Banana Learns A Craft

                                                             “…for something

                                              like history is trying to take place in secret meetings and bombs,

                                              something that does not include us, though we are there in force,

                                                            counting the dead”—Rodney Jones, Grand Projection

Banana grimaces and awakens from a slumber dominated by images of an immensely proportioned alien structure. His mouth opens into an elongated ‘O’ that soon begins to distort into the shape of a wobbling Hula-Hoop in decaying orbit around the waist of a child. Banana still bears the fading red stains from Tomato’s epic leak, and he doesn’t have much to say to his plump rubicund neighbor as a result. Moreover, he feels less and less inclined to join with the other fruits and vegetables in their daily rounds of gregarious gossiping and grimacing. He can grimace quite effectively all by himself, thank you; and he spends much of his time balanced against the rims of the Fruit Bowl, secretly hoping to fall out onto the hard floor below. Of course, for Banana, whose hide is thick and tough, this would barely cause any significant bruising, but might draw the attention of Hand.

Hand, of course, occupies that special place in the Fruit and Vegetable narrative, usually reserved for demons, monsters and ghouls. He—or she, as no one can really distinguish gender in Claymation—has five articulable digits, each capable of putting the squeeze on any produce item that is desired at any given moment. Worse, for the occupants of the Fruit-And-Vegetable-Bowl, is the fact that Hand has mercurial tastes, probably influenced by an unseen partner, and can be relied upon to do the unexpected. If Hand desires a Pepper, he might just grab Habanero, of whom the other Fruits and Vegetables have grown so fond; but, if Hand, wants an Apple, Red Delicious might get the grab, and will be remembered as he looked when ascending in the organism’s tight and strangling grip, as he rises into the depths of Kitchen never to be seen again. Hand, of course, makes no apologies; he is as Kitchen made him.

Banana slowly begins to sense that none of the Fruits and Vegetables is really that important in the grand scheme of things happening in Kitchen. This is disquieting in itself, but even more disturbing is the realization that Hand is the central player in the Claymation drama, and only appears to be a monstrous anomaly because the Fruits and Vegetables have been cast as edible bit-players. Banana is shocked and emasculated by this realization, and knows that he could never tell the others, as they will most likely get angry—thinking that this repugnant, but quite possibly accurate, insight is a reflection of his opinion—and end up tossing him out of the Bowl as a result. But it is not for Banana to decipher the complex tangle of creeper-vines undergirding his mysterious motivations. It is enough that Banana knows that he must leave the Fruit Bowl and find the truth.

Hopping out is easy enough. Some momentum and a push from the upended top of his black anvil crest—the umbilicus that once connected him to the collective banana consciousness that still seeks communion through symbolic reunification with the ‘Bunch’—is enough to pole-vault Banana over the rim and down onto the flat table surface below. Banana knows that he must descend to the lowest level of Kitchen in order to make it to the large and alien device that he has seen in his dream, which he is certain is just on the other side of a far plateau. Banana twists his elongated yellow body, goes into an unintentional small-‘o’ mouth-grimace and turns end-over-end like a Starfish until he builds up enough speed to glide down to floor level.

Star-fishing across floor level, Banana confronts his first obstacle in the form of a tremendous monolith whose sheer walls rise at too straight an angle for normal scaling to be effective. He realizes that this is the close-up view of the plateau on which the alien device resides. Getting to the counter-top will be tricky, but Banana is an inventive fruit of unfathomed intuitive capabilities. A single strand of fiber from his own hide will make the perfect tow-line that he can use to shimmy right up the sheer cliff face of this gargantuan butte; Banana, however, doesn’t want to compromise his body just for the sake of convenience, so he devises another arrangement. Using his own increased momentum, and an innate knowledge of a strange occult science called “Newtonian Physics”—which, Banana believes to be the ‘physics’ of Newts—he upends himself again and begins Star-fishing rapidly in a series of ever diminishing concentric circles. Once the circle begins turning in on itself, Banana uses the explosive thrust in momentum to corkscrew into a spiraling mass of centrifugally propulsive Caribbean fruit. He ascends off of the bottom level and into the rarified air of Kitchen, glimpsing the Claymation Fruit and Vegetable world in its totality for the first time.

