A Puppet Is a Mad-Man Is a Mothball

You are famous, but you are also old, maybe you've always been. You invite me into your home, sometimes a museum, probably a workshop, certainly a circle from Dante's hell, it smells of mothballs. It's for them, you say, beckoning casually to the shelves, cabinets, cases, end tables, and cupboards piled high with puppets, their eyes fixed on some past glory. The moths aren't fooled, you add, pointing around, but it makes the puppets feel better. Before me, I see faces I know from movies, ones I grew up with. How surreal to see these lives without life, taxidermied memories from childhood. They are also old. Latex, you explain, isn't meant to last, that any of them survived the movie business is a miracle. Clothing in tatters, paint chipping, hair in sloughed knots, not how I imagined movie stars at all. Some with rods, others strings, but the famous ones hold machines inside. Tiny gears for tiny hearts, tiny springs for tiny muscles, actuators to breathe for tiny lungs, transponders and receivers for tiny brains. But it is the eyes that amaze. You hand me a pair and I try them on. I see the past. 

 

You were younger, camped out in the Plaza, with the turquoise and silver, wedged between kachinas dolls, your booth, a pop-up mini theater, with pop-up Punches and put-upon Judys. It looked like a time traveler had missed his stop and somehow wound up in Santa Fe. Though I am in the Plaza too, I'm also still in your living room, and can hear your old bones slowly sinking into the mint-colored couch, itself resembling a movie prop. I can still hear your voice, mainly your breathing, labored after years of airbrush fumes, in a time before masks, a time before plague. Why did you play with dolls, why were you in the Plaza, why on earth did you use those ugly things? I point at Punch, accusingly. Punch's face fell, turning to hide a fragile ego under that suggestive hat. You answer in place of his ego, Dolls, puppets, marionettes, statues, kachinas, they are universal, in every culture, every language. This is the true time-traveler’s language. 

 

I twist the eyes, each iris a knob that takes me forwards or backwards in time. Now we're in Ireland, the home of parts of my own family’s unruly heritage. But I see not my family, but you, drunk, yelling at the locals. Maybe you fit in there better than I realize. No matter, you're making movies. From Santa Fe to Ireland to Hollywood, all carried on the backs of dolls, their thin armatures grinding as they carry your weight, which is slight, but your ego which is not. After that, you were famous. You made more movies and had more stories to tell. Like the time a legendary director (yes, that one) was in a nearby soundstage, snuck into your workshop and stole your ideas, the machina, the tiny engines inside the tiny souls. He got an award for that, some tall, gold, naked statue. The statue, a doll too, marched off in protest and now sits on your shelf; or perhaps you beckoned him like some neoprene pied piper. After that, you moved your workshop to your home, then moved your whole home back here, to the desert. It's good for their complexion, you said at the time, gesturing as you unpacked the faces, arms, loosened jaws. A lit cigar in one hand left a trail of smoke that underlined and punctuated each word, a lit fountain pen, the nib, a glowing cherry. 

 

I take the eyes off and am in the present again. You are retired and are famous-not-famous. Oh, you are known alright, for anniversary exhibitions of the movies, artwork, projects, and untold things which you've sculpted, crafted, carved, painted, and ultimately stuck your hand up as far as it would go to control; to control the eyes at least. They rush and fawn and ask a million questions. But none are about the present, or the future. It's not about what you're doing now, but what you did in the past, always easier to autograph a poster than a blank canvas. 

 

Now I try to find you, but you’ve gone. I can still hear your voice, but I think the couch has indeed finished swallowing you. Couches take a while to digest, like a snake having swallowed a hare, so I figure there's time yet to ask a few more questions before you're dead.

Why did they only care about the past? 

 

They needed new eyes, was the reply from the upholstery, a few wisps of cigar smoke escaping in between the charcoal gray throw pillows. With the eyes of a doll, they will see. There is a pause in your speech, as if one side of a record needed to be turned over to continue. We all need doll’s eyes, the ones God gave us are too big, they cause us to see too much, to want too much, to miss the small things, the slow things. You continue speaking as you emerge from the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee, a spot of rum floating atop. 

 

Huh. First the couch, then the kitchen, perhaps couches are a portal to other couches you have strewn about? Perhaps this is how you get around your house now? Couch travel is certainly the way to go, especially at your age, when every movement is labored. I give the eyes back. 

