Spring Cleaning of the Soul
by Jerry Channell

Every spring, in addition to reading Walt Whitman’s, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d, I crack open my collection of Edgar Allan Poe tales and read the short story, The Angel of the Odd – An Extravaganza. It’s a celebration of sorts, a Purim that explores the realization that something other than man’s interminable machinations is the cause of all things unusual, odd and foolish.

The tale opens with the narrator sitting before the fire, dyspeptic after a hearty dinner, drinking himself into a luculent state. After reading the evening paper, he becomes absolutely convinced of two facts: the press routinely reports “contemptible falsehoods” in order to increase its distribution of “penny-a-liners” and that an inebriated man understands nothing. These two observations together suggest it is now possible, most would say justifiable, to “believe nothing henceforward.” What a relief that would be! Because all endeavors are fabricated, man therefore knows nothing and can, consequently, choose to believe nothing.

Enter the Angel of the Odd. He introduces himself with a stilted, maladroit Teutonic dialect, which is an obvious product of perpetual drunkenness enabled by the fact that he has “kirshenwasser bottles for arms, a rum puncheon for a torso, barrels for legs and a Hessian brandy flask and funnel for a head.” One might posit, given Poe’s popularity, that the Angel’s appearance is nothing more than a deep, meaningful hallucination on the part of the narrator. But we, along with the narrator, learn that the seraph is actually quite real when the narrator is bashed on the head with the Angel’s kirshenwasser bottle appendages. 

The narrator then offers the reader this: “I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was the genius who presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic.”

With this announcement I can finally identify the force behind all worldwide malfeasance, and what a relief it is! No longer am I burdened by the label of fool or incompetent while toiling in this postmodern society. I am simply heir to the Angel’s benevolence. I no longer need the “undo” key combination on my computer keyboard as he is the source of every typo. I am considering foregoing use of my turn signals when changing lane; shall I sluggishly coast through STOP signs? The Angel of the Odd is now my guardian angel. I’ve taken his words to heart: beau coup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens! Epicurean happiness is the basis of all good sense. There are no accidents in my heady world of hedonism. There are no fools, just legions of appreciative folks optimistically waiting for spring to unfold and reveal the warm intemperance of living a Sunset Magazine lifestyle each and every summer.

Are there consequences when adopting a praxis of bliss by exercising ignorance? Well, yes and no. Poe describes a series of unfortunate situations that reveal a dark side to the Angel of the Odd’s activities, such as losing your toupee after having your hair singed off in a household fire. Or how about having your pants stolen by a drunken raven that eventually leads you to holding on to a hot air balloon tether for dear life whilst floating above your hometown, all the while having the bad-tempered seraph toss bottles of cherry brandy at your noggin, and only freed after after falling into your own chimney amid the piles of soot and ashes. Poe seems to subscribe to the “no pain, no gain” maxim when discussing one’s bad luck. Unfortunately the question remains, is the propensity for hoodoo directly proportional to the capacious nature of human suffering? Obviously we’ll never know because man’s foolishness has yet to reach its apex.

Nonetheless, I use great care when perched upon a step ladder carefully clipping bunches of fragrant French lilacs with my razor sharp Felco snips. I figure that the Angel of the Odd doesn’t need to waste his time telling me that an arm immobilized in plaster or a hand sans an index finger makes typing the command-z key combination more difficult than ever before.