that monster there...

     When you have a job long enough, and work hard enough, and care just enough about everything there is to care about and do the right thing just enough to get into heaven with the platinum invitation, you can say to yourself, “I’m ready for the American Dream!” You work hard, very hard, and earn millions for the Boss, and for that he cheats you on your insurance, cuts your salary, and doubles your workload. You scratch enough money together to put a downpayment on a house, and when you look around for one, you find that there are more home’s you wouldn’t want to be murdered in than those you’d like to live in. The mortgage broker robs you, the previous owners despise you, the real estate agents - well, there are not enough words to describe that kind of disease - and the sub-contractors who will fix up your dream falsify their credentials, lie about their ability, deceive you about the scope of work, and are generally the kind of people you are trying to keep ou...

“We want something light, L-I-T-E like, you know - you know?” “I think I know. Like.” “Things that are very big, that’s light, right? Those big flowers, or those big dolls, or those big toys...” “Big sculptures. Big pop-sculptures.” “Yes.” “We put them in front of buildings, in parks, on the medians, perhaps you’ve seen the most recent works on Park Ave - I love saying Ave...” “...Giant cupcakes...” “Is that what they are? Haha, I thought they were rocks. Giant rocks.” “Boulders.” “No, I thought they were, like, giant rocks.” “Giant rocks are boulders...” “Now you’re just teasing me.” “Dick Dirkens.” “Yes, fabulous.” “He murdered his wife.” “But he got off.” “Ah, did she get better?” “Like?” “When he got off, did his wife get better, cause...” “She’s dead.” “How much are we talking about?” “Forty-five thousand.” “How big?” “Make it touch the sky.” “Everything touches the sky.” “They said you were difficult.” “Who are they?” “Everybody in the program.” “In th...

Tick... A memory, before the fear that came with Gus’s love - that’s right - It took a while  but that tiny crawdad got the best of the old man, and with love came the fear he never had for himself; fear of what the future had in store for his fragile boy, the hurt, the disappointment, the sharp promise of despair, failure and to top it off, the disease of death that already ran through his veins. So Gus hadn’t killed Crawly, no, he slowly tortured him with his love. His was a promise to inure the boy against the pitfalls of life; a plan to keep the boy’s head as low as possible, eyes down, close to the ground, with bruises and stumbling incorporated. That was Gus’s love: Bruises and Stumbling Inc.. Tick... But before all that there was something else, a pleasant feeling, one that came without the residual violence after the vice. It was the nearness of that feeling and the close threat to it, in the form of that guy - suddenly that stinking, lousy guy...

Of course it was Crawly on the staircase with half a mouth full of petrified bannister as that guy stumbled over Babe’s warmth and out the door. Crawly: one-half an angry inch from a dynamite-belt strapped to his own head, half that distance to dreams of explosive peace - a memory of something soft and compelling, a comforting space torturously tied, gagged and wrapped in fear. Ah, there’s nothing like a firm, well-ruled childhood! Tick, Tick... “You, you’re that guy from the first floor - what’s the guy from the first floor doing with Babe there? Huh? Guy from the first floor?” That guy still had his hand on the sweaty frame of Babe’s doorway, hadn’t even had a chance to expel the last breath of her surroundings from his lungs before he found himself stuck using that air to defend himself. And he did it, did that, using that very air, he said, “Crawly? You’re the son,” he said, quietly, nudging a soft cheek upward.  “The other one up there - Babe said so...” “Babe said what!?” spa...

“...Well, Thurmond Theery was unkind. My work, “String”, the first “String”, was a monumental statement about the inconsequential - or, more perhaps - a translation of the monumentality of the inconsequential - You know, as much as a room full of string can say about such a thing.” “You speak about a work, “String Three”, this one, a work where you literally string the continents together, literally. How so?” “Airplane and a big spool of string. Monumental spool of string. Strong stuff.” “I see.” “Do you? Really? Can you see it? The string, bakery string, draped hundreds of thousands of miles, over homes and forests, and tigers and little poor children starving to death - no one is absent in my art! - over oceans - give it a yank and draw up an ocean! Magnificent!” “Theery says you are a buffoon...” “I wrap time around my finger like one end of a yo-you string and bounce space up and down with a flip of my wrist, Theery can kiss my bank account...