Sunday, March 30, 2008

Defeat




Defeat

It wasn’t Hera or their children or his jealous brother Hades. When Zeus fell it was finally to Christopher, patron saint of truckers and long haulers.

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

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April 8, 2008 at 9:36 PM
Anonymous said...

It wasn’t Hera or their children or his jealous brother Hades. When Zeus fell it was finally to Christopher, patron saint of truckers and long haulers.

April 15, 2008 at 10:36 AM
Anonymous said...

Off to another modern art museam, to be stared at by hoards of field-tripping elementary school children. All in a day's work, all in a day's work. But how many sights I have seen as I've travelled the country on the backs of giant trucks! Makes being a huge shiny statue seem almost worth it. If only this rope across my mouth wasn't so coarse...

April 24, 2008 at 8:38 AM
Anonymous said...

Oops, forgot the rest of my identity:
www.mindsprocket.com

April 24, 2008 at 8:39 AM
Anonymous said...

“So, do you have any tips?” I asked Snipe, poised at the kitchen table with a pad and sharp pencil.

“Anyone can make a parade float,” Snipe said. “Don’t worry about it.” And he hung up the phone. I was left holding a lifeless handset, my ice water sweating on the table. So, that was it: Snipe was taking charge again, like always. There was nothing to write with my clean-smelling pencil, nothing to plan with my bored, shiftless mind.

Snipe called “some people” and had giant components made. By proxy he tailored yards and yards of toga. Through others he poured cast-aluminum heads, arms, legs, and torsos. He drafted the arts high school to craft enormous, exotic orchids and passion flowers with papier-mâché. Meanwhile I tried to explain to my husband who this man was who took care of parade floats from afar, but it was impossible. What do you say? “We were never involved, we just met in college. He’s not even coming to California. He just likes to create.” You don’t explain Snipe. But Doug hardly cared; he trusted me. Besides, Doug had more important work to do at the firm.

I almost wished Doug would accuse me of having an affair. Defending myself would be something to do.

The flowers and fabric and other fragile things arrived in vans. I assume the heavy statue pieces came on a convoy of flatbeds. Before I knew the stuff was there, a crane team had assembled the shining, toga-wearing statue and the metal frame, and placed the gigantic paper flowers. I was left with a florist’s paint-by-numbers: chickenwire to wrap daisies around. The rest was already done.

When I got to the warehouse and saw the almost-finished float, I called Snipe and said thank you.

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “Have fun, kid.”

Clamshelling my phone, I picked up a long-stemmed, magenta rose and smelled it, contemplating the lonely warehouse. What a hollow victory. I would be in the parade, but I had been helped like a child. All I had now were endless posies: thousands of flowers and dozens of pounds of florist’s foam.

The towering metal god looked down on me and all my blossoms. I couldn’t help it: I sat down on the cement floor among the carnations, crushing a few stems with my weight, and I cried for want of a challenge.

May 1, 2008 at 2:27 PM
Anonymous said...

Sorry; it might have been rude of me to not introduce myself. My name is Brooke Arnett. I made the fifth comment on this post.

I like your concept!

May 1, 2008 at 2:33 PM
Anonymous said...

Pieces. I give pieces to everyone, depending on what they need. As a result, I'm scattered and torn apart.

You need this? Okay, I'm coming. You want me to do that? Okay, I'm on my way. You need anything? Yep, be right there.

The pieces are giving but not receiving. The pieces want to be together. The sum is no longer making up the whole.

I want to be one. I want to be whole.

May 4, 2008 at 8:42 PM
Anonymous said...

Of course in hindsight it was obviously a bad idea. Creating a 100 foot titanium robot wasn't the smartest thing I've done. My teachers say I need to be less impulsive. They talk about restraint a lot too. My dad never talked about restraint. He always encouraged me to follow my creative urges.

They won't let me visit him - not even on birthdays. National security they say. Don't believe all that mad scientist and supervillain stuff you read in the papers. They're just mad that he showed them all up. It was global warming this and global warming that. Now nobody complains about global warming, and it's great to see that the polar bears are finally off the endangered list.

It's not like I meant to hurt anyone. I just wanted to make my dad proud, show him that I can do great things too. Perhaps the giant robot wasn't the best way to go about it, and the laser beams for eyes were definitely a stupid idea. But man did they look cool. Did you see that oil refinery go up.

You don't have to yell. I feel bad enough, sorry about your city and all the running and screaming and stuff. But no one really important was killed, and things were getting a bit crowded with all those Canadians moving south, so perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. It eventually ran out of fuel anyway - pity I couldn't get hold of more uranium.

Hey! You missed my turn. Where are we going? To visit Dad! Cool. I want to talk to him about this anti-matter project I've been working on.

June 23, 2008 at 8:56 AM

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