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ArtistEdna Million in a drop-dead suit Dutch Pink on a downtown train Two-dollar pistol but the gun won't shoot I'm in the corner on the pouring rain Sixteen men on a deadman's chest And I've been drinking from a broken cup Two pairs of pants and a mohair vest I'm full of bourbon, I can't stand up Hey little bird, fly away home Your house is on fire, your chickens are alone Schiffer broke a bottle on Morgan's head And I've been stepping on the devil's tail Across the stripes of a full moon's head Through the bars of a Cuban jail Bloody fingers on a purple knife A flamingo drinking from a cocktail glass I'm on the lawn with someone else's wife Admire the view from up on top of the mast. .Churrigueresque Psychosomatic Magicalism: a maximalist literary movement where magical realism collides with surrealism, expressionism, psychedelic collage and postmodern association. Ordinary objects open into dreams, memories, philosophy, art history and absurd jokes. Like Churrigueresque architecture, every detail sprouts another detail; like Escher, stories fold recursively into themselves. Yet Chinese and Zenga emptiness interrupts the excess. Meaning emerges through unexpected connections: intricate, colourful, atmospheric, nonlinear and strangely alive.
Diversity Saturday — Characters — Jockey Full of Bourbon
Saturday arrived wearing somebody else’s shoes.
By noon the city had developed a nervous condition. Rain came down like loose change thrown from heaven, and every window along Dutch Pink Street contained somebody who had either lost the argument with God or was preparing an appeal.
I went looking for characters.
Not people. People are what governments count. Characters are what survive the counting.
First came the Jockey, dressed like a bankrupt undertaker with a cigarette hanging from his mouth at the exact angle required to insult gravity. He carried no horse and offered no explanation. Behind him rode three gentlemen on public transportation, one wearing a paper crown. This seemed reasonable. Democracy had finally achieved its natural form.
At the corner sat a man hugging his knees, waiting for the universe to return the deposit on his childhood.
Nobody spoke to him.
A pistol appeared on the table beside my coffee.
It said NO DUELAR PISTOL, which I took as excellent advice, particularly since I had no idea what language the gun was speaking. There are Saturdays when firearms become grammatical problems. You do not touch them. You order another coffee and allow syntax to defend itself.
Across the street a red devil sat patiently beneath a birdcage while a mechanical angel exploded behind him. A pink flamingo stood in a martini glass. The moon had acquired a human face and looked down with the weary expression of a bartender who had heard the same confession since 1647.
Then the women arrived.
One carried a pink pistol large enough to settle an argument between Freud and the Book of Revelation. Another reclined beside a wooden ship wearing gold jewelry and the expression of somebody who already knew how this chapter ended.
That was when I understood Diversity Saturday.
It wasn’t a parade of identities assembled for inspection. It was the old democratic catastrophe of existence itself: saints without credentials, devils on lunch break, sailors, queens, mechanics, drunks, philosophers, immigrants, ghosts, fools, lovers, casualties and men who had boarded the wrong tram thirty years ago and were too proud to ask where it went.
Everybody had brought a different universe.
Nobody had brought instructions.
By evening the rain had washed the borders off things. The map on the table no longer corresponded to any country recognized by the United Nations. Geometry crawled across it like drunken mathematics. Somewhere a ship sailed through a woman’s bedroom. Somewhere a caged bird dreamed of machinery.
And the Jockey?
He disappeared around midnight.
Naturally.
He left behind half a cup of coffee, one cigarette burning in an ashtray, and a note with nothing written on it.
I kept the note.
It was the clearest explanation anybody had given me all day.
