Category Archives: epanodos

Epanodos (e-pan’-o-dos): 1. Repeating the main terms of an argument in the course of presenting it. 2. Returning to the main theme after a digression. 3. Returning to and providing additional detail for items mentioned previously (often using parallelism).

The partridge was in the pear tree. The kettle was on the boil. The farmer was in the Dell. I was in a-gadda-da-vida. I had been stuck there since 1968 when my bell bottoms got stuck in time and I was chocked to death by my peace medallion when it got tangled in the external rearview mirror of a Cadillac that almost ran me over. I chased after him and my medallion got wrapped around the mirror. He took off with me hanging from the mirror and I choked to death.

He dragged me about a mile and I was flopping like a hooked fish. I distinctly remember dying. It felt really good. No anxiety. I was untangled from the mirror and transported to the morgue. They took off all of my clothes and laid me on a metal slab and covered me with a sheet. It was quite comfortable—cool and smooth. They determined by the burn marks on my throat and my bloated face, that I had been choked to death. I heard them say that the driver of the Cadillac had been arrested. That made me happier than I had already been.

Like I said, it felt good to be dead. I was comfortable and relaxed. Not a care in the world. The only thing that puzzled me was my awareness of the world around me and the monologue rolling along in my head.

Luckily, I wasn’t cremated. I had a traditional funeral with crying people saying nice things about me. My family was cheap and put me in a cardboard coffin. I didn’t care. I was dead. I was buried near the cemetery’s parking lot and my grave was marked with a white wooden stake with my name on it in magic marker: Brad Black: 1946-1970.

Just as I was getting settled in, I was resurrected. All of a sudden, I was standing by my grave with a guy in white robes standing there. He said “Boo!” and a huge wing popped out on either side of his body. He was holding a lute and started playing “In-a-gadda-da-vida.” He handed me a karaoke microphone so I could sing along. It was great. Then he cut the playing and said “Did you hear that bell tinkling?” I told him I had. He said: “You’re an angel!” My big wings popped out, and suddenly I was wearing a white gown. I went to angel camp and was trained as a guardian angel. I wear a thing like an Apple Watch that tells me when my charges is in trouble. I manifest myself and get things straightened out. Most recently, it was a five-year-old boy hanging from a cliff. He had been knocked over the cliff by his dog which his parents had subsequently angrily thrown over the cliff. Somehow the dog was unscathed after the 300 foot fall. Hmmm. I wonder how that happened?

It felt good to be dead. Don’t get me wrong—I know there are sinners burning in hell right now. When I was in Angel Camp, we went to Hell on a field trip. They gave us ear plugs so we couldn’t hear the screaming of Satan’s victims. I was surprised to see my neighbor Mr. Gundoor. I asked our guide what Mr. Gundoor was in for. He wasn’t allowed to tell me, but Mr. Gundoor was sitting naked on a pancake griddle, sizzling like bacon and screaming.

Well, it’s time to earn my eternal paycheck: there’s a boy stuck in a bear trap, circled by wolves, with a forest fire making its way toward him.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

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Epanodos (e-pan’-o-dos): 1. Repeating the main terms of an argument in the course of presenting it. 2. Returning to the main theme after a digression. 3. Returning to and providing additional detail for items mentioned previously (often using parallelism).

Do you ever wonder why you’re here? Do you ever wonder what God intends for you? Do you aver wonder why stock cliched answers to these questions are good enough for you, mainly because they fit on a bumper sticker you can stick on the back of your car or truck, or on your college dorm door?

We walk in the shallow trench of the shadow aimlessness carrying cellphones and I-Pads to comfort us in our total isolation from the “others” who are tightly-wound mysteries reveling in their uniqueness. The core of their beings is incomprehensible. You can know their shoe size. You can know the color of their eyes and skin, but you can never know THEM—their being the in world is an ensemble of otherness, mystery, and difference. “Similarities” between you and them as persons are illusory. As things or objects, you can know them—six feet tall, 200 lbs, $80,000 per year.

These are things I learned in college. I learned to love what I couldn’t understand about a person, because that’s who they were and that’s what I wanted to love. The closer I got, the more mysterious they became. The less I “knew” them, the more I loved them. I couldn’t predict. I couldn’t control. What I could predict and control was not them—not their humanity. That’s why I turned to bumper stickered cliches. Yes, it’s true. Let m explain.

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining. Cat got your tongue? Time flies. Fit as a fiddle.

These, and thousands more, gloriously true and compact sayings, reach into my soul like the hand of God. They anchor me in the uncertainties of life washing over my relationships and everything else in a refreshing clear stream of hope, and faith, and happiness. Plastered on the rear of my Subaru, they tell the world we are connected by the blandness of common sense and the social chasm of our foundational alienation. Cliches ground us in the garden of advice, like tomatoes or basil, they grow in the soil of providence in need of very little tending, to yield their soul-nourishing fruits and healthful herbs. Cliches help show us how to live with unwelcome pontification and arguments, grounding our lives of love and loneliness in simplistic remedies—one-liners that can fit nicely on a 3×10” strip of paper with adhesive on the back.

The next time somebody says to you, “That’s a cliche,” pull out a bumper sticker from your backpack and read its cliche to them. Read it loudly with passion and resolve. Then, stick it on their face over their eyes, and spin them around a couple of times. Then, rip off the bumper sticker and yell “Opposites attract!” Then, give them the bumper sticker to keep, along with your business card and a small bottled water. If you get arrested, just pay your fine or serve your sentence and shut up.

Once you’re out on the street again, leave people alone. That’s right, ALONE. It will be the punishment you inflict for the great lot of humanity’s failure to understand that not understanding isn’t misunderstanding, it is rather, the acknowledgement of the centrality of bumper stickers and their cliched contents to the human condition, to the citadel of moaning and laughter.

Inspired by being stuck in traffic behind somebody, and reading the bumper stickers on the back of their car or truck, I am freed from the oppression of the other, the fear of contracting myself, the hernia- inducing heavy lifting of coherence. Right now I’m “making lemonade.”

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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