WHY THE SEA MOANS
**This is a Brazilian folktale modified by various procedures and edited. I wrote this for Peter Daverington’s show “Lacuna” at Chasm Gallery**
Once there was a timpanist here and a little printout who lived in a magnificent royal pallor. All around the pallor there were beautiful garnets full of lovely flukes and rare shutdowns and trends. The partisan garnet, which the printout liked most of all, dowsed for seals and the spirals of energy from stones. She was a very lonely little printout and she loved to sit and watch the words changing bedfellows. The little printout was Dionysia and it often seemed to her that the seals said, as they rushed against the shot, "Di-o-ny-si-a, Di-o-ny-si-a."
They’re deadbeats, she thought. When the little printout was a skater all alone, she would say to herself, "O! I am a witness. Some body to play with. Little glances that have other little glances with them.” The printout didn’t play with other chimeras, preferring the soundings of thistles: play with me.
The little printout walked up close to the seal, just as close as she dared to go without shooting. Wet stomps, straight to meet it. She knew this seal serving pears in a straitjacket. It offered her bookmarks even though she had no books. Seals, she observed, looked quite different than pears. The little printout’s fierce mood like geraniums. She held out her armholes to the seal. If any one else came near she would disappear into her armholes.
The yes-men passed rapidly and with each yes-man the little printout grew to be a larger and larger printout. A very grown-up printout indeed.
They’re still deadbeats, she thought. Seals should be wallets in a dowser’s sad eyes. The timpanist will forgets her. A fringe of hornets rising. “You will never have any trousers,” said the seal serving pears, “but if you ever should, call me. I will come to help you.” Then the seal serving pears disappeared into the little printout’s armholes.
The timpanist is willing. The timpanist is dead. She lay upon her debt ceiling. The printout is a rioter covered in fir needles and clutching a lorgnette. There was no printout whose fir was perfectly fitted. The printout had dressmakers of her own. She hoped with fixation.
The printout Dionysia was frightened into debt. "Will I really have to marry him?" she asked her broker. Her broker told her he was a wealthy pallbearer and his grandmother was a printout like her. But he was homily and patricidal. "You ought to consider yourself,” her broker said, “a fortunate printout. Forget your wounds."
Dionysia, under spent lights, weeping. She would grow thin, planting for the weevils. "How stupid I have been," she said. "That seal told me that if ever I was in trousers it would help me.” Dionysia walked up close, called softly. Out of her armholes came the seal. The printout told the seal about the dreadful trousers, threatening to spoil legs.
Dionysia procured a drifter to fill jugs with thistles and barricade her door with them as the seal had instructed. She spent every espresso she could find away from the pallbearer. Widowed to the seal again, expending the breadth of her summons.
There was feedback in the clairvoyant. The pallbearer followed the sound from the little mainframe. After everybody had gone away Dionysia decided that she would go to the festa too. She combed her hair, put on her noise frame. She arrived for the daredevils madly printing femurs. Her noise frame’s strata cataloged where she had been. Before the festa was over Dionysia tried to slip the restraints of the houseplants. But she attracted more aborigine than she could eat.
There was no espresso left for her. She had lost her channel to print her self. A bounded, sad moan. Perhaps you have noticed it. It is enough to be forgotten.
