Inspired by the author’s experience working on boats during the COVID pandemic and refracted through the myth of the Tower of Babel, Edifice unfolds within a vast, ever-growing structure maintained by a quarantined community fractured by language. Through labor, accident, ritual, and desire, the story examines the necessity of Sisyphean endeavor and the fragile yet essential fictions that sustain collective life. Blending elements of magical realism and speculative fantasy, the Edifice and its crew’s ceaseless efforts to maintain it function as a central metaphor for love—constructed, maintained, and continuously at risk of collapse. What begins as playful and profane gradually strives toward a language of the spiritual and the eternal.
CONTENT WARNING: This work contains explicit language, sexual references, and depictions of bodily functions. Reader discretion is advised.
Edifice
By Austin Krauss
Clink,
clink,
clink, go the backstops of the windlass, gathering in another tentative turn of this colossal line. Thick, gnarled braids—like the stolen locks of some capricious god, let down from its dreaming head and put to this profane task. This, our endless project. I pay out some more tagline— smooth, gracious handfuls, hand-over-hand—till the inscrutable captain squeezes his raised palm into a fist. And then, we all just hang tight, fingering our respective cunts. (It’s a nautical term. Look that shit up.) I do so enjoy the feel of cunts running through my hands (not at all a gratuitous statement.)
Cunts.
Call me Head-cheese. Are we on a boat? No /Maybe? Honestly, I got no fuckin’ clue what to make of it, and neither does anyone else—best not to overthink things just now. Our necks are craned to the limit, as we all wait for the bosses—one on high, one down low—to work out their communication. The one aloft is making large, frustrated gesticulations while the one down here fights off the angle of the sun through a pair of nox. Stinking Bishop and Babybel; dueling captain’s of my soul! —The one aloft, frothing with idealism and vision, as though she might will this thing into being with nothing but the sheerness of her passion; the other, below, yet watching over all with a tenderly narrowed-eye, as he strokes the crusty leavings of the last meal from out his pensive beard.. Together, guiding this absurdity to the heavens.
As to be expected, the hand signaling has failed. Communication very soon breaks down as they resort to incoherent shouting. It goes back and forth like that for a time—small distant shout, volleying ear-blisteringly near shout, all mutually unintelligible. If you are curious, we are in the process of hoisting the last section of a quadruple-decker skybridge, which will finally join the N-East and West flanks of the Mid-Gallants, as well as their long-estranged crews in a long awaited union. But—lest we begin pulling out or cigarillos to soon—the subtle curve of this colossus is proving a real bastard to maneuver through delicate buttresses and byzantine networks of cable. We’re nearly there.. until another boss joins in, popping his head out some hatch midway between Stinking Bishop and Babybel—feeling it incumbent on himself to mediate. Coincidentally there is also a forth boss below, relaying gestures from a fifth and sixth boss, each behind a pair of theodolites.. These dudes are not helping. In total there are 38 bosses, that I know of. But I use the term loosely. I am a boss—depending on who’s around. All it means is that you know a margin-of-error more shit than present company. And whoever knows the most shit, relative to present company, is the most boss. Though, admittedly, a fuzzy metric on which to base any sort of hierarchy, “knowing shit” does have its value.
I know some shit.. I know what a cunt is!
Exasperated shouts are starting to turn Stinking Bishop’s voice hoarse. We all stand-by handsomely.. A large bird passes the sun. I watch as—talons laden with fodder for roost—it slowly corkscrews it’s way round the lurching edifice; round and up and away, disappearing into the haze-shrouded stratums.. A gust of wind blows. I listen to the creaks and checking of all the wood, and steal, and cable, and line—all holding untold strain, under vast amounts of tension. Everything tuned up nice and tight, as it were some delicately calibrated stringed instrument.
Tick.. Tick.. Tick..
I ground my eyes in the deck, shaking away the swoon. Still makes me nauseous; looking up at it like that; upper-stories softly swaying into some terminus beyond the powers of my vision. I look off to the steady horizon, and as the edifice rears—side to side, back, forth and over us—I watch as it throws shade deep into the far and disparate neighborhoods of the city below. the goings-on of tiny, mortal being, as they move in and out of its shadow.
The gust passes. I reach out to damp the wild vibrations of my line—feel it absorb into my hand and up through my arm, into my body. Throwing a turn on the cleat I give a squeeze to the back of my aching neck. Its then that I notice it. Something on the deck, peaking out from beneath my shoe.
LoΛƏ
I shift my boot a bit— LoΛƏnɥ (?) —and then cock my head.
huevo7… An old tag. Orange paint-stick. I seen this head around. Now that I think of it, I seen you more than a few times.
..
That’s strange. Why is Babybel shouting at us? Wait; his frenzied, spittle-laden shout appears to be aimed at me(!), as I am now realizing I have failed to pay out an appropriate amount of slack on my tagline—as necessary to keep the suspended hulk at a 40° angle / 0° pitch—thus causing said hulk to lurch, with pointed edge, dangerously near to the tender canvas under-belly of the Main Bladder.
Toggдl zə̃”ggids rüpp! ZRÜPP!! —Babybel, loosing a furious volley of inscrutable nonsense.
I hurry to correct my mistake while those astride the bridge shout and scurry, frantically, in attempts to counter the sway. But, in overcompensating, we catch one of the steel stay-cable, sending a shudder through the whole edifice.. mind, I’m not an engineer. But—judging by the prodigiousness of it’s cunts—this particular stay-cable seems notable. I close my eyes and hold a breath. Listen as it groans and sways.
The noise settles. Could it be? [hoping against hope, as I open my eyes.]
Nope. The whole shit is indeed fucked. ‘Course it’s really not so bad as it looks (though, to be clear, it looks real fucking bad). But it’s really just the outer portion of the south-east quadrant. One of the Flying Gallants—the cascading debris of which is currently creating an avalanche of cluster-fuck all down the SE face of the edifice. The dust will be engulfing us, very shortly.
“Fuçk” belches Babybel, as we disappear in the cloud. It is the only sentiment communicable across all tongues.
I guess this is what you’d call my fault. At least the bridge is still there! Just nothing much left to bridge.
Several of those aloft are currently experiencing a bit of distress in the seat of their crotches, knocked off their feet and swaying ineffectually from harnesses. Among them, Stinking Bishop, struggling to right herself—she’s clipped in backward. “AHHhrrrrrrr!!!” She gives in, conceding to hang their, like a flaccid noddle, or a wet baguette, or like some other similarly ineffectual wheat-derived product perhaps.. But aside from that, thankfully, no one is hurt—we are very careful about these things. Safety first.
The bridge was lowered back to deck, and with it, our dangling comrades, only one among whom has managing to remain on his feet. A dry-humored, angular fellow known as Queso-Frito. A real low-moisture dude, with an exceptionally high melting-point, Queso was the sort that never lost his cool under pressure, as testified to by his quick-actions in fending the bladder—which he achieved by improvising an impromptu piece of chaffing on the offending edge, using only a shoe, and all of his clothing (with the exception of the opposing shoe and tube sock in which he now stood indomitable). A very angular fellow, indeed.
