Page 90 - The Irony Board

Into the World

You bear in mind
What’s eating me:
Honey I’m not
Out of my tree.

While on the subject of bees, it seems appropriate to present this
piece. Two sets of sememes are portrayed by one set of morphemes;
of course, the graphemes yield slightly different phonemes in each
case (mental punctuation required). Both refer to a disturbed mental
state.
The first reading is addressed to a symbolic psychological
marauder, the intra-cranial ursine. “What’s”, in various Anglophonic
regions, is dialect for “that’s.” So Gluckman intends it here. The
raider is ordered away from his target (imperative “out”) with the
explanation that he will not find what he is after. In such a fashion
might one attempt to dismiss frightening fantasy monsters from
one’s consciousness; if, however, one is already being consumed by
imaginary creatures, the protestation would seem a desperate
insincerity.
The second interpretation is directed to a loved one (“honey”).
“Bear” becomes a verb, “what’s” a contraction of “what is,”
“eating” slang for “worrying,” and “out of my tree” an idiom for
“deranged.” The speaker is, in effect, asking the other person to
understand his perturbation as a response to an external source, and
not a symptom of madness.

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