Mildly cold wooha. Would that be sparkling or mildly sparkling or just plain? If sparkling, with or without lemon? Or else, would that be spring or rust-and-chemical-ridden tap water? Bottled or otherwise?

Details, please.

If Seleda is a show, and your friends who order caviar and exotic animals from e-bay are also pulling a show, and your colleagues striving to turn their BS in Food Science into a BS in Wine Tasting (pun unintended) are show-casters, then what does that make you? The audience? It seems like the stage is larger than the audience. Maybe everyone on stage is insane and the audience, content drinking cool wooha bottled from the spirited springs of non-desperation, is the sensible one. Who said sanity was statistical in the first place? Who? Who? Who? Who?

("the milkofhumankindness must be mindful/ must be mega/ must be main")

I confess, I belong on stage where the common creed, conviction, whatever you wish to call it is that: life cannot be simply distilled to water. No, we're not Dualists or Epiphenomenalists! We promise! We just think that there's more to existence than thirsty cells, more to imagination than neuron networking, and more to dreams than the pH or temperature of the substance you consume. That's all.

(aside: ever tried Chamomile before bed?)

I was too young to understand, but old enough to remember. I remember my bare black body, naked as the day I was born, being plunged into the cold, cold body of water. Plunged, not once, not twice, but enough times that my insides thawed. Thawed by the cold. God only knows how. Meanwhile the room reverberated with a cacophony of foreign Tongues and infantile, infernal screams. The theatrical thing of it all was that not even my parents understood what the Priests were saying. They spoke Greek. None of us understood anything. And to this day, the only thing I got out of it is that even the water can be spooky sometimes.

So now, tell me about your poison-free dreams. If you need me, I'll be rehearsing backstage.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

FROM: Baboor
TO: Evian

I almost forgot that I was supposed to write to you! When I remembered, it meant traveling for twenty minutes to get to a computer with an internet connection. Then I realized that I had less to say than before. It's been a while since I read a Seleda piece in its entirety. The Seleda show has not been interesting lately.

Perhaps it's me. Perhaps the food for thought that was once Seleda has lost its appeal for my mind for reasons that will only be clear in retrospect. The messages are repetitive. It doesn't feel nourishing to read most of the pieces anymore. Scanning through the words of the folks who are the editors, it becomes obvious that, for now at least, they have lost the tools needed to explore the limits of their ambition. It's probably the case that I'm not their target audience. Could it be that I'm sitting on the wrong table with the wrong kind of mankia to feast on their tasty asharo?

The truth might lie elsewhere. Seleda.com now competes with ethioindex.com for my attention. Entirely different from each other, I agree. But how much more of yeSeleda alasfelagi hateta can my thirsty mind tolerate? The mooq wooha that is Seleda was once good enough to wash our hands with and sit at the table waiting for the real meal to arrive. That meal is not coming! The cook fell asleep and all we have for qoors is asharo. Misa asharo. Rat asharo. Asharo b'asharo!

Ok, Ok. I'm exaggerating. Why can't I just admit that Seleda is too deep for me and mind my own business? Why can't I just remain content with what little I understand from Seleda's far and wide offerings of mind food? :-) "Arfeh billa," says a voice within. "Quaq alegn," says another. "Astawk," says a third.

There's my tewket for you. I imagine the editors licking it off their screen. And puking out more asharo of their own.

Firja!