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Artifice

Russ Bickerstaff

    Hers was an emerging personality. I had known her much better before she had turned five years of age. That was the point at which she had yet to go to school. Five days a week more or less full-time. In the afternoon she was tired and non-energetic. She was experiencing a lot of those first regular days outside of the home. Summer vacation came for her at the end of that first year. I found a familiar little strange thing out around the home. It was nice, though. It was a chance to reconnect.
    I had purchased a workbook so as to keep her limber and mentally flexible through the summer months. I marveled at how many letters and numbers and words she recognized. The ability to do simple math. Quite proud of her. It was what I would consider to be kind of a progressive workbook. In addition to the spelling and letters and numbers and words and things there were a little suggestions for physical activity. I carefully read one to her on a particular morning. It suggested that she stretch in a way that represented her favorite animal. It would be up to me to guess what animal it was. I explained it to her carefully and told her that I was going to go up to do some work. I directed her to call to me when she was ready to play the game.
    I hadn’t checked my email. I found myself getting lost in a few postings by a few different people involving infuriating little problems with the government. So much to get done but so little actually getting done. The question of representation is always suspect when elected representatives are at such a low approval ratings and yet they still managed to get reelected. Constantly reelected. And it’s the money that moved them. And they seemed to be getting less and less conscious of just how much they were lying to everyone. Completely unaware of their own dishonesty as it had become so much a part of the job description. My anger with that pulled out into the substance of the moment when my daughter called to me from outside the office.
    I walked out of the office and into the room where she was doing her work. Such a bright and fresh face smiling at me. She walked right up to me and looked me straight in the face and said that she was a frog. Clearly she had misunderstood me. Once again I explained to her that what we were looking for was for her to express the animal exclusively in stretches. No words. I would guess what the animal was. She smiled and nodded. She seemed to understand on some level. Satisfied that you seem to know what was going on, I told her to call me when she was ready and disappeared back into my office.
    I had intended on getting some work done. But I was lost in the comments section of a couple of different articles on current infuriating bits about certain politicians. The upsetting thing about the whole situation was the fact that just as the politicians were being duplicitous and increasingly unaware of their own dishonesty, so too did those who were championing their causes and even those who were criticizing were taking their own postures and their own poses. I began to wonder whether or not I would being completely honest in my reaction. And I didn’t even intend on saying anything. Didn’t even intend on making any comment. Anger mixed with confusion mixed with strange sense of existential free fall. It was fleeting and it was subtle but it was very definitely there. That sense of intellectual and emotional disorientation and anger and frustration. Very definitely there and very definitely real. As it was all so alarmingly real at that moment. Of course, it was all words. And that’s all that it ever was. Just words and abstract concept tied to learn to be circulating around various places. I tried my best to distance myself from the whole situation, but I found myself getting sucked back into it every time I tried to open files to get serious work done. I couldn’t help but notice the sound of my daughter outside my office. So it was time to pry myself away from the whole if you and move on to something altogether different. Something that I truly hope it was altogether different.
    So I walked into the room beyond the office and there was my daughter. Fresh faced and beaming with pride. She wanted to make sure that I was settled. I felt as though I was. I settled. She settled. We made eye contact. She crouched down and began speaking in a very calm voice. “Bow wow,she said. “Bow wow.” Her little lambs crouched and stretched in a very obvious and very familiar posture.
    “Interesting,” I said. “I think that’s a dog.” She stood up and smiled. She was beaming with the kind of pride I might have felt at that moment.
    “It is!” She Beamed. “I was making the noise used to.”
    “Yes,” I said, “yes you were.” There was a high-five. There was a hug. Simple animalism. Simple portrayal. A refreshing simplicity which may well echo in the future. That’s what I was hoping for. That may well have been when I was getting at that moment. Maybe I might’ve decided it would be a good idea to take the rest of the day off. I knew that I could only get more complicated from there. I knew that things were going to get impossibly complicated as things progress. This may have been the easiest interaction that she and I were ever going to have that had any sophistication at all. There was a kind of purity in that. There is a kind of a purity in that obvious duplicity. Probably a good idea to embrace that is much is possible. There was no telling what the next day would bring.

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