Synathroesmus (sin-ath-res’-mus): 1. The conglomeration of many words and expressions either with similar meaning (= synonymia) or not (= congeries). 2. A gathering together of things scattered throughout a speech (= accumulatio [:Bringing together various points made throughout a speech and presenting them again in a forceful, climactic way. A blend of summary and climax.]).
My head is spinning like a roulette wheel. First there was the bucket. Then there was the crayon. Then, the bullwhip. Next, the acorn. If I didn’t know I was thinking about surrealistic art, my head would’ve come off, or twisted like a rubber band. Tomatoes. Tornadoes. Trains and berry tarts. So much comes together that does not “belong” together—cows on roller skates, bongos with wings, flaming peach pits, mentos scattered on a bedspread out in a field during a hurricane.
I had inherited a collection of surrealistic paintings from my father—he died of a heart attack while he was chasing his dreams. They were all so quirky and out of reach that they killed him. We lived in California and he wore jogging clothes all the time. He’d get up in the morning and tell us he’d be chasing his dreams. The beach was one of his favorite places to chase dreams. He said it was the smell of the sand that prodded him. One morning he went chasing his dreams at the town park, and boom, he was gone. The doctor had warned him that running around beaches and parks at 83 years old was a little dangerous. Dad didn’t listen. I thought he was like Don Quixote, “dreaming impossible dreams.” But actually, he was more like Little Orphan Annie on a “tomorrow” treadmill. But, he lived to be 83.
The paintings he left me were pretty much worthless. I kept them hanging on the wall out of respect. Being surrounded by surreal painting had started to affect my sanity. Being surrounded by depictions of dreams and random collisions among unrelated objects had made begin to doubt the reality of reality. If it can so easily be manipulated with colored oil and acrylic, and pastel, it could be that everything that seems to go together does not—in the fullness of time we have forgotten its absurdity, and the randomness of what seems to go with what in natural order, and the conventional connections of social order. Think about it! To me, a duck sitting on a couch is normal. A tree growing out of the ground is a cruel joke or a hallucination.
The glue has come undone. The world is coming apart. My feet have turned to rubber. Is that possible? I guess it is. It is happening to me. It has put a spring in my step. Boing. Thank God I don’t have to leave my house. I can just wander around, reveling in my walls. Oh, there’s a cat hovering like a helicopter over a swimming pool filled with lollipops—red, green, and yellow.
My nephew Ned delvers my groceries. He tries to take care of me in every way possible. This morning, he gave me a little red supplement pill to “enhance” my thought processes. I took it right after he left.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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