Congeries (con’ger-eez): Piling up words of differing meaning but for a similar emotional effect [(akin to climax)].
Wee haa! Wo hoo! Yody Ho! Yippee! As you can tell, I am relatively elated—making some stock elation sounds, and a couple of new inventions. I am easily elated. An airplane landing elates me. Sunshine on my shoulders elates me. A chicken crossing the road would push me over the edge without asking why. I would just watch, and then break out in joyous noises when the chicken reaches the other side.
There are so many goals to be achieved in life that are not extraordinary but yet help make the world go around. Think of the humble nitwit. Consider how they must contemplate the steps in a process and diligently strive to complete it without causing too much damage, but nevertheless be yelled at by an angry boss.
Once one becomes an avowed nitwit, life’s burdens build into mountains of incompetence topped with grief and anger. For example, what about the guy whose job was to scrape gum off the floor at the Notting Hill Tube Station in London. People would walk by and kick them, pretend he was a horse because he worked on his hands and knees, and rode horsey on his back while he scraped. They would also swat his butt with “The Evening Standard.” He stood up, posing like the Statue of Liberty—holding his scraper up like Lady Liberty’s torch. One of his knee pads slipped down his leg and all the commuters stopped and fell silent.
Collectively, they could see what they couldn’t see individually. There was a doctor from Vienna standing by the stairs holding his arms in a circle. He was holding a pastie in one hand and chewing a bite from it very slowly while the wheels spun in his head. They were snow tires and unsuited to London’s summer. He tried revving them up while he contemplated the crowed. He hoped to wear the treads off on the rough edges of his skull’s interior. He dropped his briefcase. It startled him and provided a road to revelation: collectively the commuters came to conensus without saying a word. This must mean when people are packed together they think alike. The have a “collective” consciousness. They are like ants or honeybees, or flying geese or schools of fish.
The gum scraper lowered their scraper and pulled up their knee pad. The commuters became animated again and headed down to the tube platform. The sun came out behind the doctor’s back and he forgot everything, picking up his briefcase and blending in with the commuters. He kicked the gum scraper as he went past and felt very good after doing so.
He was a fake. He wore a second-hand sports coat and pretended to be a doctor. He had a fake office and receptionist. He spoke with a fake Austrian accent, that was actually German and had learned from Colonel Klink on “Hogan’s Heroes.”
Life is complicated.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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