Dadaoism (An Anthology)

by Oliver, Reggie

  I can see her now. There goes one of the fireworks, and it makes a whole galaxy of colour in the sky, and, twinkling in the spiral arms of this magical galaxy, between veils of pink and blue cosmic dust, there is a beautiful star called Koda Kumi. You know, I do believe she can hear what I’m saying as I’m talking to you now. In which case, I would just like to say this: around the world, or let me say, on the other side of this firework galaxy, between its pink and blue clouds, on other stars, there are people thinking of you.

  And I can add, on a personal note, I love you.

  Thank you for listening to me. I feel much better for having told you. I could just sit now and look at the sunlight on my slippers by the shoji there. But I’m not being much of a host, am I? Why don’t we take a stroll down to the bay?

  THE LOBSTER KALEIDOSCOPE

  Julie Sokolow

  The girl was in the ground and worms were feasting on her knuckles. She wanted to give each of the worms a knuckle sandwich, but they were already commandeering the buffet. Only years prior, she had been petting a worm—her only friend in prison. She fondly remembered its glue oozing across prison cell cement. The girl had stroked the length of the worm so frequently that she became attached to it. She hadn’t been able to peel the worm off her finger, so she dipped it into the prison cell’s toilet. She had then handed the worm a ticket to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl as it spun down the tubes.

  The ticket was one-way. The final destination: the outside world. The girl, who was being devoured by worms, had fed her pet worm to the prison cell’s toilet. Alone, she squatted on the toilet’s lid. She had been waiting for a man with a key to open her cage so she could run out like the family dog. She had spent many months longing for the comfort of faces. She loved eyes and noses. Mouths, not so much. In prison, mouths primarily served as hostile displays of amateur dentistry.

  After the girl exited her cage and entered the outside world, she couldn’t think of much to do. She had been wandering the courtyard, wondering what to do, when a basketball flew her way. The owner was a fellow convict, now accusing the girl of basketball theft. The girl wanted to rid herself of the evidence, but her hands had suction. She considered how handy the suction would be in a different context. Perhaps, if she had previously desired to adorn her car’s rear window with herself, her suction hands would have been of use. She could have positioned herself above a bumper sticker reading, Baby On Board. Baby Over Board was more like it.

  The girl and the basketball were stuck. The cons were the pros and they certainly outweighed the girl. They ripped the ball from her grip and launched her into space. She became a Globetrotter without even playing a good game of basketball. She whirled rapidly, like a spinning basketball on the index finger of a pro.

  She was so high above Earth and other familiar planets, there was only one thing she could do: plummet. She plummeted back down to Earth and into the earth, which shoveled itself around her. The earth felt exposed. Some children walked by as the earth attempted to cover itself up. They laughed at the earth, which gaped in shock and embarrassment. As the earth’s dirty mouth gaped open, the kids decided to toss in some beheaded tulips.

  The children had started the trend of throwing heads into mouths and the rest of the humans soon followed. For a while, shrunken skulls were the new onion rings. But considering that heads have always been less abundant than mouths, the poor had to settle for tails.

  Meanwhile, the girl was getting itchy and bored in the belly of the earth. She wondered about the cons she had left at the court. Unlike the girl, most cons expelled from courts didn’t have the luxury of traveling around the globe. Point is, she missed the sight of human eyes and noses. Rarely mouths. She thought if humans only had eyes and noses, they’d get in a lot less trouble. The world would be a better place without mouths, she thought, as she lay stiff in the belly of the earth.

  She couldn’t recall exactly how she ended up in prison and then, ultimately, in the earth’s belly. She wondered if the earth would poop her out into the Tilt-A-Whirl toilet of space. She wondered if she would be born again. If so, where? When? If you’re born again, how do you know? But how do you KNOW if you were never born? All of these questions were open sores that the worms were getting their grooves into.

