Wang Shu’s sacred phone!

Where is Wang Shu without her phone?!

Who is Wang Shu without her phone?

Can this really be happening?!

As she catches the jug Avigail has a sudden – unconnected – thought. She thinks.

Oh. I see … Everything is illumined. Of course. Everything is illumined –

speciality tea, cream jug …

Everything is illumined. Always. Constantly. Perpetually. Ineffably. Illumined. All of matter. Illumined. It’s just a question of quietly glancing down, focusing …

Ein Sof, in everything, NOW.

Ein Sof is always in the present tense.

Ein Sof never was. Ein Sof IS.

The broom clatters to the ground. The broom is illumined. Ying Yue makes no attempt to grab the broom because being hit by a broom (even an illumined broom) is considered INCREDIBLY BAD LUCK to the Chinese. Charles – who has very slow reflexes – does nothing. Morpheus is thoroughly traumatised by everything (the squawking, the sudden movements, the phone, the illumined broom) and piles straight into the illumined drying rack. The rack teeter-totters (Charles – finally spurred into action – stills it with a single, calm movement of the hand) and Morpheus performs a quick 180-degree turn, exiting the rack (head and torso obliterated by a T-shirt that reads: I support the right to arm bears).

Because Morpheus is unable to see where he is going, but is terrified, he (illumined cat) careers straight into the fallen (illumined) broom, panics still further, continues his forward momentum, smacks into the (illumined) fridge and is now moving at such high speed that he just keeps on going, runs approximately a foot, vertically, up the fridge, then performs an impressive loop-the-loop, or a back flip, or whatever it is.

Wow.

A cat falls.

A shocked silence.

Wang Shu starts laughing.

Oh shit.

3.

ASK ME ABOUT MY VOW OF SILENCE

Avigail is – and has always been – fascinated by the power of silence. Over time this fascination has expanded – quite naturally – into an important, secondary belief in the comparative pointlessness of words. She quickly noticed how her sole designation in the noisy, chaotic home of her childhood (as the middle child of five) was simply to peep-peep-peep like a bird. She’d open her mouth to speak (that deep inhale on the cusp of the first syllable) only to be stuffed full of worms (and ignored). Children, she discovered, were sometimes listened to yet rarely heard.

And the emotions? Fruitless things – hurtful, burdensome things – always standing in the way of progress.

Another revelation was her capacity to befriend – better still, to harness – the very thing that was once imposed (un-heard-ness). Her power – such as it was – quickly became a defiant holding-in. A refusal to engage. But expressed so meekly, at first. A gently tipped head. A cocked ear. Ah, to hear! To listen and remain quiet. To be lost-in-your-own-thoughts but still in charge of the map of meaning. To dumbly observe. To be hush hush hush! So exquisitely small! To take up such a tiny amount of space. To be so thoroughly modest and discreet and unassuming and … and … la femme n’existe pas … il n’y a pas la femme.