FIRST DRAFT PRODUCTIONS
Proudly Presents” The Gregor Chronicles, Part 5
“MEDIA CIRCUS MAXIMUS”
Staring Gregor D. Lotus
For those of you who have joined us in the middle of Gregor’s adventures, I will explain:
Gregor is a lotus who lives in Muddy Waters, a pond that can be found in the very middle of the Great State of Imagination. Gregor, like his namesake, can metamorphose, which is very fortunate because without that ability, there wouldn’t be much of a story. He’d never go anywhere or do anything.
As usual, the opinions expressed by Gregor and the other characters in this tale are their own and however distasteful, should not be attributed to the author or Feathered Pipe Ranch, both of whom are well-known to have no opinions whatsoever.
No loti have been injured during the creation of this tale.
Parental indiscretion is not only advised but encouraged.
A Greek chorus chants:
Behold fiery Mercury
In golden chariot doth haul
His blazing orb
Where above Muddy Waters’
Tranquil realm
He does install
To bake and boil and vapors make
That timid loti to stir and quake
While bold Athena to Rove is giver
Of lethal bow and ample quiver
That he may harry on distant shore
Beleaguered yogis
He doth abhor
And douse the light of
Moon and stars
To pave the way
For fearsome Mars.
Gregor gave himself a present for his sixth birthday. Unlike in each of his previous years, he would allow himself to sleep late. And so, it was long after the ice had melted from the surface of Muddy Waters pond when he scratched his roots, gripped the bottom mud tightly and poked his curled-up leaf into the sunlight.
“Ah,” he sighed as he unrolled on the water’s shimmering surface, stretching this way and that. Then, he flopped over and did a couple of downward facing leafs before turning back, right side up, for a bit of photosynthesasana. He took in a look slow breath of carbon dioxide, one…two…three, held for a moment, then breathed out oxygen, one…two…three. It was only then that he looked around him and noticed that he had a lot of room to stretch and pose. No other loti were pushing or shoving, crowding him. There was plenty of leaf space all around. Where had all the loti gone?
Gregor looked to his left and then to his right. There he saw them, tangled together in two knotted packs, one on each side of the pond. The entire middle was vacant space. And then he noticed that the pond was much lower than it ought to have been at that time of year. What was going on?
While he was pondering this question, a water bug rushed by; its spindly legs dancing over the ripples. “The pond is shrinking!” it yelled. “The pond is shrinking! The pond is shrinking!”
Gregor held up his leaf and stopped the bug. “That’s obvious,” he said. “Any fool knows that without the loti covering the entire surface, its going to evaporate fast. But why are they all bunched up on the extreme right and left?”
The bug shrugged several of its limbs. “How should I know? You’re the lotus, not me.” And she began to set off.
“Hold it,” said Gregor. “If you’re going to be broadcasting the news, you might as well get the whole story. Why don’t you just hop on my leaf and we’ll go find out.”
The bug smiled. “I’ve always wanted to be embedded,” she said excitedly.
Gregor shook his leaf. “Parasites get embedded,” he sighed, “not bugs.”
First, they headed over to the right side of the pond where they saw a crowd of rugged individualist loti marching obediently behind a pudgy yogi posing on a litter being carried by four buff (but straight) young yogi bearers. His name was Rave.
“The pond is leaking water,” he raved, “because all those loti on the left side of the pond are rootless. They go around shamelessly with their stem above water against God’s law.”
“Can I quote you?” asked the water bug.
Rave scratched his leaf and thought about it. “Don’t use my name,” he said. “Only the part about the leak. Ascribe the leak to an undisclosed source.”
So then they went over to the left side of the pond. Here, they had a much harder time. Although these loti claimed to believe in working for the common good they were leaderless and everybody wanted to be quoted. They were marching around with picket signs all saying: “Me!, Me!, Me!, Me!, Me!, Me!.”
After a while of this, a big fat lotus in a baseball cap pushed his way to the front of the crowd and began to shoot a movie.
“Press,” yelled the water bug. “What’s your movie about?”
“How the loti on the other side of the pond are being swindled,” he said. “They only have half-asanas over there. But if they come over to this side the can get their asana whole.”
“What’s your movie going the be called?” the water bug pressed on.
The big fat lotus pushed his baseball cap to the back of his leaf and smiled. “Celsius zero,” he said, thinking himself clever.
“Why?” asked the bug.
“The temperature when ice melts and all the water leaks out of the pond.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Gregor who was listening carefully, “but melting ice has nothing to do with a leaking pond.”
“Ha, Ha, Ha,” laughed the film-making plant. “You know that, and I know that, but look at them.” He waved his leaf over at the right side of the pond. “They’re clueless over there. They’re all in a persistent vegetative state and only a good scary movie will shake them up.”
“Well, actually,” the water bug sniffed, “you’re all in a persistent vegetative state. You’re lotuses.”
It looked like there was going to be a fight but Gregor slid between the water bug and the film-maker. “I just figured out why Muddy Waters is drying up,” he said.
They looked at him surprised. “You have?”
“Yes,” Gregor nodded. “It’s as our great sage, Abraham Lotus long ago prophesized.
“A pond divided against itself just doesn’t hold water.”
“and none of you guys who can get the word out are doing anything to help.”
Just then a deep voice boomed out from somewhere beyond the clouds.
“Gregor….Gregor…”
The film-maker grabbed his cap to prevent it from being blown right off by the reverberations.
“It’s God!” the water bug whispered in awe.
“Actually, it sounds more like Morgan Freeman,” Gregor replied. “Yes, hello, who’s there?” he called back toward the voice in the clouds, as if it were a dinner-time telephone solicitation.
“If you want to bring the Loti of Muddy Waters together,” rumbled the voice of Freeman, “You must journey to Never Pond. There you will find the answer.