We guided them all back to their feet and then, as they all went about fixing their respective situations, we stood by for a head count.
“Gǃ’at?.. G!’at?.. Gǃ’at?.. ” Babybel places his hand on each one of our shoulders, as he does a once around to check that everyone is OK. As his hand reaches my shoulder I make an earnest attempted at apologizing but all he hears is a garbled mess of repentant noises. Babybel just nods and gives me an extra clap on the shoulder, but the paternalistic visage he presents is hard to deny, even coming from under an ironic trucker cap on which is pictured a bison grazing a scenic vista. Similarly, Stinking Bishop is standing off to the side, her frazzled hair framing the same look on her flushed face as she looks over his shoulder at me. Is this what they call disappointment? I am already the least skilled person in the lot. But to be incompetent in addition to useless. My eyes divert to the food-bits in Babybel’s luxuriant beard. On the whole it is a rather unmentionable setback, given the conspicuous run of luck we’ve been having. And though I had been party to such shit-showings before—one’s of comparable and greater scope— and though no one held it against me—such mishaps being commonplace and universal—for the first time I feel, somewhere in my center, a distant yet distinct pang: I’ve let my crew down. In any case it seems clear that the rest of my day will be spent in some inferior form of toil.
On a positive note, my term of penance does have the effect of thrusting me into the acquaintance of a new and enticing comrade of the fine-ass variety. It is her first day. She is friendly and cute. But the all important question—which I shall proceed to ascertain as delicately as a decorated pediatric brain surgeon— ..is she a lesbian? (Historically speaking I have been reasonably successful here, only problem being that 97% of females that have arrived in the past 8 months have been lesbians (a 5000% increase in lesbians) attributable to an overly successful PR campaign on the part of the office to increase lesbian representation in the ranks of S/E Octant. Thank you office.)
While the rest of the crew are busy clearing fallen debris, me and homegirl are paired up, and sent squeezing our way through the crawl spaces and lesser-traveled compartments of the lower decks for a deep clean. “Don’t mind the cats” I try to say, but instead I make a series of inscrutable hand gestures and cat noises. She giggles, as the stray kitties scurry past and head for cover, through deep crevasses that lead into yet further unreachable places. (They come up through holes in the undersides, and nestle into the warm parts around engines and pipes—it’s getting to be a problem..) We penetrate deep into these dark and humid nether regions, just the two of us. And as she vac-hoses out cat dander and old squirrel cachets from the vents and wiring manifolds, and I scrap mung—what has to be 50+ years worth of accumulated layers of grime—from the nooks and crevices of piping and frame, I proceed with my first tentative flirtations.. Hey look! A moldy pair of tap shoes. And whats this here! A well preserved romance novel w/ woman straddling shirtless kilted man on the cover, entitled Tamed by the Highlander.. The communication is rather stilted. What with the respirators and intermittent ring and hum of engine tests, with the additional layer of construction racket going on just over- head, I suspect the full extent of my charm goes unappreciated. Just a few awkward laughs really, as we proceed in figuring ourselves into ever-more intimate non-sexual positions, demanded by a narrowing work space—crawling clumsily over one another, dripping sweat and knocking into each other’s groins, while distressed kitties squeeze past—hey there kitty! Our present arrangement is her holding the flashlight and calling out incoherent coordinates as I scrape grim feverishly from my blind-spots with a butter-knife while fighting the onset of a Charley-horse. Mmmm, nice buttery dollops of mung! Which she vacs up, enthusiastically. She is fully into it (is there anything sexier in this world than a girl willing to get down in the muck?) And yet, despite these romantic beginnings, I find it all a bit difficult to read.
Is it me? Or is it the muck?
Somewhere in the deepest depths of this region we come upon an opening sufficiently high for us stand straight and stretch our backs. Very shortly we notice that the clearing slopes down into a grotto of luminescent algae, around which is gathered a small but diverse population of creatures—iridescent butterflies, florescent-feathered amphibians, fuzzy crustaceans, blinkering nematodes, and a purple whiskered fish with nascent limbs—all of which are occupied in copulating. Everywhere! Strange, yet untaxonomized species—endogenous to this one spot, and singularly unique in all the world! All feverishly having sex.
Upon further inspection the back of the grotto reveals an opening onto a crystal clear lake, beyond which stretches an even greater cavern of cathedral-proportion, wherein can be discerned the twinkling edges of a vast topography of hills, bluffs and valleys; even the confluence of a babbling stream—all contained under a roughly-hewn ceiling, held up by a forest of colossal pillars. There’s a coracle with a single oar pulled up on the near bank of the grotto that might well ferry us across, but which would have to be left for another day—it is getting near to quitting time. We both content ourselves with hurling a few obscene exclamations into the resonate interiors of the cavern, listening as they return wreathed in the clustered gaggles of our laughter. I could swear her smile is for me. Maybe not. Maybe its just the inordinate levels of orgone (the orgasmic energies of all these horny creatures) suffusing this place, and clouding my judgment. Now she is caught in a dust-up of butterflies. Two of the luminous beings land— mid-fuck—on her cute noes. I can hardly stand it. The wonder in her eyes. Seems to reach out in every direction, aimless and without distinction. Hits me in waves. Intoxicating. Plus her ass —the shit is incredible; been smack in my face all damn afternoon! (What you want from me folks? It’s only nature.)
In the space of a look, there is a sort of implicit understanding between us that we will not vac-up all these wondrous creatures in the throes of their rapturous passions. Best to leave it to some other future generation of spelunking mungers to despoil this orgiastic paradise. For my part, I’m a sentimental-type.. I want to leave a piece of myself here, forever.
Quickly I pull out my chisel-tip and look for a spot on which to leave my mark. Surely, not for many, many years had anyone been here. Nobody, that is, but me, and home-girl. And huevo7. Son of-a-bitch. There they was. In succulent drippy letters, against the calcified wall. And it looked fresh too—just missed their ass.
Who are you huevo7?
Before we leave I throw up my tag beside him and pluck a bouquet of penis-shaped mushrooms off the wall, of which I make a faux proposal. She accepts. All of this coupled with an afternoon of being jammed up in small spaces with aforementioned ass was enough for me to formulate a favorable opinion. Unavoidable I suppose. Only for a short moment at the end of the day, having climbed back out into the air and striped of our ventilators and goggles and all our rubber vestiture, did I receive the full compliment of her beauty. The full radiance of her smile. Could have sworn it was all for me.
Celebrating our successful return with a solidly-platonic high five, we proceed to exchange a few niceties in our mutually incomprehensible languages. Her name was. I’m not really sure. Was never really clear on that point. In any case, that evening, during crew supper, we had decided that if she were a cheese she’d be Velveeta. So I guess that’ll suffice for a name. Velveeta; a mysterious and bewitching substance which was not in fact a cheese at all, but a “cheese product”—which precisely fit the maddeningly unknowable nature of this girl.
..
