WE HAD BEEN UP ALL NIGHT STUDYING, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them we were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth, we literally trampled underfoot the pavement in our truly avant-garde quest to walk down the hill to the cafeteria while preserving some shred of that obsolete concept, dignity.
That Stupid Little Miniature Pony Gait! That Ballerina-Like Prancing! That Eternally Unstable, Dissatisfied Trot Of The Student Perpetually Losing His Footing! That Waltz Borne Of The Inner Motor Of Continuous Imbalance! That Stride Of The Conqueror Compelled Desperately Onward! This is the inaugural wail of the Modern era, the time of monsters struggling to be born!
Our correspondents in Paris marvel at the sheer nervous power behind the Silly Leo’s Hill Gait, the way it so deftly lays bare the neuroticism of the contemporary world with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel.
It was dawn, and Leo’s was just opening its doors. Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves skipping wildly down the hill quite alone, like ball lightning, or like the wild horses of the Eurasian steppe, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their fists against the bases of their overheating laptops!
The Stupid Leo’s Hill Gait is a revolt from within that great cathedral of philistinism, mediocrity, composure. In the very depths of its philistinism it refines that philistinism into something radically new; in its strident mediocrity it glimpses the sublime; its profound, pathetic composure is a wake-up call that incites the world to riot!
Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge GERMS ambulances that went leaping by, streaked with light like the dorm buildings still celebrating their festivals, which the hurricanes in flood suddenly knock down and uproot – or might, if we had better hurricanes, or worse dorm buildings, knock down and uproot – and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drag down to the sea.
Then, as we stood halfway down the hill, the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly we became aware of the depths of our hunger.
“Come, my friends!” I said, “Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind! We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is the very first breakfast on earth! Nothing equals the savor of its Marriott Continental Breakfast pancakes which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness!”
We uneasily frolicked on, reaching in triumph the base of the hill, the gates of Leo’s, the redemption of our minutes of humiliation and disgrace! Then, with my face adorned with a pale blue mask, with the wear of sleepless nights, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid insomniacs and angry premed students, we dedicated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth!
The Heckler’s verdict: 4.6/5 stars; walk still looks silly.
(Any imitation of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti is purely coincidental)