Capitalism
The merchandisers flowed into the central arena and warped a bit of spacetime to make some delicacies, whose uses, virtues and (in one instance) inhibitions they propounded to one another in highfalutin tones. "I'm just sitting on the modicum of recalcitrance this fright of a hedgehog transmits to the holder." "You may canvas all tiny reactions and canvas all giant reactions, but you'll never canvas the full range of deeply-felt sympathies this food processor brings out even in organized criminals." "Journey far, journey near, but don't journey at all unless you've got Stealth Unaccoutered. Stealth Unaccoutered is not ridic, wan or shafted. Stealth Unaccoutered is handiness standing."
This was intimacy unalloyed!
An actor wandered into the show and declared to the assembled his love for the moment, his desire for rest unrelenting, and his mostly unexpressed hate for The Things That Were Wrong With the World. His tears streamed down to his feet, right past his genitals, which were quaking with all the sundry tenacities of a grand motive. The merchandisers bawled, they leaned upon one another's shoulder and ran solicitous hands over one another's chest and belly, and their tears ran down to their feet past their genitals, which were shifting hither and yon with all the confusions of psyches aroused and unmastered. The actor bowed, shuffled backwards and out, and the merchandisers fell upon one another with tales of wives, houses and heroin.
Then there was an intermission, with the kindest merchandisers standing upon footstools brought by other merchandisers, and proclaiming the meaning of rest: "Rest, that stippled pond. That snowfield caught up in banks like bunched velveteen. Take your rest, good merchandisers, for the needs of the day are upon us, nearly, and something remains to be done." The footstools were rendered back to the appropriate parties. A fine bliss of hominess shot through the bunch.
During the second half, things were returned to their constituent elements by a master disassembler in from the sticks. He knew tires, nutcrackers, galoshes, computers, and the patented essence of farce. The merchandisers ran to catch each part as the master disassembler hurled it into the audience, hurl hurl, not even alerting the audience with his patter of each hurled part. "Gonna snap, crackle, pop, 'cause the din of the mustard's a-courtin' the mousse. Shriek and unbend, freak and relent, there's nothin' but shaftedness here." His beard reached down to his genitals, which had lain in wait for seventy years now; he displayed them for a moment, and the merchandisers oohed, for there was a religious element in all of them.
Then the music began. The music was enormous, there were tympani galore and all manner of beauteous, shimmering trills and mordants in the violins, and a mighty fine pianist squandering riffs on the Steinway as if riffs were replenishable. The conductor had a moustache and tackled the trumpets at one point, launched himself into the air over the second violins and landed smack dab amidst the trumpets, whom he tackled to the ground, bending their instruments into amusing animal shapes which he threw to the merchandisers as tokens of his and his orchestra's affection. He was a devoted conductor, anyone could see that, and the merchandisers applauded with one heart, and something was improved in the spirit of American enterprise.
Finally dusk threatened from the distance. "Ho," said a merchandiser, "if I am not mistaken that is a mass of dusk on the horizon, looming." "Yes," said another, "I wouldn't warrant a nay to that augury." "Ho then," said the first, "it's high time we pealed out of here, no? Come dusk, come dark, as they say." "Come dusk, come dark," said the second, wiping his nose, "but I'm not entirely sure of this particular configuration. Still..." "I know what you mean," said the first, "you mean we are blessed by the lightbulb." "Yes." "Ah."
The lights were lit with some ceremony and the merchandisers gazed into each other's eyes in the new extra brightness. They remained in the arena for hours and hours, for there was depth to their delicacies, and endless uses, wants and even inhibitions that wanted propounding, and only a lifetime for all.