They have begun to excavate the Giant ー
In the middle of/on the fringes of/ a city swollen and stripped by a populist politics, some pillars lay dug out and naked between two shot out highways. Shot out as in, pot holed and pot bellied drivers ー jumping down the asphalt. Driving by, you wouldn’t think, couldn’t tell that they are excavating the Giant. Stopped at a light, seen in passing, I make intimate eye contact with a woman sitting in the passenger seat of a red shoe box vehicle *. She holds my gaze as if cupping my face between her two hands. She realizes, as do I, that they have begun to excavate the Giant.
Peering through the windshield at her, I wish I was a pane of glass, sunlight pooling through me. The woman is slightly translucent **, sunlight pulling through her and illuminating a pattern almost seraphic in its organization. In the branching spirals I watch small beasts climb a mountain, furry creatures build a ship, mythic horses on an ancient plane. The Giant’s face, visible in some areas where the construction crew has chiseled away at the sandstone, is gold and shining. The Giant’s face, she thinks, looks like her grandmother. The Giant’s face, I think, looks like my neighborhood grocery clerk. Looking closely, it is clear that the face is covered with a fine fur, cowlicked in some places, like the flank of a buffalo. There is something uniquely bovine in the eye contact I hold with the woman, something idiotic and dumbfounded.
The excavation work has not been easy. The excavation work has not been noticed. Local town halls discuss the filling of a swimming pool, construction of a housing development, crumbling infrastructure. Bloated participants at a cheap table, democratic processes subverted many years ago by a bloated faith in the strength of such a democracy, the belief that good work is being done ***.
* Wet cheeked, the woman presses her entire body into the wall of a boat, her nose and forehead round pressure points, joints of movement. She hears the ship hum and sigh, water pumps groan and the bow slapped by swell. Pushed, mercilessly back and forth. Here she is, prone inside the great beast, a round pressure point. Soon, she will be on land ー legs bowed and swaying, seated in a car on the highway, a joint of movement.
** Translucent, not as a ghost is, the woman is not a ghost, she is just slightly see through. The down feathers of a duckling ーgossamer, veined, palpable.
*** Really, the same holes are dug and filled a million times over, for the sake of the shovel, in the name of progress.
