Variations on Thirst

They were both harassing him as if he were prey.  “Before you know what’s going on you better get your facts straight.”  He unwrapped a green piece of stick gum and started chewing fiercely.  The elderly, startled, awaited quietly in the access-a-ride van.  At first the driver was followed to the front and then to the back with demands for his papers and the whereabouts of “the gun.” An onlooker dialed 911 to place a complaint about their lack of “Courtesy Professionalism Respect.” The two retired to the squad car to write up a summons. They had to accuse him of something. He was crying as he called his boss. His only crime had been not getting out of their way fast enough. What did they want? He’d been helping a blind woman up the wheelchair ramp.  The wait for tickets was surprisingly long when I got inside. I heard her say how beautiful it was. I thought she’d meant the spring-like painting over the information desk, but it was a compliment for the arrangement of cherry blossoms.

Right angles fusing with no right angles. The claustrophobic fictional frame ignored. Formulas break up. Multiple tilts. Edgelessness. Flatness folded. Gold. Silver. Anodized aluminum. Stainless steel. Tin and paint turned into frozen displays. I watched as the guard demonstrated the collapsable hinged-metal cut shapes as he coaxed viewers to become participants and compose their own versions without set goals. Some did. Some didn’t. He told me that he answered their inquiries by sending them to the gift shop to see if metalgami kits were available for sale. She was accused with the disappearance of “art” as primary “object” in her replacement of it with an interactive vocabulary of touch.  Endlessly fluid, varying levels of one’s sturdiness shift. To be both inside and outside. Everything led there, unencumbered. I’d just missed one of the scheduled reenactments before heading downstairs for the film screening. She challenged the theories of confinement and restraint. You could see her gentle sweeping moves as she placed handmade vehicles of texture and sensation across his bare form as she glided him somewhere else. He savored the drops of honey on his lips as she lifted his veil of doubt.

She talked about how you could see the sky peering through the lace pattern carved at its top edges and the glow at night when lit from within. A towering 20’ bronze sculpture stood erect in a field surrounded by hills and forests. She didn’t mention whether they were going to record the sounds of the wind unable to pass through. I asked if she knew how many cedars had been milled in the making of the casting mold.  She had no idea. I asked if she intended this to be a statement about the ones cut and the ones still standing. I asked what the neighboring trees would then hear that she felt hadn’t yet been said. I thought about tamanu wood, pua wood and his desire to give back, to bridge what he made with what was.

There were three reception areas and three personal declarations to chose from. I signed the one about always saying what I mean. She told me to expect a document in the mail. I noticed that she had a crumpled up candy wrapper with a yellow smiling icon that I’d seen somewhere else. But she didn’t want to say much about it but only where to go. It was the same exact one that I’d found in my media sack and remember thinking how odd it was that they’d slipped a bag of chocolate covered marshmallows into it. I found out why after I’d stepped into the restaged installation of a candy making factory that mimicked the Columbian export facility in the town that he came from. At least the  visas for the workers from there came through as promised, but it was like an amusement park sideshow as you peeked through stacks of sealed up boxes. The smell was not very intoxicating like it had been around the block last year when they were cooking up chocolate for a skyscraper of over three hundred busts or the ones where she re-sculpted hers by licking. They asked if I wanted to volunteer in distributing free crates of this premier product into the 5 boroughs and share my stories about reaching out to communities. Maybe someone else would be interested in doing deliveries for their seven week ad campaign.

I didn’t have enough time before closing to linger among her trees. The stain of blood could still be seen on the sidewalk. I’ve always gone to see her exhibitions and not his. There wasn’t anyone around to ask whether they believed he’d really pushed her out the window or not.

Can you remodel everything?

They photographed swirling aerial perspectives and dropped manifestos from planes.  A crowd had gathered around the wall size translation from French into English of the 1909 declaration that had set fire to breaking down the doors of the “Impossible.” You could huff & ignore it, shout back, swallow your objections or recite without consonants.  Nothing is static. There is no forward speed in the past. Or is there? Her manifestos in response to his could easily go unnoticed: “The whole of humanity has never been anything but the terrain of culture, source of the geniuses and heroes of both sexes.” “Every woman ought to possess not only feminine virtues but virile ones, without which she is just a female.” “Art and war are the great manifestations of sensuality; lust is their flower.”

Details can be swapped or divided. No matter how hard he sought to categorize his scorn for women, he still showered her with love letters. Luminous aquamarines. Tempera & encaustics set the gazing tone. He was holding the catalog, so I approached him. He told me that they were thrilled when she asked to borrow the five panels on loan. It seems that she remembered seeing the mural at the post office in Palermo as a young girl. Some still feel that comparing museums to “cemeteries of empty exertion” continues to be relevant. Some feel that their inventiveness, the fury, the disruption is not clearly evident in this retelling. Some feel that all this is exactly what they were resisting.  Some still feel that they don’t want to eat from his fascist plate. Some feel that without them not much else would have unfolded. Does eating ice cream with raw onions make men weak?

A single room. Undisturbed.  Stormless. Two chairs and a small table.  One printed text to read. Sewn & bound.  Then he says the first thing aloud since he left the corner store: “Fuck it.”  One piece on the wall. Fiberglass. Epoxy.  Acrylic.

It was like a potluck without bringing a dish. Instead of around an elaborately constructed table, selected pieces perched on top in order to get conversations rolling. I understand that the stakes are high and that there isn’t much time for debate. He pointed out the tiny painted styrofoam eye hidden slightly in the corner as he whispered what it had gone for. She didn’t like that I questioned what she had written so perfectly on the chalkboard. Maybe it would have been better to come in through the back door. We were each handed a clear plastic bag and shown the moves for filling it up with swished air. We did exactly like him, pushing and pressing for sounds to arrive. He showed us a picture from Bali with fifty 26’ poles where the wind and bamboo serenaded the rice fields. Platform shoes lifted her 6 more inches. His bike design lifted him 6 feet higher. We talked about not getting the paintings’ historical double meanings. I noticed them pointing at a sculpted miniature man who was trying to keep balance on one exaggeratedly long leg. I think it was supposed to trigger secret memories. You know that feeling when you’re so hungry that you’ll walk into any place? We were just about to sit down. “Please don’t. There is a 2 hour waiting list.” He was so rude we were glad to leave.

We didn’t mind standing on their line. I ordered an everything, minus the hotdog. The slideshow was just ending. It was as if the streets were going wild for the grab of floating down dollars from an overstuffed piñata. The combinations of slows and quicks don’t seem to congeal.  Something no longer is present.