Ron Silliman Dream #4 (2nd batch): Core Strategies

The crowd all around me’s going nuts and I climb into the ring. Ron’s in my corner, and he’s screaming:

“Remember what I told you, son, remember what I told you.”

Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking. This is going to be a piece of a cake. A piece of cake. A real piece of cake.

“Just go East,” Ron’s booming. “Just go East.”

My opponent’s entering the ring, the crowd’s gone silent, and, damn, he is f-cking enormous, with a Mohawk, earrings and studs. And he’s leaping around the ring like a jack-hammer.

And, O no!——the crowd’s started chanting “The hammer.”

“The hammer. The hammer. The hammer.”

And now the ring announcer, a fat version of Michael Buffer, introduces my opponent as the “All-Time King, Bill ‘the hammer’ Snakely.”

I’m getting pummeled. Snakely’s all over me. Nothing helps. I even try reciting the opening to Chaucer’s Tales:

“Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote” etc etc

No help.
Ron’s screaming, Bill’s hammering, I’m bleeding.
I am going to die, I think. I am going to die.

But then a tiny little voice comes to me like a water-lily: remember the core strategies of abstraction, son. remember the core strategies of abstraction.

And I am expanding. I am burning. Nothing can stop me. I am all-powerful. Snakely is nothing !!!