As the last of the pots and trays are scrapped clean, Stinking Bishop flips on the beer-light and retires to her cabin with a jug of wine, signaling the end of the traditional working day. From various compartments of the floor, wall, and ceiling, there then emerges a steady stream of alcoholic beverages, which are fire-lined alongside cleaning instruments, to our waiting hands, as all crew lay-into clean-up. An intricate tango of chores ensue—sweeping, scraping, lathering, scrubbing, drying and stowing—as we weave through one another with organic precision, crammed in the smallest imaginable space. Despite being the largest structure ever constructed by mankind, for some reason there is virtually no compartment within the edifice in which I can stand straight, or lie down fully stretched. Reference my bunk, the curtain of which provides sufficient privacy, but which privacy I must share with a variety of conduits, including a lengthwise-running duct, of approximately woman-size, which floats just atop my 3 foam inches of heaven. All of this in addition to a box (which I surmise to be a compressor of some sort) right above my head, which seems to be time-set to violently awaken me at 3 Am every third Thursday.
In any case, dishes are a real treat as I can almost stand fully erect while hunched over the sink—my head securely nestled into one of the only nooks of rafter willing to receive it. The nook is however a little off-center, which places me in a somewhat crooked/diagonal stance— which is not nearly as uncomfortable as it looks.
Pecorino, our rosy-cheeked cook, cranks up some joint from the old-country and leans back idly on his foot stool. Head cast to the sky, he leads us in chorus, belting out lines of patriotic-toned babel between sips of his shamrock cozy-covered beer. I try to match his soaring tone, casting some doggish into the cacophonous lot, as I scour a macaroni encrusted tray and hand it off for rinsing. Meanwhile a contingent of sole spongers squeeze between my legs on their way to clean the galley. Among them, Velveeta laughing mirthful, swept up in the irresistible contagion of our strange ritual. I lift a foot as she cleans under one, then the other. She looks up at me in my nook, beaming.
..
Having none of the traditional or celebrated qualities of a cheese, and, just generally cutting a fairly bad impression, it had been previously concluded that if I were at all a cheese, it would surely be a cheese in name only; an anti-cheese if you will.. Headcheese. A most conspicuous outlier, even among this concentrated distillation of societies most outlaying-liers.
While the rest of them get hammered and dance trashily to accordion renditions of contemporary pop songs, I slink off by the light of the moon, making my way to the edge of the deck. It’s not that I don’t enjoy their company—on the contrary, I enjoy it only too much. That’s why I gotta get away.
I glance around; no one’s watching; I hop over the side and scale down a moldy rope ladder onto a buttress. I next make the long slide down to the ground into a heap of salt, and take off down Flood St.. I collect my thoughts to the soothing hum of the Flood St. Sewage Treatment Plant, as I pass the retired tugboat yard, hulking carcasses of old, beached wrecks chained to the ground, big gaping holes in their rusted sides. I take a deep breath—that familiar scent of churning effluent mixed with burnt rubber from the tire factory that closed 20 years ago. Does my soul good, to walk around at night. Gotta do it every so often, just for a bit. It’s all I can do to get some distance between me and this all consuming thing. Some space, between me and the intensity of my feeling for it. All of it. And yet tonight I just can’t seem to get away. It clings to me like the funk on Pecorino’s cheese board; haunts every corner of my thoughts, like a huevo7 tag haunts this street. On a dumpster.. on a stop sign.. on the web of a rail. Everywhere I go, it is there. I sit at a dead bus-stop and throw my HEDCH*Z up on the glass, alongside huevo7. A trivial gesture, but its all I got.
My hand quickens as I hear someone staggering forward, from out the darkness. He wags a finger at me and cackles as he passes. It’s Babybel, coming back from the bar. He misses his wife and two little kids. I watch him stagger off into the night, belching a fuck for good measure. Just me and huevo7 now.
Everyone is asleep when I get back astride the edifice. Everyone ‘cept Queso—he’s somewhere above, blowing a mournful tune on his penny whistle as he lies awake in his hammock. I brush my teeth, and take a last piss over the side onto some unsuspecting house below, and then I crawl through the minefield of snoring crew-mates that lay between me and my sweltering bunk, wherein the cool embrace of my woman-sized duct awaits.
..
Next morning: Brainstorm session w/ breakfast. Whole puffy-faced crew is present, congregated in a big circle of folding chairs with cornucopia of cereal options on floor in middle. No seats by Velveeta. I open the Tasteeo’s, and there on the inside flap: huevo7. Fuck you, huevo7.
I pull up a seat by Époisses and try not to breathe through my nose. As cheeses go, Époisses got it all, and much, much more. Sweat, salty, sharp, tangy, chewy, gooie, and pungent —so very pungent. The sort of funk that gets itself banned on public transit systems in European countries. With long beautiful flowing hair, and an Adonis-like physique it’s something of a disjunction that Epoisses finds himself so powerfully repellent. But I’m really not one to be throwing stones. An eccentric fellow, I had many occasion sighted Époisses jogging naked in the rain, or otherwise doing strange calisthenic exercises which made everyone uncomfortable. But, a generally good-natured dude—perhaps a little too good-natured for my purposes. In any case, I’ll still sit next to the guy!
Wreathed in a tangle of bed-head Stinking Bishop is wiping down some scraps of whiteboard as she waits for us to get our morning coffees and settle down. Also present: Our master balloon bender, Gouda. A rich, smokey flavored veteran of the edifice, Gouda was a hard-nosed bulldog of a chick with a soft under-belly, who had vagabonded much of the world via train, boat and zeppelin.. Beside her, the brother’s Curd; a mulleted duo of gyroscopic-engineers, and VHS enthusiasts extraordinaire.. Next, our pink rollerskate-clad resource conservationist, the always delightful Tofutti. Next, some new girl whose name I don’t yet know, but who will soon go on to make a memorable impression for retiring to the bathroom to sing opera ballads whenever in new and/or stressful social situations; her other pastimes will include a strange compulsion to steal crew-mate’s shoes and deny it while wearing them. Beside her, the ruff and tumble Queso-frito; renown for his ability to squeeze through small spaces, climb virtually any object, and not piss his self at terror-inducing altitudes.. Beside him, aspiring edifice-wright and resident Philosopher Edam. An older gentleman, Edammer was yet supple while being dense enough to withstand being fired from a cannon.. Then there was Gorgonzola, our on-board magnetician/ welder/ plumber/ electrician/ physician/ fiber optician, and BASE- jumper; for fun the beautiful Gorgonzola throws knives with deadly accuracy, macrame’s intricate historical-tableau themed cozies around every naked piece of hardware within proximity, practices a martial variety of yoga at the black-belt level, and just generally makes me look lame in comparison.. she’s mad cool. Not gonna lie; I sweated home-girl for a long while, till I finally came to terms with my limited hopes of ever shoehorning myself into the complex network of bi/polyamorous relations which constitute her romantic life. Turns out I’m a simple boy. And finally, beside her, Velveeta.
Our beloved cook, Pecorino is also present, prepping lunch on a little fold down cutting board that is just above my head—now playing passive D on any bits of potato that escape his board. Indeed there is only one living space for the crew in the entire contraption, which must be remade from kitchen to dinning hall, back to kitchen, back to dinning hall, into VHS viewing area, and, finally, to sleeping quarters, every single day. Right now it is in a state of hybridity.
