Pebbles.
1.
“Neighbours say nice things to each other”. “One foot in front of the other”. Suburban billboards ring out with bland platitudes. I do as they say — smiling at passers by as I take care not to trip over myself.
I notice a pebble in my left shoe. I stop abruptly — almost tripping as I do. I’m paralyzed. Petrified. “What do I do?” My mind screams at the top of her lungs. It would be entirely rude and a total inconvenience to bend down, begin to untie my laces, finish untying my laces, loosen my laces, take off my shoe, shake it out onto the ground, put my shoe back on, tighten my laces, and then tie my laces until my laces are once again tied.
I decide to keep walking. I can ignore the pebble until I get to a more private place.
“Hey!”
“Susan?”
Susan was the kind of woman who wore cardigans that matched the colour of her eyes. She would smell like lavender on Mondays, but by Friday she didn’t smell like anything. Now that I come to think of it, she only had one green cardigan.
“How you doing”?
“Pretty well. I’m feeling quite alive today. The sun is shining. I’ve just gotten a new pair of shoes”.
Immediately I regretted bringing up my shoes. The discomfort of the pebble grew at least 4x.
“That’s nice to hear! I’m soaking in the sunlight too! It’s making me feel quite alive.”
“That’s good.”
I scraped the bottom of my mind for a polite conversation topic.
“So what did you think of the debate last night?”
“The Presidential debate?”
“Was there another debate?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just never heard you talk politics.”
I talked politics often. That was Susan’s mistake.
“I thought it was interesting. I mean, of course, I was wrought with anxiety.”
“To be expected, I guess.”
My understanding of this year’s Presidential election was made up of a web of barely connected news-clips I’d seen. Each one a little piece of shattered glass piercing the story we’d all been telling ourselves about progress.
“It felt like someone had shot me in the stomach. I couldn’t even really bare to watch the whole thing. Every time a candidate — FUCK!”
“What?”
“There’s a pebble in my shoe.”
“Well don’t take your shoes off.”
“No I know, I’m not going to take my shoes off.”
“Cause that’d be rude.”
I caught myself frowning as a neighbour passed by — I quickly recovered and gave him a smile.
“The candidates sicken me is all I’m trying to get at. They’re truly ugly people.”
“Oh I agree. Ugly.”
“Sorry for yelling just then.”
“It’s fine, you have a pebble in your shoe”.
2.
I got to work so I could work myself to the bone. Susan said goodbye. She works in accounting. Me? Marketing.
I walked up to my desk in the open concept work-space (we weren’t allowed to call it an office ever since management spent $2.6 million on a renovation that absolutely nobody had asked for).
“Jeb.” It was my pet name, not my real name. “Come in here.”
I walked into my bosses office. One foot in front of the other.
“Sir?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Shoot.”
“We should get in on all of this election shenanigans. Make a dance about it.”
“What kind of dance?”
“Upbeat. Groovy. Political.”
“Mhm?”
“Can you watch the debate several more times to see if there are any funny dance moves we can extract?”
I was sick to my stomach at the thought. Like I’d been shot with a shotgun.
“Of course.”
3.
“The future of our society is a connected one. Filled with love.”
The governing party was towing their line.
“Fuck love.”
The challenging party, towing theirs.
My job was to manufacture that kind of thing. Love. I worked for the Ministry, in the Marketing Department. We had been called the Propaganda Department before, but we weren’t allowed to say that ever since management spent $4.8 million on a re-brand that nobody had called for.
If the party in power lost the election, the content of my job would change — but the substance of it wouldn’t. Right now, the content was all about getting people back in touch with their most noble human instincts: “Neighbours say nice things to each other”. “One foot in front of the other”. If they lost, though, it would just be the inverse. “Fuck your neighbour.” “Fuck putting one foot in front of the other”.
Altogether, though, my job was about unlocking the primal. Chipping it out from the alabaster of a very complicated every day existence. Releasing the dog in us.
People love to see the dog. But only when they want. They never want their life interrupted by the dog. They don’t want the shit and piss. They want the bark. The barred teeth. The puppy dog eyes. Anger not inconvenience. The essence of humanity without the body and earth. Strong language, rage, metaphors. Not a pebble in one’s shoe.
I zoned back into the Presidential debate. The incumbent was sitting cross-legged on the podium — playing something on his acoustic guitar.
The camera panned. The challenger couldn’t help but bop along a little bit.
Cut. Print. That was my dance move.
4…
