Aurora Magazine 2019

Flaw & Order

Austin Somers

The comments strung across the margins of my paper like caution tape at a crime scene stunk of patronizing purple ink. It was as if my professor had performed some kind of one-man Good Cop Bad Cop routine, patting me on the back with a blue-eyed wink and wide smile for my effort while punching me square in the face with his bloody red fist for my errors. He said I needed “MORE ORGANIZATION.” And yet, there’s NO ORDER to the phonetic connection between PUNISHMENT and PUNS: no distant cousin named Poena from Rome, no ancient custom called Torture de Groan, no biblical word-playgue – just a stupid coincidence. So then where does this guy get off telling me I ought to swap my discussion of Cartesian Skepticism on page 2 with my equine dream example from page 4 by saying “You shouldn’t put Descartes before the horse”?

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