Nostradamus's Li'l Brother

Nostradamus may well have had a little brother with sticky fingers

Nostradamus’s Li’l Brother- Nostramadus

I always look towards the future from the viewpoint of Nostramadus, who was perhaps, Nostradamus’s little brother. It could not be said with any degree of accuracy that he was so much a visionary, as a genius pick-pocket with the delicate touch of a butterfly. I remember well his treatise on gold watches and silver trinkets, like it was only yesterday, when in fact it was over five long centuries ago. (A splendid tome as thick as a politicians head.) As a result of his learning, he was never to be found with out a time piece, or the time in which to use it. His apartments were, I am told littered with a sea of buzzing, ticking and whirling hands all spinning in various degrees of accuracy. I shall never forget his most cherished motto: “If you have a watch, I have the time.”

I can see him now in the far off distance of my minds eye, skipping gleefully through the streets of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, his pockets filled with glittering timepieces and baubles as he headed towards his all to quaint, semi-rustic, parisian home. Once there he would ascend to the heights of his attic to drive another series of small rusty nails into the rough lath from which to hang the precious loot. Afterwards he would fall back on a makeshift cot to assess his gleanings with unbridled joy.

And so it is with my writing. Each and every time I jot a missive to the handful of muses which randomly occupy, yet pay no rent within my aging bones, I pick a little silver nail from my pin pot and and tack it to the wall of my dwelling. Recently, I have had to purchase longer nails as, over time these walls have become so thick with layer upon layer of my endless jottings, that a shorter nail will just not do. The walls and floor of my den are so densely draped with paper, that they are in fact utterly upholstered with no less than a million sheets of penned parchments, which are haphazardly arranged all akimbo and in such a marvelous disarray, that it has through no apparent design, taken on the appearance of a padded cell.
How appropriate!

©David L. Nelson 5-32-07 Ironworks Publishing & Focus Fine Arts®