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Enter hyperspac




SPECTACULARISM. A

fascination with extreme situations.


ever.

Ever was actually about ten years, and the sight Edward found outside those doors really amazed him. In all the time he had been sequestering himself, being piquant in his little room, the rest of hu-manity had been busy building something else—a vast city, built not of words but of relationships. A shimmering, endless New York, shaped


of lipsticks, artillery shells, wedding cakes, and folded shirt cardboards; a city built of iron, papier-mache and playing cards; an ugly/lovely world surfaced with carbon and icicles and bougainvillea vines. Its boulevards were patternless, helter-skelter, and cuckoo. Everywhere there were booby traps of mousetraps, Triffids, and black holes. And yet in spite of this city's transfixing madness, Edward noticed that its multitude of inhabitants moved about with ease, unconcerned that around any corner there might lurk a clown-tossed marshmallow cream pie, a Brigada Rosa kneecapping, or a kiss from the lovely film star Sophia Loren. And directions were impossible. But when he asked an inhabitant where he could buy a map, the inhabitant looked at Edward as though he were mad, then ran away screaming.

So Edward had to acknowledge that he was a country bumpkin in this Big City. He realized he had to learn all the ropes with a ten-year handicap, and that prospect was daunting. But then, in the same way that bumpkins vow to succeed in a new city because they know they have a fresh perspective, so vowed Edward.

And he promised that once he made his way in this world (without getting scalded to death by its many fountains of burning perfume or maimed by the endless truckloads of angry clucking cartoon chickens that were driven about the city's streets) he would build the tallest tower of them all. This silver tower would stand as a beacon to all voyagers who, like himself, arrived in the city late in life. And at the tower's peak there would be a rooftop patio lounge. In this lounge, Edward knew that he would do three things: he would serve tomato juice cocktails with little wedges of lemon, he would play jazz on a piano layered with zinc sheeting and photos of forgotten pop stars, and he would have a little pink booth, out back near the latrines, that sold (among other things) maps.


"Andy." Dag prods me with a greasy chicken bone, bringing me back to the picnic. "Stop being so quiet. It's your turn to tell a story, and do me a favor, babe—give me a dose of celebrity content." " Do amuse us, darling," adds Claire. "You're being so moody." Torpor defines my mood as I sit on the crumbling, poxed, and leprous never-used

macadam at the corner of Cottonwood and Sapphire avenues, thinking
my stories to myself and crumbling pungent sprigs of sage in my fingers.
"Well, my brother, Tyler, once shared an elevator

with David Bowie." 'How many floors?"

"I don't know. All I re- member is that Tyler had

no idea what to say to him. So he said nothing."

"Ihave found," says Claire, "that in the ab-

snce of anything to talk about with celebrities,

you can always say to them, 'Oh, Mr. Celeb-

ity! I've got all your albums'—even if they're not musicians." ''Look—" says Dag, turning his head, "Some people are actually driving here." HA black Buick sedan filled with young Japanese tourists—a rarity in a valley visited mainly by Canadians and West Germans—floats down the hill, the first vehicle in all the time we've beenhaving our picnic. 'They probably took the Verbenia Street off ramp by mistake. I bet you anything, they're looking for the cement dinosaurs up at the Cabazon truck stop," Dag says.


LESSNESS: A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing expectations of material wealth: "I've given up wanting to make a killing or be a bigshot. I just want to find happiness and maybe open up a little roadside cafe in Idaho."




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