faster pussycat... type! type!

I'm jealous! Have fun!

Hunger.

July 07 2006

He sat motionless in his cage and they all resented him. They resented his silence, they way he did not move. The stillness provoked disquiet in them. He was an artist, and this was his art. He would eventually disappear but after a long still silent pause. The wait was the process. The product was when all have moved on and his slight body was swept up and discarded with the hay that lined his cage.

What angered most was that on the surface there appeared to be nothing happening. Those that paid the cost admission would not feel that they had received their moneys worth until they had seen the hawk-boy, or the bearded iguana. His act, his art was too much out-mode for the main attraction. His cage was off to the to the far side in the place designated for the smaller attractions. The less interesting attractions, those that were still under contract, but raised less interest. The art was no longer respected, and the artist was the butt of ridicule, and jokes. And he longed to disappear, but an artist cannot rush his art. And surely he would soon be gone.

It was friday... thought id write a few words of fiction...

His activity had always been with purpose. He spent a year as a walking artist. Seen on the sides of hi-ways walking. Hours in the day with left foot in front of the right, the left to follow the right. His art spread from town to town, the motorways were the canvass. He walked from miles, and in the days he found pain in his feet legs. His art began to take shape. It was that of loneliness, of solitude. But the activity stole away for the structure of the piece. Each step moved him from the last, and the statement was lost in the miles. It was in the hypnotic steps that he realized that the truest expression was that of non-movement.

He purchased a cage, and in the vein of the older artists he set about creating this new masterpiece. He found a traveling road show in his wanderings and approached the owner to explain the work he had in mind. A freak show was not the gallery that he wanted to present the new masterpiece but the deal was struck. The artist funded the exhibition. He had the cage, and lined it with hay; he sat there. It was all that needed to be done. And now in his closed cell he saw the world. As the show traveled from place to place, from town to city and to farmers field he watched the parade of people move past the view thru the bars. At first the desire to move or to explain the process was unbearable. He let his emaciated body his watered eyes and pale skin tell the story; this incomplete story that would ultimately finish with a seemingly empty cage.

The parade of observers showed little interest for the thin man in the cage. This man not moving, not speaking sitting there alone, no spark in his eyes, no oddities about him at all. Out side of his oversized clothes and rail thin body there was nothing special to note, just a thin man in a cage. And the sign outside stated clearly that the show would amaze, intoxicate and fill with awe and fear. This man in a cage was not any of these things he was just sitting. An obvious miss laid crate. The man must have been food for the Amazing Egress. That laid just beyond the far door.

Soon all the customers had gone to see the egress and the great tent of mysterious wonders was empty of them. The hired hands had begun to pull down the tent and pack away the boxes and the exhibitions. The two headed frog, the half beast woman, the freakishly small elephant all went to their trailers and boxes. Every thing was packed away and the trailers had begun to move off to the next town every thing that is except for the artist. His small cage was left behind. Perhaps because he couldn’t call out and remind them that he was being left behind, or perhaps the owner had enough of the small box that drew no attention and was looked on as more of pain to move then it was worth. Whatever the case was the artist found himself alone in his box in the night air of the countryside. And he would have stayed there like that for all time if I had not accidentally found him.