With her piece of white board Bishop has begun to demonstrate the next campaign to append height to the edifice. From what I gather, it involves using car jacks to elevate the entire structure from off the 2nd deck, propping this with dunnage, installing larger jacks, propping these with cinder blocks, before, presumably, installing yet larger jacks. Looks legit. Right as Bishop is attempting to explain the logistics on the multitude of complications which this big jack will entail, a quake interrupts us; that familiar sound of raining debris, accompanied by the toppling of a few unstable stacks of VHS tapes. Another collapse apparently. Bishop pokes her head out a hatch for a moment but does not seem overly concerned.
We are a small crew. Though there is still no hard census data, it can be estimated that we are just one of many thousands of such crews occupying the edifice; crews composed of many hundreds of thousands of similarly odd individuals, all of whom have been placed under quarantine here since the outbreak of the novel Babella virus. Since it seems to most people that both the virus and the edifice have been around since a time immemorial, it is often a point of debate which one came first, rather like the chicken or the egg; just as fruitless and unresolvable. But what is obvious is that the edifice now functions as a sort of sequestration colony wherein all the babel cases are gathered up to convalesce.
Funny thing, how everyone who ends up here seems to belong. No matter where they come from, or what they did before, they seem to slip right in, like naked beer bottles into one of Gorgonzola’s cozies. Sooner or later they all give in, and offer themselves up to the Edifice, and I watch as it transforms them into their most heroic selves. They become wrights, and smiths and rope-makers and glass blowers, and masons, and plumbers, and cooks, and they learn physics, and metallurgy, and horticulture, and aerodynamics, and vertical engineering, and take up carving, and painting, and juggling, and accordion, and hang gliding, and parkour, and they all become highly competent, eminently useful individuals, well suited to communal life among mutually productive malcontents and weirdos. Everyone. Except for me.
See, I am the strangest and most inexplicable case that exists in all this vast edifice. Because I am not weird—not the good kind at lest. And because I simply do not belong here; I am not afflicted by the babel. That is why I can write this, and you can read it. Me? I’m just a regular, coherent, able-bodied homeless person who happened to wander into a gig with free room and board. In any case, it’s a significant improvement over eating out of an Aldi’s dumpster and sleeping on the exhaust grate outside Applebees.
..
Remainder of morning spent digging our way up through debris onto deck, followed by clearing debris off hatches and vents. After lunch I am sent overboard to rust-bust hull with Époisses. We share a sort of modified bosun’s chair for-two, which someone has panted a heart on. Lowering down over the edge of the deck, we skirt our way along the sensual curves of the undersides, giving notice to resident pigeons to move to new niches in the designated pigeon roosting areas, before wire-brushing away the bird shit and rust for incoming welders to hang patches. Along the way we stop to windex the bottoms of the huge crystal prisms which conduct sunlight from above, without which there would be perpetual shade in the neighborhoods below..
(Because of the elegantly tapered design of its underside [which lends, on the whole, a very top-like appearance ⟨a real feat of engineering!⟩] the edifice occupies virtually no real-estate and poses little hindrance to the ongoing of the world below. Indeed, the whole of the structure is supported on a single terminal point—a ruby-alloyed bearing—about the size of a basketball, which, in turn, rests on a stepped pedestal of rusty steel plates, judiciously anchored in native ledge. Additionally the edifice is shadowed by 5 pillars [magnetized?] which are seated in the bedrock below and angle up into the sloping undersides, but which do not actually make contact with the hull at any point—in actual fact, the edifice is, at no point anchored to the ground. Despite certain mythic technologies—which I am led to believe exist deep within the bilge— there is no obvious reason why the edifice is able to maintain its state of erection. It just sort of hangs there, between those five fateful digits, with a few old tires jammed in the gaps between).
I wipe a window in the soot covered prism and glance inside. From beneath, it acts as a faceted telescope allowing me to spy on various scenes aloft, one of which contains Velveeta and Gorgonzola who are occupied in sewing patches on a bladder. Some douchey-looking guy in agreen hardhat (one of the curdz?) is tryina kick-it to Velveeta from a nearby scaffold.
Meanwhile, beside me, Époisses is tracing a winged penis in the dust with his finger, while he nudges me suggestively..
More facts about the Edifice: in addition to being the largest structure ever created by mankind, the edifice has been recognized as a place of interest on google maps by @Huevo7.. Legally the edifice is licensed as a “temporary/movable structure.” Despite its marvelously spare amount of contact with the ground, the plot on which the edifice rests does not belong to us and has to be shared with the local chapter of the Benevolent Order of Disabled Yo-Yo Enthusiasts Anonymous which uses the space for certain events, including a bi-annual barbecue/ convention, and, consequently, requires us to shift the whole of the edifice 5ft south (then sometimes an additional 2 more feet SE [then 1/2 foot back, because the operation was encroaching on another neighbor’s property]) every 6 months.. The edifice is situated between a cliff and the mouth of a post-industrial river, very near its meeting with the sea. The edifice may very well have been intended, at some earlier time, as a vessel of some sort, but it had since been hemmed in by development—including two bridges on either side, a hatch-work of high capacity power lines, an elevated train which tunneled directly through it (a notable complication to the prospects of operation big jack), and the no-fly zoning of a nearby airport. And so, short of sprouting arms and legs, or somehow burrowing out from under its predicament, the edifice seemed condemned to a relatively sedentary existence. The advent of teleportation might yet have relieved it from this predicament, if not for the fact that, in addition to all of this, the edifice had been designated a protected wildlife area, owing to a very ugly and obnoxious species of bird known as the Skunkpecker, which had taken to matting exclusively on its upper south-east face, and no place else on earth. In summation, the edifice did not (by intention) travel. And yet, it was not without a destination.
A few distressed kitties have hoped out the riddled hull and are now crowding our love seat. In the confusion I have dropped my scaling hammer and am watching as it falls into the net below. It slides down the netting to where various debris has pooled into a low spot—a kite, a soccer ball, a dead raccoon, a spud-wrench I’ve been missing for several months, someones blow-up companion in a state of severe deflation, etc.. I need’a take a dump.
I hop some scaffold, climb up a hawse-pipe, clamber over some yet-to-be assessed debris,
and make for the head.. Last week we retrofitted the edifice’s cardinal nodes with DCRT (Dynamic Counter-wind Response Technology). I’m talkin’ real cutting edge shit, direct from the generous nerds at Brainbulge Analytica. And yet the two toilets on which I, my crew, and 4 additional crews are dependent, still utilize bucket-&-sawdust technology. I lift the lid, and there, written in orange paint-stick on the underside.. but I’m sure you can guess.
Coincidentally head #2 doubles as one of the larger branches of the Edifice Library System, replete with a wide selection of completely unreadable though beautifully hand crafted and scribbled codices, including various graphic rigging manuals, knot & splice guides, and a social science section featuring colorfully illustrated historical, and ethnographic studies of the various peoples and cultures native to the edifice. Unfortunately, the toilet itself is tucked away in a cramped nook devoted exclusively to highlander romances.
