PETRONIUS’ GARAGE: Petronius’ Garage is his answer to Plato’s Cave and all systems of enlightenment or salvation where “the aspirant invariably wonders, “‘Do I really have it?’ — a certain indicant he has been duped.” “To leave the cobwebs and oil stains of Petronius’ Garage and enter the paradise of a sunny park” one needs to listen to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony after ingesting LSD. “If what he experiences is not ‘enlightenment’ then that word has no meaning and should be encased in lead and dropped into the sea.” (I’m not a huge classic music fan, but I think this is a serious contribution to systems of enlightenment. Even Sandy said it’s awesome.)
PETRONIUS’ SECOND THEOREM: Petronius’ Second Theorem is S/3. It enables one to determine the compatibility of other Beethoven symphonies with LSD. (For the layman, it’s Beethoven’s symphonies divisible by three.)
THE NINTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Ninth Petronius Sensation is a terrifying affliction where the “thick callus of familiarity that carefully covers our surroundings” is peeled away, “revealing the most mundane things as bizarre and unrecognizable.” “The words we have to name things, which normally shield us from their primordial strangeness, lose all of their power.”
PETRONIUS’ THIRD THEOREM: One wouldn’t normally think to ask “What is the sun?” because of Petronius’ Third Theorem: “The frequency of a man’s observation of X is proportionate to his disinclination to ask, “What is X?” or x>f(x). “Such questions, however, become the norm during the frightful Ninth Sensation — and no answers are forthcoming.”
THE TENTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Tenth Petronius Sensation is “spellbinding aphasia at the eye-crossing stupidity of what one has just heard.” “In its throes, a victim goes through four distinct stages: denial, anger, despair, and then back to anger.”
THE ELEVENTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Eleventh Petronius Sensation is best described with an example. While driving on a long straightaway, Petronius slouched in his seat and looked up at the clouds. “A discombobulating sensation overtook me, insisting to my cowed senses that we stood still while the plane connected to the dark silhouettes moved beneath us. This was not merely an amusing hitchhiker picked up by my lonely intellect. I felt it. The earth spun beneath my car, suspended by invisible wires.” This may have “interesting entailments.”
THE TWELFTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Twelfth Petronius Sensation is “the experience of a pleasure that cannot be adequately described to another.” This is owing to its uncommon nature.
PETRONIUS’ THEORY THAT FOURTEEN IS UNLUCKY, NOT THIRTEEN: Petronius’ Theory That Fourteen is Unlucky, Not Thirteen is based on the complete lack of evidence indicting thirteen and the mountain of calamities involving fourteen: the Black Death in the fourteenth century, WWI in 1914, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the Cuban Missile Crisis taking place over a fourteen day span.
THE THIRTEENTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Thirteenth Petronius Sensation is when “the siesta of Reason indulges a man with the rapture of Now.” “The present, formerly a watchtower from which I surveyed the grisly battlefield of the past while nebulous but threatening shapes amassed on the horizon of the future, became a meadow flanked by walls of gold, beyond which the terrain was of no concern, as though Reason had been cloistering me from my surroundings and informing me via outdated and arcane journals.”
PETRONIUS TIME TYPE I: Petronius Time Type I is “an interval not objectively longer than the same period experienced by a third party engaged in something numbingly mundane but felt by me as lasting longer due to its extraordinary nature.” For instance, if Mr. Jones is sitting in an algebra class and Mr. Smith is skydiving, an increment of five minutes will seem longer to Mr. Smith. (I told Petronius it would probably seem longer to poor Mr. Jones. “Then he is experiencing the agonies of Petronius Time Type VI, which I’m still developing,” he snapped.)
PETRONIUS TIME TYPE II: Petronius Time Type II is “the taffy-like stretch that time undergoes whilst a man is under the influence of tetrahydrocannabinol.”
THE SEVENTEENTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Seventeenth Petronius Sensation is reveling in the adoration of posterity. “Consider all who shall delight in my annals a thousand years hence. How will I enjoy the generations of ovations if not via the anticipation of them?”
THE NINETEENTH PETRONIUS SENSATION: The Nineteenth Petronius Sensation “refers to inauspicious situations where the threat of far greater inauspiciousness lurks like a sniper.” (I had a nasty experience of this. Of all the mornings to cut myself shaving, the morning before a job interview was the worst, the most inauspicious. While driving to my interview, I kept checking the mirror to see if the wad of tissue had stopped the bleeding, which resulted in a fender-bender and an exponential increase in the inauspiciousness. Just when I thought the inauspiciousness couldn’t possibly increase, the cop who arrived on the scene noticed the empty beer can Petronius had left on the floor in my backseat.)
