Warming Trends

I am walking now. Someone is walking with me. She says, what will you say? This suggests, I will soon be talking.

I consider. They say walking the walk is the reality, while talking the talk is only bragging. That suggests a progression. Well, I'm already walking, and I didn't have to plan for it. So what do I need to study talking for?

But I look for a loose scrap to fill in notes. A magazine subscription request. I turn it over to see is there white on the back.

I think of Marilyn. She invented walking, in the movie Niagara. Long takes of her moving away from the camera. Walking scenes. I'll bet she didn't need more than one take on each of them, but I don't know. She sure needed plenty of takes on talking scenes; in Some Like It Hot she wore out her co-stars by messing up takes, some 70 in a row sometimes. That may be a record. For 70 clapboard snaps, she'd walk up and say, like, "It's Sugar, me."

Chaplin said the camera should be still. The only reason you move a camera is to film walking, and walking isn't dramatic. I wonder if he ever saw Niagara.

I am expected to introduce my new play. It's to be performed by a high school. I'm no longer in high school. I wasn't aware I would have to speak tonight. Isn't the play supposed to address itself?

Well, no. At least, I hope not. The play is about the fallacy of faith. There is a scene where guys out on the Chosin Reservoir are very cold, then they are glad, because their hands and feet are starting to warm up now. They can't feel the cold, then they can't feel anything. It's a light-hearted comedy, and nobody will catch on, so I'll just tell them it's all about global cooling.

Nobody ever knows anything. I used to worry about that, but I soon warmed to the idea.