In other news, looks like this bucket of shit is just about full. Indeed 28 of the 29 industrial-sized ice-cream buckets which we picked up beside a dumpster behind Happy Bros Creamery, and which are now used to store our feces, are now at capacity—and they are not gonna empty themselves. I draft Edam, we hazmat-up, and the rest of this day will be spent making runs to the Flood St. Sewage Treatment Plant. This entails carefully laundry-lining the buckets down a quarter mile of gang line to the ground and loading up the company van to capacity for 1 of 2 trips—the first of which I must make alone so that Edam can stand guard over the remainder of buckets, as to avert the terrifyingly high frequency with which these deceptively labeled containers, when left unattended, are carried off by gravely mistaken members of the general public.
At the sewage plant we hump each bucket of sloshing effluvium up several flights of stairs till, perspiring and winded, we reach the concrete banks of a sweet smelling stream. We take a moment to catch our breath before carefully cracking the lids and methodically dumping the contents into the stream below—taking special care to minimize splash-back. As Edam dumps the last one he blows it a kiss farewell, and then, putting an arm around my shoulder, we watch as it carries away down the channel, merging into the rushing river of our collective humanity. Once upon a time Edammer was a big deal out here in the world. A professor, or doctor, or something of that nature if I had to guess. Probably made a lot of money and drove an expensive car. Until he woke up one day in his mid 40s with the babel, and switched his career to scraping bird shit off the sides of the edifice. In any case, to look at him now, you’d think this is what it was he’d been missing all his life.
..
I only get one brief moment with Velveeta at the end of the day before the rest of them sweep her away in revelry: She reaches over me to stow some dishes, as I scrub a sole board. No longer the smell of lilies, she is taking on her own distinctive funk, like no funk I have as yet snifted. I fan my nose to tease her. But I like it. Say what you want; beauty is in the nostrils of the beholder.
That night I see a hoodyed character moving furtively down Flood St.. I follow them a distance—as they hop from utility box, to sign post, to mail receptacle—till I realize they are tagging. Could it be? Huevo7?
I get close and make a chirp. They swing round, reveling them self and their incriminating tag,.. It’s Queso Frito, in his grubby, tar-blotched dungarees, with his lanolin-greased ‘stache. Is it you? Are you the one that haunts me? No. His tag is on some other wildstyle. I’ve seen it once or twice—a lime-green flourish of babel-born glyphs, all his own. Most funky. In any case this is a welcome revelation. I wag my marker at him and grin.
That night we hop the fence to the scrap yard, scale up the barnacled hulks of several beached tug’s and proceed to bomb their topsides. Turns out we share a predilection for climbing tall objects and writing on the tops. He points to a nearby water tower. We climb it. I point to the stack over the abandoned tire factory. We climb that. He points to the pylons of the nearby suspension bridge. We climb. Every high thing that we come across in the immediate area, we climb that shit. And at the top of everything we climb—at the top of every cell-tower, every beacon, every silo and spire—is huevo7.
Huevo7 is on the tip of God’s tongue.
At the top of the local water tower Queso taps his marker on the tank and nods toward the street below. Époisses is jogging down Flood St. in a speedo, golden hair flowing behind in the breeze.. Goj pee ñayeȩ̇D! Žee žeȩ̇D uGe uGeeEE! —his song carries up to us as he disappears down the desolate street.
It’s a quiet week-night in this sleepy working-class neighborhood. Nothing but the soft churning of sewage and the occasional chatter of a broken beer bottle underfoot as we walk home for the night. We walk right down the middle of Flood St., Just Queso and I, and the silence of our mutually incommunicable interiors. There is much I would confide. It would be nice to know if any other human being knows this feeling inside me right now? It would be nice to profess my anguish, and confusion, and my gratitude, for all of it. For the happiness and the despair, and just the sublime absurdity of it! But I doubt I could articulate any of that, even if anyone could understand. In any case it goes without saying.
Beside me, Queso cranes his head up at the edifice and makes a noise. I look over; he has a grin. When he looks over at me, he gives a head-check, and then, sort of like a joke, he points up, into the darkened patch of firmament somewhere in the edifice nestled its head.
I look up. Somehow I have never considered this; probably because it is absurd. But so is everything else. I’ll tell you this: I bet huevo7 has never been up there. I turn to Queso and give a nod in the affirmative. He laughs, his dry laugh, until he realizes I am dead-ass. He nits his brow, and assesses my face for incredulity. There is none.
When we get back on the edifice Queso shows me into a side locker of some sort. He switches on a red-light, revealing the cramped interior. It is his workshop, jam-full of meticulously stowed and labeled tools, ceiling studded with pickle jars—full of various hardware and curiosities. The jar next to my face contains a spider which, in ouroboros-fashion, is climbing up the silk it is simultaneously spinning. Queso dogs the door and switches to a small incandescent lamp over his bench. He pulls something out his pocket and clamps it in a drill press—some piece of copper, scavenged that night from the ship yard. He oils and chucks-up a new drill bit and switches on the machine. His work bench is scattered with precision instruments—calipers, compasses, a brass balance-scale, various counter weights. But, at the center, wreathed in wood shavings and loose gouges, is a schematic which he appears to have compiled from several incomplete sources, including rubbings taken from various inscriptions I have occasionally seen etched into very old pieces of the edifice, (the words are of course incipherable, but there are lots of stupid diagrams with arrows and manicules pointing past each other to the various holes which correspond to their pegs [for example, Plate 3: an image of 4 & 1/2 toenail cuttings ⟨taken from the second-to-last toe of a lady’s foot⟩ lined end-from-end to indicate dimension, and 26 pubic lice placed on a scale to indicate weight of said component, or, Plate 12: showing component material = to cat taking shit w/ tree growing upside-down out of it, and inset of old man massaging young wood ⟨I saw this exact image in a codex the other day, while relieving myself in head #2⟩ or, plate 31, showing personified rock in sweat lodge, and a disembodied hand holding a vessel beneath it to collect perspiration, indicating ⟨?⟩]).. There is one recurrent glyph of a sort of chimerical tool clutched in an upward pointing hand. I had seen this glyph before—sometimes bracketed with cherubs, or hung with a halo, or set apart from the text with a different color ink. It was also carved over the doorway to this very locker.
Suddenly Queso switches off his drill press and, reaching up into the rafter space over his head, his hand emerges with it. The God Tool.
He thrusts it into my hands and gestures up. A sort of hybrid hammer/spanner/can opener the main part consisting of a fluted mallet made of a very rare purple wood, called Singing Heart Wood—which grows on the undersides of rusted hull, but only after its carrion scented fruit has passed its seed through the digestive tract of a cat—the wood of which produced a certain sound when struck, and was here accentuated by a series of beveled slots cut into the head. The stem of the tool took a rather indirect path as though it needed to fit around a very specifically shaped obstruction. Additionally, the tool apparently needed to function as a marlinespike, allen-key and swivel spanner, loosing a shackle and tightening a bolt in the same instant as it struck, whatever it was intended to strike. It had a hinged elbow in it to accommodate this movement, plus a weighted pendulum, shaped like a fish with large, voluptuous lips.
