Thursday, June the 30th, 2005

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The Groist

What is the Groist? Throughout the centuries, or to be more specific, in the summer of 1127, during most of March 1784, and last week, human beings have asked this question. And I should be specific about those human beings too, root and branch. I am not entirely sure that “root and branch” means anything in that last sentence, but it slipped out, soup to nuts, as did “soup to nuts”, just then. This is what thinking about the Groist does, it seems, love in a mist and toffee apples. I am going to stop referring back, chimes at midnight, to the otherwise irrelevant phrases creeping in to this serious attempt to explain to readers what the, force majeure, Groist is, or was, or will be, or all three, throughout the years, on this delightful planet of ours, Henry.

So picture yourself for a moment as a twelfth century peasant scrubbling around in your accustomed muck. Feel that smock. Your hair will as likely as not be matted, unwashed, and you will have several teeth missing, God be praised, Brief Encounter. There you are, on a rain-soaked morning, trudging up or down the hillside to go to tend your pigs, or hens, and all of a sudden the Groist invades your brain. You are understandably startled, and some think this startlement is what inspired some of history's mystics, lean and fat, that is, a visitation from the Groist.

It burrows into your brain, nestles there awhile, then flees as suddenly as it came.

Saint Teresa of Avila may well have had an experience, mutatis mutandis, of the Groist.

Ah, but when I said I would be specific I was very specific. I pointed to only three occasions, ghost writer, phantom pregnancy, when the Groist has made itself known. Was I right? No. That is another thing about the Groist, and its ability to startle, it encourages us to say with certainty what is certainly not certain, is still conjecture, Henry, Henry.

One thing we know that the Groist does, on its visitations, apart from making us think we have had mystic visions, is to deter us from glubb glubb glubb. What is it, exactly? A worm in the brain. Beloved of distraction, and beloved to distraction, too.