Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 10: Slapstick and Circles

But what about Martha? Yes, Martha, briskly shuffling through the rooms of the Yardley grounds, taking care not to bump out of her assigned place (which is the corner) into the spotlight. Her time is paid for, but still given up to the people whose name is on the check. If Martha does not have the luxury of looking to the future, then her time is now. Now, the time is occupied by the Yardleys; Brother and Sister are in the now and they get all the action. This pushes Martha back to the past, but the past is the past and it lies in the ground, the eyes of its body, black sockets, and its interiors made the land of maggots and termites and dust. Where to go from now? No now means no time for Martha.
Unless we ask Laurent or Charlotte to hold their breaths out in the yard or, when they drift off in their booze-snooze, let them rest undisturbed. We can alot some space and time for the one whose time is documented on paper and receipt. Martha is given a gray hammock in the parlor, swaying a bit above the muck the ones in charge have left for picking up. Prop the flatulent lady up against a pillow or two in her nest and give her a stage prop to occupy her white, spatulate hands. A fashion magazine for her to fan a breeze against her rosy face. She gages the face of time and wonders if she might be able to go into one of the guest rooms, where she might be able to catch a soap opera on the air. Something she doesn't need a spatula for--it is practically fed to her through the larger than life television fuzz and buzz. A doctor to lay out a methodical diagnosis onto his patient's bed or an estranged grandson returning to his grandmother, who will not nag anymore, she promises. She is just beside herself with joy at the sight of her beautiful, wildly talented grandson, remorseful for his crimes (and it is most certainly a crime to forget your grandmother), a prodigal--no, a prodigy of a--boy! Yardleys are her children now. They have been prancing around her feet for several years.
As a lower character, would it not be funny to see her in a slapstick routine? A velvet ghost of the house pushes from underneath into her backside, towards the left, abruptly turning the hammock sideways until she topples out onto the tile floor. Weeeeeeeeeee!!! She has hit the ground elbow and hip first. Ouch! What is this?! Shakes her head, sucks in pockets of air that the Yardley siblings cannot get to if they tried at this point from outside. Martha rubs her elbow with the palm of the unscathed hand. Always, she has to take care of the Yardleys, she does not have the energy now to take care of herself. Can't I just BE for one goddamn second?! I promise that I don't need much--I hardly need anything! During her tumble the clasp of her necklace became stuck in the twisted ropes of the house and the thin gold chain detached itself, now hanging over a knot, a knot she feels in her back, with both strand ends dropping over the sides. Martha proceeds to reach for the necklace, hardly a statement piece, but something of great personal value, passed down from Mother. Marked as the twinkling evidence of her topple, it hangs glimmeringly between the lighting of mahogany urn lamps through hand sewn silk shades.
Unbounded Laughter sounds off from outside. Naturally, it is easy for Martha to think at first the bursts of delight in the distance are had at her expense. Martha forgets her entanglement is off the main set, making it nearly impossible for her to be a point of any relevance for the Yardleys. So, let them laugh. Taking the necklace in her hand, she is even able to laugh at herself breathily. She turns her hand, palm towards her face, and examines the gold chain and traces the bright metal with the fingers from her other hand. Martha communicates through the image back to Mother. Slim sliver of property, soft material, only a thin view to the past, but under the lamplight, it glistens nonetheless. Mother, forgive my carelessness. I must do better a better job of hanging on to you. Although she is tuned in to how silly the gesture might look from afar, she kisses the necklace before clasping the chain back together. Hang on tightly, Martha.