Despite its awkwardness, the whole thing came to a rather graceful effect. Presumably, one would need it to perform some complicated mechanical feat at the summit. What happened after this was a matter of faith.
..
Next day; I have the watch. This carries with it various responsibilities and duties including: make sure the main and auxiliary bladders have sufficient pressure and temp. Check helium intake from sky pipeline is not clogged with graduation balloons or blowup dolls, take readings on all 56 gauge barrages, and, finally, bleach down the toilet seats in heads 1 and 2. But first I must perform wake-ups. The shades-rocking cook (who is stirring a big pot of oats and jamming out to a sitar-laden cover of smooth criminal, which is turned down very low on the little speaker hung along the row of coffee mugs beside his head) throws me the hang-loose as I move through his galley on my way to rouse the sleeping comrades. But just as I am about to begin despoiling their sleep the quaking of some near-off collapse does the job for me. Hanging pans and utensils chatter as the cook steady’s a precarious tower of bowls—some deep, some shallow, and all cocked at different angles. We both look up, in anticipation of an aftershock, but, whatever it was, seems to have settled. We glance at each other; he gives a sigh of relief toweling the sweat from his brow.
Once I have done with the morning check, completed my domestic duties, and followed this up with a second noontime check, I now have the afternoon to myself. It’s a lovely day out. There’s a place I’ve been meaning to check out for some time—a sort of mizzen structure; a small edifice coming off the side of the main edifice, which was apparently the first iteration, but which, for structural reasons, had to be abandoned, and now serves mostly as bird sanctuary and curiosity—preserving the eccentricities of our predecessors building methods. I have decided to check it out.
As it happens I come upon Velveeta. At first I can only hear her; a girlish humming, emanating from somewhere in the line yard—a section where old line is retired and laid out to fray in the sun. I soon trace her wavering melody to the banks of a huge old fluffy coil, and, clambering up its slopes, I discover her lounging there inside. She is writing in her journal—a sumptuous script to accord with whatever exotic language her babel-addled brain has produced. She has the day off apparently—a rare moment were she is not being besieged by other crew mates vying for her attention. I point to the distant peak of the mizzen and sort of inquire— through awkward body ticks and stupid smile—if she would like to accompany me. She would.
We head off, making our way past various contingents of crew engaged in project big jack, among them, our own, standing idly-by jacks, as Stinking Bishop and Babybel argue over an apparent lack of cinder blocks—due to political disturbances (?) between here and place where cinder blocks are accessed (?). (This can be speculated to be part of an ongoing series of disputes between various parts of the edifice and the office—a vaguely bureaucratic organ located somewhere down in the world which is referred to by pointing down and miming a guy cinching his tie. Despite being universally scoffed at by all working inhabitants of the edifice, the office and its unseen agents are begrudgingly acceded too on most occasions, for, it must be conceded that the office does contribute certain indispensable advantages to our mission—chief of which is an ability to communicate clearly within itself and with the outside world, if not always with the edifice itself.
We pass up several flights of inclined rail, over several different territories, including a part of the edifice currently struggling for independence from the world beneath. An endless struggle. Over the years the edifice has endured many conflicts and revolutions, and seen every conceivable form of political and social organization—the only reliable source of unity being the collective mission of maintaining and elevating the edifice. The work is all. And everywhere we pass we see our foreign comrades setting to it with as much diligence and coordination as they are capable.
Eventually we come to a vast and desolate stretch of open storage where sand and lime are heaped up into huge wind-swept dunes, from which craggy outcroppings of various bronze and copper components peak. The landscape gradually gives way to one punctuated by the messes formed of huge ingots of tin and lead, after which we come to a reservoir of crystal-clear water which has come down in a long narrow fall from somewhere higher up the edifice. We swim toward an island in the middle of the lake, which is stocked with colonies of cinder blocks, sunning themselves in strange configurations along the shore, and shading themselves in piles under trees in the interior. We reach the beach on the far side of the island and walk along it, waves lapping at our feet, until we come to a condemned bridge leading to the mizzen. I hop over the barrier that warns against passage and offer Velvetta a hand. She is hesitant, but she takes the leap. The bridge goes a span across the water and continues for a vast stretch across a canyon—the gulf which divides the edifice from its mizzen. Beneath we see where the reservoir terminates in another waterfall that pools down into a river that runs a ways before disappearing into the edifice and presumably emptying out a scupper into the world. The mist from the falls rises up in a big refreshing cloud which beads the cobwebs on the old bridge (as I heroically karate-chop a passage for Velveeta—I have never been so cool.
Like the first friend an exchange student makes when they arrive in a foreign country, she hasn’t yet figured out that I’m not cool. She doesn’t know that I don’t belong here. None of them know that I don’t belong here, or anywhere else on this earth. Or maybe they all know it, and have since the start. In any case they just let it be, so long as I give myself to this thing like the rest of them. Just so long as we all have this absurd and beautiful task in common, that’s all that seems to matter.
We have arrived at the mizzen. We proceed up the helix of old stone steps which wrap around it, traversing a few ancient ladders, and a sketchy plank spanning a gap along the way. Higher and higher we go, ears popping from the altitude. We stumble on a nesting skunkpecker while climbing some rat-boards and Velveeta gets the brunt of it. The agitated bird flaps off squawking. (skunkpeckers eat termites that burrow into the wood, which actually makes them quite beneficial to frame integrity—something we have to remind ourselves of when we still smell like shit two weeks after having been sprayed by one). The fact is that the smell never really goes away, despite mellowing considerably into one of a variety of cheese-like odors—not all of which are created equal. I myself have been sprayed a few times. Last time I went aloft to do maintenance with Queso I took a full frontal misting from an arms distance. I would have just about lost my hand-hold if Queso Frito were not there to steady me.
Me and Velvetta climb till we come upon a comfortable landing, where a singing-heart tree grows—short and stunted, but hung with a wind-spinner and blessed by the setting sun. We sit under it and watch the sun go down. She shows me a booboo on her hand and I get to hold it—her hands are small and calloused and fit like little clam shells in my own. It is a chilly night and she lets me cuddle her under the Singing-heart tree. She has a little content smile on her face as she closes her eyes and falls peacefully to sleep. Meanwhile I am hard as the heart-wood from a Singing-heart tree. She is so warm and nice. I lay gentle kisses on her face and whisper compliments to her—about how nice she is, how cool she is, how good she smells—careful not to wake her.
