A friend of mine in Asheville has been collecting old color slides that he finds at thrift stores and rummage sales. Over New Years, he told me about this project he wanted to do, where he would give people a set of six slides, and they would write a 900 word monologue about the six images. The monologues would be performed on stage, with the slides being projected behind the performers. I told him it sounded like a neat idea, and he handed me an envelope with six slides.
I just found out that the project has been tabled for the time being, so I thought I'd go ahead and post my monologue. It will be lacking something without the slides, but I'm sure you can use your imagination and make your own pictures where the slides are mentioned. I got kind of buried in schoolwork this week, so I'm a little behind in writing, so this will make a good blog post for now.
[SLIDE 1: City Street]
It shouldn't have been a bad place to grow up. On paper, it looks ideal. A quiet little suburb, an easy commute to the city and all that it offers. The community hit its apex in 1954 but never declined. Instead it sat there, perfectly preserved, like an insect in amber, waiting for us to ossify along with it. There was no crime, no poverty, no graffiti, no hoodlums hanging out on corners. Hoodlums had tried, but had been politely yet firmly and repeatedly asked to move, at least to the coffee shop, where you didn't have to buy anything and could sit for hours sipping a free cup of coffee while looking with distain onto the main drag, where citizens politely yet firmly would conduct their daily business repeatedly, hoodlum-free.
[SLIDE 2: Small Child]
I found it suffocating, even at my young age. It's not as if there was pressure to conform, but there was an overriding belief that you would, eventually, come to your senses and conform on your own. After all, what did you stand by bucking the system? The system had worked for twenty-five years, and looked as if it would go on working indefinitely. The town was the perfect machine, generating just enough energy to sustain itself, never growing, never shrinking. Bored out of my gourd, I took to smashing sidewalks with a sledge hammer, an act that turned out to be genuinely satisfying to the mentality of a ten-year-old boy. I managed to get most of my block done before the police caught up with me. They politely yet firmly asked me to stop. I thumbed my nose at them and started on the next block. The next morning the city crew arrived, digging up and re-pouring all of my handiwork. They could fix in half the time what I could break, and each day, physically exhausted from being a ten-year-old boy spending all day swinging a sledge hammer to break sidewalks, I would watch as they easily replaced everything I had done. I gave up. But I was still bored out of my gourd, and the urge to destroy was replaced by a need to escape.
[SLIDE 3: The Cat]
The cat offered to help. He had observed my sidewalk smashing with interest, exhorting me on for several days beyond the point when I felt inclined to throw in the towel. The cat knew things. He gave me pointers on how to more efficiently swing the hammer. He always vanished when the police showed up each afternoon to politely yet firmly ask me to stop smashing the sidewalk. There was a rumor around town that he had fixed the local high school football championship and had made a mint betting against the local team, but know one knew anyone who had taken his bets, for the good people of the town never would gamble. He had connections in the city, it was whispered, but that was as much as anyone knew.
The cat said he could get me out, but I had to do exactly what he said. All he wanted in return was for me to continue my anti-social ways once I was safely outside the entropic field of the suburb. I didn't have to keep pounding the pavement, I could find some other way to work against the system. The important thing was that I keep trying, that the system needed people pushing against it, that it needed to be challenged, it needed to work against something, or else what had happened in the suburb would happen elsewhere. Things would settle into a state of always being the same, and eventually we would all bore ourselves to death.
[SLIDE 4: The Parade]
Every year, the suburb would throw itself a parade to celebrate 1954 and the year that everything started to stay the same. It was a grand affair, and everyone in town would turn out to watch. Even the hoodlums would leave the coffee shop, finally able to stand on the corner, at least for an afternoon. The parade was the key to the cat's plan. As it came onto Main Street, he trotted out in front of the drum major, his tail held high. The drum major, being a lifelong resident of the town, instinctively started following the cat, and didn't bat an eye as the cat led him off Main Street onto a side road. The rest of the town waited for a moment, then shrugged and followed the parade. Soon the whole of downtown was deserted.
[SLIDE 5: The Plane]
That was when Rodrigo landed. He and the cat had made a fortune smuggling exiles out of Cuba, flying under the cover of darkness. He owed the cat some sort of favor, though he wouldn't tell me what. We met on the football field. I was ready to go, but Rodrigo scowled and shook his head, pointing at my sledge hammer. I couldn't bring that, he said, because it was too heavy.
So I left my sledge hammer in the field. I can only hope that the cat helped some other child find it, that to this day, there are still children breaking the sidewalks in that little suburb, because the cat was right. The system needs resistance, or else we all might as well be cast in concrete, locked in amber, the same, unchanging, as the years roll over us and we slowly turn to dust.