From the interior of the house, Charlotte is seen walking about with her hands slowly twisting in the air, laughing, in a warm panache, diving in and resurfacing these imaginary waves of music, tugged into the shore by agitated, tentacular impulses. Catherine Broussard will arrive today, so there are a few loose ends to Charlotte at the moment. Steps out of the glass doors onto the patio, the babble becomes familiar:
--You know, I think it's really important to know what motivates us, right?
Laurent:
--Does an actress need to know what motivates her?
--Laurent!
--Well, you see, she's always dispensable and it's not because she doesn't know--
--Oh, do not tell me that Brigitte Bardot was dispensable last night--
--Yes, she's a bombshell
Charlotte (her head nodding, smug):
--You see? You're wrong.
--I admit an actress can lift a film from a clumsily written script, if she brings enough to the part and draws from more dimensions.
--My words fall on silent ears--I mean deaf ears!…Whatever, it's a circle.
Laurent (walking into a defensive circle):
--Then she might bring too much into the screen, when the film's a sinking ship anyway, and then she only looks desperate.
--That's what--man! It's all a fucking circle that never ends!
--An actress needs to be able to submit to manipulation.
--She needs charisma! Don't undermine charisma!
--Shelly Duvall obviously didn't know what motivated her. Altman and Kubrick just pointed the frame to something almost "downsy," unknowing of itself, but yielding and so it worked toward an ultimate intension of dream and despondency.
--Bitch, I am not Shelly.
--Never said--
--Take it back. Martha! (shouting belligerently after a twirl towards the backdoors)
--What do you want?
--I want another drink. Christ almighty, won't somebody help me!?!
--Well, make it two. You're incorrigible.
--You're ignorant!
Laurent, ponderously--not torturous, but definitely with a twisted hand crunching in on Charlotte:
--I've changed my mind. One must know what the motivation is--even an actress must. Otherwise, the same choices will keep on being made and, without a shred of any clue, they will be made almost always, somehow, inadvertently against the artist.
--Oh, Laurent, darling, do you see me as an artist?
--No, I see you as an actress.
--(beaming, dancing on her toes) Oh, Laurent. You're the same as me, you know?
--I know.
--You see?!?
--(still walking his own circle next to Sister's twirl) Yes and especially right choices, but don't get so self-aware that you start criticizing your own performances.
--Right.
--That's just bad form, you see.
--Well, I'll never read the reviews.
--That is such an actress sort of response. Broussard is going to love you.
For the first time in this scene, Charlotte takes a seat. What if we come to know what motivates and carries us through to an end, but find it perhaps hideous? Oh, God, circles.

a chair, part 2

I get the best view from the back of the room, with everyone faced forward to the doors away from me. Do not turn around or to your side in the chair, unless it is your knees and thighs I will get to see as you prop your legs upon the adjacent, empty desk chair, the angle of your knees forcing a pull of your jeans down, exposing the larger muscles of your body. Don't turn around, because it is your neck that is the ice to my ache. The way the hair, curled and wispy, dark blonde, at the base of your neck does not fit into the bun you make halfway through shift or that you bring with you from home, that is what I want in front of me. Even better, when it is all let down. You do not have a clue as to how many colors you have running through your hair--all of the browns, golds, and even reds, or how we ache back here, longing to be that chair as your dark blue, sweat-stained, leg prop.

a chair

nothing is as sad and erotic as an empty chair in the parlor. mean, plush, and empty.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 9: Who has the laughing hand?

