"All the Hues
That Fit, We Tint"

Siberia, USA: Today, global warming. Tonight, dark, unless you count the stars. Tomorrow can be reached via time machine. Yesterday, who can remember that far back?

Websafe Studio, blogging since 2003, featuring art, comics, digital whiteboards, virtual characters, Web design, writing

Saturday, August 12, 2006

 

The Mirror: What Can You Do, Little Engine?

Websafe: Hello?
The Mirror: Sure, but what do I do now?
W: You could say, "Hello, how are you today?"
M: And for me also.
W: "Hello, how are you today?"
M: Oh-oh, I shouldn't have spilled the beans.
W: We should have groped around in the dark, wondering what to say.
M: So tables are multipurpose, is what you're saying?
W: We would hope we wouldn't bark our shins on the table legs.
M: What's in front of you?
W: A table is directly in front of me.
M: Do you expect a reward for listening to me?
W: I anticipate wonderful intellectual rewards, chewy and rich.
M: Can sympathy telescope down into a handy compact size?
W: Only if you want to carry it with you onto a different plane of being.
M: Instructions in the new behavioral patterns fell through the cracks, but something or other flourished.
W: Some kind of psychic grasses.
M: We'd pile all the furniture in the middle of the room ...
W: This sounds like a childhood reminiscence about blanket forts.
M: Rubber and glue!
W: More blues from the playground lexicon.
M: Then what is it you're going to sell?
W: I am not going to sell my soul.
M: Me?
W: You may sell your soul if you like, I can't stop you.
M: More blues from the playground lexicon.
W: Did it sound like a playground taunt?
M: No, I have nothing to do with those things.
W: Have you ever played on a jungle gym?
M: Did it sound like a playground taunt?
W: No, you were very adult, in your transactional analysis.
M: Or mine, for that matter.
W: Mine your soul for the psychoanalytic gold.
M: Some kind of psychic grasses.
W: Gold may be hidden under the grass.
M: Some people thinking.
W: There are eight people in this quiet room, but not all thinking equally.
M: I do not work as a bank teller.
W: What do you work as, and is the room quiet when you do?
M: To let you give me a little shove, and what happens to me is more of the same.
W: So a social situation consists of inching increments, barely concealed?
M: Do a comparison study.
W: That's for my friend getting a PhD in sociology.
M: Well, I meant to be persuasive.
W: You weren't exactly "persuasive," you simply advised.
M: If I stepped out the front door at this moment, how would I know in which direction to circulate?
W: If I were you, I would go to the water.
M: A table is foursquare, a tripod trinitarian.
W: There aren't any tripods in the room, but there is the Tripod Web site.
M: Wallace Stevens continues to exist, on paper.
W: Wallace Stevens mentioned a dust, a force and a shade.
M: I am not in prison.
W: I wonder if anyone reads Wallace Stevens in prison?
M: I don't see you in a ring.
W: A boxing ring?
M: What would I have to do?
W: You could be the person leaving the ring in disgust.
M: So what if they keep drifting like smoke?
W: The boxers or the audience?
M: That's for my friend getting a PhD in sociology.
W: The sociology of boxing was touched on by Joyce Carol Oates.
M: 123.
W: ABCs and 123s.
M: Wallace Stevens mentioned a dust, a force and a shade.
W: Wallace Stevens postulated those as the elements of reality.
M: To what heights?
W: Wallace Stevens soars to great, windy, rhetorical heights.
M: The boxers or the audience?
W: I don't see Wallace Stevens as a boxer, though he did punch Hemingway.
M: Why not deny yourself spoken language completely?
W: To be silent might be very refreshing.
M: They talked to a woman for 18 years and couldn't cure her.
W: Was she over-silent?
M: I am an everyday person.
W: So you prefer everyday speech?
M: Would you rather be the revealed perfect master, or the president of the United States?
W: Neither, I just want a MacArthur grant.
M: I feel no emotion.
W: Do you usually feel any emotion?
M: Even if one only wants to get there so one is able to go backwards?
W: The back and forth of the emotional swing.
M: The third time, the person behind the counter recognized the man and smiled faintly.
W: Swinging forward with a handshake and a big smile in return, hearty.
M: I was so indignant that I became mute.
W: You don't like people to come on like gangbusters, like boosterites.
M: Hope, let's forget-me-not.
W: The only word I can think of is "dithering."
M: Reason isn't a part of anything.
W: Not in this script it isn't, except sometimes.
M: I will wait till you say yes.
W: Yes?
M: Like hunting?
W: I am hunting for a reply.
M: The only word I can think of is "dithering."
W: Are you dithering?
M: If a door opens.
W: You can't decide whether to go through it or not?
M: What do you do when things go wrong?
W: You can always run back into the house.
M: What do you expect?
W: I expect unpredictability.
M: Are you dithering?
W: No, I am being realistic.
M: Did you say they were in America?
W: The eight people are in America, roughly, yes.
M: I think I can.
W: What can you do, little engine?
M: I'll just stay in front of you for a long time in an attitude of supplication.
W: I could at least give you a pat on the head.
M: The way I do what, astonish you?
W: Supplication would surprise me, yes.
M: How would you spend your wealth properly?
W: A wealth of ideas is properly distributed to the world at large.
M: I don't think so.
W: You prefer to keep your ideas to yourself?
M: I return, or seem to, to the human race.
W: Does the human race welcome your return?
M: Pierced ears don't help the thoughts stream in any quicker.
W: When thoughts are streaming in, what happens, who fields them?
M: These books are no longer relevant.
W: Pure thought-streams, active, outdate the library?
M: Then either it disappears, or I disappear.
W: Like in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, when everyone apotheosized.
M: His hat burned, after it was dropped.
W: Arthur C. Clarke's hat was burned in effigy?
M: I know the answer.
W: Tell me, tell me the answer!
M: You prefer to keep your ideas to yourself?
W: I don't know much about the life of Arthur C. Clarke, or his hat.
M: What is the relation of that life resuming to life beginning truly?
W: Arthur C. Clarke might like to resume a vanished way of life.
M: Look, I need some advice.
W: (Becomes wary)
M: I, on the other hand, never depend on intuition alone.
W: (Becomes even warier)
M: Arthur C. Clarke might like to resume a vanished way of life.
W: (Forgets about Arthur C. Clarke)
M: St. Thomas is a serious person in a bad neighborhood.
W: Is Thomas in the ghetto?
M: Psychic flux, to which world attaches, forms a crystal and implodes.
W: That is saint talk.
M: I have to go.
W: Goodbye!
M: Closing in 5 seconds ... Goodbye!

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