7/25/1998 g.g.Ashbrook
It was a model horse and people had come from all over to see it. William Farrington had come all the way from Tulridge. Patsy Molenton had ridden a dog sled all the way from Tulumpter. It was the hole digging season and most of the people were out on their front lawns digging a few six inch by twelve inch holes, or twelve by twenty four, or some daring people digging elliptical holes, or pyramidal, and one boy --who sat paging through a book of apparently all bank pages never lifting a finger to dig-- insisted he’d been digging plainer holes all day, only they had no dimension of thickness so he admitted they were tough to spot, and sometimes even would fall down from the surface and right through the other side of the planet and begin an orbit about the sun. He wandered if these holes in orbit around the sun or around whatever they did circulate would accumulate over time; and if something would happen when there were enough of them. But anyway everyone was out on their lawn when they saw people gathering around the Milltoru’s place. People began arriving from all over as early as eight seventeen am. The first person there was George, and he spent the next hour making a true to life sized statue of the horse out of giant piece of Styrofoam. Then shortly after he left to have it fitted for an armor of tissue paper. Gladly Smiling Joseph McCaleraphrum pushed his thumbs into the earth around the base of the horse, nodding and excitedly dictating encrypted notes to a small clump of huddled cronies. Martha Primpot was sitting on the porch on the swinging bench next to Ms. Milltoru eating her Fired Oscar sandwiches on mill-pond and swinging out high over the crowds (as the porch had a roof at least twenty feet or so in height taller then the house). Hothulm, who was a thin man with a limp mustache who dressed in a dark suit, was wearing a sign which read, "Man In Charge," and urgently and with an air of great import he was making his way around taking people’s orders for food. Chimpazees riding on the backs of pigs began to arrive dragging behind them scale models of elevators on long chains, but no one seemed to pay much attention to them. Robinson Caruso was reportedly scene there, though without the proper verification of claims, riding in an automobile he’d fashioned entirely from sectioned geodesic petrified figs. Small children were walking around with baskets filled with oranges for the taking, some of which were wax and some the most delicious you have ever had the pleasure to try.
But further toward the middle the crowd began to undergo elaborate separations by patterns in clothing and tastes in movies though the people as individuals were simply standing where they felt most in place. From an aerial point of view the people were carving designs the likes of which being akin to those in Indian or oriental or middle eastern tapestries down to the simultaneous glittering of all the same jewels in jewelry, as if taking turns by type. And as the crowd was in continual shifting motion for so and who to get a better view the designs would change and flux but staying comparatively stationary as they changed over the people moving through them.
In further still the people began to realize they were all related. This man who you’d seen yesterday in the elevator was the brother of a person also in the crowd who you’d seen a week ago half way round the world, and their best friend from elementary school to the present moment is the girl your son just got engaged to, and then and there your all wearing exactly the same color shoes. And the man who you see getting a paper outside the Automate every Saturday is the grandson of your grandfather’s boy hood blood brother (which may seem insignificant) and also the subject of your uncles favorite and funniest crabbing story which you know as well as palm salt, and always wandered if it was true. And people find themselves hugging more and more people, and meeting more and more people they already knew one way or another as the crowd shifts. Most of the people are constantly in tears of joy and almost overwhelmed.
If you can get further in you find the expressions and phrases are moving around the people. If you say something, all the people around you say the same thing. You can’t help it, it just happens. Even if it’s something like blurting out where you went to dinner the night before. And yet at the same time people are still having conversations. As a group people are saying basically the same thing, but with distinct variation from one end of the group to the other. And so where all the differently shaped groups touch eachother various strings of conversation are going on; and somehow all synchronized so that coherent clusters of commonality wander over the people. And again, as the people are speaking they are only saying what it seems to them perfectly natural to say, it is all a great ongoing coincidence.
Just a step further in from that and everything you say comes out in perfectly rhyming dramatic verse, and often with musical accompaniment of unknown origin. And in from that what you say comes out with a kind of color and slight texture forming vague compositional works of art which act as background for the rhyming words you are using, giving it feeling and foundation. And in a bit further from that: objects come out of your mouth when you speak, objects which are the meaning itself which you intended as living, painted, breathing, changing, sculptures.
Jostled in the crowd John is nudged into someone else’s imagination. He falls in and out of romances and outbreaks of panic and laughter in post offices and visiting super markets of truths, linguistic styles, aisles of caned worlds pickled or in spring water or tomato juice but always dolphin safe. There are cook books at the aisle caps which recommend popular favorites for mixing worlds and for saying what theology will go well with what geographical aesthetic for an ideal clam gravy with a hint of reticent water falls and small labyrinthine towns, always low in sodium. And without any time having passed John Merthinfwitz is back in with the crowd of people, only to be tipped from behind into four consecutive life long relationships and a preview of the ancient lineage of the man named Walter who works at the fish market across town. A brief image of a few elderly people sitting huddled around a lost-and-found box of assorted memories in the pleasantly painted office of the elementary school they went to decades and centuries ago throughout time.
A few people would notice for the rest that if they looked closely at themselves, at their skin and their clothing, that they could see that it was comprised of the same layers of waiting shuffling crowds of people gathered around themselves. Moving ever inward towards themselves.
Many farmers came with buckets to milk the horse, as one milks a cow. But this simply couldn’t be done, and caused a lot of well humored confusion, and caused a lot of farmers to be standing around tentatively chatting about farm equipment. Lozenges of peppermint, licorice, baskets of steamed brussels sprouts, people drawling mazes on eachother’s backs, puzzle boxes of all shapes and sizes were being passed around, riddles would pass through the crowd at all levels. The people who petted the young horse seemed to be filled with more questions then the people who had yet to see it. Questions about the weather which were answered by an old soup recipe. Questions of shape and origin, answered by another question about the potter’s wheel. Questions about relationships unasked by the momentum of the same relationships through time folding and unfolding itself. Questions that turned into stories, often who’s characters were later seen in the crowd. Questions which stop, and some that start. But Ron, he’s been over by the long table trying to put a butter made from Almonds on a bread which is too weak and flaky and breaks under the force of the knife and viscous and adhesive nature of the butter. He tries and tries, different ways. He had a hat when he came which he since has given to someone else. He has one wandering eye, and thick eye brows. He desires to curtsy, or to spin on his head like a gyroscope on a table top, or along a telephone wire. He thought about gold fish in tanks and about how they sometimes suck in the stones at the bottom of the tanks and then spit them out again. He looked around and wandered what all the fuss was about. The crowd had now easily exceeded the town limits, and there were other crowds which had developed in other towns; or so they said. He thought about whether he was frightened to talk to the people around him, and then he felt how being bold would fix all that, but then back and forth indefinitely, as if the indecision of the first were simply looking for any vessel of circumstance, and the same for closure. He’d seen her around so many times, maybe they could go see the horse together? Or no, perhaps that was frivolous and absurd and presumptuous. Or no, perhaps all he need do is ask, to go out, to be forthright and direct. He could give her a drawling, or a piece of the bread, or some advice. He’d learn, he could smell that.