walks through warm sands in Africa, but is she properly
attired? Does she sport sand goggles? Wear sand-proof clothing? Adorn her feet
with sand-als? So much depends on appropriate attire, right, Miss Fitted?
Now, this first stanza
quickly thickens, like my head after a tiresome faculty beating:
To storms in Africa
OH MY! The winds are picking up, and Enya is so
small that we fear she may be blown away, away, away! And the winds, says Roma,
will grow into STORMS throughout all of Africa! And do you know why, studnuts?
No, I didn’t think you did. Well, this is simply the result of global swarming,
classh. Let me pontificate upon this further – no, Miss Spoken, it will NOT be
Gorey.
Global swarming, classh, is a major problem of our
time that Roma is here addressing, she being full of social unconsciousness.
And so should we be too. You see, my fledglings, we are Enya-
Enya here represents all of humankind awaiting the shock and awe of global
swarming! We must take action: walk to school, recycle your bicycles, eat
orgasmic food, freeze in the dark if you are a Canadian; we must all work to
solve this global problem.
So,
you see, Roma is about to deliver a BIG massage in this song, one that we
cannot afford to ignore.
Now that we have met our poetic persona
"Enya" [Extraterrestrial Nearing Your Area], and watched her walking
on such warm sands, we must next ask how Enya can DO this -- won't her feet
and/or toes get singed or sand-burned? Well, please do not worry about Enya's
feet and/or toes: didn't you all see that wonderful picture in which Enya sits
on a low couch with billions of tiny candles globally swarming her feet?
You see, classh, Enya has "asbestos footitis" - a genetic anomaly
within the Brennan clan. So you need not worry
- do you all feel better? Good!
Roma then consumes her poem:
How far to go
I cannot say.
Oh
dear, Enya is apparently LOST in the sands of
Africa! She walks and walks and walks, not knowing where she is or how much
farther she must go. Now, this is Roma's exciting metaphor for the depletion of
the ozone layer -- how far will it go, will those awful holes at the
poles open up so far that we will all be resumed with radiation? Our beloved
Roma asks such deep questions that we must look carefully out of the Darkness,
in search of the Light that we must follow if we want tomorrow.
In sum, our alienated Enya, like all of earthy
humanity, has lost her whey, and her milk too; she needs some directional
guidance, so she says, so quietly that only the grains of sand can hear her, Klaatu barada nikto. In English this means:
How many more
Will journey this whey?
Yes Master Sargeant, she is indeed awaiting OTHER
travellers walking across the sands of Africa, to join her in the quest for
climate control and irradiated milk. How many, she cannot say; it all depends
on our social unconsciousness: are you, Miss Begotten, willing to give up your
motorbike to save the Earth? To stop opening the refrigerator door every five
seconds for more seconds? No? Sigh......what a long long journey this will be.
But perhaps travellers other than you will come from
Far and Away to join her, because, like some of us, Enya Wants Tomorrow. No
Exile for her, or for humankind, which she here misrepresents according to
Roma. And if more Irish environmentalists (Bono, anyone?) were to join her, we
could watch The March of the Celts to save our planet, oh, ecstacy: Hope has a
place!
Your next assignation, then, is to accurately
measure how far Enya must go in order to find the "many more" who
will journey this whey. Remember that a straight line provides the quickest
path to Nirvana, or to any other very loud rock band.
But, for the timed being, let us ingest more of this
opulent offering from Roma - her paean to our fragile globe, her hip-hopping
cry against global swarming, her epiphany to sand!
Dark skies fall on
Black earth and ivory
Oh, the sky is falling, the sky is falling! so
speaketh Chickenos Littlos, the famous 5th century Geek philosopher, who died,
tragically, when a chunk of cloud walloped him, not that he didn't deserve it
since......but I digress.
The sky is DARK (and plural
too), Roma tells us, and it FALLS! Now, let us assume that Roma here speaks
alligatorically, for you can all see that the sky has not (yet) fallen, classh,
just look outside the window. See, it’s only Mr Woof carrying a plastic bag –
plastic bags! My, my, the quintessential bane of civilization. We must do more,
Miss Apprehended, to discourage the use of plastic bags, and I am sure that our
dear Roma would agree with this digression as Nicky has just purchased 75
million reusable cloth shopping bags.
But back we go: a dark sky (or skies) is (or are)
ominous: it (or they) forebodes (or forbode) a STORM, which is so fitting as
this poem is entitled "Storms in Africa" and surely that cannot be a
mere coincidence, can it, Master Card?
Well, since the sky is NOT going to fall (or so we
fermentingly hope), let us admit that Roma here speaks metaphorically of a storm
coming from the sky and then falling down -- wouldn't it be odd for it to fall up,
Miss Rhine? Think of the gravity of that situation!
Thusly, some storm from the sky falls down, and Roma
now tells us where: “on black earth and ivory.”
Now, is the Earth really black, or is the dark sky
making the Earth APPEAR to be black? Does black represent the fertility of the
Earth, or just poor housekeeping - it is so dusty in the desert you know!
At this point, however, Roma presents us with the
literary device known as "colouratouraloura,” that is, classh, the BLACK
of the Earth is offset by the WHITE of IVORY!
Is Roma here alluding, ever
so deaftly, to her shy third child, Ivory? The child that Roma prefers to keep
out of the lemon-lime light. I believe Ivory is living at Manderley Castle
these days, perhaps in the kitchen, but who knows where the cook goes, only
thyme?