That night I have a dream about being a normal person in the real world. I have a family and a garage and a shining stainless steel grill, none of which huevo7 has ever marked with his orange paint-stick—a world without the edifice, where everything is straightforward and obvious. Next day we wake up above the clouds—a few wispy strands slowly grazing the land beneath. She picks some orchids and we eat them for breakfast—they grow along the frame of the edifice in shaded areas, and, though beautiful, can compromise structural integrity. I am just now realizing that I missed the 3rd and final sundown check last night, and would most assuredly be in the shit for this (if not for the fact that, unbeknownst to me, my boy Queso frito has once more saved my ass ⟨and also possibly diverted a catastrophic system failure [which would have almost certainly resulted in a game-over collapse attributable entirely to me..] so that’s good⟩). On top of that, me and home-girl are about to be late for work. But we have decided; we can’t stop now.
It’s not long before we near the top. There’s an unfinished course of bluestone with a small wooden crane and some old stone-working tools lying nearby. After this there is just one last balloon. We climb up its netting and scurry onto its bulbous crown, at the summit of which is lashed a triangular harbor buoy inside which a bell is softly tolling. For a moment I think I may have done it; could it be that I have finally risen to a place above which huevo7 has been? But no. It’s right there, written small on the red cone piece at the top. I reach in and grab the ding-dong of the bell, giving it a hard toll. We are quiet for awhile. Velveeta closes her eyes and listens to the resonance carry off. I watch her; as a curl of hair tickles her closed eyelid; her chest lightly raising and falling.. I want to hold her and kiss her and tell her what this feeling is inside me, but I don’t have the words, even if she could understand them. As the resonance fades, I look out and see whole vistas of the edifice I was not yet aware of, including several distinct enclaves of workers, one of which seems preoccupied in a strange and joyous celebration of some sort—colorful banners are strung along their rigging, and the faint echo of song carries across the way. It is calm and clear up here, though some rain clouds are strafing the far side of the edifice. They will pass right beneath us and wash over our home before we reach it. I throw my tag up on the bouy, below huevo7’s, and we head back down. It will all collapse a few days from now, and I will have been forever grateful that all of this happened before it was too late.
..
The Edifice is a living thing: it is always in the dynamic process of decay and rebirth. Just as they say that every cell in your body is replaced over the course of 7 years, and that, therefore, you are no longer the same person, so too there is no part of the edifice that has not been replaced, several times over, in the course of its lifespan. It is therefore less of a “thing”, as it is a relation: the accumulated labour and affection of everyone who has ever laid hands upon it. Naturally, for me, it is the very specific generation with which I share it. My crew. Most things constructed by man reach a point in their life span where it’s cheaper to just scuttle the thing and start over. Few ppl care about a thing enough to do what we do. We do it the hard way. We go on patching, repairing, rebuilding. We don’t give up on it. Consequent to this we treat each in a way that is qualitatively different. I adore my crew. There is no limit to unsavory tasks I would not be willing to perform for their sake. Yet, for whatever reason, there is also something in me that insists on making a short-hand of all this affection—of all that which gives my life meaning—in one unfortunate person.
Starting to think about this girl a lot. Can’t sleep right anymore; not eating much. My only respite—bombing the tops of tall things—now all but exhausted of target, but for that one notable exception which looms over everything.
I try everything to charm her, up to and including being a douche. I learn her language a dozen times over; spend countless hours massaging out vocabulary and deciphering her grammatical structures like a blind monk bumbling through the mellifluous cathedrals of her mind. Even achieve degrees of comprehension.. but never quickly enough to fire-off so much as a “what’s your name?” before the whole thing mutates again—ever onward through the endless iterations of her ever-evolving babel.. And so I resort back to being a douche. I simper, and sulk, and agonize over what to do next. There is no one to ask. The Edifice is all I have in which to confide. All I have into which to translate my agonies and ecstasies. We work all day, and at the end of each day, in the night of our unknowable desires, I watch as she turns in modesty—glimpse her naked back, her quiet movements bathed in red light—as we both go down to our underwear and crawl into the solitude of our respective bunks, to ponder our respective confusions.
What is happening to me? Whatever it is, it must be followed it to the end.
In my bunk another sleepless night. But I am decided.. Tomorrow I’m going to tell her.
Somehow.
..
Next day. I sleep-walk through a series of unmemorable tasks, while silently agonizing over how I am going to express what it is I feel. The end of the day arrives. I invite her to a walk, and we head down one of the studding piers (it juts off one of the whisker spreaders for the Flemish wind harness, and reaches way out over the side, above the ocean which is down there in the world below..) She is different today—I wonder if she senses this agony inside me. Maybe she has her own? Maybe she just wants to take a shower and nap. When we reach the circle at the end we gaze out silently for a time—you are so close, I could just about hold you. I want to tell you about how it has been this way for some time: me tortuously deluding myself, inter-cut with vignettes of you breaking the hearts of all who proposition. You don’t seem to want any of us. You—whose name I will never know. What goes on in you? What goes on in anyone? impossible to say. Perhaps it is all the same storms that rage inside me? Perhaps it is all cool breezes and sunshine. Perhaps there is nothing between any of us and never was; aside from our shared confusion. Perhaps that is enough? In any case I must take my leap.
In the end I grasp at words. Specifically, I fumble around for a very particular word which might express what it is I am feeling inside. It starts with an L I believe. I scour my thoughts for it, yet can’t seem to find it. But even if I could find it, and say it, and you could somehow understand it, what would it even mean? It’s just a word. A short-hand for a story at best. The story of two ppl being in the same place at the same time, for a brief moment in the universe. That’s all. An accident. A coincidence. Luck.. Maybe that’s the word I’m after? In any case it’s the best we can hope for.
Can’t you see Velveeta, or whatever your name might be? I like you. And there is no reason for it. We don’t know each other, and we never will. None of us! We have nothing to point to. Aside from the fact that we all shit in the same bucket. And if that’s not a good enough reason, we are lost. Because that’s as close to a reason as we get. I like the way you smell. I like the way you smile when your falling to sleep, and the stupid little sounds you make when you think your alone. I like your big noes. Your butt. If you like me too, why should we spend another second alone? In the cold consolation of our lengthwise-running ducts?
But you don’t understand any of this, do you? That’s ok. Feels good to say it anyway. But hey! I got a secret to tell you. I’m gonna go up there (resting my arm on her shoulder and pointing up). That’s right. Up to the place where huevo7 has never been. I’m gonna go up there and squeeze right through that futtocks, and I’m not gonna turn back till I get there! And guess what? When I do, I’m gonna think about you.
It has begun to rain. a few drips, which rapidly build into a deafening roar. Warm torrents peal over the pier in waves, enveloping us. From the far end we see someone running toward us. It is Époisses, naked, basking in the rain. He runs right past us without noticing, both crying and laughing at once it seems—both our unending loneliness, and all the beautiful things we make of it.
..
