Laurence Unger							
(R)E: pluribus unum

Poitevin woke up that day and was not surprised about it.  In fact, Poitevin did not think anything of it at all, but nevertheless Poitevin was constantly thinking. Poitevin was not just thinking -- but thinking and rethinking and rethinking. 
Poitevin never turned off the TV.  It went on all day and all night.  There was no falling asleep without it, in silence.  The quieter things got outside and around Poitevin, the louder things got inside Poitevin’s head. The TV and Poitevin’s head were in a continuous struggle.  Without the TV, Poitevin could well have thought and rethought and thought and rethought and thought to the grave – now that was something to think and rethink about!
	Poitevin did not mind what was on the TV.  The channel was hardly ever changed, and Poitevin never paid much attention anyway.  Poitevin kept away from books though.  Books did not help.  Poitevin’s voice was still in Poitevin’s head with books.  Poitevin tried reading aloud, but that just led to perplexity about Poitevin hearing Poitevin’s own voice coming in from the outside, just like a newscaster on TV, except it was Poitevin’s self.  The perplexity just led to the same process: thinking and rethinking and thinking and rethinking and thinking…
	Who is this Poitevin character anyway?  Perhaps Poitevin would be better served if left to introduce themselves.  “Themselves”?  Yes, Poitevin is indeed a single individual, but, as Poitevin had read on a quarter once right above the head of the majestic eagle, “E pluribus unum.”   And Poitevin thought and rethought that there was a lot of sense in that, but Poitevin was thinking about personalities.  Poitevin was one from many and from many one, like so many, or so Poitevin thought and rethought.  But let’s get back to the unfurling of the chorus’s single mouthpiece’s day.  
	Poitevin had no job.  Many would have casually said that Poitevin had no identity.  All Poitevin had was a never-ending monologue with Poitevin’s self of thinking and rethinking and thinking again.  If Poitevin spilt a glass of milk, if Poitevin forgot to water the fern, that was all it took: Poitevin was off!  Thinking and rethinking.
	Poitevin had a fern and kept it in an extraordinary flowerpot.  Sometimes as the setting sun’s last bright, bloody rays grasped desperately at the window sill trying to cling onto the life of another defunct day, the bluish and bruised metallic rim of the extraordinary fern’s flowerpot would shine so morosely that it would positively drive Poitevin to lunacy.  This depressed flowerpot introduced itself to Poitevin by coquettishly manipulating Poitevin’s mother into a perverse and insatiable desire to upgrade Poitevin’s beloved fern.  Poitevin’s mother and all her weighty costume jewellery shuddered every time they were faced with Poitevin’s anarchic and disgraceful disregard for decorating. From Poitevin’s mother’s vantage point, Poitevin’s fern, which had lived the simple life in a reddish-brown plastic pot with some longish roots growing out of the drainage holes in the bottom, was a slob just like Poitevin.  Fearing disgrace would fall upon the family from an outsider’s opinion of the Poitevin’s poorly manicured plant, “Mama” had thrust the dark, metallic flowerpot into Poitevin’s life and the fern’s.  The flowerpot’s relationship with the fern was then promptly and rudely forced by “Mama” who shoved the fern inside the new dark-complexioned and sad piece of pottery (Poitevin called it “crockery” in private and tittered) as a symbolic act of consummation.  Dissatisfaction reigned. Ever since the fancy flower pot incident, the fern never seemed to have the same respect for Poitevin.   Why couldn’t Poitevin have stood up to “Mama” just once?  There was clenching of teeth and beating of breasts.
