Epicrisis (e-pi-cri’-sis): When a speaker quotes a certain passage and makes comment upon it.
“My foot was stuck to the pavement by dog shit and bubblegum. My life was about to change again.” Tribold Rector
This passage from Tribold Rector’s world famous tome, Sole to Soul Remonstrance, first published in 1959 by Ink Blot press, an avant garde endeavor to enlighten humanity.
In his book he follows the protagonist Saul “Shoe” Blandon who frequently “steps in it” and becomes transformed, sometimes morally, sometimes physically, sometimes both. In the passage above, Shoe is transformed into a cockroach with a moral compass, refusing to sup on refuse containing meat or meat products of any kind. He skitters off into a muddy puddle, loses his moral compass and is transformed into a used car salesman standing on a car lot wearing a plaid sports coat and sporting a gold front tooth. He knows he is “Shoe” but he can’t help relishing the prospect of selling a clunker to the teen-aged boy approaching the lot.
He sold the boy a ‘39 Ford with a rumble seat, The car needed of a ring job and a new oil pan. He laughed to himself as he stepped into a spot made on ground by the sold car’s leaking oil. He immediately turned into a sleeper couch with no moral compass. As he was flipped open by a man and woman “staying over” in the spare room, his front right leg landed in a spilled gin and tonic, and Shoe went through the change again, leaving the couple bereft of their little playground. They used the floor instead, while Shoe was transformed into Rev. Skidbilly, a man with a moral compass. He immediately said a prayer of thanks and went to work saving souls. He went down to skid row where there were many lost souls.
Almost the second he arrived at Skid Row, he stepped into a pool of still steaming vomit. He was immediately transformed into a lobster roll with no moral compass and shot through with Salmonella. He is eaten by an unwitting tourist, a metaphor for greed’s consequence, gobbling up whatever foodstuff is there, as if, for example, being “full of baloney” is a blessing, tantamount to being full of Truth. This is heady stuff and most readers won’t get it, scoffing at its simplistic engagement life’s mysteries.
As you can see, Shoe Blandon was a tremendous genius. He used the ground we walk on as a metaphor for the “The Walk of Life” that we are all taking, finding ourselves as we traverse this vale of things, holding in the cache of our brains the multiple indices of introspection that we glean. Sometimes there is pleasure. Sometimes there is pain, but it never adds up. Rather, it confuses us, like trying to find a light switch in the dark.
So what?
It’s vagueness, numerous contradictions, and nearly complete incoherence, enable us to open a new life riding upon the wings of Sole to Soul Remonstrance, whose sole value is its price tag, which is a metaphor for “stepping in its” value as a meta-metaphor for the sum of human agency. As Shoe Blandon wrote:
“If you’re not there, you could be anywhere.”
These are words to live by as you walk like an Egyptian through the tomb of everyday life, inevitably stepping in it here and there, for better and for worse, becoming transformed into a unique version of yourself.
I give Sole to Soul Remonstrance twenty-six stars and recommend it to all literate, sentient, gullible humans.
The Daily Trope 