Every question ended in complicated nods to business. What’s your business here? Does the key fit the lock? Are you prepared for the future? I didn’t have a plot of land that made any sense of what I’d done with my life. And the people I knew that did, what common threads we shared were store bought. The economics of implied derivation sank from my view the way white tufted clouds sometimes dipped into Lake Pontchartrain. And I hadn’t even dropped a toe into that lake in years. I wanted a way out, a path that led to something else. But there was a toll, and I didn’t have the right currency.
So I dreamt up plans of houses I’d never have, of rooms that made no sense outside of whim. And whimsy is a fickle maiden. But sometimes, out of whimsy’s reach, I’d admire the white rocks, the broad deco strokes somewhere and gallop along with them. You could be with me, here in Los Angeles, in Chinatown, in the laboratory where they purged the rotten parts of my liver. You could be here. And we could drag our pencils together and collaborate on great pillars of pronouncements, marble dedications, limestone bemusements. A parlor filled with snake eyed slate. A wide lawn in the middle of a wet, wet country with Bermuda grass that tickled our feet as we stepped upon it.
by Hank Cherry