	“You’ll be the death of me!” exclaimed Poitevin at once viciously and timidly.  It was unclear whether Poitevin was addressing his mother or the flowerpot.  Poitevin ran to the corner of the room and started whispering things furiously at a cobweb.  It was difficult to distinguish Poitevin’s groans from Poitevin’s words and agitated sniggering, “hragh…pots, stupid…hrumpfda…cockamamie…hehe… ‘cocka-Mama’…right…rawr”
 	“Mama” knew what was best.  Poitevin sat in the corner for hours thinking and rethinking of solutions and resolutions to solve or resolve the situation.  A proud fern is no friend of a frivolously melancholy flowerpot, and, indeed, all of Poitevin’s friends had flattered the flowerpot and had ceased taking notice of the abundant, green foliage coming out of it, which was all the fern’s hard work.  The fern had become like an exceptional wig that might have strolled around the parks of Versailles in the early 18th century on the head of a pink-cheeked, blue-eyed marquise, and the flowerpot was the fair head, so beautiful, so fragrant. To be sure, that flowerpot had accessorised and sidelined the fern.  But even that success did not cheer that morbid piece of pottery up with its elegant little painted guppies, which looked like they were releasing little bubbles from their bright mouths whenever beads of perspiration gathered on the flowerpot’s side from a recent watering.  Absolutely everything charming about the flowerpot soon succumbed to its unexplainably wretched and gloomy outlook.  Soon the peaceful little guppies on its sides seemed to be gasping for freedom from the dark, geometric patterns that surrounded them, especially at dusk as the setting sun’s last bright, bloody rays grasped desperately at the window sill trying to cling onto the life of another defunct day… Poitevin sank even deeper into safe, secure repetition.
	Aside from hopelessly trapped painted guppies on a life-ruining flowerpot, Poitevin had friends, and Poitevin could not stand them, and, to be honest, they were not too fond of Poitevin these days.  With friends, things had to be thought and rethought out even more.  Poitevin preferred to interact with ferns and TV commercials.  Poitevin thought and rethought that the best thing to do about this was nothing.  At least nothing that required thought or rethought.  Poitevin was not a Poitevin of action; Poitevin was a Poitevin of thought and rethought.   Breathing, blinking, ageing, yawning:  all of these activities seemed alright.  Poitevin did not have to rethink about them.  Quite frankly, Poitevin had come to see his friends as combustible catalysts, waiting to set off the thinking and rethinking…just like that flowerpot!  And yet Poitevin felt loneliness.  Poitevin needed a new companion.  Relations with the fern were tense, and, anyway, there was nothing to be done about the flowerpot.  
A new companion…  A cactus would do nicely.   Together they would just… live!  Be alive! Respire!  The cactus’s spines would grow in tandem with Poitevin’s hair; everything would be in unintentional harmony.  
	Yes, that was how Poitevin and his fern had once lived, in symbiotic harmony; the fern would exhale oxygen, and Poitevin would inhale it, and Poitevin would exhale carbon dioxide, and the fern would inhale it.  But what if the balance were to be suddenly thrown off? What if the fern became jealous of the new cactus? Suddenly Poitevin felt truly threatened by the fern, the fern that had once been Poitevin’s dear friend before the flowerpot had come between them.  That was how it went, thought Poitevin, treachery and betrayal were everywhere.  It was over between Poitevin and the fern.  For once, Poitevin thought it out straight.  The fern was the enemy, and the fern knew.  Suddenly the fern started sucking away at Poitevin's very life-sustaining breath… Poitevin couldn’t breath.  For once, again, there was no time to think and rethink.  Desperately Poitevin ran for the door.  Poitevin had to get away from the fern!  Poitevin stumbled down the stairs and ran out into the street.
	“Air, air, air, I think I need air,” thought Poitevin.  
	Poitevin was about to start rethinking about that and about how to make amends with his fern when suddenly Poitevin’s mother came road-raging around the corner in her SUV and slammed right into Poitevin.  Yes, in that one moment of just thinking and not rethinking, Poitevin had met Poitevin’s end.  Poitevin would never think or rethink or rethink and think again.  “Mama” had been trying to rush to get Poitevin a highly cultured teapot that would not take no for an answer.
To the people outside who witnessed the tragedy, it did not really seem that the fern had actually been such a big threat to Poitevin after all. It was, de facto, quite a long time before the ensuing investigation brought to light some fascinating, personal details about the ill-starred Poitevin, which led to some intriguing discoveries about the cataclysmic role of a certain depressed flower pot and its guppies.  Poitevin’s mother arranged to have her beloved flowerpot placed prominently on Poitevin’s grave without the fern, which she donated to a charity flower show in an act of unparalleled selflessness.  At the end of the day, Poitevin’s mother had never liked the fern, and, anyway, it had withered to a pitiful shadow of itself in Poitevin’s absence with no one to water and re-water it.

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Laurence Unger graduated in 2005 from University College, Oxford, with a B.A. in Modern Languages. Recent artistic accomplishments include a Bronze Award for a screenplay entitled The Nose and the Nutcracker from the Houston International Film Festival and a showing in an art exhibition at Agora Gallery in New York.