Significant Objects X Litquake No. 1 of 5.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Miranda Mellis, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $12. Proceeds of this auction have been donated to Root Division, host of the first-ever Significant Objects live event, in connection with Litquake in San Francisco.]

Candra was raised by chance operators. Later, rejecting the coin tosses and water-damaged ceiling readings by which her mothers navigated, yet unable to put her faith in any non-arbitrary criteria, she agonized over decisions.

She went to her siblings for advice. Her sister, an eschatologist said, “No worthy decision is easy. That said, at this historical juncture it’s impossible to make the right decisions; just try to make good mistakes.” Candra yearned for more noble counsel. Her brother said, “You become spiritual or go crazy: these are the options. The goal of doubt is belief – if you can’t bind yourself to a set of those, then you will go nuts.” She went to a pungent occult shop. She waited until nobody else was lurking, then poked and glanced around cautiously. The proprietor watched her, an owl with a tremendous brown beard, baldly moving his head. She saw a book called Say Yes. Instantly she decided to adopt that program.

She bought the next thing she saw, an object being sold as a candleholder that was actually a defunct project of the store owner: an unfinished astrolabe. She also bought a candle. Her building was going through lead remediation at the time. The landlord showed up with a lead tester and patrolled the rooms, her device chirping. The landlord saw the astrolabe for what it was. An amateur astronomer, she asked if Candra wanted to go to the beach. Candra thought say yes and said yes. The landlord pointed to the astrolabe and asked Can we bring that? Candra said yes. At the ocean Candra’s landlord positioned the astrolabe. “It’s one in the morning,” she said, though it was four in the afternoon. “Yes,” said Candra. The landlord offered Candra a pill: she swallowed.

Several friends of the landlord turned up and they all took pills. Cresting waves washed up mysteries. They parleyed with talking clouds. Sudden animals gave warnings and instructions. Part of the group disappeared and the others went looking for them; then the first group reappeared and the second group was lost. Candra got separated and walked seventy blocks home. A bobbing, disembodied head accompanied her most of the way incessantly talking, just to her right, before finally dissolving. She recognized it; it was her life, that noise.

Exhausted when she arrived home, she lit her new candle, stuck it into the astrolabe, and ran the tub. Moments later she heard a thunderous flooding sound from below. She ran down to the caged stoop at the front of her building and saw a man with bright red eyes peering through a gap in the sidewall where he had wrenched out a board. Behind him she saw a shattered window. Coincidentally, a pipe as thick as his torso had burst, just as he had been breaking in.

Candra was startled: the disembodied head! The head was also alarmed – he was up to his knees in water. He urged her, crafty-faced, to come down into the basement. Why? She countered, you should get out of the basement. But I need you to come down here and see all this water, he said. She refused, backing away. Her sister was right: she should make good mistakes. By no criteria, fixed or random, could Candra rationalize crawling through a broken wall into a flooded basement with the red-eyed man.

———

COME TO OUR EVENT: October 9th, from 6-7 p.m.: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!

Object No. 3 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Terese Svoboda, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $42. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

Dear Wicked One:

As in “wick,” your sat-upon heart suggests so much to all of us on this Planet Nolove, pronounced to rhyme with olive, which whirs toward our sun at an alarming rate reminiscent of sperm lash. We lack heat and your visage, so pinkly coy, so silvered as if off a chalice, so bent-buttocked in the curve, your heat if lit — though miniscule it appears — would be just enough to energize our zip so we could snap our airlocks tight to the sun at last and sigh and smoke the way actors in your features express their heat thus slaked. But such a suggestion is not appropriate from the female side of Nolove, the side inopportunely pivoted toward the sun for the last nth, so we realize, keening, nothing at all can come of the electron flashing, wick-kissing heat you promise. We mourn for another nth then we get on our exercise drums and lean so far into the cosmos that a revolution (manned and unmanned) occurs, and Nolove rocks. That is, the male side cheers. Gaining on the pointer side, they forget all too quick who did the leaning, who kept to the drums when nobody had even a pull-cord. We’re the ones who find old sticks floating in the no-air and rub them slowly, oh so slowly, ourselves in ricochet, until a spark appears — the elements after all that time (we have it, time, on loan sometimes) seep in if you wait, some of the more idle elements, the ones with only one electron available. With that spark so carefully husbanded by ourselves across so many thrillions of pixels, we trusted your sensual self to rise up on those silvered haunches of yours and receive and burn. Yet never have you so much as leaned, you who must know that leaning is how it’s done in the cosmos by our kind, leaning into the spark? Wick-ed yourself then — our sun is not yours, we call it Love, and you obviously care nothing for Nolove and its potential — still — to collide and produce endless synergy that would so far outRabbit your whole system that you wouldn’t exist after that, for system is all you have, you bitch, probably consoled and iPudded and wii-ed up the wazoo, but we have the — someone hold them up — pull-cords. It isn’t another little galaxy we’re wanting, believe me, you little wick.

Terese

The winner of this auction also receives Terese Svoboda's story, mailed by the author.

