exploratories
form letter
Dear Sir,
Of course, you may not yet have been blessed with a Knighthood,
reaching those parts amenable to no lesser flatteries; in
which case, cut short of such blessed increase as you now
are by government fiat...because, you are an Australian,
are you not, sir - if, indeed I may call you that?
Or, are you a man at all?
Dear sir or madam,
Feeling, as I do, that a fresh start might be warranted,
I decided to make a clean breast of it...as it were. But,
somehow, sanctified by tradition though this phrase may
be, it still does not seem quite right. Might you be offended
by the implication, however remote, that I am suggesting
you have once kept a bawdy house? Or even - and I blush
to reveal it - that you have habitually consorted with seventeenth-century
cutpurses? How, beset by such hazards, may my address properly
indicate the respect I feel for your person even though,
as yet, we have not met. Another approach must be selected....
To whom it may concern,
But this so formal, and haughty besides.... It smacks of
a pride which I do not feel, in my role as your humble supplicant
- ideally, beseeching your munificence in an approppriately
obsequious fashion. Can you not forgive this poor wretch?
Will a loose phrase, dropped by my untutored pen,
incur your unforgiving enmity...or may I beg the traditional
indulgence of the truly noble toward all genuine servility?
Oh Great and Mighty One,
Do not cast me from you. Spurn not the prayer of a worm
such as I...that am unfit to grovel amidst the dust beneath
your feet. Mine poor tongue can find no words sufficient
to praise your superlative excellence. Fawning, I would
clutch at the hem of your garment, save that my lowly touch
would hereby soil your magnificence. Forgive the sins of
one who knows no better, than to so petition in a worldly
and hubristic cant. Let me cut off the hand that offendeth,
and burn the pen which drew the evil mark. All I have is
yours - as always - and, to serve is my only wish. I will
build a pyre of my children, that none may come between
this supplicant, and the least of your wishes. To the end
of my days shall I serve, and degradations without end will
be sweet in the mouth of one whose fortune is to wait upon
the highest.
Yours sincerely,
a job seeker
John Henry Calvinist
