Illustration and Story By Sandshoe

A conceit of mine was once to establish great fame and riches on the strength of an iconic tale about a University professor with a rich inner life and loose grip on reality, obsessing with a search for a truth. As I doodled and coloured, he developed his anima and I acknowledge he lives in my head. Regardless I wondered how fond I could grow of an owner builder who chooses ivory for a grand design…

Once upon a time there was a professor of philosophy who lived in an ivory tower that he built himself, to keep himself warm in winter, cool in summer, dry when it rained, to stop the wind from blowing away his papers, the snow from melting in puddles around his feet. The professor’s mother, Abdhalla Rajhas, was a professor on some other once upon a time and his father, Katersha Rahjas-Heppleblume, was the son of the famous Castethene and Roga Heppleblume (the latter not so famous, but considered a very loyal and polite person). And as you can see they were a smart lot and it is no wonder the professor was smart too.

It was a beautiful ivory tower of course and The Tourists came to see it from miles around.

There was only one thing the professor would not let ANYBODY do. NOBODY was allowed to touch the professor’s ivory tower. NOBODY BUT NOBODY and the professor painted signs to tell EVERYBODY exactly that.

NOBODY BUT NOBODY is to touch my ivory tower he painted, again and again and again…and again. And put the signs outside, clustered like flowers in a flowerbed. Some real estate agents mistaking the signs for “For Sale” notices from a distance, being real estate agents did not hesitate to read them properly in their haste to be first up the path and were never heard of again…but were the only apparent casualties suspect of meeting disappearance by their own hands, goodness me. The signs were easy to read. They might just as well have read “Stand Clear”. The professor told the milko it was nice of her to suggest “Piss Off” would save paint and pondered over his cereal with dairy that morning. He converted to soy.

One day the professor built a fence around the edge of his property, to keep the agents out, the tourists on the verge. The professor found it necessary to adopt a disguise to collect his newspapers in the morning. People wanted the professor to stand beside his front gate and pose for photographs. Local dignitaries wanted to shake the professor’s hand-they said “because of your contributions” – which was reference the professor did not understand because he owned the tower, lock, stock and every barrel of vino.

The telephone rang a lot. Reporters from as far away as other once upon a times talked about ‘public accountability’ (among other things) which embarrassed the professor because he was a very shy and private person, someone called Bill said he always wanted to meet ‘a real nut’ (which made the professor feel quite angry when he thought about it), and pertinently every charity in the land wanted the professor to either give money or ask other people for it.

It was not before long the professor was thin (whereas he was fat), withdrew from his teaching duties at the nearby Institute of Philosophical Conundrums (which left some of the less gifted students in quandaries) and decided to pull up stakes. Where to go? What to do?

The professor (although not really a professor anymore) sold his ivory tower (for an undisclosed sum), packed his toothbrush (with other useful things like the left over plastic carrier for a carton of milk), settled his final soy milk and newspaper accounts, and went bush. No-one was more surprised than the professor’s mother. Poor Abdhalla naturally wondered where she’d gone wrong. Was it because her son was an only child born to parents of mixed beliefs who divorced in their son’s formative years yet with nary a concern for consulting the I Ching?  Not that Professor Rahjas was all that poor speaking candidly about the relativities of the universe. And again speaking relatively single children in her once upon a time prospered (relatively ie measured alongside everything else given salient truth there is more of everything there ever will be).

He met a soul mate. The professor had all along dreamed of truest love, seen this enact out in fond imaginings, mooned through the window of his ivory tower when the sky clear, the stars out and bright, the moon at its finest silver. He wrote a proposal his lover come away with him to anywhere in a once upon a time they could find to call their own, signed it ‘Your neck is like an ivory tower’ and attributed it: Song of Solomon 7:4.

And the undisclosed sum of money from the sale of the professor’s ivory tower easily set the couple up in a mud brick home the professor really did build himself, to keep himself and his lover warm in winter, cool in summer, dry when it rained, to stop the wind from blowing away their papers, the snow from melting in puddles around their feet.

They lived happily ever after.