TEXT 518

I hear a distant bell and children singing. Below the carpenters handle delicately a mammoth pane of glass, so clear it seems they carry a piece of the Invisible. The radio squawks and gabbles, tuned on an outlandish frequency. In an outer corridor a woman walks down stairs, confusing the walls into a white silence. Magenta and blue plaster, the city on the hillside sits patiently in the rain, rife with a stolidity learned of centuries (the sun will come again). It is the moon's day, incipient and wet. In the small black-bordered room (No. 37-A) at the back of rain I play solitaire with a deck of live cards, faces contorting in mockery, the vain reflections of a thousand mirrors. The skin is rubbery and unreal, the numbers and symbols in black and red profusion weave and cross -- now there are thirteen where there were three, now two where once ten. The hour glass, brought from Arabia by camel, pours an endless stream of moments in a golden string. Suddenly an alarm sounds, the cards are abandoned to their private vices, I rush from the table to the windows -- the parade has begun. Slowly in spectacular file the myriads inhabiting the assorted rooms pass by. The day will end in a bloody sunset, despite the heavy promise of the clouds. Always a spectator! Always!

-- Allen Sutterfield (Adze)