Monday, April 23, 2012

Titanic Vacation: entry 10


            Dear Diary:

            Today we met a Scottish ghost. He was both canny and uncanny.

            We were touring an ancient palace (well, actually, an old ruin) and I noticed a door; and the door had a sign, and the sign read “This Door Must Remain Closed At All Times”. I said, “But how can anybody get through?”

            Then the Ghost walked through. The ghost said, “Eye, me lassy”, or something like that, and then he said something I couldn’t make out at all. Jayadu explained that the ghost was speaking in something called Brogue, and she volunteered to translate for me.

            According to her, the ghost said, “Yes, young girl, by this door’s logic, none may pass through. It was canny of you to notice.”

            I replied, “It was uncanny of you to pass through anyhow!”

            According to Jayadu, the ghost said, “Why do you call me uncanny? I am a true Scotsman, and all true Scotsmen are canny.”

            I said, “All Scotsmen are canny, but all ghosts are uncanny; so which are you?”

            “Now how am I, a Scottish ghost, to be both canny and uncanny?”

            “I know how,” I said. “You’re a ghost, so you’re dead. You don’t exist.”

            The Scottish ghost was quiet awhile, then said, through Jayadu, “Yes, and I thank you for the reminder, for men need not teaching so much as reminding.”

            “You knew that you aren’t real, but you forgot?

            “It slipped my mind.”

            “But now you remember, so what’ll you do?”

            “I will do what the dead love best to do.”

            “And what is that?”

            The Scottish ghost said, “Nowt atall - 

            - and vanished.

                        Yours, Sogwa


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