The B.T. Encyclopedic Entry on Longing

It isn’t what it used to be. The throngs of shadows from the tetradactylic sky made us uneasy, reminded us of the shapes of Things-Before: four score and so many years ago, we longed richly, longed like the longers of old. Consider Longfellow, thus named for his rhymed-yearnings. Longfellow knew a good longer when he tried one, the bouquet of it just-so, and the good legs it hung down the sides of a goblet. Alexandre Dumas, a longer like no longer. And Proust, and so on. These days, no longer is a good longer. Better no impact, be able, as my friend says, to insert some platypus lasagna anywhere and lose nothing and when I speak, Friends, of monkey juggling, let me say that it matters not whether I refer to that unkind sport of primate-as-bowling-pin or if I mean to say that a monkey steps on a stage and spins four chainsaws in the air, three torches of fire and we all applaud. The juggler, the juggled, nevermind. We’re in the midst of defining (and by defining, I mean dismissing,) longing as the plaything of mortals, of the tender-hearted, the bleeding hearts, the hearts-on-sleeved who hurt when they want a thing, love a thing, lose a thing. I mean to say: longing is for losers, anyway.