The commodity strolls through the shopping mall, peers into each store, turns over price tags, casts a cold eye over advertised specials. In the movie
a four-thousand-years-dead Egyptian boy finds his way to his parents – among the stars – with the aid of a giant yellow bird (species undetermined)
and a long-haired, tuskless dwarf mastadon. There is a proper way to turn these things inside out, unravelling which no optical contrivance
can blacken or occlude. Sunset lavenders spin their ways down through a tall cool one, a hand-held tracking shot that lingers on palms
and corrugated fences to beat back the constant drumming traffic. Culling over price tags and casting advertised eyes on exposed breasts – the polished
leather, laced and tightened around white-and-peach-fuzzed thighs, the pins of heels and woven rattan mats, home.
'The spillage of sunlight...'
The spillage of sunlight into the still bowl of a windless afternoon, humming with insects and a distant, unidentifiable clatter. Something comes next, follows on. Time's logic, coded in our very synapses, demands it. Spillage of sunlight into a bowl of windless – but for a small breeze – afternoon. Flowers purple, blue, bricks bleached grey and tan. Spillways of attention, never settled or direct. Enter SECOND ACTOR, tottering on chopines, face a horrified mask. SECOND ACTOR: (strikes pose, right hand on breast, left hand outstretched, chest heaving magnificently) (beat) Exit SECOND ACTOR. I sold my vote, recalled the old man, in the election bazaar. For a handful of magic beans or a mess of red pottage. Spilled like ochre cat-sick on the hem of the histrion's chalked-white toga.
