The Last Day of Langley Collyer - Chapter 1

The cure had begun to take effect: Homer's blindness was no match for the daily regiment of 100 oranges and black bread. Small wonder. His affliction was no more mysterious than the machinations of the outside world bent on infiltration of our perimeters and, once inside, forced adherence to various principles of determinism and weight loss which I've only been too proud to eschew these past years even if the efforts required for our continued security have surpassed even previous estimations but are quite commensurate with the persistence of their provocations as laid bare more by the silences between than the shouts that come ringing through our halls admonishing us to "smell the topiary" or "flush the grundles" or "sniff the dandies" or any number of countless exhortations designed for no purpose but to make me question my convictions; but I will not; I must not for were we to surrender at this point the bureaus and legions would have little choice but to try us for the highest brand of treason and treachery - they'd probably force us into educational programs designed to make us forget the powers of the life force just within once it's awoken with fragrance. Which brings me back to where I started: Homer. A fool would treat his affliction as if it were merely one sensory faculty affected. Such a simplistic view of the world belongs in the schoolyards or the docks. No, just as it takes two eyes to perceive depth, it takes all the senses together to behold the manifold mystery of our day. Things are only rightly understood when taste and smell are in concert, when touch and smell waltz, and when hearing and smell twirl. It was this folly that engendered Homer's compromised state. Homer had been relying too heavily on his eyes, had thought the world can simply be seen. Well it can't and if it could be known through a single sense it would surely be smell. That's where the oranges come in; there is no object in this world that is such a delight to each of the senses jointly and severally and there is nothing so uniformly disappointing to each of the sense as black bread. Why is it black any way? The point is this: through the systematic derangement and rearrangement of the all-sense scheme as executed through this repeated excitement and disappointment of the senses, Homer's senses could begin to work as a team again with the captain taking his post at the olfactory watchtower. It's already begun to work. I just need a few more weeks to allow its proper course but they advance daily. Will Homer's cure first afford me the reinforcement I so desperately need in our defense? Or will they overtake us and pound us into the submission of scolded children through campaigns to compromise heightened senses of smell or at least heightened awareness thereof? Or will these booby traps I've rigged throughout the newspaper piles spell victory for us once and for all? The answer is out there curling through the air like the aroma of ham or broccoli.