Wednesday, January the 9th, 2008

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The Path Of Pollen

Mr Key wishes to announce that henceforth he will be following the Path of Pollen. As you may already know, this Path is an important and ancient tradition of bee shamanism. Like Naomi Lewis, I will be bounding out of bed at dawn and doing the lemniscatic walk. It looks like walking in a figure of eight. When bees come back from foraging, they do this to tell the hive where the best nectar is, and so on. The walk is seen to give one access to infinite knowledge and vitality.

You might wonder what precisely is implied by that “and so on”, as if there is some kind of fluffy vagueness about the Path of Pollen, but I can assure you this is not so. I am confident that, as infinite knowledge and vitality begin to suffuse every last chink of Hooting Yard, you, as readers, will be thankful that bee shamanism is being practised here, and you may indeed take up lemniscatic walking yourselves.

Incidentally, I have been asked a number of times over the years if Joost Van Dongelbraacke, the suburban shaman, was in fact a suburban bee shaman, but I am afraid my researches to date have thrown only a very pale light on the matter. While some authorities claim that he shed bits of beeswax as he roamed his shamanic suburb, others counter that they were simply bits of earwax falling from his admittedly rather grubby head. I do not yet know enough to pronounce on the question, for I have only been following the Path of Pollen since this morning, and so my knowledge is not yet infinite. I am hoping it will be so by about Thursday week.