Shame

[Steel, glass, flying machines and slow time. Palinode and Schmutzie wait for their flight home from Toronto. The flight will never happen. No time passes, but it passes anyway. Airports.]

Palinode: I really want a hamburger. A greasy, fast food burger.

Schmutzie: Oh! Wait til you get home and go to the A&W downtown. There’s a guy with an extra thumb.

Palinode: What?

Schmutzie: He’s got this extra thumb on top of his regular thumb.

Palinode: Is it a working thumb?

Schmutzie: I’m not sure.

Palinode: Maybe it’s a parasite. Like those fish with those parasites that pretend to be tongues.

Schmutzie: I don’t think so.

Palinode: And every time the guy handles food, the parasitic thumb takes a bite. It’s got these tiny teeth, I predict.

Schmutzie: It - no.

Palinode: You’re right. It’s probably a symbiote. The thumb gets burgers, and the guy gets extra dexterity.

Schmutzie: Just go see it.

Palinode: Should I walk up to the counter and say “I want the guy with the freaky parasite thumb to serve me”?

Schmutzie: I don’t think he’ll like that.

Palinode: What if I just asked to see his shame?

Schmutzie: He would hit you?

Palinode: He’d throw his parasite attack thumb at me.

afternoon gaslight special

[Two rooms, one containing Palinode, the other Schmutzie. Palinode’s finger touches buttons, Schmutzie’s phone rings. Satellites and towers gurgle at each other.]

Schmutzie: Hello?

Palinode: Hello.

Schmutzie: You know something, I knew you were going to call.

Palinode: You did?

Schmutzie: I looked at the phone and knew that it was about to ring, and that you’d be on the other end.

Palinode: Here’s a question. What was the gap in time between your conviction that I’d call and my actual call? Was it seconds? A split second?

Schmutzie: I know, you’re going to tell me that my brain is mixing up the order of events.

Palinode: Your consciousness glitched and reassembled events in the wrong sequence. You covered the logical gap by concocting a metaphysical experience. You have no control over reality.

Schmutzie: I’m not making a big spiritual thing out of the moment. I just think we have other ways of knowing and connecting. Especially after eleven years of marriage.

Palinode: Eleven years?

Schmutzie: Yup.

Palinode: Look, I’m going to level with you. We’re not married. I have no idea who you are. We’ve never even spoken before. My friend just handed me a slip of paper with a phone number on it.

Schmutzie: Really.

Palinode: You are absolutely crazy.

Schmutzie: You promised to cook supper tonight.

Palinode: And I was totally insane to promise that.

The Facts

[Cold open. Palinode and Schmutzie in a moment of evening silence. She nudges pixels around on one couch, he reads on the other couch. The dwindling light outside holds the threat of snow.]

Palinode: I have the karaoke version of Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R” now.

Schmutzie: What?

Palinode: I said, I have -

Schmutzie: I know what you said. I just don’t understand.

Palinode: Really? It was a pretty straightforward sentence. No subordinate clauses, nothing.

Schmutzie: It’s just weird for you to say it.

Palinode: Why? I just said a fact. I have a karaoke version of a Ke$ha tune.

Schmutzie: It’s weird because we weren’t talking about Ke$ha. We don’t listen to her music. We don’t sing karaoke. And it’s got nothing to do with anything else you’ve said today.

[pause]

Palinode: You see, you just said four facts. But I don’t go around saying that’s it weird when you say facts.

Schmutzie: Why are you doing this?

Palinode: I wanted to say a fact.

Schmutzie: No, I mean why are you doing this to me?

Palinode: Because you’re my loving wife. And one of the cats peed in your shoe, so good luck going anywhere.

A Campaign Update from Your (Soon to be) Mayor of the Sea

Well hello everyone. This is quite the campaign so far. Initial response to my mayoral run has been extremely positive. Residents of the sea appreciate knowing that their voices will be heard come election day. Recently I delivered a rousing speech to a giant school of jellyfish, and while I’m not sure that they understood a word of my campaign platform and its plan for colony organism opportunities, at least they didn’t do anything weird or slimy. I’m tucking that one away in my locker of little triumphs.

Along with the many pleasant surprises, there have been challenges and definite teaching moments. First off, the sea is a lot saltier and rustier than I expected. Who knew that my fleet of campaign cars would corrode so quickly after failing to start underwater in the first place? Live and learn, I guess. It really is “a whole new world” down there.

To all you fish, polyps, aquatic mammals and shorebird allies who have volunteered your time and energy to my campaign, I say thank you. Your efforts are the best example of what the sea can be when we all get together and start swimming along the same current.

Don’t forget, Creatures of the Sea: you’re not just seafood, or suicidal whales, or gross things attached to a rock. You’re mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, offspring buds and small bits of particulate matter that I’m guessing are alive. And as long as you’re alive and not sea-dust or something, I will fight for your interests and make sure that we all have a place at that table we call the future.

I also appreciate the many barnacles that have been flooding into my office over the past weeks. I’m not sure if they’re constituents or some kind of sea-currency, so if someone could clear that up for me I’d very grateful.

I’m not joking. Those barnacles are making it impossible to get anything done. They even got inside the mimeograph machine somehow. Could someone clarify this barnacle situation ASAP?

Yours in Reef Justice,

The Palinode

A Brief Moment with the Cat

I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I’d just like to say that on the long end of a fall Sunday morning, when the light is low and warm all day, my cat paused in a striped bar of sunshine and looked at me.

The moment, the cat’s gaze, the pause that suspended the morning, was all mine. But I had my camera in my hand and now it’s yours too.

Don’t be too pleased about it, though. I think the cat stopped because he had to fart.