Objects are more successfully grasped at than are people; people always seem to manage to slip away. Brother considers the infinite spaces. He tries to see far beyond the horizon, beyond the sharp bits of glass wall that all mirror his gray projection. What will finally conquer him is the composite picture into which these jagged cuts will assemble. Then he will feel monstrous. Not that he has not done his own time in thinking himself to be a monster. Sister, in a way the direct product of Mother, hanging on by a mutual limb of self-loathing and self-adoration, has already become accustomed to feeling quite monstrous at times. It is early evening. We are back to the house, where the Yardley siblings are in their yard, again. A sunset swirled with unspoiled hollandaise sauce and egg yolk, dwindling before the twinkling eye.
Charlotte:
--I feel supremely disillusioned.
Laurent:
--You what?
--Here, right here, my character is feeling very disenchanted with everything onto which she had latched herself, before her emigration from Greece. Then, in the penultimate scene, she does get everything she had dreamed of having in her travels, but it is unbearable to her. I think that sort of irony fuels her feebleness and her own sense of martyrdom when submitting herself to the rape. Well, I suppose you cannot volunteer to be raped...It's sacrificial.
Laurent:
--If I ever become theistic again, it will be because of irony--not that my turning myself back into God would be ironic, but that my understanding of my own bigger ironies and those pertaining to others and of those that overlap myself and others would cause me to affirm a God of some kind.
Maybe God is the reason things do not happen the way the Yardley siblings expect! If they were more supreme, it seems they could bend their reality more to their liking if they tried hard enough. There is money, though, and it keeps flowing across the Atlantic and into their pockets. Plus, the two are performers. So, reality is bending all the time and given new structures as seen fit. Laurent lights another cigarette as Sister listens intently. How quick the two are able to switch from enemies of the midday to Brother and Sister again, obsessed with themselves and with the other!
Laurent:
--Until then, all of irony will be read as absurdity.
Charlotte:
--I've actually thought the same thing several times and have decided that kind of ontological introspection is an ultimately ironic and despairing thing. Absurd? Not quite. That axe never quite drops--the sound of one hand laughing.
Laurent nods his head:
--So is absurdity more brutal?
--I'm not sure. But I think…I think that absurdity sounds like something that can be ignored, dismissed, written off. Something to wink back at from a chair, while keeping with the daily flow and routine. I don't know the true heart of the word, but I do think it's pretty brutal. Do you agree?
--I think so, yes.
Laurent:
--You've given this script a lot of thought. How did the phone call go? You did call, right?
Charlotte:
--In my experience, well, the director has said very little. Communication was in some accord through the medium of casting agents and through the writer. She always seemed to be very brooding, not gloomy, but very introverted. You can imagine how stressed I was as I picked up the phone to dial her number. Surprisingly, she spoke so much she made my head spin. Her mouth was motorized by machine and it was wired to a postmodern, neurotic mind that was short circuited by its own mania and self-consciousness. I believe she's very excited for the project.
Laurent smiles, realizing he forgets how fully-realized his sister can be in her analyses. That is the thing, though, we are much better are analyzing others than we are ourselves. It is not only Charlotte's needle of social awareness, but her eloquence that captivates Laurent. Sister should try to write, just like Laurent, except that this would further stifle Brother's voice. Poetry has been his territory, after all, and he needs territory.
Charlotte:
--She wants to come by tomorrow to chat and get to know me.
--Catherine Broussard coming to our house. Man, oh, man.
--You'll have to be on your best behavior.
--Meaning?
--Don't bore her.
--I'll just act naturally.
--No, don't do that.
--I'll just act very enthused for your upcoming work. I'll also say things, such as "any character who really, righteously embraces her martyrdom is so erotic to me."
Sister dips her head down and purses her lips:
--That sort of remark won't get us anywhere.
As if Laurent and Charlotte want to go anywhere. No, they are much more comfortable here in their little palace. This is not to say that neither of them are driven by want. Boy, do they want! What they both want is to end a scene with the laughing hand.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 8: Poached eggs, You belong to me!

Laurent zips up his trousers after the last drops of urine are shaken out onto nature and faces the patio where Charlotte has called out to him:
--Is brunch ready?
--Yes, come on inside.
As Laurent is walking across the lawn back to the tea table where he left his writing, Charlotte continues:
--You know who just called?
--Would it be that director?
--(A light scoff) No, I'm to call him, remember? And I will, later.
--Then who?
--Charles.
--Our brother?
--Oui, notre frère.
Laurent and Charlotte pause for a bit. Charles, student of business at Yale University who has remained in America, occupied with his studies and internship all this time, has called. Laurent has the suspicion that Mother and Father are behind this phone call and that they mean for him to go back, but at the moment Laurent has no intention of putting an end to his vacation. Charlotte stands there with her hands on her hips, almost gloating over Laurent's silence. Laurent would like to tell Charlotte how this in unfair to him. That he is being singled out and that it is not as if Charlotte is being so productive herself here at their idealistic retreat. Charlotte would only retort that she has work practically begging for her to pick it up, learn it, memorize it, and transform it into an expansive and rewarding product and that she is not wasting herself away like someone she knows.
Laurent:
--What did he say?
--Well, it's all very unprecedented, but I believe he is coming here.
--To stay?
Charlotte:
--Come inside. Brunch is served.

