THE LAST LIVING MONK OF THE CLEMENTINE ORDER

When I was a  wee lad we couldn’t afford toys, I had to play with the snot that dripped from my nose every crisp winter morning, which was EVERY morning because we lived in the arctic circle.  When I was 5 my daddy sent me to work in the ice fields where I cut ice cubes until my wee little legs shook from exhaustion.  I’d go home to my only meal of the day, a thin watery soup with three sprigs of grass.   That was the only greenery I saw until I was 40.  I didn’t go to school, nay I was taught by a pack of wandering nuns that called themselves the Nunmads, they taught me until they left.  It was then I was educated further by a traveling mobile monastery.  With my monastic brethren, I became one with the order of St. Clementine, who was the patron saint of Walrus teeth.  Not the whole tooth though, just the tips.  

When I was, as my grandfather would say, “the ripest age for picking,” which was 40, I left the arctic circle with my Clementine Brothers.  It was a pivotal moment for all of us.  For me, because I was leaving the only home I ever knew, and for my brothers, it was the loss of their religion after a Walrus ate an elder monk and Saint Clementine of Walrus Tooth Tips did not divinely intercede.  When we reached the edge of Greenland, I saw my first sprigs of grass poking out of the cold hard ground.  I realized then the true meaning of St. Clementine.  Just as the tips of the walrus teeth poked out of the abdomen of Brother Barkley, so do the tips of the grass protrude from the ice hardened earth.  Life is a cycle of tips poking out of things, teeth, grass, and probably other things too.  When the Mobile Monastery finally settled down, the brothers got together and decided to disband.  “Brother Barkley was the best of Brothers,” the other Brothers would say.  “What a sane St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips did not save him.”

I listened to what the other brothers said.  I was tempted to tell them that Brother Barkley did not do his daily Walrus Dance, and that is why St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips did not save him.  Brother Barkley was not pious, no he was not.  I was pious though.  The most pious, and that is why St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips chose to give me the revelation of the Grass Tips.  While the other Brothers disrobed and disbanded, I tied my robes tighter and reaffirmed my faith.  Alone on my shoulders should the future of St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips rest.  Through my mouth, the words of St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips shall flow.  Through my heart shall the blood of St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips pump.  And through my anus shall the waste of St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips deposit.  From mouth, to heart, to anus, the Divinity Trinity that all sustenance must flow through, that was the way of our order and I would not abandon it like St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips abandoned Brother Barkley as walrus tooth tips pierced him betwixt the mouth and anus.

In that first year as I spread the word of our holy saint on my own, I traveled down through the land of green, Greenland, and told people of the teachings of St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips.  I told the parable of the lost walrus tooth, I told them of the sacred Walrus Tooth laws.  Laws like “Never place your head between the tips of walrus teeth.”  The wisdom I spread was profound, it healed people, it saved people.  I felt good.  Then, I was gifted with another revelation: in a small eatery I heard a patron express gratitude to a well-served meal.  While I would have considered the service far from exemplary, the patron reached into their pocket and produced scant change.  “Here,” said they, “a tip for you.”  A tip, I thought?  A tip?  Like, a Walrus Tooth Tip?  That which St. Clementine is patron of?  I tracked the patron down later that day and begged them to pray tell the meaning of their tip, and what they spoke to me were words begot of St. Clementine herself.  “I gave them a tip to express my gratitude,” they said.  It was there that I fell to my knees and wept as the profound experience of the touch of a Saint washed over me.  A new meaning brought to my order, the spreading of tips not just as a warning, but as a gift?  I was baptized in tips, born anew.

For the next several years I began leaving people as many tips as I could gather.  Tips of fresh blades of grass, tips of old pencils, tips of small twigs floating in the cleanest streams.  I was doing the Saint’s work.  Then I was struck with a thought that consumed my waking mind.  What tip would be better than the tip of a Walrus Tooth?  So for the first time since my childhood, and most of my adulthood, I journeyed North to the Arctic in search of the mystic Walrus Tooth Tips.  I had traveled but a day when I came to the northern coast, and there in all its fat pompous glory was the Walrus to end all Walruses.  The king of the Walrus.  A beast so massive the ground shook between each step of its girthy limbs, a cavern in the earth opening behind as it dragged its plump tummy rolls across the earth.  I approached the beast and looked up at its small quiet eyes.  The eyes of something that probably isn’t very smart.  I said to the Great Creature, “Tis I, Nicholas Luver, of the order of St. Clementine, baptised by tips as Brother Luver, and I have come for the tip of your tooth.”

“Foolish human,” the Great Walrus spoke.

“Foolish me?” I said aghast.  For I was truly no fool.

“These are not the tips you seek,” said the Great Walrus.

“If those are not the tippiest tips to ever be tipped, then what else could possibly be them?”

“You search for tips, but you do not find the tips,” said the Great Walrus.

“Why is that?  Has my saint forsaken me?”

“No human, the tips have always been with you..”

“What do you mean?” I implored.

“The tips are within you.  The tips are a part of you.  The tips of your fingers, the tips of your toes.  The tip of your tongue and the tip of your nose.”

“So what you are saying, is I AM the tip?”

“You always have been the tip, as has everyone.”

This was the pinnacle of my revelation, the ultimate meaning of the Walrus Tooth Tip.  It wasn’t the tip of the tooth itself, nor the whole tooth or even the Walrus, but the tip it gave me, the small tidbit of advice, the tip that we are all tips.

“Will you join me to spread the divine word?” The Great Walrus asked.

I was too overcome with emotion to handle the flow of words, so I surrendered myself to the spirit of St. Clementine of the Walrus Tooth Tips, and my body unbidden by my command mounted the back of the Great Walrus, and we rose into the air, flying over land and sea, bringing the tips to all who will listen.