Staying with a friend…
Sylvia: You travel with a cactus?
Antonia: That’s Rolenzo. I’m writing a book. Working title: Travels with My Cactus.
Sylvia: Graham Greene?
Antonia: But Rolenzo doesn’t chatter so much as an auntie. Very supportive. Just sits and listens.
Sylvia: I see he has a red streak.
Antonia: Everyone needs a bit of red in their life.
Sylvia: That pencil case? Be strong as cactus. And it’s green. You’re obsessed. Everything you own is green. Your bag, your water bottle, even your socks.
Antonia: Green is soothing. Like moss. Or tea leaves.
Sylvia: Does Rolenzo get a dedication?
Antonia: Of course. Page one.
__________
Voice-over
Antonia goes on to explain why Rolenzo is a perfect travel companion. Doesn’t need to be taken on walks or go sightseeing. “I am enough of a sight,” Antonia heard him whisper once. Just a stoic little traveller who absorbs sunlight and doesn’t complain.
Gnome Leaving Home for Vacation, Leaps Out of the Soil…
wh5: How can you put up with traveling ALONE?
Gnome: How can YOU put up with traveling with others? Traveling alone: no
arguing, no waiting.
wh5: Time and tide?
Gnome: Not really alone, I travel with my plant.
wh5: A gnome away from home. But why the
plant?
Gnome: Gnome need garden. No green, can’t sleep.
wh5: You never think, just a little bit
kitsch?
Gnome: Not at all. Quality Gnome and Garden.
______________
Voice-over
The case for accepting gnomes:
Many argue that gnomes are kitsch. Possibly many are if measured by the
criteria of Immanuel Kant, that kitsch is anything that is not “fine art” or is
“overly sentimental.”
Milan Kundera insisted that kitsch is “a sanitized
view of the world.” Maybe gnomes which look like Disney’s
Seven Dwarfs do look clean and bland.
But can we turn Milan Kundera’s argument around? He also argued that this
sanitized view of the world is akin to totalitarianism.” If we marginalize
gnomes, we neglect to laugh, our being becomes unbearably heavy, and
totalitarianism looms closer.
