The Madness of Envious Bees

The Madness of Envious Bees

A Portrait of the Fluke Extraordinaire

 

You may recall Andre De Foi’s provocative reference to an insect that does not promote Conqueror Worm’s goals unwittingly.^[1] He promised that a “beautiful lady” would speak to that subject a little later; and, indeed, I am that lady, and at this very moment what was then a little later has become now.

 

Bonsoir! I am Myrina Gabrielle, the Garden’s most talked about and intellectually fecund personality. I am widely regarded as an unbiased authority on Garden psychology because of my unique life cycle and the extraordinary popularity I enjoy. I am also a creature that cannot easily be associated with either bee or common fluke, even though nearly everyone claims me as their own.  I am thought to be accepting and neutral but to some degree, vain and annoyingly contrary; yet I am chiefly known for calling things as I see them and standing up for myself when I am wronged. For example, Monsieur De Foi has proven to be an individual who can at one moment swear eternal faith to a lady and the next brag to the world that she is his lover! It is beyond poor judgment because it shows that he does not recognize the difference between an act of love and an opportunity to self-gratify in flowery verbosity! I freely concede that a thoughtless mistake was made one evening, but a lady should not be put in a position when she is forced to concede anything! Should she? But, no, my good Monsieur Bee has chosen to speak out of school, and I cannot respect him now. Indeed, I call him monsieur because the distance established in the use of the word captures best my attitude toward him. “Fellow literary character” might be a better fit! Also, Monsieur De Foi is a garrulous jackanapes that is too full of himself for reality to get in a word about itself edgewise.

 

I am sorry to have given him a wrong impression about our relationship, and I have just now dispatched a correction to that effect. Yes, a correction! I shall remain completely out of his league, and I do not say that only to mock him. I am a butterfly; he is a bee and a misfit drone to boot. And even if he were of my kind, he should not suppose that anyone as popular as me would play the fool for someone who merely hopes to be well-received. Furthermore, I do not think he understands me well. He says that I am like him in that I make everything about myself. That is true on a superficial level, but my veil of conceit is far different from the outrageous fantasies he has about himself. No, my proclivity has little to do with the absurd expression of unmitigated delusion, and everything to do with deflecting others from thinking about me in ways that matter. In any case, I am certain that I will have more to say about Monsieur De Foi before I say, adieu.

 

The creature at issue is known as a fluke extraordinaire, even though he is technically not a fluke at all, but a maniacal confetti bee that has gone off the cosmic rails. He does so because of his inability to reconcile the sense of self-importance he experiences in having been made a little god with the profound reality of rules that prevent him from fully enjoying the benefits of his status. His frustration with this arrangement causes him to view the Garden with increasing cynicism, and he comes to disdain the common flukes and other bees who seem happier than he is. He views them as victims too, but ones who are intellectually and morally inferior.  He inevitably concludes that the rules are bad because they limit him; the flukes because they mindlessly obey the rules; the bees because they envy the flukes, and the Gardener because she seems indifferent to his conclusions.

 

His solution is always the same: A new Gardener is needed, and it might as well be him (or him by proxy), given his fierce determination to “make things right” and the detailed plan he has for bringing about a better, and more equitable universe. But the fluke extraordinaire is something like John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, in that his madness derives from his fixation on the Deity and her perceived flaws. He rebels not because he is inherently evil but because he is a strident iconoclast that has too much personalized the concept of justice. He regards himself so highly and recognizes flaws in others so easily that he cannot fathom why he must endure the same constraints as less gifted, and therefore less worthy, individuals.

Indeed, it is the fluke extraordinaire’s preoccupation with justice that identifies him as a confetti bee and not a common fluke. But he understands justice only in a limited way, confusing the resentment he harbors for his position in the existential paradigm with a noble desire to bring about a more even-handed social reality. Thus, he focuses his efforts on compelling others to accept his personal universe as a template for what the greater universe should be like. One is tempted to admire the boldness of this madman’s ambitions, but he is more deplorable than the Worm. For death prevails with unequaled indifference, while the fluke extraordinaire flouts the laws of Nature with disdain for Creation itself. He may care deeply about everything, but his caring does not include love, but only a venomous contempt for the rules, particularly the rule that prevents him from being the Gardener. To him, the objective always justifies the means because he sees his personal universe as the logical alternative to an unjust physical reality. If others must suffer, so be it, for indeed, the many are not him and cannot matter since they are merely superfluous details of a greater and more loving bug’s vision.

