Honest Nonsense

The avoidance of the puddle would be precisely the kind of superb detail that, say, Tolstoy might flourish; War and Peace has an execution scene very close in spirit to Orwell’s essay, and it may well be that Orwell basically cribbed the detail from Tolstoy. In War and Peace, Pierre witnesses a man being executed by the French, and notices that, just before death, the man adjusts the blindfold at the back of his head, because it is uncomfortably tight. The avoidance of the puddle, the fiddling with the blindfold—these are what might be called irrelevant or superfluous details. They are not explicable; in fiction, they exist to denote precisely the inexplicable. This is one of the “effects” of realism, of “realistic” style. 

But Orwell’s essay, assuming it records an actual occurrence, shows us that such fictional effects are not merely conventionally irrelevant, or formally arbitrary, but have something to tell us about the irrelevance of reality itself (…) There was no logical reason for the condemned man to avoid the puddle. It was pure remembered habit. Life, then, will always contain an inevitable surplus, a margin of the gratuitous, a realm in which there is always more than we need: more things, more impressions, more memories, more habits, more words, more happiness, more unhappiness. 

And I was Cody.

And SUPER STRESSED. I (as Cody) was apparently in the midst of organizing this huge get together celebration... cook out? that takes place a few years after the war. Some kind of anniversary thing. I dunno, the dream just plunked me in midway. Coruscant was chosen because it was near the Jedi Temple and logistically, made it easier for everyone to attend.

Then Fox arrives and he's... DIFFERENT. He's calm. He's friendly. He's SMILING and shaking hands and greeting everyone cheerfully. I, I mean Cody, am horribly disturbed. Then someone, Bly (?), comes up besides me and goes: "Wow. Married life changed him."

And Cody Me can only nod in horror. Because wtf is happening on Pantora with that tiny, blue wife of his?

But, I have bigger problems. I, Cody, go to the area the BBQ is supposed to happen and to my shock there's a freakin' starship parked right there! And I'm panicking, because we need to set up asap and I'm sure I booked this place! So I'm psyching myself up for a confrontation and trying to think of what to say without escalating and then Fox just walks past me.

And his entire demeanor changes.

He proceeds to verbally rip into the starship captain, yelling something about code violations and quoting legal jargon and the guy just... quakes and falls apart, quickly leaving in a blubber of profuse apologies. And Fox just nips at the guy's heels as the starship flies away, barking something like, "Yeah you run if you know what's good for you!"

And I, Cody, am just filled with Emotions. Emotions too strong apparently because it jolted me awake. Dammit!!! I wanted to attend the BBQ, especially after all the stress I suffered with prep work!!