Random Thoughts: All around the mulberry bush...

[I once wrote a mini-short story entitled "Moth-Eaten." It was lost, and then rewritten... I eventually wish to expand it further, including an alternate reality (as in The Matrix, or in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland") that plays off of the "real reality," and calls into serious question the nature of reality period. The following are some rambling thoughts regarding the nature of that alternate reality.]

"All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought it was all in fun
Pop! Goes the weasel."

1) Silkworms, at least of the Chinese variety, eat mulberry leaves.

2) "The monkey" can be read as "The monk, 'e"

3) "Weasel" may be read as "We Sell." Sell what? Insurance. Insurance against what? Insurance against the Unexpected. "You pay us so that life can be maintained at its expected pace, with its expected hopes and disappointments, with its expected risks and misfortunes, eh?" This, of course, is absolute absurdity. But isn't "insurance" basically an absurd industry? It is RISK MANAGEMENT, a covering of the bets, but risk is inherently UNMANAGABLE.

"We Sell" insurance... But we don't deliver a thing...

A question keeps returning, not just for the insurance industry, but for many "forms of business" (form vs. substance) that sell nothing. The recent subprime mortgage fiasco, with the buying and selling of, if nothing else, risky loans, i.e., the "bundling" and "repackaging" of risk, is an example of this.

WHAT DO YOU SELL?

"We Sell" thus becomes a universal name for empty promises. In this story, it is the name of a sinister organization that sticks its dirty hands into every pocket, and maintains and manipulates "risk management" through active interventions, i.e. assault, murder, mayhem, whenever necessary.

The "Monk" chases "We Sell," because he is attempting to recapture himself.

Or something.

I would also like to incorporate Daedalus. In the story, the "Monk" has another "self", we can call him Jack (Jack in the Box), who is an employee of "We Sell." Jack manages what is referred to as the "Data List." It is a vast and expansive list of all "clients", a compilation of bits and pieces of data about individuals, data that is crunched on an hourly basis to determine "risk factors", to keep on the cusp of "That which is expected" of any given individual.

"Data List" sounds like Daedalus. Daedalus was, among other things, the architect of the Maze of the Minotaur; despite building the Maze for King Minos, he was helplessly (?) imprisoned within his creation, along with his son, Icarus. Daedalus thus represents cleverness that is imprisoned.

Daedalus can also be tied to the silkworm. A silkworm who has trapped itself within its own coccoon, within fibers of its own making. "The spit of worms," as expressed in the original story.