--punctuated.
So I know that etiquette of this is
you're supposed to read and then look up.
And if I do that, then I'm going to forget the p-- where I am
and then you'd have to watch me.
So I'm really aware that you're here.
[LAUGHTER]
So we're not going to be-- we're not going to be bonded as I do.
[LAUGHTER]
"Nevertheless, I fear the lone instance
I can recall having heard aloud derived
from an acquaintance of a close friend who said that he had,
himself, overheard this exemplum aboard a high altitude
commercial flight while on some type of business trip.
The fellow evidently holding a commercial position that
called for frequent air travel.
Nor one hastens to admit, did the variant or exemplum contain
any formal enunciation, as such.
Nor any comme on dit period of trial.
Or supernatural aid, trickster figures,
archetypal resurrection, nor any in certain other recognized
elements of the cycle.
Nevertheless gentlemen, I leave it to you
to judge for yourselves.
As of course you each, in turn, have left it to us as well.
As I understood it, the man in question
was diverted by weather onto the continuation of a United
Airlines flight.
And overheard it's narration as part
of a longer discourse between two passengers seated
in the row just ahead of his own.
It was a continuation of some much longer flight, perhaps
even transatlantic.
And the two passengers had evidently been seated together
on the flight's first leg and we're
already deep in conversation when he boarded.
And the crux here is that the fellow
said he missed the first part of whatever larger conversation
it was part of.
Meaning that there was no inframing
context or antecedent, as such, surrounding
the archetypal narrative as of course there is with all of us
here together this afternoon.
Then it appeared to come, as the fellow described it,
out of nowhere.
Also, that he had evidently been seated
in the particular medial exit row
that is always nearest the wings' jet engine.
The over wing exit.
Often, and I believe on this type of aircraft, row 19 or 20.
It was point being that because of the seat location's
terrific ambient engine noise throughout the flight,
he was able to overhear the narrative fragment only
because one of the predominant passengers
before him seemed to be either hard of hearing or cognitively
hobbled in some way.
[LAUGHTER]
For the somewhat younger passenger,
the one who appeared to be relating and interpreting
the cycles variant or parallel or whatever you may have judged
it to be, seemed to articulate his sentences
very slowly and with unusual clarity and stiffness.
Which he said, come to think of it,
is also the way people who are not particularly bright
or discerning speak to foreigners.
So then perhaps the older passenger
was a non-native speaker of English
and the narrator was, himself, not terribly bright.
The two never turned round or turned their head--
or their two heads sufficiently for him
to get a real look at them.
All there ever was to look at as the narrative unfolded
were the rear portions of their heads and necks, which
he said appeared average and unremarkable and difficult
to extrapolate anything from.
Which is the back-- which the backs
of strangers heads on airlines nearly always look."
[LAUGHTER]