Bubble

It is called a “deluxe water ball assistant,” ninety-nine cents; “Made in China.”

It is a holiday scene suspended in liquid medium under an inverted aquarium. Solid figurines attached vertically to a horizontal faux base floor.

The only thing animated in clear, pristine silence are white faux snowflakes animated by shaking the bubble and letting each flake fall gently on the mannequins and the floor within.

So are our worshiped “American Idols”:

“Oh! If I could just touch a hem of his garment”; a lock of his hair/DNA sample/YOUTUBE unauthorized video performing God-knows-what (in the nude).

So are our worshiped “American Idols”:

Pop stars like:

- Lindsey Lohan;
- Britney Spears;
- Todd Bridges;
- Michael Jackson…

Politicians like:

- Mark Sanford;
- John Edwards;
- John Ensign;
- Bill Clinton…

Sports figures like:

- Dennis Rodman;
- Michael Jordon;
- Kobe Bryant;
- Tiger Woods…

We insist they behave in our preconceived parameters of their caricatures in our minds.

We participate like paparazzi vultures with the 4th estate in yellow journalism, hypocritically scripting their lives (and not our own).

We do not appreciate the blessing and gift of walking into a mart, a mall, a grocery store without thought of where our security detail is because we might get MAULED (or our lives threatened/our reputations blackmailed).

We assail them as we shake their bubbles.

Eventually we shake…
And shake…
And shake…

Until lateral forces starts a quake in the very structure of the mannequins’ unsteady base. Micro cracks and fissures appear at the microscopic level and manifest macroscopically in listing one side or the other, then eventually: both – sometimes all at once.

The cracks get larger until…

The figurine teeters and falls, like the flake, acceleration due to gravity cushioned by the viscous fluid as it falls gently to the faux floor.

And,
Since we can’t reach into their watery other world,

Where other rules of physics and reality apply to affect repairs:

We shrug!

And
We
Throw
IT

Away.