Ultimate, July 21, 2023

.

This Show Case features three pieces submitted in response to our forty-seventh Writing Prompt: Ultimate. You can see responses to each prompt in the drop down menu for the Show Case page. Try an item. They are all delicious. We hope they stimulate your mind, spirit, and urge to write. Maybe they will motivate you to submit a piece for our next prompt, which you can find on the Show Case home page.

And please share this Show Case with your family, friends, and other writers.

.

The Ultimate Critique

by S.T. Ranscht

Image credit: Jr Korpa, Unsplash

.

The Ultimate Outsider Has His Say

by Mimi Speike

Sly’s letter to smug, university-educated scholars,
who will never accept him as their intellectual equal.

Sly is a proponent of Natural Philosophy, which is rapidly giving way to the new method of exacting scientific inquiry. He has gotten himself accepted as one of the letrados, among whom a commentary is circulated, each scholar adding his thoughts, forwarding the chain letter to the next name on the list, the participants unaware that Sylvester Boots, Private Secretary to King Jakome of Haute-Navarre, is a cat.

I have stolen the first two lines verbatim from Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), called the First Female Scientist. Margaret liked to put her scientific theories into verse! Perhaps she got the idea from Sly, who preceded her by three-quarters of a century. I conclude she was familiar with his work.

The terms Mechanical Men, Experimentals, ‘lice’ for atoms, are hers. The rest is mine.

***

Who knows but in the Brain may dwell little small Fairies; who can tell?
If so, why should not to annoy good sense be their transcendent joy?

How else but that, the Gown-ed Tribe, intent on Progress, dares describe
strange doings: substances combined, spirits distilled, methods refined,
odd instruments to mix and weigh and render Science, so they say,
to solve a puzzle, so they claim. The life force makes a cunning game indeed:
to trap the Vital Spark and violate it — what a lark! — 
by probing mysteries bethought to confer wisdom. 

All for naught are such pretensions. Never can 
mankind be the custodian to secrets of such grave import. 
It is a ludicrous disport.

Mechanical-Men, on the whole, prefer the Atom to the Soul.
To take the measure of the lice is their idea of Paradise.
The minikin world is their glee, for devilish complexity.

Experimentals: Your method, your core conception, fine and good.
Hypotheses drawn from a cause are parsed, and distilled into laws
derived from stringently-culled fact and computationals exact.

My beef with your rigid approach is this: pure logic fails to broach
the chasm between motes in flux and consciousness, the very crux of Being.
You folks tinker. I am fascinated more by why we are who we are.¹  
I prefer to wonder, ponder, and infer.

Sensitive Matter² is the glue which binds creation, in my view.
I posit that it doth pervade the Cosmos, down to a grass-blade.
Your vision of the world is bleak. Your misconceptions — I shall speak
straight from the heart, as I am known to do, they chill me to the bone.

Nature, inert? Nay, not a bit. In fact, the very opposite.
We creatures, are we chattels mere, that man is born to domineer?³
The vile ‘Great Chain’ pish-tosh, what rot!⁴ You may endorse it. I do not.

Do I so lack lucidity, that I seek an epiphany 
of ones without a doubt, astute, and proud, of parts, and wide repute?

I do. I have the brass to try, though even I can’t justify 
a poke at the great hornet’s nest of scholarship, so to molest 
the bumble-brains bestowed therein. Just what do I expect to win?

The most of you, I understand, dismiss my ravings out of hand. 
A few of you will write me, then I’ll never hear from you again. 
Some lunatic or other might prick up his ears and see the light. 
From my best word-work do I earn a pathetically poor return.

Fine! Tout your triumphs. Do not fail to slam your rivals, to assail
the hordes of hacks and hucksters who would line their pockets, unlike you. 
Your impulse is to help, to heal, to teach. In short, the commonweal.

Your heart is pure. Don’t miss a chance to strut, with a slick song and dance: 
sly references to your degrees, and similar inanities. 

Have you smart patrons? Sure, you do. No? Fret not. You’ll invent a few. 
Dropped names, Lord This and Lady That, will peg you an aristocrat yourself. 
Have colleagues to your club. Your swanky parlour shames their pub. 
Stand rounds, often. You may be sure free-flowing beer redeems a boor.

Bear with me here, I’m almost through. I leave you to your barley-brew.
Forgive me if I seem to scold. Do honest work, sirs. Conjure gold.

1. A talking cat would naturally be more interested in why he, in the history of the world (as far as he knows) has been gifted with his incredible talents.
2. Sensitive Matter was a principal theory of Cavendish.
3. In a fit of outrage, Sly gives himself away. Hopefully, no one noticed.
4. The Great Chain of Being: a medieval religious notion that there is a place for everybody and everybody must keep to his place. Sly abhors that idea, naturally.

.

Piece Hat

by SL Randall & S.T. Ranscht

Artwork by SL Randall

.

Diversity

by S.T. Ranscht

Photo credit: Henry & Co, Unsplash