Gregor was aghast. “No, not Never Pond! Anyplace but that,” he cried.
“Yes, Never Pond,” bellowed Freeman. “A great contest is taking place there and everyone know that in time of crisis there is only one thing that can bring all loti together.”
“And that is?” interrupted the water bug.
“A media circus,” boomed the voice from above.
“I’m outta here,” said Gregor. He grabbed the water bug and headed straight back to the middle of the pond.
“You can’t run away from celebrities,” Freeman warned ominously.
Soon, a great storm came up and began to lash and batter the pair as if they were holed up in a double-wide that was in the path of a class-four hurricane. Just as they were about to give up, a giant Hirudo leach, its muscles rippling, its jaws gnashing, rose out of the boiling waters and scooted toward them. Extension, flexion, extension, flexion.
“That’s the biggest damn leach I’ve ever seen,” Gregor sputtered.
“Oh no!” screamed the water bug. “It’s Balco. We don’t stand a chance. He practically invented the headstand.” She was about to launch into a further exposition of the effects of anabolic steroids on the common leach when Balco lunged and with one perfect pradayama, swallowed them up.
For forty days and forty nights (although in the belly of a steroid-enhanced leach it’s hard to tell one from the other) they were bashed and bullied as if they were one of Baron Baptiste’s boot-campers.
Then, suddenly, Balco spit them up on dry land.
Gregor blinked his eyes. “Why’d you puke us up?” he called after the retreating leach. “What? We weren’t good enough for you?”
The leach shook his enormous, puffy head. “Don’t take it personally,” he explained. “I just tested positive and have been suspended.” He shrugged. “I thought I was taking ‘Arnold’s Nutritional Supplements.’ Really! And then he dove under the surface of the pond.
“Look, over there, Gregor,” yelled the excited water bug. She raised a couple of legs and pointed. “It’s Never Pond.”
And there it was. A giant castle with the light of a thousand video games blinking on and off, a suggestive silhouette in every window. Everywhere, happily smashing things and spraying each other with defoliants were little loti.
In the middle of this, Lewd Lotus, looking a little washed out, floated serenely in his own private pond, meditating while above him hung a neon sign urging the little ones to “Beat It.”
“Maybe Freeman’s right,” the water bug whispered to Gregor. “If this can’t bring all of the loti in Muddy Waters together, nothing can.”
“There it is.” Gregor pointed his leaf at a cluster of brightly colored tents, their peaks bristling with antennae and satellite dishes. “The media circus.”
The closer they came, the more evident the madness. Everywhere rats scurried about, microphones in hand, jamming the things into the faces of the unwary. They’d snap a few questions as if attempting to catch flies, then scramble away before their victims could finish their answers.
Along the midway, somber, disembodied, talking heads of lettuce and cabbage, jabbered gossip, speculation and opinion, then answered questions no one was asking.
A ponderous elk pointed his sharp antlers at the sky and explained that it was not raining on him at the moment but that sometime soon there just might be the possibility of a storm — maybe.
A pair of crow holding legal pads, went out on a limb. “Caw…Caw…Caw,” they cackled, wondering whether Lewd Lotus would get convicted.
At the main gate, a slick fox, his vixen companion grinning through glistening fangs, assured his listeners that what he was saying was fair and balanced, and that “Gossip is Great!”
“Hey,” Gregor called to the circus performers, “isn’t anyone interested that Muddy Waters is drying up?”
“They have a verdict,” someone yelled out and they all rushed to the courthouse like a flock of lemmings.
In no time, Gregor and the water bug were standing all alone in the midway. No one wanted to listen to a story about a leak in Muddy Waters. Before they could say “The leaf don’t fit,” the tents were struck, the satellite dishes packed and the circus had left town to cover the story of a Cheetah who cheated and then chewed up the evidence for Christmas dinner.
“Freeman!” Gregor yelled, looking skyward, rolling his leaf into a puny fist. “That slick fox and his crew aren’t going to help pull things together in the pond. They don’t cover the news; they cover it up.”
“I have just three words of advice for you,” Freemand basso replied.
“Yeah, what now,” Gregor asked skeptically.
“Heyam, Duhkam, Anagatam,” said the voice from on high.
“What’s it mean?” Gregor asked with trepidation.
“A dried up pond can be overcome,” said Freeman.
“That’s it?” asked the water bug.
“That’s it,” said Freeman. “You have to chant it. It’s your last chants.”
Gregor was skeptical and shook his leaf. “Forget the media.”
Let’s get back to the pond,” said the water bug, pulling on a corner of Gregor’s leaf. “We’ll just have to do it ourselves.”
Had the media committed suicide? Was news reporting really dead? We’re the loti stuck in a bad Greek tragedy? It looks might grim, folks.
This just in. A recent Kagehiro market research poll says: “Go with the happy ending.”
Okay, I will. Once again Kafka to the rescue.
And in the nick of time, Gregor heard the ringing of bells and he realized that he had fallen asleep during shivasana. When he rolled over on his side, he saw that Muddy Waters was crammed with loti from one end to the other. It was then he heard an elderly lotus call out; “Chaim zucke Natan,” which means “Harry go find Nathan.” But in the interests of narrative continuity, it reminded him that the pond we save may be our own.
So Gregor decided to give Morgan Freeman his last chants. “Heyam, Duhkam, Anagatam, Chaim, zucke Natan!”
And the Greek Chorus then got off their collective rears and chanted:
Now mighty Zeus
His bolts doth hurl
And brings forth rain
On waters muddy
A myriad lotus leafs unfurl
Arising now from game and study
With poses supple to unite
Save placid pond from
Sword and spear
Complainers scatter
From their sight
Ere Judith’s final bells
We hear.
Namaste.