  She tried to remember the time before prison and basketball courts, but all that came to mind was 5:45. A distinct PM came to mind, as well, but the girl didn’t want to assume it was attached to 5:45. Perhaps, they were only acquaintances. PM could mean a lot of things, like post modern or prime minister. The girl had a 5:45 and a PM, but not much else.

  An hour later, she thought to herself, “I don’t want to be presumptuous, but isn’t a number followed by a colon followed by two more numbers often followed by a PM? For instance, might 5:45 PM make an ideal supper time?” Her thoughts filled her brain until it popped like a balloon. Her thoughts seeped into the soil and permeated the earth. The earth, filled with thought bubbles, let out a gaseous burp that reminded the girl of the exact aura of the crime scene that led to her imprisonment. The crime scene was Red Lobster.

  Red Lobster wasn’t owned by a man whose first name was “Red” and whose last name was “Lobster.” The establishment was named after the very creature sacrificed at the dinner table. The girl thought this was strange. She asked herself, “What if the burgers at McDonald’s are sprinkled with the ashes of Dick and Mac McDonald?”

  She vaguely recalled a seafoam pattern frothing under a tide of dirty Nikes. She remembered thinking, “If we stomp on oceanic carpet, what are the implications?” She now wondered, “If I am in the belly of the earth, eating dirt, what would I be eating in the earth’s ocean? If the soil is the belly of the earth, what part of the earth is the water?” She was digressing, which made her wonder how she could trigress, and again, what would be the implications? Is trigressing as easy to do as riding a tricycle? If so, digressing would be the adult way to pedal. Regardless, she felt like a tigress, digressing obsessively.

  She hocus-focused on the seafoam carpet. Her heels were red like bloody lobsters. She thumped her bloody lobster feet on the seafoam carpet, pacing the ocean of Red Lobster. She wondered why she wasn’t at Roy Roger’s. There was never a wait at Roy’s. At Roy’s, you could eat the cow straight off the conveyor belt. At Red’s, you had to wait in a bloody lobster room. You had to fiddle with lobster antennae, waiting for reception. The host was no repairman.

  The girl fiddled with lobster antennae, running their lines parallel, then perpendicular, but nothing good was coming on the tank. She thought she might call Comcast, but they always took forever and rarely gave much. She thought of a slogan: “Comcast: The provider that takes forever.”

  The girl was eager for lobster reception without the wait. She was getting impatient with the antennae, which were growing impatient with her. The lobsters were growing furious, as demonstrated through their head-butting against the tank. As she watched the combat of head and tank, she wondered if “head-butt” could be not only an action, but if “head” could be an adjective modifying “butt.” She hated conceiving of a world where heads could describe butts.

  She was pondering and her wandering heels were thumping in synch with the head-butts of lobsters. Her date was as late as Comcast and while Comcast was a provider, her date was only a prospective one. She looked around the waiting room and noticed a family. She thought, “If I ever desired to observe others waiting in a naturalistic setting, what better place than the waiting room of Red Lobster?”

  The family was indigenous and indignant. They were a family of whales, indigenous of a principality of the aquatic, not dissimilar to Wales. They were wholly indigenous, but only partly indignant because of the wait. They were also indignant to be sharing the wait with a land-dwelling mammal. Few know this, but land mammals and water mammals have been planning World War III for quite some time now. They just haven’t been able to settle the terrain of battle.

  The whales really blew their spouts when they not
iced how loudly the girl was pounding her heels on semi-oceanic grounds. The papa whale asked the girl to keep it down, but she didn’t know what he referred to. Her heels continued to pound in all directions. The papa whale pouted and spouted passive aggressively and so the mama whale tried to defend his honor. “Keep it down!” she bellowed. The girl yelled back, “I’m already depressed, but I can stop popping uppers if you like!”

  The mama whale was beside herself and the girl’s heels were thumping reminders of bloody red lobsters, which whale bellies were grumbling for. Finally, the baby whale screamed, “Just stop pacing!” Even adolescent whales are blunter than their elders.

