Plate 11, Plate 12

B. Picart sculpsit, 1726

Daedalus

While he was giving Icarus these instructions on how to fly, Daedalus was at the same time fastening the novel wings on his son’s shoulders. As he worked and talked the old man’s cheeks were wet with tears, and his fatherly affection made his hands tremble.

--The Metamorphoses of Ovid

Φ=1.618

phi

@ the Murden's

The Ten Books of Architecture

In making of Stair-cases, (the Ancients) recommend the making of the Steps in odd Numbers, and especially in their Temples: Because they said that by this Means we always set our right Foot into the Temple first; which was accounted a Point of Religion. And I have observed, that the best Architects never put above seven, or at most nine Steps together in one Flight; imitating, I suppose, the Number either of the Planets or of the Heavens; but at the End of these seven or nine Steps, they very considerately made a Plain, that such as were weak or tired with the Fatigue of the Ascent, might have Leisure to rest themselves, and that if they should chance to stumble, there might be a Place to break their Fall, and give them Means to recover themselves.

--Leon Battista Alberti, Book I, Chap. XIII

Namor of Atlantis

At the top of the helical slide above the Sternheimer pool at the Community Center where we swim, there is a bar at chest level from which to sling yourself into the wash. The enamel on the left side has been worn to bare metal from the ring fingers of countless mommies and daddies. Climbing the stairs, pausing to wave from the top. I limit friction to my heels and my shoulders, so that by the third rotation, I feel velocity in my back before the water. I always wish for two more turns in the auger, I always worry about kids in the deep end.

I go under for as long as I can; skimming the bottom, looking back above to the lights. The water is perfectly blue and I am near blind in it. Curved cement and Atlantean tile; I am banished Prince Namor, alone in the abyss. Whatever music plays in my head, breathes there from years below. I can stretch my limbs, coil and unraveling, I can swim. Outcast, rebellion, twisting, elongated. This building with a pool in its heart has a city block worth of names of builders, portraits of financiers, their testament to architecture. No masons names, no Mexican sheetrock hangers, no tile-setters, no carpenters.

Damn the names of carpenters. I can swim.

Fig.18-Brace

If Larry was right and the ankle of a horse

Is holy, then what about my carpenter’s wrist, fatigued

By three weeks of the nail gun? Reinforced in its black

Brace against the weight of the drill, the weight of the saw.

The song the saw sings. The sheetrock goes up.

It’s not as bad as New York, its great webs

Of tendonitis creeping up my elbow, my shoulder.

Months of metal studs and sheetrock. The length

Of my arm encased in lycra and velcro.

There are novels of pain to be told, but this

Is not one of them. I drive nails and screws,

Thousands. I dream of the bones of the wrist,

My wife. I dream of cowboy music.

The river of music that makes up a life.

I Am Thessaloniki

4" Craftsman/King-Seeley jointer, 1950s

Fig.17-This Auger Against

Every auger has a centerbore to precut,
then shank-spiraled, carries chipwood up and out.
It is this upthread that carries, that drives itself.

The posthole digger’s two sets of handles
jolt and twist, will knock you and the boss,
you hold on, rib-bruised, and its
big eight-inch auger dropped
center down bores, relentless.
It threads itself through dirt towards devil
or China both, like Akhilles, dirt spilling
over itself at hole mouth, and both hands
to hold onto this Akhil.
The cigarette burns down and this sound of
perfect rage burns two fingers.

The most pure sound of God
lives in feedback. The sound
Akhil of perfect metal bends
and he obliterates all sound.
The Akhil hand, the Akhil roaming death
and this complete Akhilles of hate
unto twisting grain, slid down
from silo, augered through feed sheds,
spread out to thine bovine feed
and thus fed to chop.
This Akhilles shines so bright as to blind.

Thus He, Achilles grown greentall
and strong, grown twin bar-strung
and wild of carwreck, grown paired rage
of wire-strung feedback: sound, strung,
is created, and caught in the machine
which bore it, is folded again unto
its system, and thus, is born again as pure noise.
The purest noise of sound and sound
and most pure form of against. None so ever welcomed
the fate of hell and so fuckall of hell against

while his boots filling with blood, said

“I was born to this shore,
and knew neither Greece nor Helen,
and raised unto blood plain, birthed
only for young bones in blood-sand,
I yearn for nothing else than to
shine tenderfoot, ankle-wise and tear
through this now, or some other now
and tear God from Heaven if I could.”


--written Fall, 2000

Fig.16-Pediment @ Davis

The Junior Classics, Vol. 4: Hero Tales

Grendel, the captive of Hell, the adversary of God, lamented sorely, chanted his grisly death song. But Beowulf, the strongest of men in that day in the world, held him fast. He did not intend to let him go, for he reckoned not his life useful to anyone.

Beowulf Fights Grendel

Figure 14

A Fat Man in a White Van Gave Me a Doughnut Today

& I ate it. I was out at the truck, smoking. He was making a delivery, two doors down and regarded me. I had my belt on, obviously working on the place, besides, who doesn’t love a working man? He pulled up and rolled down the window. I said, “Hidee.” He replied, “I got two dougnuts I couldn’t finish. You want ‘em? I got ‘em just this morning from Peggy Ann’s.” Or some such fuckin place. I said, “Sure” thanked him and he drove off. They were in a nice white box, about two inches tall and shone in the sun, glazy.

I got home at lunch with my stomach so tied in knots I could barely walk. I climbed into bed with my wife and the baby, who were lying down for nap.

“See that’s the difference between you and me," she said, "I would never eat food given to me by a stranger.” Baby May poked me in the eye and said, "Eyes?"

“I thought it would be bad karma to refuse the proffered donut. He seemed like a very nice man.” I said.

“You know there’s nothing good about doughnuts anyway.” She said. I said I’d have to think about that.

I had eaten fried shrimp four days straight last weekend at my parents place in Florida. The night before last my wife had fed us fried taters. I guessed the donut, fried in lard was the final straw for my insides and they revolted. Deep fried material had shredded my stomach. I had to get up and head back to leave the key for the electrician. There was the other doughnut still left in the box on top of the stack of sheetrock. I’ll probably eat that one tomorrow.

Occidental Tool Belt

Fig.13-Beowulf and Grendel on the Red Line

The residue smell of yesterday’s tiger balm across my shoulders, blood vessels broken above my pelvis from the tool belt.

Beowulf at the tunnel, his layer of mail.

My thin layer of white thermal to cover me, the blue gray of the morning filling these rooms.

The smoke from my cigarette. Beowulf on the platform, Grendel in the tunnel.

The clear water running between the tracks, the slime billowing like ladies hair.

Calluses across my hands, calluses on my feet, my hips.

Denim or canvas to cover the whole of me, the twenty eyelets to lash each boot.

The sword point of Beowulf blunt against concrete.

The ghost train with windows blacked out, work train filled with tools, slows into the station.

Leathery Grendel spread like a spider across the top of the train.

The red weight, the ox blood of the toolbelt. Grendel descending.

The terrible saw that lengthens my arm, the sinew and muscle that makes up my arm. The two rows of eight bones that make up my wrist.

Beowulf and Grendel collide against one another.

Beowulf and Grendel colliding.

Poseidon at Marineland

Figure 12

Last week, pulling base molding, I found a three-by-three picture from the previous generation. Not dog-eared or faded, a mother holding a small boy over a cake with two candles. Both in red. Somebody’s grandpa strolling in from the back room, in a Bermuda shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. The child with thick curly brown hair, blowing toward the “Happy” between the candles, the mother’s hair straight and perfectly parted. Her arms lean and strong.