********************
At the kitchen table, Sister sighs and tosses out leisurely into the midday air in her usual, privileged laugh:
  --Well, as you know, all we ever do is plan total social destruction on these…unsuspecting targets.
  Everything's part of a script. Charlotte speaks while cutting into her poached egg with a new, cold, and calculative manner of a mathematician bent towards the solution of a problem that has eaten an entire month out of her life. Really, she has only had the script in her arms for a couple days.
While it is certainly no longer "morning" morning, the time of day is still closer to the moment of waking from the unconscious, the greatest source of inspiration. Brother and Sister hope that their oeuvre is long sustained after their departure from the stage and that their musical chord is not immediately flattened down by the next generation. What will happen, they both wonder, now? Another party member to contribute to their masterpiece.
Brother and Sister like to perform for each other. They like to wear different personas as they satisfy their ever-changing temperaments. Brother takes to a bowler hat and gives it character. Sister will take the bowler hat and wear it herself. Once one of them finds a role that resonates with a particular mood, the scene is bound almost seamlessly. Here moods are changing rapidly, so it is not very often that a mood, singular and binding of a scene, is carried throughout a whole act, never mind an entire play.
Sometimes they act out against each other and their great acts come splattering down from the swimming pool balcony down to the mosaic below. Sister might throw the bowler hat back at brother's face to hasten the action. Retaliation builds when its execution is passed from one performer to the next. There is only so much stage space and the two of them carry such large egos. The flashes of light from the sky are played--shot down and meant to be seen. They share virtually everything, as if they are connected at their hips from the same, precious cradle of life, their minds erupting upwards into overlapping networks of neuronal processing and transmission, stars that they pretend to spell out above them theatrical frescos of fortune and pain. Both throw the organic outlines of their lives up to the fates. This accounts for the occasional autonomy, which, when it happens, is a marvelous spectacle.
Luckily, the two here at brunch are not joined at the heart, because, as it is, they will too often enchant themselves into believing that it is people onto which they pour their love, when it is, in fact, inanimate objects, heirlooms, trinkets picked up from foreign streets, gifts that have been passed to them from old acquaintances that receive all their affection. Brother and Sister might lend themselves to others, but both fully appreciate the sentiment of giving yourself to yourself. At the heart, the siblings would be all the more reckless. No, they are not joined at the heart. Soon, it will be Brother and Sister and Brother all under the same roof again. Just like old times. Maybe now the audience will get some real heart to heart.
Laurent:
--So Charles is coming next week.
Charlotte pinches off a piece of her baguette and uses it to wipe up the hollandaise sauce and running yolk on her plate. In the kitchen, Martha tells the cook that he has done well and that he can take his leave. Martha comes back out to the breakfast table with more coffee for Charlotte and Laurent. Charlotte grabs a remote off of the kitchen table and points it in the direction of the stereo. She presses a couple of buttons and Jo Stafford starts playing. You belong to me.
Charlotte:
--As I told you. I think it's a fantastic idea.
--You know he's going to give me shit.
Charlotte swallows her mouthful quickly:
--You deliberately think in ways that are self-defeating!
--Oh, please.
--You do, yes you do. He wants a vacation and it's his place here, as well as ours. Honestly, I think he really needs this. His girlfriend dumped him a few weeks ago and he's been real mopey.
Laurent shakes his head after taking a sip of coffee. Brother is finding it hard to act. There is an actress right here, again, again and always. So, making a firm stance is difficult. All of his hesitation is pinching him in the cheek, like sisterly Sister. It will all come back to pinch him again, if he is not careful. Brother takes a few steps elsewhere:
--I want to watch a movie tonight.
Sister bobs in her seat:
--Of course! What sort were you thinking? Been a week since I've been in our theater room.
--Any movie, really. I have--I haven't really given it much thought.
--Some idea, Laurent.
--(through a little chuckle) Yeah, I know. That's me, though, my ideas--
--(with a pat on his hand) I'm only kidding! Let's watch Body Heat. No? Let's watch Vivre Sa Vie. That one neither of us have seen and, so, neither you nor I will be explaining away things that speak for themselves or that you or I would rather discover on our own.
--That sounds good. I actually have not seen a French New Wave film in a hot minute.
--Holy shit, I love her eyes. Anna Karina's eyes. They're just so big and playful and sad...
--I've only seen her in Une Femme est une Femme.
--That is a good film, Laurent. She's so precious in that one. You know what you need? Some Anna Karina to help you get out of this funk. Come on.
Laurent, who cannot help taking a few steps back:
--I just don't want him parading all of his accomplishments in front of us to make us feel trite. Oh, come on, it's likely he will.
--Can't you just be happy for him? It's going to be fun. We should throw a party. No one is going to make anyone feel trite.
--Well, of course we'll throw a party. Does Mom and Dad know?
--We'll have several parties. Who cares if Mom and Dad know anything? I tell you, I'm pretty excited. It's been so long since we've all sat down and really enjoyed ourselves. We can all get high and drunk together.
Laurent cuts into his meal and rethinks his initial response to the news:
--I suppose you're right about-
--Of course I'm right.
--Okay. You're right.
Jo Stafford: Fly the ocean in a silver plane. See the jungle when it's wet with rain. Just remember 'till you're home again: you belong to me.
Charlotte, while taking out a cigarette, lighting its end and placing it in her mouth:
--You're still writing, right? Tell him about your stories, unless you've completely neglected them. Don't you also have a novel you're working on? That's something! It takes time to write and you need time and space to create. Charles can appreciate that you are being creative; our brother has his own literary endeavors, although on the reading end and not the writing.
Laurent breathes in and out heavily while he scratches the scruff on his jaw, which attracts Charlotte's attention:
--(while rubbing Brother's lower cheek) You should shave. You always look your best clean-shaven.
--(swatting away Sister's hand) Right.
--It's true. You do, L.
--That, again?
Sister smiles down at Brother with an antiseptic sweetness:
--How are your eggs? You haven't finished them yet.
--They're fine, but I'm not really hungry anymore.
Charlotte exhales the smoke from her lungs and then puts her cigarette out in Laurent's remains of his poached egg, twisting the cigarette butt back and forth as it punctures through the white and yellow material, its ash mixing with the golden pool of hollandaise sauce and yolk, shamelessly poisoning the flavor and warping the texture.
Laurent:
--That's revolting!
--(chuckling) You were done with it anyway. Look, it had already turned cold.
--I'm going back outside.
Charlotte:
--You put up with so much, L!
--(his voice, exasperated) An egg is a pure thing. Golden, nourishing, and filling, it has the potential to become a new, whole and living organism. This is tasteless--really nasty. It's not natural.
--It didn't suspect to be infiltrated by burnt tobacco! It's not so nasty. Besides, I do not think that this egg was to become anything, except poached and devoured, or not devoured and just left, picked at, like it is there on your plate. This was not a crime against nature. You could say snatching this egg from the mother hen was a crime against nature. I say this is a work of art! Martha, bring my camera from my room, so that I can take a snapshot of the midday that I ruined for Laurent. Laurent, oh, I'm so sorry, don't leave! This was tasteless.
Laurent spits out in mock gratitude:
--Thank you very much.
Laurent scoots his chair back and exits outside as Charlotte slumps in her chair, opening her arms out wide to start singing along with the Jo Stafford track: But just remember, darling, 'till you're home again: you belong to me!