  The girl parked her bloody lobsters on oceanic carpet. The nearby tank fell silent. Silence made the girl nervous. Even the sound of head-butting lobsters was more comfortable than this nothingness.

  “No problem,” she said to the whales. She parked her butt on a bench, occasionally dipping her feet in the aquatic carpet. Her lack of movement agreed too much with her date’s lack of movement. She thought, “I’d like to agree to disagree that my date is stationary, but, alas, I must agree.” She held her hands like they were someone else’s and hung her head from an imaginary noose.

  The whales wondered why humans have suicidal tendencies. Suicidal tendencies were not only all over human newspapers, but also all over human faces. The whales had big hearts, so they decided to offer peace to the girl. The baby whale was sent like a brave soldier to the other end of the waiting room to deliver a finshake treaty. Unfortunately, the girl could not finshake and the whale could not handshake, so the two species agreed to disagree.

  The baby whale and the girl were two animals that happened to eat lobster. Nevertheless, while the girl had the intention to eat lobster, the whale only incidentally swallowed. Regardless, both were guilty and a Red Lobster bill was charged.

  Soon after the baby whale returned to its parents, the family with big hearts was called in for a big supper. They would even have the option to super-size their suppers. When the whales left, the room felt empty. The girl sighed, “This used to be a room with whales in it. Now, it’s just a whale of a room.”

  She noticed a couple of swordfish who had snobbishly snorted at the whales as they entered the main restaurant. They whispered to one another, “And we thought sea-life couldn’t get larger.” They blabbed about how the whales were unsightly gluttons, consuming more than their fair share, even in a capitalistic society. The swordfish wondered why people cared to observe the obese of the sea when the obese of the land were so much more abundant.

  The girl watched the swordfish converse, and, conversely, longed for her date to arrive. Then she thought, “What if my date has arrived, just not to the waiting room of Red Lobster?”

  While caught in the net of her thoughts, she lost track of the swordfish, who were now fencing for no reason. She wondered how they could be fighting now, when they were only talking moments prior. Then it made sense. Most fights start with words that are spoken from mouths, that she once again found to be detrimental to world peace.

  The female swordfish sliced up the male’s argument, after which, he delivered some cutting remarks. Watching the whole thing made the girl want to slit her wrists. The couple reached a stalemate and agreed to disagree. This only led to both parties giving each other the cold shoulder in a world where opposites attract.

  The swordfishes’ cold shoulders repelled each other so much that the two sat at opposite ends of the bench. The girl was still caught in the net of her thoughts and she felt very much like a lobster in a tank at this point, but not quite. Feeling like a lobster in a tank is a sensation we have yet to sense, let alone try to imagine, let alone try to verbalize. The girl tried to saw the ropes of her thoughts with her lobster heels, but lobsters are very incompetent when it comes to such handiwork. If you asked a lobster about his workmanship, he’d just philosophize on work, men, and ships, and never get anything done. The girl and her lobsters were both existentially alone and inefficient in their existences.

  The girl was as helpless as maybe Pavlov’s dog, but not as helpless as a lobster in a tank, when she asked the swordfish for the time. “Hah. Humans asking for clarity on their own inventions,” the male swordfish barked. “Shh. You’re being rude,” the female swordfish whispered back. The male then lost some hubris and gained some civility. He stammered to the girl, “Sorry, miss. What time are you asking for?”

  “The current time!” she spoke out, exasperated, not understanding how someone could have misunderstood her.

  “Well, you see… we don’t run things below like you do above.”

  “What do you mean? Are you working in a different time zone?”

  “You could say that. You see, underwater, we don’t really adhere to the idea of time.”

  “The idea of time?”

  “The invention of time.”

  “Oh, so I made the whole thing up? Somebody better tell Caesar.”

  The swordfish wasn’t even going to try to understand that one.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m not accusing you personally of inventing time. I’m just saying that your people—”

  He quickly corrected himself.

