PAPERCLIPS

Wiping hands of dust and ink hesitating and hesitating but not much before lips tighten and soften to blow more dust out of the bottom of the plastic container where the paperclips reflect dimly dimly they reflect as the dust floats and descends around a desk where the paperclips reflect dimly dimly reflect. Plastic container bottom emerging from the bottom below lips that tighten lips that soften to blow above the plastic container above the bottom of the plastic container where the paperclips reflect dimly dimly they reflect as the dust floats and descends dimly reflecting floating descending dimly dimly they reflect.

Padster: How is that helpful?

Vroof: Did you say something?
Padster: Yes, I said something.
Vroof: Something of use?
Padster: Of course, I was inquiring about the usefulness of what you were doing.
Vroof: The usefulness of what I was doing?
Padster: Forget it. I’m in the mood for a snack.
Vroof: You mean my cleaning the dust out of my paperclips container?
Padster: I am moving on to snacks.
Vroof: Moving on are we?
Padster: I am moving on, you are still over there with your paperclips.
Vroof: So, what you’re doing over there is moving on?
Padster: I guess not if I let you pull me back to the paperclips.
Vroof: I was becoming curious about your moving on to snacks.
Padster: Were you?
Vroof: Was I what?
Padster: Were you curious?
Vroof: Yes, I believe that is the word I used. As a matter of fact, I’ll use it again. Curious.

Padster: Now you're just making it stand out separate from the rest of the group.

Vroof: I believe that is a halfway decent description as I see the lone figure isolated to make the journey as far as the footlights that become the edge of its world where the audience retreats into the darkness on the other side of the planet.  The stray never makes it back as the rest disappear to celebrate at some undisclosed location where they can vomit what little they will never absorb to laugh over one less oddball to worry about upsetting the execution of their performance.

Padster: I'm looking at my shoe and noticing how my foot moves in that way so that it seems the only function it serves is so you can check for any scrapes on the side of the in-step.  When I was small about maybe 4 or 5 my mother got me these black shoes that had these stiff edges.  She used to get so angry when she would discover I had put on 3 or 4 pairs of socks to protect my feet.  She'd rip those extra pairs off and declare that I would break the shoes in and they never did get broken in.  They were always too small and the only one who got broken in was me.  Somehow as I grew and it has always baffled me how old I am now and how many decades have been torn from my grasp that along the way how much I got broken in and would remain small in my feet and my legs and my arms I would somehow get broken in enough to stay small in my chest.  Not a surprise the world or just a small piece of it can't breathe it in just one deep breath to take something in and instead and so instead  it just stays out there. Somehow stay small in my skull.  Not a surprise I get these headaches no room for thinking with staying small.  I try to tell myself I'm not the only one staying small you know.  That has to be the only miracle that genuinely takes place that no matter how much I get old there's this getting broken in and staying small and keeping these stumpish hands to myself like a gadget or some device.  Device is more like it because others at least find gadgets more interesting.

from the bottom below lips that tighten lips that soften to blow above the plastic container above the bottom of the plastic container where the paperclips reflect dimly dimly they reflect as the dust floats and descends dimly reflecting floating descending dimly dimly they reflect.

Vroof: Now, was that helpful or of any use?

Padster: Was what of any use?

Vroof: All that talk.

Padster: You had your talk, too.

Vroof: I believe that, uh, maybe, wait a moment.

Padster: Wait for what?  I want a snack again.

Vroof: Wait.  It'll be here in a minute.

Padster: What will be here?

Vroof: What I was going to say.  I was pretty sure it was going to be useful.

Padster: I can't decide if I want something crunchy or soft.

Vroof: Thought for certain something was going to come out and and and

Padster: And do what?  Do what?

Vroof: It's not showing up or I was misled about some arrival of something.

Padster: Was it that you lost hold of it or it was never there to begin with?  I'm leaning towards something either soft or what was it?

Vroof: It's not clear.  I feel like I was misled about something being there from the start the emergence, you know what I'm trying to get at?

Padster: All I know is that I'm digging through this drawer trying to get at some snacks and I'm not finding any.

Vroof: What I'm getting at is the emergence the start of the emergence.

Padster: What the hell is the start of an emergence?  It emerges doesn't it?  Or it's always emerging or always starting.  Like fits and starts.  After all these years and all this life fits is more like it.  Just one obnoxiously tenacious narrow rivulet of fits.

Vroof: This is your moving on thing?

Padster: Why do you keep asking me like that?

Vroof: Like what?  Like your moving on thing is all about how much horse shit examining your in-step can generate?

Padster: I'd appreciate less questions and more evidence of something freakin' crunchy to flippin' munch on.

Vroof: You should make such statements about questions when you're the one asking what is of what use like some monitor monitoring.

Padster: You have no idea how much I have had to watch my every move since you came into this department.  It was bad enough having the hag before you with the stomach that was dying and peeling the paint off the walls with her mephitic fumes.  The only thing that occupied my mind was imagining what colors her wardrobe came in when she originally purchased them.

Vroof: What every move?  I don't know how you accomplish anything.

Padster: See what I'm talking about?

Vroof: See what?  I glance over in your direction and only manage to catch a brief image of what I thought appeared to be a hole of some sort where all your moving on vanishes into and then the next time I look there's not even a hole not even a brief image not anything suggestive of any image.  

Padster: Was any of that of any use?

Vroof: There you go with your inquiring and investigating.

Padster: I always ask myself whose final decision it was to put you here.

Vroof: You know who.

Padster: I know, but did they really make the final decision?  Who did they consult with?

Vroof: Who put you up to inquiring?  Was it the consultant?

Padster: Nothing crunchy.  Nothing soft.

from the bottom below lips that tighten lips that soften to blow above the plastic container above the bottom of the plastic container where the paperclips reflect dimly dimly they reflect as the dust floats and descends dimly reflecting floating descending dimly dimly they reflect.

- Max Stoltenberg