Regarding that time I was telling you about—when I got sprayed in the face by the pecker and Queso-frito was there to save my ass: we spend 4 days and 4 nights up there. We climb late into the day and hang hammocks over night. I bring up a chip-brush and a canvas sack full of one-slather-fixes-all—the main ingredients of which are pine-tar, crisco, and various green additives of varying toxicity. I remove old bird nests from footholds and slather the goop liberally over outbreaks of rust, and checks in the wood, while Queso makes a general inventory of rot in his notebook, pausing to re-lash the occasional ratline. We pass through several climatic zones long the way, including a blizzard. The sway is violent up here, and the air is thin. We scurry up shrouds past wind turbines, and colossal blinking red lights. On day 3 we climb a Jacobs ladder through a vast magnetic field which forms a gap, several stories thick, holding up everything above it on an invisible cushion. Later that day we come to a place where the whole edifice tapers down to the width of one lashing—which consists of a couple passes of seine twine alongside a flex duct—before widening out again at the royals. Queso inspects this particulate lashing extra close, but seems satisfied. Day #4, we come upon a skeleton. It is clothed in a pair of blue coveralls, and one of the lanyards on its harness has a ragged end. Nearby hangs a wind- chime made of spoons, gently clattering. I fold the departed’s hands over their chest and search the pockets of their overalls—find a few nips of twine, a harmonica, and one orange paint-stick.
At the end of day #4 we reach the terminal moon-raker and come to a bottleneck with a tiny passage leading up through a narrow pair of futtocks, through which only one individual may proceed. We stop there. That night we camp out under the futtocks. In the morning we scramble up some pecker eggs with frame mushrooms for breakfast, and head back down.
That was the highest I ever went.
..
Today is Tuesday. Tuesdays I get away from the Edifice for an afternoon—or, rather, I get off the edifice. Its shadow is much too long to ever get away. I am entrusted with the keys to the van and tasked with running deliveries between local restaurants and a food distribution program operated out of the Y, as part of the Babella relief effort. And so, the same van we use to shuttle our buckets of shit around, now carries 100 units of chicken parm diner, 200 vegan curry cauliflower, and 150 meatloaf stroganoff w/ brownie.. In exchange for helping out we are allowed to keep a couple dozen meals for ourselves—a well-earned day off for our Pecorino.
I relish this time alone, cruising around town, arm slung out the window, listening to Mexican love ballads on the radio. A respite from the confusion. A break from this all consuming project and the ponderousness of my feelings toward it. I was assigned this task by Babybel. He seemed to sense I needed it—needed a break. I suspect he knows that I am not one of them, and that I am therefore no danger to the people out here, in the world. Still, I wear my mask and gloves—just to put everyone at ease.
“Come around back and we’ll load you up!” The owner of Mamarosa’s Fine Italian Dining waves me back; a clear and direct instance of communication has transpired. Out here people get their points across quickly and with precision; no one wants to deal with anyone longer than need be. Indeed, it would seem that the side effect of a functional language is that no one any longer desires to communicate. Or maybe it’s the other way round? Maybe the comprehensibility is a function of the fact that no one wants to communicate?
By contrast the edifice seems to thrive off of its discord. It is only owing to the confusion of tongues that it is possible to build such a thing.. If everyone understood one another and thought alike it would produce only a consensus that it is not worth the effort. And then none of us would ever have had any cause to be here. And then where would we be? Somehow or other we all manage to a working extent. We get by—on amateur miming and onomatopoeianisms. We get by on fart noises, and obscene gestures. We get by on playing with our food at meal time, and stupid drawings on white-boards during brainstorm sessions where every suggestion is subject to the most productive of misunderstandings. Because contrary to popular belief, it is a fallacy that communication requires understanding. It is enough to WANT to understand.
Yu ier? ‘em work dat mahchin babyl –one of the heavy accented Jamaican dudes in the back lot of Eng’s Asian Buffet says—they’re always trying to get me to smoke up with them after they help load up the van. Sometimes, when they find out where I work they ask me about it. Breda tell: a wa mek dem bil’ it? Jus’ wa tis de point evan?
The point? —I believe that’s what he’s asking me? But who am I to say? Honestly, I’m not sure it ever had one, and who ever could have told us is long gone. In all likelihood, there simply isn’t one.
Out here, in the world, you might on occasion hear it being referred to by its various epithets. The Blunder on the (insert adjacent natural feature), or Mr. (currently discredited politician’s) Mistake, or The (insert adjacent city) Shade-maker. I once heard a rather clever individual out here in the world refer to it as the Ark of Sisyphus. I rather like that. To be sure, there are no shortage of movements to efface us from the skyline. But despite a ceaseless stream of ridicule heaped upon our endeavor from all quarters, somewhere deep in the unseen places of even the most cynical and merciless detractors there is a tacit need for this absurdity to stand and to keep on reaching. Because, truly, can you even imagine the world without it? And indeed, at this point, for most of you, it is simply taken for granted.. Only we who work upon it long enough have to know the truth; that the whole thing is a mere contrivance. As fragile as the inner-most hopes and dreams of all us tiny mortal beings who skidder around in its shadow. The truth being that if we stepped away, even for a single moment, the whole thing would come crashing down! On all of us! We are, it would seem, held hostage by it.
But the point you ask!? Since there must be a point to this.. The point is it’s there, and we put it there. Never mind that it is pointless and stupid— the alternative (it not being there) 17 simply wouldn’t have worked. Heaven knows it’s the only thing high enough on which to hang a hope. Even if, as is the case, such things can only survive by virtue of being held out of reach.
In any case, I’ve decided to drop off some meatloaves to the good folks at the office—a gesture of good will. Apparently it is nearby—never been there before. When I finally find it, it turns out to be more like a PO Box in a sleepy business park. There is a sticky note on the door that says office hours “Monday 10-12. Call Fernina to scheduled appointment” followed by the absence of any phone number. In the past the office has pushed advocacy for various random and disparate causes, mostly applaudable. It has also had to deal with massive outside problems like pandemic, flooding, loss of payroll etc. Right now the office is supposedly lobbying for the teaching of Esperanto in high school, using us in the edifice as a cautionary example of linguistic discord.. Oh office. Despite this, I know that there is some use to you office. Alas, though we aim ever upward to the firmament, we cannot seem to escape the spot of earth on which we rest—We are nothing if not a hope sent up from the world.
I park on a closed beach and I sit there eating lunch. A large Latino family is splashing around in the water just south of the discharge point for the Flood St. Sewage Treatment Plant. The children are laughing hysterically as they walk into the wake and get plowed back, over and over. A hundred years ago they used to quarry blue-stone here. There was so much they would throw it off the side of the trains to shower-up the tracks from high tide. In the middle of the beach is a stack of it which someone continually piles up into a tower about 7 feet high, but which falls down periodically and has to be rebuilt, over and over again, endlessly, by whoever it is that builds it. I have seen it rise and fall many times, this stack of rocks. “Fools Monument” as someone once chalked on one of its slabs. I sit here feeding the gulls and watch as the waves lap at its toppled sides.
You get what you get. It’s all a goddamn miracle if you ask me. In any case it is way more than I deserve. Way more than I could ever repay. Which is why I am the way I am. But I’m trying with all my might here to earn this. Truth is I just want to make myself useful; show my gratitude, for all of it. In any case! I’ve decided; tomorrow is the day! If I don’t make it back down, I just want to say thank you; to every face that ever lit-up whenever somebody actually understood what the fuck it was that I was trying to say. In the end nobody understands anybody. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you want to.
the ampersand 
Leave a reply to cypherblossoms Cancel reply