LOST TELEPLAY FOR NORTHERN EXPOSURE
Dream sequence
Joel Fleishman is standing with Ruth Ann in front of a tombstone.
She is wearing a black poncho.
JOEL: What is this?
RUTH ANN: Your grave, Joel.
JOEL (squints): God - the font is minuscule.
RUTH ANN: Perhaps this will help. (Hands him a magnifying glass.)
JOEL (Peers through glass; periodically looks up in indignation)
"Joel Allen Fleishman. Died in Alaska. Buried in his Ralph Lauren paisley comforter with matching sheets. Never earned a real salary or paid student loans. Displayed insufficient medical skill in the following instances..."
HEY! This is a memorial? What about griving? Respect and remembrance?
"Drew insufficient joy from living, vide never schtupped..."
This is outrageous!
RUTH ANN: I guess that's the difference between a tombstone and a resume, Joel.
JOEL (looks around): Where are we, by the way?
RUTH ANN: Hell, of course.
JOEL (spluttering): Hell? Hell-hell? Dante and circles like the Guggenheim? But I was a good person!
RUTH ANN (examines Joel skeptically)
JOEL: Relatively! I never squished honeybees. I gave to the United Negro College Fund. I was a doctor!
RUTH ANN: I'm sorry, Joel. The influx of baby boomers forced us to adjust the curve.
JOEL: What happens to me now? This area looks brimstone-free.
RUTH ANN: Well, you would have been devoured by wolverines, but you don't know what they look like. Your choices are: eyes pecked out by plovers, knees gnawed by martens, or sanity loosened by loons.
JOEL: Is this hell, or Yangzee's take-out?
RUTH ANN: I forgot. You can spend eternity in a Chinese restaurant, hopped up on MSG, arguing with a waiter who purposely misunderstands the word 'Chablis'.
HERR KEPLER'S NOTEBOOK
Time is the bully anchor of the opposing tug-rope team.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
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"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
-------------------------------------
"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
:-)
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