Love Poem for the Pessimistic Pornographers

back dimples were once precious indentations guarding
the base of his spine--of her spine,
moving up and down
with their partnering buttocks for each step of the strut.
now, accompanied by stretch marks and cellulite,
i think little physical defects are sexy, don't you?
they lose their original effect,
soon gone for good.

for example,
take his chipped tooth, her chicken pox scar,
or the hairy mole on his upper bicep.

the guitarist strums his guitar for the strumpet.
years are bearable for both
when they are able to strip bare the body.
the metallic triangular cover of her G-string
is slowly pulled down by the thumbs and reveals another
triangular cover, bushy, of the wet groin,
some like the pull of hair by teeth, grazing the field.
differing textures appease the wet appetite.
unless the audience is rather drawn to smooth loins.
like those of five year olds. that can be remedied
with the ole Venus razor.
no shame there.

history tries to erect myth, set it in stone
--to enforce a nature behind the moving picture
of the woman taking the pound, pound
screaming oh, yeah and loving the crowd.
i like the crowd, it makes me feel alive.
--as if power could be bestowed
from spectators to spectacle.

history belongs to the phallus,
making it a hard force to swallow whole.
this is real interaction between artist and audience;
audience entering and coming
into/inbetween/fullforced
onto canvas.
its milk has long turned sour,
but with a jeering crowd:
"chug! chug!"
the doing it becomes more than doable.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 7: Coffee, Actressing, and that Dragonfly

Now we go into Sister's playroom. Photographs are scattered across the desks against the walls. On one desk, a pair of sharp, fabric cutting shears rests next to a green Tiffany table lamp. Sister turns the lamp on. Pendant emerald dragonflies with bright orange eyes are spliced with black, smoldered copper that bolsters the glass pieces of the lamp's cone. Under the light of the dragonflies, the cutting shears blush green, glistening at the inner edges. There is a brown paper binder on the floor next to the desk. Sister grabs a couple tasseled throw pillows from the couch and tosses them onto the floor near the binder and then sits down on the floor. She opens the binder and reviews pictures she has collected over the past few months that have been cut out of magazines, art books, and illustrated biographies on actors and artists that are dear to her. She takes a few seconds with each picture. Marlene Dietrich in a white, two-pieced suit, leaning backwards against a stair railing in the street. Catherine Deneuve in a golden seventies' spread for Chanel No. 5. Tilda Swinton, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis.

Sister holds the last two photographs in her hands. "My Mother told me never to speak badly of the dead. She's dead…Good!" Her toes wriggle in her loafers. Davis' alleged icy epitaph, which she so kindly uttered for the late Crawford, sealed the famous actress rivalry in a state of titanic mythology. Two goddesses, one with melodramatically-thick eyebrows and eyes wide on the offense, the other with drunken cheeks, sagging and contemptuous. Their lips! Crawford was said to have had a nervous breakdown from the pressure her costar, Davis, hammered down on her head off-set. Finally, Davis sent Crawford off the stage, her insides writhing while her face worked as hard as it could to conceal the stench of artistic jealousy. No one could ever accuse the stars of being undedicated.

Sister places her hands on the carpet and pushes her body off the floor. In front of the couch there is a coffee table with a small crystal bowl filled with toffee and classic Hollywood Chewing Gum. Sister knows the importance of being good to herself with the occasional unprecedented gift. Leaving her folio open on the floor, she walks to the coffee table and grabs a handful of wrapped toffee bits as she plunges down onto the sofa. Martha walks into the room with Sister's coffee:

--There you are. And voilà! Here is your coffee. The milk is already poured in, as you like it. (Looking back at the open brown envelope on the floor) Oh, I see you have your collection of actresses out on display.

Sister:

--I'm working. I need inspiration.

--So, you will call the director soon?

--(Sister accepts the coffee mug in both hands, as she draws out her response lengthily) I will soon.

Sister wanted a specific way to deliver that line to Martha. Martha gently places her hands on her hips and looks around the room. Sister places the coffee mug on the table. Head tilted back onto the back of the couch, Sister keeps her eyes fixed on the toffee bits in her hands that she drops delicately, one every thirty seconds or so into her mouth.

Martha:

--Where is Laurent?

--Well, I'm not sure. It looks like he went out.

--He went out?

--Outside, Martha. He just went outside, I'm sure of it.

--I'll go make sure.

Sister waits for the maid to leave the room. She then sits up momentarily before leaning into the palms of her hands that are supported by her elbows she has digging into her lower thighs. She lets out a sigh and reaches for the mug to take a sip of coffee.

Outside of the house, Laurent walks around the pool and stretches his arms. He will hold his left arm straight against his chest, pointing to his right for a few seconds, and then he will let that arm drop and do the same with the other arm. The morning miserable, coping with his morning body aches. He reflects on the Cornish’s from last night, who will surely report back to Mother and Father about how wonderful he and Sister are and what excellent, mature hosts they make. It was not quite an invasion, but it was unwanted from his part. Laurent's chest is congested, his breaths, deep and raspy. How much did we smoke last night? Martha comes outside and sets a coffee mug on the olive-green tea table where Laurent's parchment paper and pen lie in waiting. Careful now. To his relief, Martha does not spill the coffee, as far as he can see.

Laurent shouts from the other side of the pool:

--Thank you, Martha!