 

You sit down, this time on a wooden bench, it is a church pew you brought back from Ireland. I never asked how, but knowing you, it was probably put into a woodchipper, the chips used as stuffing, a doll made from the stuffing, the doll posed as your son, got a plane ticket, flew home with you, then regurgitated itself back into a church pew. It smelled of incense, of drunken nights, of green moss, white mothballs, and black pepper. It smelled of your past, before being famous, of being unknown, of being a small white kid raised near a reservation, spending your life not sitting on pews, not genuflecting, but helping those who were ignored, who could not stand or speak for themselves. You, not knowing their words, put a sock on one hand, and from it, spoke your first puppet. You learned the secret of kachinas, you made more dolls, you gave life. Through these, you spoke to the children, and they spoke back, being heard for the first time, they cried for joy and their tears formed a gentle river, which carried you around the world, and then to the Plaza, washed up driftwood your first Punch, an old tailor's dummy Judy. Their fighting made sparks, sparks which propelled you through life, a rocket sled to fame, and with no brakes, you just had to wait for gravity to catch up before you finally slowed down. 

 

You're in your workshop now (via the settee, I believe). You're on your second cigar, the first one, still smoldering, sits in a waist-high ashtray in the shape of Jeeves, his arm outstretched, holding a hinged cloche; tapping his foot makes the top open. It rusted long ago so won't close, the smoke filling the musty room, shafts of light coming through poked holes in the tin foil covering the windows. You turn on a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, then a lamp on center stage, then others out of scene until the room is, at last, bathed in light. Puppets, of course, line the walls. A large butcher block table sits in the middle of the room. On it are artifacts of prestidigitation: cups and balls, finger guillotines, silken handkerchiefs, sponge rabbits, tarot cards. You make a signed bill vanish, it reappears in a fresh lemon, as it's cut out, the juice spreads across the table. I remember as a kid using lemon juice to write messages in invisible ink, a candle flame making them reappear. As you talk, the lit cigar brushes across the tabletop, the heat causing a secret to appear, but it was brief. When you turn your back, I hurry to write it down, I will keep the note for later, in the hopes that someday I will understand. 

 

Meanwhile, you lay out tarot cards. Death has no interest in lemons, so joins The Fool and the Magician in a Celtic cross. This does not mean the end, you say as you tap the Death card with your wand. You tap the next, This is The Fool, but it means you’re better off not knowing. I notice that the Magician holds his wand like you do. He isn't here to trick you. The Magician creates. And this is my greatest creation yet, you say dramatically as you pull a velvet cloth from a large object. My own exit. 

 

The coffin is ornately carved. There are characters from the movies that made you famous, there's even a crude caricature of a legendary director (you know, that one), there's Punch, and at the opposite corner, Judy. Your pallbearers will be all the children you helped, all those you spoke to before the fame, all those you gave voice to, a way to share their words with the world. You will lie next to the first doll you ever had, the one they, in thanks, created for you as you floated away, the doll meant to watch over your spirit and guide you on its journey. 

 

What about all of these, I ask pointing to the city of dolls you've made, shall I leave them to the moths? Shall I wave a wand and make them disappear? Shall I carve them tiny coffins? 

 

No, you say as your lid begins to shut, in typical you-fashion, ratcheting down melodramatically, tied to the rhythms of a clock built into the base, the pendulum, your executioner. Take them with you, lead them out. They're a bit stiff, like me, so may need a moment, but will follow. Lead them now, they are your audience. I have made one for every person in the world. It may take you a while, but please deliver them. Give each a name and know the name of each who receives. They, in turn, will make dolls for their children, and children's children. In this way, we will all finally speak the same language, no magic required. 

 

You hand me one last card, The Hanged Man, and disappear into that piece of furniture, never again to reappear. Hmm. Perhaps this doesn't mean what I think it does. I untie the strings that hold The Hanged Man’s body. He falls from the tree but remains upside down. This is his new perspective, this is his guarantee that he would see the world differently from now on. I do the same. Upside down, the world suddenly looks hopeful. I march the dolls outside, they on the ground, me on the ceiling. We look for a place to begin. We look for someone to help. Someone who needs to be untied, or needs new perspective, or needs penance, or just needs a bench upon which to sit. We begin the story. We begin with you. Tell us your name, and we'll tell you the future.