Anyway, Roma recedes:
Far from your sun
Clouds now close over me
The SUN is far and away; this too could account for
the darkness in this poem. What, Miss Begotten, you ask what the “sun” is? Oh,
I see now: you live in Atlantic Canada, where the Sun has now officially been
declared a missing mass.
Anyway, with the sun gone, clouds close over Enya.
Oh dear, now she is not only lost and alone, she, poor dear, is being smothered
by evil, nasty, narny clouds! That poor woman endures so much!
Now, my benighted fledglings, we have important work
to do! You see, Enya is in a very perilous position, being smothered by clouds
as she is – quite obviously her plight is the result of a runaway, away, away,
greenhouse gas effect! Clouds are closing over her - she disappears from sight,
oh the tragedy of it all! It's no wonder that our
dear Enya once again says the following:
How far to go
I cannot say
Yes, Master Chef, this is indeed the REFRAIN of the
poem, which we have heard before. Now, Enya still cannot possibly know, at this
point, how far she must go: those deranged clouds are obscuring her vision.
It's like being in a blizzard in Winterpeg
- there are these white-out conditions, and no one can see where they
are driving, and 400 cars ram into each other, and 200 insurance firms go
broke, and the economy suffers even more and I digress again.
“Enya, Enveloped by Clouds,” so Homer would have
described her in his immoral epic poem, The Oddity. But Roma is not a Homer;
she is a triple base note, so on we go:
Will journey this way?
Well, if they are watching
the Weather Channel, Enya, I can assure you that not many are likely to boldly
go where you have gone. But, lo and behold, Roma informs us that:
Now, studnuts, this is where you all must go
bang on one of those drums so thoughtfully supplied by “Drums R Us” - for you are now officiously backed-up
drummers.
Storms are here! Why, of course: you see, classh,
increasingly violent storms are one of the predicted effects of global
swarming. Thus these storms of Roma's are incredibly violent, like Mother
Superioriosa at a faculty beating when Sister Sigmunda questions her sani....
but I digress yet again.
Moreover:
Rains wash the earth away
This is clearly not just any old storm; this one
will wash the Earth away! A catastrophe of the greatest latitude is upon us
all. For if the Earth is washed away, what will we walk on? Have you thought
about that, Miss Understood?
Rains are washing the Earth away just as happened
long ago in the Great Flood, which lasted 40 days and 40 nights, and only Noah
Jones survived on her ark made of Grammy awards.
But, alas, we are coming to
the point where we must terminate our poem – has anyone seen Arnold around? No?
Oh well, let us energize ourselves, like a bunny, and do it ourselves!
So, let us now conflagrate the poem:
Oh, no, not again! Does this happen so very often in
Africa? No wonder the cohabitants play concussion instruments so well. But THIS
time Roma's dark skies are falling down:
What a perspiring image: skies, very dark skies,
falling INTO another day! What do you think Roma means by this, Master Full? It
was time to change into Daylight Savings time? Well, that is an
interesting answer. Any thoughts, Miss Begun? Right! Since dark skies already
fell in the stanza above, wiping out that day, we need a new day now! As my
dear friend Feline Dion has said, “A New Day Has Come”!
And look at what next appears:
Rains have now come
From storms in Africa
Now, this is perfectly logical, is it not, Miss
Placed? Out of the storms come rains - but why “NOW”? That is the question!
Well, you see, classh, Roma wants to compress upon us the vital role TIME plays
in global swarming. This is all happening NOW: we must take action NOW, we must
man the barricudas, we must run riot in the streets, we must save the whales,
we must eat more veggies…....sorry, I got a bit carried away there.
And so, in the next verse Roma emphasizes the
vitality of TIME, and ONLY TIME, once again:
But NOW, this TIME, Roma introspects a note of HOPE,
in B flat, I think. IF we act NOW, we might save the day, and even the Earth,
but only if we want to.
Time, that vicious linear beast that rules our
pathetic lives, er, our poetic lives, WILL go on, we shall not be
vanquished from the Earth! We shall overcome global swarming and the runaway
greenhouse effect just as the Venusians did! Roma, you see, always offers us
such hopeful joy at dire straits such as this. Bless her heart. And so we
conclude:
Time will go on
Through storms in Africa
Even though rains may wash
the Earth away, opines Roma, Time will go on through and despite such storms,
thus the metaphysical question now becomes: will that Time be a good time or a
bad time? Well, that is entirely up to us, isn't it, Miss Rhine?
You see, in the end (which is where we are at the
moment), we all have CHOICES to make! Even in times of storms, times of angst
and overwhelming heat, we can move through such difficulties as long as
we are in AFRICA!
THAT, indeed, is why Enya is there: Africa is a safe
place when the rest of the Earth is consumed by global swarming. Enya, after
all, watches the Weather Channel all the time, looking for a day without rain.
So, dear studnuts, when the Earth starts to wash
away beneath your feet, just hip-hop a plane to Africa -- better to burn your
tender toes on hot sands than be swept away as the Earth moves underneath your
feet!
Oh well, it’s time for me to jump on my broomstick
and storm out of here, like a tornado sweeping Dorothy far from Kansas. Maybe
we'll even find Toto the dog, and persuade him to use paper baggies!
Ta for now!