Salome

Leaky Heaven Circus's production of Salome is one of the most amazing theatrical productions I have ever witnessed. It had beauty, nudity, music, gymnastics, comedy and tragedy. Rather than send up the play, they took the totally unique approach of squeezing every laugh that they could find out of it. The costumes were sensational. There are some sequences that will genuinely stay with me for the rest of my life.

I hope some of you got to see it. It will never be recreated. This is why live theater can be an amazing experience.

I aim to see me some more live theater in the future.

Love's Arrow has a warhead

This shambling baby walks upright across the white marble floor of Heaven.
This one year old has the thousand-yard stare of a Vietnam veteran.
This is a baby that has had to keep up with earth’s latest stealth detection technology.
This is a baby that is more machine than child.
This is a borg baby. This is a baby designed by Giger.
This is a Cupid.
This is a modern day Cupid.

His chubby left arm disappears at the elbow, swallowed in the maw of the elbow socket for the Arrowchain gun. It’s a prosthetic weapon. It drags on the floor. His ravaged little face is poked through in places for cables that snake back into his head. There are a series of copper tubes that arc across the back of his little skull. These are the cooling units for the Heaventech computers that map his synapses. They burn his soft skin where they enter his skull. His head is hot with the tactical knowledge he needs for his strikes. Little glowing blue circuit maps dot his little brain. This baby gurgles with an ancient tiredness. This baby can go invisible to the naked eye and seventy three other types of scanning devices at a thought. He has camouflage like the Predator. His skin is pale and peppered with varicose veins. He hasn’t slept since his creation. They are worked until they die. It used to be a pleasure to bring love to Earth back when there only a few million of the monkeys running around. Now there are billions. And they expect the Cupids to keep up. They improve the armaments but don’t give them any more units.
The traditional sheet wrapped around his class of angel is black with oil and urine. The cherub’s sheet has rips in it from breaking sound barriers over seven continents. It hasn’t been changed in weeks.
Three thousand, four hundred and fifty six cherubs are expected to patrol the earth and pepper it with love in an organized pattern. They are tired but holding on. Almost none of them have gone rogue, rebelled, or destroyed themselves in over a year.
This baby shambles up to Mission Dispatch.

The Bigboard.

The board is black.
It hangs in the center of the white room like a widescreen television.
“Q4CF55. Magnify Calcutta” whispers the child, dust in its throat.
The board’s blackness starts to bubble.
“Magnify to 3. Track right. Truezoom to 2.”
The bubbling blackness becomes a swarm of black dots on a white background.
“Light ‘em up.” Says the cupid.
One of the dots turns red. Cupid Q4CF55 sighs. Steam rises off of him like he just got out of a hot tub on a cold day. His left eye narrows. His right eye can’t narrow because it’s glowing yellow and was installed over five years ago.
“Give me the match.” Hope sounds in the child’s rasp.
Another dot turns red.
The cupid slumps with relief. They’re in the same city. They’re in the same class of society. They already know each other. Their union will break no laws. This’ll take less than an hour. The baby turns, gun barrel scraping along the floor as he walks to the bay doors. He pauses as the blackness and the wind open before him. It snaps playfully at his sheet. He leans forward like he’s falling out of a window. Like he’s tossing himself off of a diving board. He is sucked into the jetstream. He’s on his way to Calcutta.
He plummets towards the earth through a midnight sky, the lights of Calcutta swimming up to meet him. All he can hear is the wind rushing past his little left ear. His right ear is plugged in, scanning ahead for sounds of traffic and radio chatter. It’s never quiet inside the baby’s head.
It’s never quiet inside the baby’s head.

Minyasin is eating curry in her restaurant and thinking about tomorrow’s plans and tomorrow’s orders. Suddenly she starts thinking of Dhaljit, the cook’s younger nephew. He’s too young for her but she can’t get him out of her mind all of a sudden. She’s a little surprised at how turned on she’s becoming just thinking of his big brown eyes looking at her.

Cupid shoots people in the head, not the heart. He removes their capability to think until the love has run its course.



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