Brand Loyalty

from Your Name Here (2000)

        “Father, you’re destroying the collectibles!”
	 
        “You are mistaken.  I’m enjoying them!  The green magenta finish on this one reminds me of the
	piano shawl in our flat in Harbin—only greener, as though slits of light were coming through its
	slits.”
	 
        “At least we have the lilacs.”
	 
        How he would get a little too creative, God and I both know.  He’s spent the morning chiding the
	waterspout, clearly amazed as it drew increasingly closer.  “I’ve had it with natural phenomena. 
	They never know when to draw the line.  At least we have some sense, and we’re natural
	phenomena too, for goodness sakes.”
	 
        I wouldn’t let it get to me.  On the other hand, the waterspout or whatever you call it is getting to
	us.  It touched down, back there, and only a moment ago it was in front of us.  I suggest we sidle
	along the sand. 
	
	The deuce you say!  On the other hand, if you really think so.
	 
        We could offer it tea and cookies, but in a moment it’ll be too late for anything but palsied
	brooding on the tired theme of retribution.  Like I said, they build them stronger and stronger
	until it’s encoded in them.  They can’t help putting their best foot forward, and where does that
	leave us!  After all, a little peace was all we were after.
	 
        If only you’d read up on the subject like you said you were going to.
	 
        Yes, well we can’t alarm our surroundings too much, even as they torture us.  That way we’d
	only slip out of pain and not see the exciting denouement.  And what a sweet-tempered morning
	it was.  Put aside our notions of the intrepid, the universe is paying a courtesy call, God has us on
	hold, and there’s not much we can do except spin like dervishes, human tops.  Hair climbing
	upward to a point, a kind of spire, and all I’d done was brush down the sides.
	 
        Can we do it that way now?
	 
        Not exactly.  The village is walking toward us, we are becoming its walls and graffiti-sprayed
	cement bathrooms, its general store, the tipsy taxi driver.  If I told you where we were going it
	wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, and yet it would…
	 
        Sounds like my friend Casper, the girl said.