Arletta: What does it mean, being an animal? Acting beastly? What is an animal? What does an animal want?
Ellington: Eat, sleep, multiply. Is there any more?
Arletta: Life itself – what’s that for the animal?
Arletta: What is it like being a jackdaw?
Ellington: What’s on her mind?
Arletta: What’s life about for a magpie in November?
Ellington: What’s life about for a woman in October? And what does the animal in her want? We are mammals, however. Is that what you mean?
Arletta: The human beast.
Ellington: I don’t think we should imagine animals as having the same feelings as we humans. Like love and hatred.
Arletta: No, but we are animals. And I think we need to practise accepting and understanding that.
Ellington: So what does the animal in us want? Eat, sleep, multiply. Is there any more?
Arletta: Do you really know the animal within?
Ellington: Do I? The animal in me.
Arletta: I’m friends with the animal in me. Are you?
Ellington: The beast in me, is it friendly minded?
Arletta: Are you maybe a badger? Among other things.
Ellington: And horses? When they roll over on their backs. Is that a sort of beastly pleasure?
Arletta: Is it really? Beastly?
Ellington: This horse. Does it want anything more than eating, sleeping and multiplying?
Arletta: Don’t you think so?
Ellington: And by the way – is the human body’s pleasure just human?
Arletta: Our bodies also know something about being a horse. I think so.
Ellington: What does a snail know? About beauty and aesthetic pleasure?
Arletta: What do your hands know about aesthetics and beauty. And what do they say about our human and our animal side?
Ellington: Our Animal Side? Do you think that we humans might have an insect anima somewhere in our biological structure?
Arletta: Do I? Have an insect anima in my body?
Ellington: An insect anima? The animal in me – what does it say?
Arletta: Can you hear it?
Ellington: … I’m listening …