Martha smiles and walks back inside. Laurent continues his stroll around the patio. Crumbles of speckled gray cement pervade the patio that separates the grass from the pool. They stick to the bottom of his feet and eventually rub off from the friction between skin and ground. At the base of a clay flowerpot several ants operate, disorderly and drunk, off the trail, poking here or there, seeking sugar underneath the sun. In the outskirts of this busy insect gathering, the trail emerges. There is the scent. Mildly intrigued, Laurent follows the insects, keeping a step's distance away from the line.

The ants accumulate at the patio mosaic. Laurent realizes he had been searching with the ants for the dragonfly corpse he left on the ground yesterday after his swim. Edges are now tattered a bit. The ants partake in the sap of the insect. They crawl all over its body, which has been displaced from its original position. Fire underneath everything, partially hidden by the itchy ant carpet, swarming and fuming. Laurent is bothered because he would have liked to hold the insect himself. Maybe take it back over to the tea table for a while. At this point it is better to leave it be and go on.

Laurent ends his stroll back at a lounging chair next to the tea table. He takes two long sips of his coffee and whiskey and then takes the paper to place in his lap. The pen is uncapped and ready, now if only language will just come to him and help him to find a voice. Although the time is perfect for writing, Brother forgets that there is nothing convenient about writing, not that he knows very much about the art. Not that he feels he knows very much about the art. Brother writes the word, "afterwards," at the top of the paper. After words, then what? Spaces:

"In physics, so much is defined by what is lacking, or what might have been there one second but now has moved on in its course." Well, that's true, isn't it? The universe is terribly busy. "The brick wall behind my back is none of the following: a summer breeze, a thick and fuzzy quilt, a point of reference to plot on a Poincare map." In fact, it's wicker and not brick. Why am I defining something by everything it is not? Seems unfair. "A brick wall is defined by time and space, that's why, and as much as I love Dalí, this brick wall is quite rigid. It will never slump forward as I do now with my coffee and whiskey. Only memory slumps forward"

He looks up at the sky and scratches his hair. He needs a cigarette, but they are inside and he is approaching an artistic mania. There is no time for interruptions. He stares back down at the parchment paper and reads everything written down thus far. He waits and moves his jaw muscles, cracks his neck and then relaxes:

"Do you like the color of this stationary? Personally, I'd rather it be more minty."

Absolute fodder. How did this become a letter? I'm not writing to anyone. A few olive leaves rustle against the cement near the pool water. Laurent taps both of his brown oxford shoes against the ground, agitated, because he cannot decide whether it is that language is so expansive and that he is just ignorant or if it is that language is clumsy and unavailing. No, of course we need words to help communicate our ideas. There are loads of things we wouldn't know about without our words. We'd all be complete idiots without language. Laurent, the idiot…"What is it with this obsession with being untouched, unstained? There is a constant fear of alien invasion. How do humans feel about symbiosis, really? Why go on perpetuating these pretended brick walls? Is it really that a clean room makes for a clean mind?"

We've got to mend that crack. Laurent realizes he has been holding off the release of his urine for some time now. He sets down the papers and walks off into the lawn to the side fence behind the cypress trees. In a ritualistic exercise that he himself seldom finds bizarre, Laurent urinates on the grass. Of all the times that Laurent has been outside with the bodily urge of urination in the backyard, they have mostly ended with him relieving himself outside. He thinks to himself how surely this is natural. The product of nature, broken down and filtered and then excreted back into nature. What is not so natural--and even Laurent can admit this to himself--is his tendency to relieve himself in his bathroom sink, rather than walk the extra five or so feet to the toilet. Sister would find this appalling, but who is she to argue with the prick of Laurent?

--Laurent, really? There are ten restrooms inside. You can pick any one of them, but the outdoors suits you better?

Laurent zips up his trousers after the last drops of urine are shook out and faces the patio where Sister has called out to him:

--Is brunch ready?

--Yes, come on inside.

As Laurent is walking across the lawn back to the tea table where he left his writing, Sister continues:

--You know who just called?

--Would it be that director?

--(A light scoff) No, I'm to call him, remember? And I will, later.

--Then who?

--Charles.

--Our brother?