the child speaks saying: the house of the laughing duck is not a nice place to live. you would think it would be since there is an actual duck, (as of yet unseen, just behind the trees in the dank little sewer pond who laughs in a most authentically amusing fashion. parental addition)
but it isn’t.
the genius stairwell looks over the top of his glasses and squints at me as if i am some dull urine-soaked piece of crockery being handed to him as a unexpected gift.
“awake again?” he drawls while giving me the once over twice, “awake again and freshly bathed, it seems,” he adds looking at my thinning hair wet with greasy water.
from the very first the house of the laughing duck had ominous signs, tiny but persistent, hovering about the periphery of my vision and always within the parameters of the street itself. whatever curse is upon us, it seems to be concentrated on this particular avenue.
i walk about on rare occasions when inertia doesn't reign and notice a less than subtle shift in air-clarity, light, sense of well-being and general happiness on other blocks.
this could be an error on my part due to my inclination towards the dramatic. but so it seems.
the house has a crispiness to it that tends to echo.
it is a suburban bump pimpling the area surrounded by almost identical and close-set homes all with similar latitudes and angles, all filled with great big loads of this and that, the stuff of whiteheads and disease.
the house of the laughing duck is ridiculously stuffed full in every nook and cranny with various manifestations of buddhas.
it does not help. it is not helpful, here, in the house of the laughing duck.
symbolism comes to this ‘hood to die. so very, very emptied of meaning.
Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.
Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.
