Here is a partial list of our demands:

We  want Guiness Stout declared a major food group
We want our brains to fire up into extreme fluency on demand
(with the sound the furnace makes when the gas hits the pilot light)
We want to stay close to the gooey interface
wherein hormones make neurons talk, and language meets linoleum
We want to be able to express the hilarity, the absurdity, the wafer-thin
profundity of having a "mind" that is compelled to "make sense"
of "all this stuff" that "happens"
We want Guiness Stout to be declared a major food group again
We want everyone to "back off" on sunday mornings
We wanna keep on "keepin' on"
We want someone to send us an email about these dang Mission Statements
We want more frequent flier miles
And some other stuff, which we will no doubt think of as soon
as we save this Mission Statement.....
 

 
 Sifting, yes, sifting would be the right word. We were not so much walking or hiking or even strolling as we were sifting through the path. It lay as fine and aromatic as cinnamon, a rare dust that soothed your feet as you proceeded – unlike other paths, other conveyances, that seemed to take something in exchange for the passage, this “Cinnamon Trail” not only buoyed you towards the destination but it also made you richer for the journey itself. So we all sifted in harmony, in silence, because there was nothing to say. The passage itself was the conversation and like lovers who find a common harmony, our strides matched congruently and we all proceeded perfectly alone together. 

 Until the rain came. Without warning. But rain is 100 per cent wet whether it falls with or without a warning. And cinnamon powder holds 47 times its weight in excess moisture, whether it’s in your oatmeal or underfoot. Which is to say that our syncopated cadences quickly crashed in a quagmire. 

  So we lost momentum and bumped unto one another – Finnegan-the-Barkeep; Mohammed Mahoney-the-cabbie; Homer; and the three of us from World Headquarters. That makes six. But there were seven. Someone got lost in the shuffle, or the soup, or the oatmeal, depending how you look at it. And one more thing, cinnamon doesn’t smell so good when it’s wet, or between your toes, or both.

 “Over here!” A voice, sweet like music, from over there. “No, over Here!” she sang from somewhere over there. “Here, here, here,” she scolded. We couldn’t see through the rain and mist but the cabbie navigated, Homer lead the way, and we took up the middle. 

 Homer suddenly parted a curtain, we exited a cloud and stepped into a Garden. “Why it’s Madam Eve and Mad Adam!” gushed Homer. His eyes opened wide and he didn’t look at Adam.

 The cabbie blurted out, “It’s ‘hammed and Eve!”

 Well, it was Evening, all right, and we might have been all wet but at least Finnegan wasn’t lost. “Now drink ye all some of this,” he chided.

 “And here, these warm sandwiches from London,” chimed Eve. “Goes great with cinnamon sticks,” she giggled.

 “Are we going frontwards or backwards?” I couldn’t help asking. 

 “Now that’s a good question,” counseled Homer. “Start from next week, and head to the end.”

I had an argument with someone recently.  We parted, the air  decidedly acrid. An unpleasantness which  left a knot in my stomach--a double slipshank with a twist. I threw back a couple of Glen Fiddich’s in order to forget. And at that price I figured I better forget. 
Well, to make a long mission statement shorter…….I woke up Sunday morning feeling good.  You see, I had a dream….a dream about a warm sandwich. The person with whom I had the argument  sent me (all the way from London, England) a warm sandwich. No note.  Just the warm sandwich. I knew immediately the warm sandwich was sent as an olive branch. An olive branch in the form of a warm sandwich. I still have the sandwich and it’s still warm. And that’s what we’re doing here.  Making warm sandwiches. And mailing them to you in your dreams.  Sleep well, eat hardy.

   The Mission Statement of the the week before the week before the week before The WEEK BEFORE TheWeek Before Last Week

 
  O.K. The Mission Statement. It’s not that complicated. So, forthwith and with dispatch, let the Mission Statement be stated. We will distill the elucidation of the uncomplication. Or, would that be to un-explain the deconstruction of the ‘magination…..?

