Unable and powerless to circumvent my miseries, daunted, discouraged and unable to face reality, I felt myself to be unworthy of human company and so took to exile. I had no skills and no achievements. Of abilities, I had only my habits, which was to stand around all day doing nothing, this and that I was in fairly good physical shape. These being my sole attributes, I resigned myself to cross over to the other side of humanity’s double, on the opposite side of the glass, to a land where everything is cool and clear, perfect and pleasing to the eye: I went to live among the mannequins.
Life among the mannequins is ever fashionable. We live in your future: sweaters stretch across our perfect bosoms while you still swelter, and our matchless bellybuttons pucker above brave swimsuits while you shiver.
We are a sensibly evolved race, only those who need heads and arms have them. But each is a perfect exemplar of what it is. None of us have eyes, but, being perfect, like numbers, we have nothing to see, nothing to admire and nothing of which to be jealous. We are gracious in accepting your gazes. We are your royalty: you dress us in your finest, you carry us, you display us to represent you.
Sexless and perfect, immune to decay and age, born fully formed, we are more like angels than men. Indeed, in the story of creation told by mannequins, God, who like us, is perfect and immortal, made us in his own image, but first, wanting to get his creation right, experimented with clay studies and figures. After many, many trials, he was at last ready and created us, the mannequins and was pleased. Then he realized he had many, many leftover clay figures. Loving all his creations, however unequal, he decided to keep them, only to discover that the unfired clay was prone to rot and lose shape over time. The mud was getting everywhere. He thought that the clay figures might last longer if they were kept somewhere moist with lots of mud to fix them with: so he placed his flawed creations near the mud hole he had scooped out. This was your Garden of Eden. Despite all the moisture and the mud, the poor things kept falling apart, so perhaps he gave you procreation. In any case, so the story goes, he gave us to you, so that you might have something to look up to and to know what to wear.
Perfect in proportion and lack of detail, we are your ideals, your greatest of impossible hopes for yourself: in what sense can it not be said that we created you?
TURN #84: WEEK 70; WORDS: 79,648
NEXT BY 25 OCTOBER 2006
2 comments:
Mr. Van,
You have certainly found your calling - and, although your photographic representation does not reveal any hints of next season's fashions, i still found it mildly interesting. Nude, mannequins seem oddly defiant. Lacking fig leaf or trenchcoat, they brazenly flaunt their perfectly manicured nipples and bruskly uncensored mounds of plastic. While much is left to the imagination of the passer-byer as to what will be revealed in Betsey Johnsons' Fall 2006 line, you haven't left anything at all of your offering to be manipulated by the fancy of the viewers' imagination. We have it all.
Now, i ask of you, where is the Elvis bikini clip purse that i left somewhere in your dacha Tuesday? I definately still had it when i was sifting through the pile of tires for a lost raisinet.
You can send it via express post to
Ernest L. Baudelaire
c/o Université de Rouen
76821 Cedex,
Mont-Saint-Aignan
France
I should've known when you stripped down on the beach, right in front of everyone, that you were an exhibitionist. Luckily, this time I took care of things before trying to read your prose. (Fortunately, my housemate was in the shower so I couldn't be overheard.) I was intrigued by this story and was wondering if you had anymore genesis stories. I am about halfway through R. Crumb's version right now.
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