Episode 8 excerpts a moment from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Companionship," wherein he considers how much time he wastes.
We'll be challenged to decide if we, the listeners, aren't somehow implicated in his metaphors.
Transcription of Joris:
"Watching my chickens, the overbearing gravity of wasted time oppresses me. Then again, seeing anything overwhelms me with this sentiment. Why, I could have mentioned clouds dissolving, or wind carrying outrageously engineered seeds as they parachute wildly to mock the Mother Earth, who is all too desperate to cultivate each and every one.By Jove, and it pains me to speak in such frank words, my mind cannot conjure a single thing that doesn't sag with the appalling avowel that time is wasting away savagely, inexorably, and, in a desperate attempt to dissuade me from discovering its accelerating atrophy, it searches frantically the endless corridors of memory for some thing, some image, that may challenge this intellectual blockade. But there is nothing there, Mind! Mind, thou art too proud. Search no more. For the very action of thought is wasted time that might be better spent tossing tulip heads at the chickens. No, we must spend no time in the masturbatory practice of thinking, for masturbation is a tautology, and tautology, like the work of undergraduates, turns my stomach.
So let us to our afternoon practice. The chickens can see we have already gathered the tulips. They have just formed their defensive phalanx. They anticipate the first launch of blossoms, and dart wild eyes at us. They pretend annoyance, but they are such poorly trained actors."