Cock and bull story

Ah, when pirates speak, who believes? Who listens? Who understands?

We have, like Cassandra, ears licked clean by snakes, capable of hearing clearly the languages of all beasts of all times. But there is the problematic in the telling and the foretelling.

When Cassandra broke her promise of love and lust to Apollo, he did not rescind his gift of bestial and beyond prophecy. He did worse: He closed the ears of those who heard her. Of what use is the power of sight and foresight without the capacity of the hearer to hear?

All that is heard is cock and bull.

The use of this expression to signify the unbelievable told as truth is said to date back to the 18th century before the common era. In Stony Stratford, the stopping point between London and parts north for mail and passengers, there were two inns: The Cock and The Bull. Like a Chinese whisper, stories were said to circulate between the bars in these inns. These stories, like all stories, took on a life of their own, inextricably woven around and by the tellers and the hearers, and yet separate from them.

Who could be cock sure about what was prevarication, whopper fish tale, tall canard, inveracity?

Or just bull?

In 2006, a mockumentary film, “Cock and Bull Story,” was created to celebrate Laurence Stern’s nine-volume tome begun in 1759 and written over 10 years. Stern’s “Tristram Shandy” was the first poioumenon, that is, a narrative about the writing of a book that is really about something else. A real cock and bull story.

This book cannot be about the protagonist Tristram. After all, he wasn’t born until the third volume. A kind of after-thought. Certainly not an afterglow: At his conception his mother asked his father if he had wound the clock. His birth was no better, merely an occasion for a nose crushing by forceps. His other member was accidently circumcised by the window that fell on it as Tristram urinated out it.

Stern was a pirate, I believe. So I, being a pirate as well, believe his cock and bull stories. Even if I have no idea what storm and fury they signify.

Cocks can be crowing roosters or devices to regulate flow or firearm ready to fire positions. I believe I see the theme here. But for all the profane strut and swagger of it, cocks can also be sacred.

Entire systems of belief and ritual dance arose around the maypole of phalluses. Ring around the lingham, yoni pocket posy. And Freud sanitized it all into anatomical destiny and death wishes.

I prefer the bull of solemn papal decrees and senior naval ensigns. They remind me of the aurochs painted into Lascaux caves, decreeing destiny not by physiology but by the alchemistry of desire imagined. We lie with the bullish theriomorphic gods who are both priest and sacrifice.

We sweat out diamond bullets that impregnate promise, homunculi who inhabit bull markets of increasing confidence. We call it, we name it into existence, not looking back at the wreckage of possibility poured into concrete. And so it is written: In the beginning, there was the word.

Even the name of Stern’s hero was botched. The intent was to call him Trismegistus, the thrice-great magician with the nature of Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth. The god of writing and magic was the intended namesake. But Tristram was forsaken, not forewarned, not forearmed.

My cock and bull story is valiantly true in the absence of the ear in nonexistent forests that cannot know the longing of vibrations from falling trees or the moans of phallus phalanxes or the pressed release of bulrushes, papyrus paper folded into shapes of ships that float and flail. Merely pretense of home to pirates, they be. And not. 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all tho se who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.