A word to the wise is sufficient
Oh, to be a wise. It would be fine to discern from a single word all the nuanced meaning that most others need a thousand words—or a single picture—to perceive.
When the word was passed down from on high, for the wise it was sufficient. They immediately commenced following not only the letter, but also the spirit, of holy law. Both of them became very noble beings indeed.
I’ve oft wondered how much of a picture would be enough for the wise. Would they need an outline, or the merest corner? A pixel, perhaps? By some sort of reverse fractal process, they’d perceive the entirety of the tale from a mere dot of red or puce or magenta.
Imagine what it must be like to live at such a hyper state of awareness. When sitting in a coffeehouse, a wise might overhear snatches of dozens of conversations, a word here a word there, maybe a stray phrase. For the rest of us, this is enticing, a tantalizing almost glimpse into the lives of near-neighbors. Perfect strangers.
For the wise, the experience would be quite different. Each snippet would reveal a whole other world, complete with feelings, work undone, loves unspoken. They may hear, “…walking to the zoo…” and know the speaker was heartbroken by her unrequited love for her doorman, suffers horrible asthma, and only takes her nephew to the zoo so she won’t feel pathetic indulging her obsession for otters, who are as cute as she always imagined her and the doorman’s children would be. Which is quite a bit cuter than the snot-nosed brat her brother foisted onto an unprepared world.
Most of the wise live in mental institutions, with white noise piped in to block out all other sound. No wonder.
His bark is worse than his bite
Only if you have really sensitive ears.
No. No. I take that back. What we’re really talking about is the chill of anticipation when the arm lifts the knife, and we face our doom. Our worst nightmare sprung to life – old movies showing all the embarrassing moments of our life of quiet desperation. It’s enough to traumatize anyone.
Finally, when the blade slices in, biting through flesh to grate against the bone, it is an act of mercy. We fall to our knees in agony, yes, maybe even yell curses at the fiend who has killed us. But the whispers in the corners of our eyes speak otherwise. For sparing us another moment of humiliating reflection, they say thank you.
Empty barrels make the most sound
Ping one with a stick. Slap it with your hand. Jump aboard and show off your tap. Klink clop boom boom bop. Gregory Hines would be proud.
One might ask, compared to what? The ocean makes an amazing amount of sound, and its chock full of various and sundry items. No confusing it for an empty barrel. Not in the least.
If a barrel yells in an empty brewpub, and nobody hears it, has it spoken at all?
Okay, koans aside, I did set out to prove the veracity – or otherwise – of this claim. I cornered two barrels of fine ale at the local brewpub where I used to work. With far too few friends, we undertook to make one barrel empty. Then, and only then, could we discover if an empty barrel did indeed make more sound.
We couldn’t use an already empty barrel for our experiment. They were so plentiful, that we were each sitting on one. Kevin had even lined up a row of them to do his Evil Kneivel impersonation. But those barrels wouldn’t do. It was possible that someone had snuck into the brewpub and stored their excess sound in one of the empties. It happened more frequently than you might think. We’d go, Kevin and I, to fetch an empty barrel for aging the new batch of ale, and find that someone had hidden things in it. It was usually just rat droppings, or dead baby rats, but sometimes there’d be a possum in there. Once even a bat. That made for quite an afternoon, I’ll tell you.
If people could hide animals in there, how much easier it would be to toss in some sound or other waves. It would ruin the experiment. How could we know?
We couldn’t. The only option was to empty our own. Kevin and Stacy and Gretel and I, we were very dedicated scientists that night. Gretel was frankly a bit too dedicated. When the barrel still held a fifth of its original liquid, she hid some vomit in one of the empties. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she cried, while I held her slick hair back from her face.
“Not to worry,” I replied. “That empty was already tainted. There was sound hidden in there. I checked.”
“Oh.” She smiled, then passed out.
We soldiered on, Stacy, Kevin and me. We could have used Gretel’s help, but we made it. By the time the last drop was drunk, Kevin didn’t care about our experiment anymore. He had started a new one, seeing how high he could stack empty barrels before they came tumbling down to the floor.
“Shush,” I cried. “You’ll taint our new empty. Besides, you almost landed a barrel right on Gretel’s back.”
Kevin giggled. But he stopped.
Stacy posed with her mallet by the full barrel, while I had the honor of striking the empty. “You first,” I said.
She hit the barrel, and was rewarded with a solid thud. “About a four, I guess.”
I thought it was a five, but I found that my lips wouldn’t form the word “five” so I let her ruling stand. Instead, I prepared to deliver a mighty blow to the side of my newly emptied barrel. I swung back the mallet, and brought my arm forward with great force…
But the mallet had slipped out. My fist dealt the curved wood the lightest tap. No more than a “two,” and that was being generous.
An empty barrel doesn’t necessarily make the greatest sound. I’ve done the study to prove it.