The ‘Device’ is just as Banana has imagined it. It sits on a small platform, and has a large screen that is framed by a thin cladding of the same unknown material as the platform. When Banana looks at the screen, he sees an exact duplicate of the world he is part of—the Kitchen—but from an unusual angle. Banana adjusts his angle and is shocked by what appears. It is another Banana, who is staring back at Banana just across the narrow divide between his world and the world of the ‘Device.’ Banana tries to cross over, between the barrier, but the duplicate Banana steps in to prevent him from entering. Each time that he attempts to wedge himself against the screen so as to force his way into the ‘Device’ World, his opposite, immediately—as if through some form of telepathy—puts the identical part of his Banana physique against the screen to prevent Fruit-and-Vegetable-World, Banana from gaining access.

It is deeply frustrating, and Banana grimaces unwittingly, only to notice that his doppelganger has grimaced as well. Banana then turns his Claymation mouth into a wide ‘O’ grimace, denoting disgust. Device World Banana does the same, and at the exact same moment. Banana is horrified but secretly thrilled. His mouth opens and he intones, “What an amazing creature—it can read the intentions of other fruits!” Of course, no sounds actually come out of Banana’s open O-Claymation mouth, although he does sense a string of symbols denoting an identical meaning running across an unseen subliminal barrier. As expected the Device World Banana utters the exact same string of symbols. Fruit and vegetable World Banana is fascinated and perplexed. In rapid succession he displays an entire portfolio of grimaces, tweaks, undulations, gesticulating frowns, discombobulated sqwonks, and assorted clown-faces and fish-lips, all to his opposite counterpart, who does the exact same thing in the exact same order. There isn’t even a change in nuance. Both Bananas look across the barrier at their opposite, with a forlorn expression of resignation, tempered by the slightest hint of burning curiosity.

Suddenly, Fruit and Vegetable World Banana, has an epiphany. “It’s a duplicate, because it’s another me; if I can reproduce it on this side of the barrier, I can populate the entire Fruit Bowl with a never-ending supply of Bananas, with which ‘We’ can combat Hand. He can’t grab us all at once!” Banana is delighted with himself for having this insight and his Claymation mouth immediately converts into a half-circle grin. The question now is exactly how to go about reproducing Device World Banana, as another Fruit and Vegetable World Banana without upsetting the balance between the two realms. ‘But why should there be any balance between the two realms?’ wonders Banana. ‘Perhaps, the problem is in how I look at Device World Banana,’ he elaborates. ‘Maybe there is no Device World, only an apparatus which manipulates light, the way that Hand manipulates its five articulable digits.’

It is only a short Starfish-leap from this intuition to the realization that Banana can best reproduce a doppelganger by manipulating the Claymation realm itself. But doing this will not be easy, since Claymation is the bones and body of the Fruit and Vegetable World; and, getting outside of it is as impossible a task as standing at a distance from oneself to gauge the precise dimensions of one’s boundaries. Banana can sense however, that the Claymation World is not one continuous moment of uninterrupted movement, but a series of frames, each with a distinct beginning and end. Of course, if he shared this bizarre idea with the other Fruits and Vegetables they would think him mad, or worse, some form of charlatan. But banana knows that no matter how strange it sounds, his idea is true. However, if Banana’s very identity is construed as part of the Claymation World how can he retain the former while standing adjacent to, but not within, the latter? This is a question that Banana feels is unanswerable. Yet, he must try to do exactly this, if he is to be successful in his wild endeavor.

Banana stands rigidly, as if encased in petrified cantaloupe skin, and begins to visualize an invocation with which to summon Device World Banana over onto his side of the barrier. Banana now realizes that there is, in fact, no barrier, only a refracted world of light; and, that by extension, Device World Banana is also an illusion comprised of tiny seeds of light. Names have a tendency towards semi-permanence however, no matter what world one is residing in—and Banana still finds it irresistible to think of this apparition of luminescence as another version of himself. He slowly begins visualizing the spaces between the Claymation Fruit and Vegetable World and the unknown void from which it is generated; which he pictures as a series of tiny mandarin oranges dropping from a small chute onto a continuously moving conveyor belt. The oranges are as the frames in the Claymation world, and the conveyor belt is the passage of time, which makes it all appear continuous and uninterrupted. At the end of the Conveyor belt is a Hand. If there are too many oranges, the Hand cannot grab them all at once, so it picks a few and lets the others go. Banana sees this as a symbol of Hand’s limitations, as well as a something that diagrams the possibilities for fruit proliferation in the dangerous world of Claymation.

While lost in this stream of Claymation images, Banana begins reproducing his proxies on his side of the barrier. When he realizes that his plan is working, he becomes puzzled for a moment, as he doesn’t know exactly how he has managed to do this; but, it is enough, perhaps, that Claymation World has stepped in to actualize his fantasy and bring it within range of completion. The more Banana thinks about the process of making proxies, the more easily he is able to conjure them, until he finds himself in the company of over two dozen ripe and grimacing Bananas who are identical to him in every way.

