Questionnaire

How would you bury your valuables if it were totally up to you… if you had unlimited time and an unlimited budget?
(We will work out a reasonable design together, but first, please answer these questions.)

How long could you be apart from your valuables?

Do you think you would be able to operate normally, knowing these treasures are underground? (They will be safe underground, I think, unless the bombing gets even worse than predicted. And, they will be well packed, to the best of my ability, but certainly the crate will be surrounded by mud—there’s no way around that.)

If you had to, could you be happy just imagining these treasures? That is, how much would their total destruction (worst-case scenario) destroy you? Financially? Emotionally? ...And in terms of your obligations to others?

On Trophies

My sculpture. Every morning, my son, inconstant the rest of the day—he is too old, living with me. Every morning, my son attaches a piece of fruit to my sculpture, my Rifle Association Match Trophy, the Winchester Plainsman Trophy I won, damn it all, I won my trophy, my sculpture, a mantle piece bronze buckskin cowboy, his horse rearing up to three legs, resting gun in the crook of his left arm, left hand holding the reins while right arm points to the mountains. The bronze horse has a perfect, full, high-arced tail. Every morning, before I get up, my son sticks a pear, or an apple, or an orange onto the cowboy’s gun, the gun tip sticks out from the crook of the cowboy’s left arm, the gun tip sticks out enough to hold fruit. Today it is pear again. My son.

My son and I make our own soap, stove to soap pots on kitchen counter. Before mess gets everywhere, lye, I put everything from the counter (fruit basket) in the side, under-bottom cabinet where a Lazy Susan stashes high with Tupperware (all the tops fall back). A pear also slips to the back of the cabinet, wrinkles, gets softer with age, develops black spots, shrinks. Rotten squishy pear on my sculpture, this morning, there is my sculpture defaced again.

We never talk, my son and I. For the last three years, since he moved back in, we have never talked to each other, not a word. We do not speak while making soap; we do not speak in front of the TV or separating toast to two plates. Every morning, the vandal. Every morning the paper toweler, chunks of fruit, juice drizzling down. Us bastards, the fruit back the next morning.

I work: I am a behavior detection officer; I monitor suspicious behavior at the airport security checkpoint. Knowledge of communication principles, methods, practices. I fought: took my position behind the trees, my anger against the smoke, my attack. I am also a hunter. There is nothing wrong with hunters. Overall, hunters are no more or less violent than non-hunters; hunters just know how to use guns.

I found a trophy for my son. Los Angeles has one thousand twenty-six trophy stores. It’s true. House of Trophies and Awards. I order my son a twenty-one dollar, plastic cast rifleman, my son’s plastic to my bronze, next on the mantle.

War. He will be seated politely, dignified even. He will become a thin boy dancing on top of a tortoise shell, impetuous, going up on right foot, lifting left knee. He will adjust his visor to focus the street, watching there from his low stool, right boot crook-nestled behind left. He will drink enough to roar, to grip at a few last buttons. A towel draped over his lap will be modesty. He will sit politely again.

Bring in: Rocks; a thin red plank; firecrackers; a child’s bike tire; a sturdy stick; a red cooler filled with water; a mahogany desk on wheels pulled by a rope; a Bin Box.

A cement road rings the cemetery. Inside the cement road: discrete stone and copper markers. Lay down flat and sink into the grass. Under the branches of an oak tree, a group of two hundred or so copper markers forms a tight oxidizing network of rectangles. The ground holds the markers as bricks with grass for grout. Lie face down at the bottom of this cemetery section. Directly on the ground, press your nose on a copper marker, arms at your side.

Put your hands over your ears. Shake your head side to side. Put your hands back at your sides. Get up onto your knees. Dunk your head in the red cooler full of water. Pull your head out. Stand up and long roll your rocks down the thin red plank.

Outside the cement road: crypts, standing headstones, benches, mausoleums and fountains—but mostly crypts. The crypt compartments stack upwards and sideways above marbled ground; they vary from post-office-sized box to queen-sized box. Screws and wide washers brace the corners of the crypt compartment marble covers. Two workers loosen the screws, hold the marble, take the screws out, pop the marble off its bottom inside clips, let the marble down, rest it on the ground.

Light firecrackers. Rapidly spin and spin the child’s bike tire on the sturdy stick.

The grain in the marble meanders brown to white to flickering silver. Guess at the various names of marble. Say: “Duchess Grey, Emperor Mountain Ash, Swirls of the Sun, Fine Alabaster.”

Sit behind the mahogany desk. Put your feet up on the desk. Get up and put the Bin Box on top of the table. Get inside the box. From inside, throw a broom head out of the box.

Marble urns on the ground. Metal vases are empty or hold perfect fresh roses ordered by Joe DiMaggio.

Picture a group of sandwich-faced comedians. Picture pickles, plaid and smoke. Here is some comedic dialogue for you to consider:
“On my gravestone, it’ll read: ‘In.’”
“No, no! Not on mine. On my gravestone, I want it to say: ‘There goes the neighborhood.’”
“Mine will say ‘Something went horribly wrong.’”

Now, pull out your pockets. Let the small empty sacks hang at your sides. Sing: “I come to see you baby but I could not see your face. I come to see you baby but I could not see your face.”

8:08 AM
Democratic Italy and Communist Yugoslavia.
As the only American doctor in the area,
anything serious.

10:45 PM
Favorite stunt: string wire across road at the level of the windshield of a jeep. These vehicles were driven with the windshield fixed in the down position. More than one soldier was beheaded before we attached a tall metal post to the front of jeeps.