 ‘Scuse me. The earth was quaking and it rattled the English language. Well, not exactly. Not at all, as a smatter of fact. The earth doesn’t quake around these parts, and anyway the wind chimes were as straight as the Tower of Pisa, and about half as quiet. 

 It must have been next week rattling these here corners. It’ll do that when the wind twists ‘round Finnegan the barkeep as he sprinkles allusions on any pint outa sight. “Pint o’ midnight-might might go great with Grecian gumbo,” Finnegan whistled backwards while standing off his feet, “if you mean what I know.” And his eyes bore down long and slow as an odyssey. “Don’t leave Homer without it.” Can’t beat that for an American Expression. “And if ya’ left yer right sense of direction, just remember, every way is up.” 

 And a voice boomed out from somewhere up ahead, “Fire was the spectator sport for poets!” Was that the future again, shimmying in past tense?

 But there is no future in The Poetry Ballroom – not some separate future you can’t get to ‘til it’s not the future anymore. What kind of future is that? That kind o’ future is all used up -- not fresh and aromatic as a pasture of basil and cilantro. A piquancy you could roll round yourself. You could wake up there, day after day for an epic lifetime, ready-as-spice, a slice of nice roll the dice twice for paradise. That’s the kind of future you find in the Poetry Ballroom, and it’ s all right here as soon as You Are There. 

 And Finnegan the barkeep whispered, “Hey Man, lemee taste yours.”

 “Now you’re drinkin’ on your feet,” chuckled Homer from the day after tomorrow.

He beat a peaty retreat towards the bar and we entered, in Finnegan's wake.

The heat was off . This was cool. All about us came the hubbub of mother tongues, from sanskrit to gallic to y'all, all rising to a haze of thick glossolalia stirred into meaning by the lone ceiling fan. Verbal gumbo. We looked at each other and smiled wide as our prefrontal lobes ignited in phonetic sympathy. "Ah, the sweet elixir", said one of us, "Neural drool", said the other, laughing. "I think something stout is calling my name", said one more - and we eased into the din of antiquity, heading for the taps. 

Edging, shouldering, sidestepping past poets, griots and stern-looking umlauts, we arrived at the bar and asked for pints of the local dialect. The irishman fixed us with a brassy glare and boomed "In the beginning was the Word!" "One word!" came the sudden chorus from from the room. "BUT", roared the son of Erin, "One word cannot be said without a second to give it meaning." "Two words!" shouted back the crowd. "And so", said Finnegan softly, "this one Word, unspoken, breathes life into all you say and hear." All grew silent as the ceiling fan creaked to a stop and the irishman leaned forward expectantly, looking at us each in turn. We drew straws on a napkin and the shortest sketcher frowed his burrow, shrugged and cried, "Yo! What's the Word?!". The room exploded in laughter and high-pitched doggerel and the ceiling fan stirred anew. "Congrats lads", said the barkeep, "Yu'v just recapitulated the ontogeny of yer own vocabulary!" 

We didn't know if this was good or bad and a little greek guy with a sticker on his chest that read Hi, my name is Homer leapt onto a table and yelled, "And here's another history lesson: In a land where words were few and stark, no synonyms abounded. Each word described an equal portion of reality, and their relationship to other words was a succinct grammar in itself. This natural tongue, though noble, could not help but grow incestuous to preserve itself. Some words began to have more than one meaning; others survived only in reference to other words. As time went on, this fateful trend continued, from burble to babble to riot. And just when every word seemed to mean anything, everything, nothing, a very strange thing occured..." 

The doors to the speakeasy suddenly flew open, dark figures silhouetted in the streetlight pouring in. "Shadduuuuuup!!" screamed a hooded voice, and then menacing, "Stow yer tongues and nobody gets... hurt." The figures began to advance, reciting lines from cheesy gangster flicks in a low liturgical litany. "It's a raid!" yelled Homer, scrambling off the table, and all was bedlam. "Thought police" hissed Finnegan, pulling open a trap door behind the bar, "this way to clarity. Hurry." 

We hustled down the chute, recognizing the dark figures as our pursuers, centuries of articulation receding as we sped, chasing the word, and being chased by its constraints...