Getting this group of gregarious fruits to listen to him however, is another matter entirely. They are all quite frisky, and, of course, resplendent in their thick yellow-hide jackets. Not one of them is interested in hearing what any of their counterparts has to say however, and they all seem to talk at once, sounding like a gaggle of cranberries in a swampy bog at harvest time. This is no way for mature Bananas to comport themselves, thinks Banana, before realizing that the circumstances here are actually quite exceptional. To speak with his proxies he must appeal to their sense of self-preservation; to their desire to save their smooth and lightly speckled yellow skins.

“Fellow Bananas, proxies, replicas,” he intones as a scrawl of obscure symbols passes underneath on a subliminal screen, “If you want to live, to ripen into the black splotchy sweetness of old age, we must all band together as a single bunch, and do our best to confuse Hand with our natural talents as imitation Claymation fruits.”  While the results are not as dramatic as Banana hopes, he notices that he has caught the attention of the proxies, who soon stop chattering, and indicate that they are prepared to make the journey back to the Fruit Bowl.

Banana can remember nothing of the journey back to the Bowl, he simply makes a seamless transition from imagining being back in the relative safety of the familiar redoubt, with his proxies, to actually finding himself in the same perch where he had been before his journey to the light-refracting ‘Device.’  ‘The Claymation World certainly acts mysteriously,’ he thinks. Now, however, he is surrounded by two dozen fellow Bananas, who are exact duplicates, and they are crowding out the other Fruits and Vegetables, who are grumbling at low frequency and grimacing large Claymation mouth-lip O’s. Hopefully, this will all be resolved soon, as Banana anticipates an oncoming Hand-grab, in the midst of the restive complaining and arguing that hovers about the Fruit Bowl like the sweet smell of oxygenating perishables.

Such whimsy is quickly put to the test when Hand emerges, mysteriously, from the outer reaches of Kitchen. It quickly grabs at Banana, but the proxies are waiting, and begin vibrating and moving about, trying their best to confuse Hand, who recoils in surprise. Banana’s anvil is shimmying like a crow caught on the roof of a barn during a thunderstorm, as he adds his intonations to the clamoring rustle amongst the proxies and the other fruits. Hand is at a loss for words, in a manner of speaking, as hand always does its hunting silently, and rears back as if in prelude to a charge. But Hand doesn’t charge, instead it seems to draw further into the recesses of Kitchen, and then goes down, like an apple knocked off a tree.

At first the Fruits and Vegetables cannot see where Hand has actually gone; but then Habanero Pepper, whose vision is first rate, indicates that Hand is lying motionless on the bottom level of Kitchen, the floor. Suddenly all of the Fruits and Vegetables are peering in the same direction, across the rim of the Fruit Bowl and down into the depths of Kitchen, to get a look at the now dormant apparatus. It is Tomato who calls it however, intoning that, indeed, ‘Hand is dead.’ For a second everything freezes, and Banana, momentarily believes that the Claymation World is playing its now familiar time-lapse games—that only he seems to notice—again. However, within seconds, the silence is broken with the loud vibrations of a Fruit and Vegetable cheer that causes a rapid transit of numerous arcane symbols across the subliminal screen below.

It is then that Habanero Pepper and Banana notice something odd. Hand is not alone, but appears to be attached to a larger apparatus, that consists of snaking limbs, a bulbous middle area, a large head-like protrusion, and—much to the chagrin of the Fruits and Vegetables who are gathered at the Bowl rim staring out at the monstrous manifestation in growing discomfort—another Hand. Banana points out, however, that neither hand, is moving, so he concludes, happily, that hand and its previously unknown brother, are both dormant, perhaps permanently consigned to the oblivion of non being. This promps the Fruits and vegetables to sing in unison: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah; Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelu-u-u-ja…Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hall-a-a-lu-u-u-jah… Hallelujah, Hallelujah; Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelu-u-u-ja.”

At that moment, as if inspired by the angelic singing of Claymation          Fruits and Vegetables, the head-protrusion begins to turn slowly. Suddenly, the eyes open, and they start looking around Kitchen, at first uncomprehendingly, and then with greater and greater awareness of what has just transpired. Banana looks at his fellow Claymation Fruits and Vegetables and thinks that he might have been premature in his assertion regarding the death of Hand. Now, there is a new and unfamiliar monster, and the denizens of the Fruit Bowl are all silent in nervous anticipation.

JZRothstein  11/25/2013