  “I mean, humans have ever so creatively crafted this notion of time, this idea of numbers with colons and arrows pointing to them and so forth to represent moments of existence. Well, frankly—”

  He looked back at the female to ensure proceeding was permitted, provided caution.

  “Frankly, under the sea, we don’t measure our moments in digits.”

  The girl thought deeply. Was that all time really was? Humans playing connect the dots with random numbers? What did the number 5 separated by 45 with a colon have to do with her arriving at the waiting room of Red Lobster? Was she the number “5” separated from her date “45” by a colon? Or was Red Lobster somehow divinely connected to 5:45, in which case, humans dare think of further explanation? The girl didn’t think so. However, she did think about the sun and the moon, which had distinct patterns of making appearances. The sun was the host of Good Morning Today and the moon was the host of The Tonight Show. She thought they were such great hosts they should be guests. But if they were guests, who would be the hosts? And then would the sun and the moon be reduced to parasites? The tigress digressed once more. She roped together the net of her thoughts and retorted, “Us here in the US don’t see time as just some lottery with balls of moments shooting out numbers. Us here in the US see time as the link between our intergalactic position and our moments as represented by numbers.”

  “Do you use numbers to represent you in court as well?” the swordfish cleverly remarked.

  “Sometimes. They’re called statistics.” The girl had won this match, so the swordfish begrudgingly slashed the ropes of the girl’s thoughts with his snout. She fell down to the oceanic carpet with a splash and a thud, brushing the sea salt and dirt off her shoulders.

  “You’re not so bad for a land dweller,” said the male swordfish, as the female pulled him back to the bench by his gills. She felt a bit threatened. After watching the heated debate, she assumed her beau might be getting hot, and she hoped it wasn’t for a land mammal. Firstly, this would prevent the female swordfish from obtaining her dream of procreation with her male swordfish of choice. Secondly, the mating of swordfish and human would produce a hybrid species, capable of land and ocean dwelling that had a weapon for a face. Although the Americans might find such a creature evolutionarily adept, the female swordfish found it frightening and the possible cause of a future apocalypse. The male retreated back with his lady, but not before getting the last word, which was: “Please stop prefacing retorts with ‘Us here in the US.’ If you don’t, it’s always going to be an US verses THEM situation.”

  The girl was again the benchwarmer of the semi-aquatic league, and the couple were now back in their home turf. They were swimming in the seafoam carpet, splashing as they pleased. They were making love, but the girl didn’t find it pornogr
aphic, although their snouts were a bit phallic. They looked like they were loving and fighting at the same time. The girl wondered what loving would be without fighting and if loving is nothing without fighting, then is to fight to love? She hoped so, given the profusion of combat on the global fields. It was truly the World Series. At least if it led to an apocalypse, it would be the apocalypse of love. This was at once wonderful, horrifying, and cheesy, so the girl decided to pedal out of her thoughts on the tricycle of trigression, which she hoped would ultimately lead her to digression.

  At that very moment, the pair of swordfish got called into the main restaurant. They brushed their fins off on the carpet and sauntered out. The girl tried to peek at the festivities, but a thick darkness cloaked the happy chatter and eating going on in the room over. The thick black curtain dividing the girl and the restaurant got the girl’s mind-tricycle pedaling once more. Where did her newly acquainted, fellow species go? Yes, she knew they went into another room, but what was in that other room? Truth is, she had never been to a Red Lobster before. Truth also is, she had never eaten a red lobster before. The only reason she found herself in the waiting room was because of a date that apparently wasn’t showing. He had suggested it, saying he’d like to give her a taste of a certain delectable crustacean. She had then replied: “Ew, sounds crusty.”

  “No, crustaceans don’t taste crusty.”

  “But what about their interaction with sand?”

  “Perhaps sandy.”

  “Crustaceans taste sandy?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think there’s a crustacean out there named Sandy?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “You get to wear a bib when you eat lobster.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s neutral.”

  “I didn’t like wearing a bib when I was younger.”

  “You can remember not liking to wear a bib?”

  “No.”