On the student Cafe forum of the creative writing course I'm doing on the OU I received this response to the stroy I'd posted up 'A tale of Bovine Love' which I posted previously on here. I had to share it with as many folks as I could because it just made me laugh and then smile for hours. Here you go then.
Hi Richard
I'm standing in a wilderness here, looking for a cow, and there are none to be seen. I have to tell you Richard that that there have been times in my life when I have been so desperate and low, that any old cow would have done; I fortified myself with the notion that I didn't even have to love the cow, because Richard I can confide in you that love is a concept that has brought chains to my soul. Love stands you on the edge of an abyss and says jump these chains will hold you firm. But RIchard the number of times I have hit the bottom of that abyss breaking myself into a thousand bloodied pieces of grizzle, bone, and torn skin, and yes, vomit, and I'm not ashamed to admit that, and yet the only thing that was still in tact, still gleaming in the few rays of daylight that filtered down, were those chains. They were untouched by the fall. They still cut into my broken heavy soul, and Richard I knew that the weight of those chains would never let me climb back up to the sunlight. I knew that if I was to save myself I would have to abandon my chained up soul. I would have to leave it where it lay, in chains, in the dark, abandoned forever. It had become too heavy for one person to bear alone.
Richard I have been inspired by your allegoric tale of Sapphic Love. However by the posts I fear that you may have encoded it a little too much because a lot of people really do think that you are writing about cows. Yes Richard I know what you are thinking, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. And I am sorry to have introduced new elements of the bovine, which may confuse them even more.
However I digress, I note with delight that not content two test one of the sexual taboos of middle class England, you have successfully catered for the sado-masochistic community with your description of barbed wire cutting deeply - I reread that line several times as I found it deeply satisfying, thank you.
Your next triumph was the metaphysical reference to the futility of birth, bravo. With your natural economy of language you have encapsulated one of lives great mysteries; why are we born? By turning the van into a womb, from which new life is disgorged, and that new life is already close to disgorging its own new life you have squared the circle of life, excellent.
Finally you have had the courage to comment on the pathos of Sapphic entanglements when you took the moral high ground and demonstrated that true love will only ever be achieved in hetrosexual communion when you symbolically had the Man walking off with the cow/sapphic partner and in a perfect biblical flourish you write of silence as man and cow are reunited in perfect harmony. Richard take a bow.
Strangely, your best line was not to be found in your piece, but consigned to a post script. I prefer cows to people you get into a lot less trouble eating them. I could not have put it better myself.
Regards John
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