Part Fourteen
So, I essentially got in the phone booth, stripped down to my super-outfit and made my powers known to the world. I became the least likely of heroes with the power to see things the way they really were and to categorize them accordingly. Figuratively stripped down, of course. I didn’t want reports of a madman running about in his drawers marking up the city. I assumed, and I was right as it turned out, that, as long as I wasn’t naked, it would matter very little to people what I was doing.
I started out at the stroke of ten, a church conveniently located nearby sang out this fact from her bells, in no way physically prepared to take on my mission, hobbling on my bad knee, careful and guarded of my ribs, my neck so stiff now that I could not turn my head at all. But mentally, I was as ready as the day I’d stepped out of my office, the anthem of Yes’s on my mind, drumming the rhythm of my approach and follow-through.
Door, office center, car hood, window, letter, another door, sidewalk, stop sign, mailbox, brick, post, postit, elevator, button, floor, piss stain, light, light bulb, coat hook, water fountain, book, table, chair, softer chair, carpet, molding, jamb, secretary’s hand, glasses, curb, line of tar, cigarette butt, shell, casing, bench, relentless advertising, chip of paint, more sidewalk, more street, line of division, crosswalk, another door, tile, picture, frame, glass, symbol for woman, symbol for man, stall door, stall wall, graffiti, proposal, untruth, tank, lid, rim, handle, drain, pipe, sink, counter, mirror, trash bag, receptacle, paper towel, toilet paper, handle, line on the wall, photograph, child, dog, blurry grass, footpath, mortar, paint, ceiling, fixture, texture, stool, cast, leg, jacket, bus, tire, hub, bumper, window, windshield wiper, another handle, ticket stub, rearview mirror, stray dog, collar, tag, belligerent old bum, baseball cap, post, line, booth, another bench, another bench, lost and found poster, missing person’s poster, missing persons, cork board, wall stain, front door, front of building, side of building, back of building…
And on, and on, and on went I, envisioning as I went my copious work coating the city in a beautiful blanket of yellow squares and quasi-permanent black marks. And all the while the Yes, Yes, Again Yes in my head, and the pain thrumming through my body. I had given up right away with the idea of classifying anything according to the Dewey Decimal System. No one knew what the hell any of that meant anyway, especially if it wasn’t on the spine of a book. Besides, ol’ Dewey, despite his efforts at making the categorization of books as scientific as possible, was inherently ethnocentric, giving far more room numerically to Christianity and the history, literature and science of Anglos than he allotted to anyone else. I wanted to be more blunt and objective, calling things exactly as they were without regard to political correctness or Dewey’s prejudices.
When I went behind the bus station I found that the leveled ground fell away from the back side of the building down into an open trench, a tributary of run-off from the city’s gutters. I slide-stepped down to the concrete edge to get a good look at the run-off water, curious if it was as nasty in reality as I had always imagined. I’d forgotten though about the recent dry spell we’d been enduring and the culvert was, of course, dry.
I glanced up and down the length of the waterway, turning my shoulders with my head to avoid the severe pain in my neck, looking for any remnant sign of the water or waste I’d imagined would be there, but it was clean and dry as far as I could see. Up the way something lay across the culvert, spanning the banks from concrete edge to concrete edge, and I moved in that direction to see what it was.
Hobbling along the edge of the trench was precarious since I was unsteady already, walking across a slope and trying not to fall in, and paying too much attention to the thing that lay across the culvert. But I made it. I slowed my last few steps as I realized what the thing was. This thing – this nearly rotten, sun bleached and warped thing that lay across the culvert changed everything. It changed everything about my mission and it changed everything about my perspective. And, before I was finished there, such a rage would well up in me that I would smash this thing to pieces, screaming and scattering its constituent parts as far as I could fling them.
I started out at the stroke of ten, a church conveniently located nearby sang out this fact from her bells, in no way physically prepared to take on my mission, hobbling on my bad knee, careful and guarded of my ribs, my neck so stiff now that I could not turn my head at all. But mentally, I was as ready as the day I’d stepped out of my office, the anthem of Yes’s on my mind, drumming the rhythm of my approach and follow-through.
Door, office center, car hood, window, letter, another door, sidewalk, stop sign, mailbox, brick, post, postit, elevator, button, floor, piss stain, light, light bulb, coat hook, water fountain, book, table, chair, softer chair, carpet, molding, jamb, secretary’s hand, glasses, curb, line of tar, cigarette butt, shell, casing, bench, relentless advertising, chip of paint, more sidewalk, more street, line of division, crosswalk, another door, tile, picture, frame, glass, symbol for woman, symbol for man, stall door, stall wall, graffiti, proposal, untruth, tank, lid, rim, handle, drain, pipe, sink, counter, mirror, trash bag, receptacle, paper towel, toilet paper, handle, line on the wall, photograph, child, dog, blurry grass, footpath, mortar, paint, ceiling, fixture, texture, stool, cast, leg, jacket, bus, tire, hub, bumper, window, windshield wiper, another handle, ticket stub, rearview mirror, stray dog, collar, tag, belligerent old bum, baseball cap, post, line, booth, another bench, another bench, lost and found poster, missing person’s poster, missing persons, cork board, wall stain, front door, front of building, side of building, back of building…
And on, and on, and on went I, envisioning as I went my copious work coating the city in a beautiful blanket of yellow squares and quasi-permanent black marks. And all the while the Yes, Yes, Again Yes in my head, and the pain thrumming through my body. I had given up right away with the idea of classifying anything according to the Dewey Decimal System. No one knew what the hell any of that meant anyway, especially if it wasn’t on the spine of a book. Besides, ol’ Dewey, despite his efforts at making the categorization of books as scientific as possible, was inherently ethnocentric, giving far more room numerically to Christianity and the history, literature and science of Anglos than he allotted to anyone else. I wanted to be more blunt and objective, calling things exactly as they were without regard to political correctness or Dewey’s prejudices.
When I went behind the bus station I found that the leveled ground fell away from the back side of the building down into an open trench, a tributary of run-off from the city’s gutters. I slide-stepped down to the concrete edge to get a good look at the run-off water, curious if it was as nasty in reality as I had always imagined. I’d forgotten though about the recent dry spell we’d been enduring and the culvert was, of course, dry.
I glanced up and down the length of the waterway, turning my shoulders with my head to avoid the severe pain in my neck, looking for any remnant sign of the water or waste I’d imagined would be there, but it was clean and dry as far as I could see. Up the way something lay across the culvert, spanning the banks from concrete edge to concrete edge, and I moved in that direction to see what it was.
Hobbling along the edge of the trench was precarious since I was unsteady already, walking across a slope and trying not to fall in, and paying too much attention to the thing that lay across the culvert. But I made it. I slowed my last few steps as I realized what the thing was. This thing – this nearly rotten, sun bleached and warped thing that lay across the culvert changed everything. It changed everything about my mission and it changed everything about my perspective. And, before I was finished there, such a rage would well up in me that I would smash this thing to pieces, screaming and scattering its constituent parts as far as I could fling them.
© 2006Labelman
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