Now, since the root of all enlightened political action is vanity and venomous envy of the Gardener, the fluke extraordinaire is bound to flourish in that realm. The Great Fluke Rebellion of the late 1700s provides exceptionally good examples of this. Every condition of the Garden was thought to need significant reform, and since flukes extraordinaire are predisposed to assume leadership roles in all theoretical social remedies, the persecution of the bees and the beheading of their nobles began. Bolstered by arguably good reasons, if not good intentions, extraordinaires were at the forefront of the mayhem, making clear to everyone (especially the roses) that the real enemy of the Revolution was the Gardener, who is, after all, the primary roadblock to the ascendancy of any creature’s personal universe.  Indeed, one of the most intriguing of the revolutionary leaders, a brilliant but demonic egomaniac named Maximilien the Fire Ant, eventually concluded that a more dynamic and “user-friendly” religion was needed to replace the antiquated faith of the rabble. He tried to establish what was known as The Cult of My Divine Revolutionary Platitudes, a religion that was entirely the product of Maximilien’s diminutive and surprisingly unimaginative personal universe. Although the new faith was enthusiastically hailed as a political home run by the ruling party’s precinct captains, it was jealously mocked by Maximilien’s rivals and fell into permanent disfavor after the old fire ant’s inevitable suicide in 1794.

 

The Extraordinaire

 

I think I am an island,

As I seem to be alone

 

Except for toadies in my head

That prance around my throne,

 

And sing of my ascendancy

In worlds, I would awake,

 

In which the others dance for me

And curtsy as they break.

 

There is also a less dangerous form of fluke extraordinaire called a fabricant de vers or lowlife.^[2] He is much like his more refined cousin, but his potential for engendering widespread destruction is limited by his need to immediately satisfy whatever base desire pops into his head. He is full of hatred and resentment and wishes he could be the Gardener too; but because of his childish impatience and intellectual paucity, he does not represent a danger to everyone but only to those who are physically nearby. He is in every way a narcissistic sore loser who thrives on personal revenge^[3]. … What? … From whom? … I cannot … But …

 

I have this very moment received a love note from the blabbermouth Andre De Foi. He says that he is concerned that “my little speech” may drift too far into unhappy political discourse and suggests that I avoid that part of things altogether since Paris does not care much for the subject.^[4] Fine!

 

-

 

But among the reasons I do not easily express affection for anyone

Is that creatures like Andre often ask you to do things for them

And then find fault in how or why you do them.

 

They do not understand that although you are

Merely a useful concept in their mind,

You are your own universe, too.

 

I cannot honestly say that I am

Regularly mindful of that fact,

But I do expect others to be.

 

Andre is endlessly a tyrant in that way,

But he is scarcely a fluke extraordinaire -

And if I may say so, that is not a small point;

 

For if he were, he would be a more discrete gentleman,

One who can at all times keep secrets to himself.

 

But Andre is merely handsome and sometimes charming in his way,

And those things could never win a discerning heart like mine.

---

[1] The poet believed that those who obsess over the lack of justice in human affairs eventually seek to obliterate Creation itself. They endeavor to foist their limited understanding of the “good” on others until others become their mortal enemies and helpless victims. But to the justice-seeker, the end always justifies the means because the end is thought to result in his triumph over physical reality. However, he inevitably recognizes that justice on the physical plane cannot be realized unless all components of a perceived injustice are excised. And of course, the persecution or even the elimination of non-believers is required.

 

 

[2] In English, worm maker.

 

[3] Politically, Paris was eclectic. He opposed every war that occurred in his lifetime, but he despised the leftism of his day, particularly as it manifested in quadrennial race-hustling and daily TV news shows. Still. at 16, he attended The Poor People’s March on Washington alone, and later became an active member of Students for a Democratic Society, arguing on behalf of that organization’s anti-war objectives for nearly two years. However, Paris’s outspoken contempt for the movie, Easy Rider and his mean-spirited ridicule of the John Lennon song, “Imagine,” resulted in his expulsion from SDS in the autumn of 1971. As he aged, Paris grew increasingly suspicious of those who “raise a fist to signify their noble intentions” and devoted his remaining political energy to opposing the goals and objectives of post-modern liberalism.

 

 

 

[4] After the 1970s, Paris seldom discussed politics with anyone other than his brother, as he believed that such discussions inevitably involve a “self-righteous inner-demon” pitted against another’s “tortured personal universe.” Put another way, Paris did not think well of himself when he engaged in serious conversations with those who seek existential meaning in the dyeing of hair, the spitting of hate, or the flying of pastel-colored flags. And he was regularly hostile to anyone who expressed political opinions in otherwise pleasant social situations.

 

 

 

Reviews

[AYVID N]

An interesting post on " fluke extraordinaire." I enjoyed this read and the prose interspersed with poetry. A lot of intellectual thinking went into this one and I do so appreciate.


Loved the following paragraph as it threw up much thought to me:
"There is also a less dangerous form of fluke extraordinaire called a fabricant de vers or lowlife.[2] He is much like his more refined cousin, but his potential for engendering widespread destruction is limited by his need to immediately satisfy whatever base desire pops into his head. He is full of hatred and resentment and wishes he could be the Gardener too; but because of his childish impatience and intellectual paucity, he does not represent a danger to everyone but only to those who are physically nearby. "