Flash Fiction 2 : Ade Ileke

             Ade Ileke - A Beaded Crown

 
I rather like this "Flash Fiction" thing.... where an army of literate chaps sort of pop out of nowhere at the local mall, and jointly recite "Evangeline" while the shoppers look on in consternation. I was in one myself yesterday. We had chosen a section of script from The King's Speech to declaim to the masses, and I'm quite sure all thought us mad. I mean, it is one thing to set aside disbelief and watch the British Empire on the silver screen with Helena Bonham Carter guiding one through the mystic rites, but it is all rather trembling and aghast and "what ho!??" when actually confronted with the spectacle of HRH stuttering in front of all and sundry.
It was, however, better than the time we did Mussolini's speech of February 23, 1941 last week:

"The Ethiopian war was hardly finished when from the other shore of the Mediterranean there reached us appeals from General Franco, who had begun his national revolution. Could we Fascisti leave without answer that cry and remain indifferent in the face of the perpetuation of the bloody crimes of the so-called popular fronts? Could we refuse to give our aid to the movement of salvation that had found in Antonio Primo de Rivera its creator, ascetic and martyr? No. Thus our first squadron of airplanes left on July 27, 1936, and during the same day we had our first dead...."

 and people thought it was all about Libya, and came up and congratulated us "UN Firsters" and "One Worlders" for finally getting it right! Some thought the "New World Order" was getting a bit more like "New World Symphony", certainly high faluting and highly browed, but imbued with more of the common touch, and kicking ass in Africa was very much on the menu as Special of the Day!
Most odd. But, then, what could we have been expecting? The only thing worse could be next month's Flash The Tempest in the Mall of the Americas, when I shall be doing Caliban, and Tempestt from the Great Clips barber shop is doing the tempest itself! Brrr! Makes one reach for the old bumbershoot just thinking about it.

OK. Enough. That is not what Flash fiction is. It is actually mini-fiction: the impenetrable rain forest of wordy novels clear-cut and deforested down to a small verdant space. Miniatures, cameos, gems of Lit 101.

I like it. I need my own name for it. The future belongs to Funes the Memorious, where even the Numbers have individualized names: 20 is "archimedes" and 26 is "homeric hymns" so great is our blogospherical memory!
Mary Ellen had "Stones", which I tried. It reminds me of "lapidary" and the polished phrasings of Herakleitos. Ruth has "Nouvelle 55", stories in 55 words.
Hmm....  "ileke"  which is Yoruba for "bead"; a bead in a rosary of stones, a necklace, a bracelet... a continuum of small small.
A collection of ileke is an ade ileke, a beaded crown.