PETRONIUS’ BOX: Petronius’ Box is the Fleetwood to the Pinto of Plato’s Ring of Gyges. It enables one to freeze time and “violate moral norms with immeasurably greater ease and comfort than an invisible man.”
Acknowledgments
Brian Bartul would like to thank James at Go On Write for a magisterial cover of great dignity and pathos. He is beholden to Zelda Alpizar for maintaining Petronius’ website. He encourages all seekers of Truth to consider that Petronius was wrong about polytheism.
Copyright © 2016 by Petronius Jablonski All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Epigraph
Preamble
In Defense of My Preamble
I: The Commencement of My Odyssey, a Commentary on the Point of Life, and the Attainment of Quietude
The Anticipation of Questions Pertaining to Part I with Answers and Analysis
II: My Bonneville is Cherished, I Discover a Box, Compose a Letter of Critique to a Hack, Introduce Petronius’ First Sensation and Petronius’ Shovel, Encounter an Enormous Bird after My Bonneville is Abducted, Dream the First of Eleven Dreams, Strike a Dubious Bargain with a Sea God, and Select the Chosen Chariot
Part II: Addendum
III: The Journey to the Light at the End of the Tunnel
Part III: An Appurtenance
A Bland and Unnecessary Addendum to the Appurtenance of Part III, Provided at the Reader’s Insistence
A Supplement to the Bland and Unnecessary Addendum to the Appurtenance to Part III
IV: I Find Myself in a Tavern, Fail to Initiate Two Sprites, Dream My Second Dream, and Suffer a Ghastly Dizzy-Spell
The Anticipation and Refutation of an Utterly Incorrect Objection to Part IV
V: I Introduce My General Potation Theory and Petronius’ Third and Fourth Sensations, Attain Oneness with My Fleetwood, Compose a Hymn to Aristotle while Sandy Constructs a Bridge, Behold a Town of Ghosts, and Begin Composing My Magnificent Annals
The Dialogues of Supernatural Individuation
VI: A Book Party, an Infernal Nightmare, and a Refutation of Vegetarianism
On the Needlessness of an Addendum to Part VI
VII: An Act of Libidinous Union is Interrupted by a Pterodactyl, I Withstand the Ravages of Tetrahydrocannabinol, Critique a Monument, Expound Upon the Perfect Government, and Reflect Upon the Night I Met Sandy but Instead Summon the Fairy Gobbler
Regarding the Non-Superfluence of My Remembrance of the Night When I Did Not Meet Sandy
On the Persistence of My Memory
VIII: We are Joined by Hitchhikers, I Expound Upon the Significance of the Bubb
legum Slayer, We Join the Rainbow Gardeners, Sandy Dissolves my Prodigious Hang-Up, I Debunk a Puerile Legend, Introduce My Unnumbered Sensation, and Dream the Worst Dream of All Time
IX: The Ripened Fruits of the Mind
Concerning the Reader’s Puerile Criticism of My Thunder Metaphor in Part IX
X: We Stay at an Inn, I Introduce my Seventh Sensation, Behold Pitiful Armadillos, Dream of a Great Orange Train, and Encounter a Vicious Meat Puppet
Preparations for Part XI
XI: My Fleetwood is Transformed Into a Tavern, I Receive a Rebuke from Agents of the Venerable Horned One of the Lake, Consume Several Strawberry Zebras, and Introduce My Special Potation Theory
The Essential and Non-Negotiable Preparations for Part XII
XII: I See the Sun For the First Time
XIII: We are Vexed by Incomprehensible Signs, I Expound Upon the Origin of the Shi Tzu; and Introduce my Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Sensations
On the Felicitous Absence of Part XIV
Preparations for Part XV
XV: I Experience the Rapture of a Knife-Edge, Introduce Petronius Time Types I and II, and Demonstrate to Sandy the Consummate Importance of the Difference Between Denotation and Connotation
XVI: The Panting Wall of Gloom
How the Reader May Halt the Foredoomed Voyage of Time to Prolong His Enjoyment of My Annals
XVII: The Introduction of My Nineteenth Sensation and Petronius’ Box
On the Superiority of Petronius’ Box to Plato’s Much-Ballyhooed Ring
The Prearranged Terms of Our Duel
Essential Preparations for the Epilogue
A Declaration of My Intentions Regarding the Reader’s Sister
Appendix by Brian Bartul, Including a Glossary of Terms
Acknowledgments
Copyright
The Annals Page 27
