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Interlude
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114 Octavius the 1st Interlude How luscious lies the pea within the pod. —Emily Dickinson Before he leapt again into the suffering, celebratory miasma collectively known as The World, Octavius, warrior-priest preparing for battle, located on his closet shelf his prized WWII Austrian artillery bag, sturdy and olive-gray. Rescuing it from premature retirement between an unworn Whalers™ baseball cap (an ironic statement from the GD?; hard to say, as her infrequent gifts tended to share this skewed, yard-sale quality, and who anyway were these preposterous whale people with their hockey sticks, diet of blubber, and forty words for snow?) and several blank canvases from a sabotaged foray into the participatory visual arts (ruined favorite shirt, rancid turpentine, the infamous “Carpet Incident” for which the Marauder had been unjustly absolved), he felt that he was ready. Into the bag he positioned the videotape (her ID—curiously Freudian abbreviation, that—securely tucked beneath the box’s 115 Gaylord Brewer plastic lip) and, offered as apology for his futile but demonstrably appreciated “dog run”—and graciously accepted without further dietary complaint—a fried bologna sandwich. He straightened and adjusted the shoulder strap (had he shrunk in intervening years?), then like his infantrymen brothers of old, muddied, bloodied, and determined in the trenches of a lost century, distaff farewells forgotten, was out the door—hell yes—like a shot. ...