Mondegreen

A consummate moment it was. Meaning that there was the enraptured, la petit mort, my cup of tea completely experienced: touching, smelling, tasting. What was perfect outside rolled over tongue. Now inside, hot. Who could capture this? Who can possess ecstasy between locked thighs?

But I emerged long enough to do the impassible. A finger in the air, a gesture that might look as if it were attempting to ascertain the flowing of ambient winds, brought waiter to table. The inquiry dreamed its way out of my mouth: “What kind of tea is this? And where can I get some to make at home?”

“It is Bali Tea. You can find next door.”

Ah, Bali: I hear equatorial gamelons singing Ramayana in emerald greenness by beaches both purely black and white. Of course, Bali origin.

So I go next door, to the little Asian grocery temple. And I, questing, in feverish pursuit, go up and down, aisle after aisle. I see nothing. I try again and again. Finally, able to bear it no longer, I groan out my desperation. “Where is Bali Tea?” The temple guardian who hears me is bemused by my ignorance. “Right there: Bali Tea is right there.”

So another finger points, and this time it is my eye that follows. And as I see, the boundaries of my own emptiness swell into joy beyond telling. The guardian points to the barley tea, to the quintessential of ordinary. And the tea is jettisoned into the waters of my mind party, flotsam and jetsam, desire stirred awry, afloat. Chaos perfected.

Consummate mondegreen.

1954: Sylvia Wright writes in Harper’s Magazine about her experience of the 17th century English ballad, “Bonnie Earl O’ Murray.” She heard the tale in her child ear:

Ye Highland and Ye Lowlands Oh where hae you been? They hae slay the Earl of Murray

And Lady Mondegreen.

And she loved them, lovers slain together, evermore entwined. So she heard it.

But the original intent of the last line read differently: “And laid him on the green.” He was alone in death, merely slain for some obscure politics, face sword slashed. But out of this misunderstanding a word was born. Mondegreen has come to mean an oral malapropism, a hearing of the wrong word.

Some comfort comes in me. My consummate tea consummates. Who can say what is union? All I can see is flotsam lost at sea, becoming jetsam sunk.

These goods at the bottom of the sea, now called lagan, have no possessor, no owner. And as such, become property of the King. The King born King is consummately consumed, more and less than desire’s object. We find him with empty ear, feigning deafness, madly, magnificently mishearing.

The Japanese call it soramimi. Like the mondegreen, soramimi involves creative hearing. But unlike mondegreen sound waffling, soramimi is the hearing of words in one language as if they are similar sounding words in another language.

My favorite example: “You give me all I need” is “yukimi onani” in Romanized Japanese. The Japanese means “watching snow and masturbating.”

Being is being dupe, fool, lunatic, all duped beyond matter into mind. Being is lascivious faith creating and recreating itself in joy beyond measure. The un-saying and un-hearing, the re-saying and re-hearing shivers us into cracks simultaneously too large and too small for the telling.

But just right for the tasting, it is tea ceremony beyond rubric or re-enactment.

Contemplate our union.

May this dupe dupe you: Constant treasure; constant pleasure. Nothing else is true.

Consummate our union. 

— Rx is the Florid aWeekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those 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.