]]> http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/16/heart-shaped-candle-terese-svoboda-story/feed/ 1 http://significantobjects.com/2010/04/29/corked-bottle-maaza-mengiste-story/ http://significantobjects.com/2010/04/29/corked-bottle-maaza-mengiste-story/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:24:37 +0000 Maaza Mengiste http://significantobjects.com/?p=6412 Continue reading →]]>

No. 49 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Maaza Mengiste, has ended. Original price: 33 cents. Final price: $19.00. This is the second of three stories in our Identical Objects series. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]

There was a set of triplets in Addis Ababa born on the third day of the third week in the third month of the Ethiopian new year. Born so close together they could have been simultaneous births, their neighbors called them A’nd, Hulet and Sost: One, Two and Three. The oldest, A’nd, was the most logical. Hulet, the most charming, and Sost was the dreamer. Everything one did, all three did. One didn’t utter a word without the other two mouthing it in unison. They were so identical, so synchronized in every move, that sometimes A’nd, Hulet and Sost couldn’t decide who had been the originator of an idea, who the deliverer, and who the interpreter.

Young, handsome men, the trio’s proudest possession was a bottle of sand an American tourist had given to them nine years ago in a bar on a side street near Bole Road. Each year on the same day, they sat at the same table, drinking the same beer and imagined the secret message waiting to be written on the blank piece of paper rolled inside the bottle. Each year, one of them suggested a line. Each year, the two voted against the one, and all agreed on the outcome.

But then came one night when the trio’s favorite waitress served them three equally measured glasses of Meta beer, but brushed a singular soft hip against only Sost. She whispered into his ear while tapping the bottle with a long, red nail, speaking so softly the other two couldn’t hear.

“It’s my turn,” Hulet said quickly to cover up the tense few seconds when none of them knew what to do except stare at the waitress’ lush lips slide into a luscious smile as she walked back to the counter.

A’nd, ever logical, had nodded. “She knows it’s Hulet’s turn to think of a sentence.”

Sure enough, when the trio turned their identical heads at the identical time, the waitress was swaying slowly at the counter, her eyes teasing Sost, who blushed and looked instead at the bottle from a place named after a key.

It all would have gone back to normal if Sost, secretly in love with the waitress for the last seven years, hadn’t spoken: “It is the best sentence any of us could ever imagine.”

The other two, one as equally surprised as the other, sat back, unsure of what to do with this disregard for order. Both of them shook their heads but Sost’s stayed still, his gaze frozen on the bottle, until he could bear the separation no more. Then he met their stares.

The silence, long and drawn out, then tripling in duration, was agonizing for each.

A’nd, Hulet and Sost, unaccustomed to separate opinions, afraid of any discord, finished their Meta beers in four large gulps and left, the bottle the bar’s only witness to a pretty woman dancing slowly by herself in the dark.

Object No. 36 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by John Wray, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $20.50. Significant Objects will donate proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now.]

“It’s certainly — well. It’s certainly a something,” Lily murmured, upon being introduced to the Object. “But what kind of something is it?”

“This,” said Oliver, cradling the Object reverently in his open palms, “Is the something that is going to save our marriage.”

Not having been birthed yesterday, Lily had her doubts, but she was willing to be persuaded. She was desperate to be persuaded, in fact. And there was something about the something in Oliver’s palms that resisted all her efforts to resist it. Unlike most of the objects in Lily’s environs, it seemed to raise more questions than it answered. First of all, what was it?

“What is it?” said Lily.

“I just told you,” Oliver said patiently.

The Object expressed no opinion.

“Well, we might as well give it a try,” Lily said. “How do we make it do?”

Oliver squinted down at the Object for a while, and then shrugged. “I think we just set it down in the corner,” he said finally. “Give it room to do its work.”

Lily considered this a moment, then took Oliver’s hand, and they deposited the object, gently and circumspectly, in the room’s nearest corner. “How long will it take?” Lily wondered.

“Ten and a half days,” Oliver said firmly. Lily couldn’t help noticing, however, that he avoided looking her in the eye. You’ll never persuade me that way, Lily said to herself. The Object chittered and hummed in its corner.

“What a strange thing it is,” Lily said. “It reminds me of something.”

“Shhh!” Oliver whispered. “Don’t talk about it. The less we acknowledge it, the better.”

It wasn’t until weeks later, when their marriage had long since been saved, that they saw the Object for what it truly was. By then, of course, it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

No. 16 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Kirsten Miller, has ended. Original price: $1.49. Final price: $35.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now.]

This dome doll was purchased three years ago for $1.07 (including tax) at a Dollar Store in the Chattahoochee Shopping Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was originally part of a pair. On the bottom of the package (now discarded) I found a sticker with the message : “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS.”

The dolls also came with the following instructions written in both English and Flemish. I have scanned the English side for you. If you would prefer Flemish, please let me know. Read the instructions carefully before use.

(Those who dislike following instructions should refer to page A3 of the February 18^th edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel.)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of twin dome dolls. Their names are Saakje and Saertgen. Treat them with love and respect, and they’ll be your most loyal companions.

Keep one dome doll on your person at all times. They prefer a pocket, but a purse will do.

Dome dolls thrive in temperatures between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Extreme heat or cold can cause cracks in the glass, which may lead to an unintentional release.

If you must travel by air, DO NOT pack your dome dolls in your luggage.

Never subject your dome dolls to the following: Fire, microscopes, foul language, infants, deep water, x-rays, excessive whining, the TSA, ammonia-based cleaning sprays, or French accents.

To break the glass, place a dome doll under the heel of one shoe. Apply even pressure. Do not hurl or bash. Once the glass breaks, remove heel immediately and take two steps to the left.

Close your eyes and do not inhale for five full seconds. (Best when used in a well-ventilated space.)

Once you are able to open your eyes, leave the scene as quickly as possible. Resist the urge to take pictures or videos.

Phone the authorities when you’ve reached a safe distance. Do not identify yourself.

IMPORTANT:

Use only in emergency situations. The effects are permanent and cannot be altered or reversed by pleading or crying, no matter how sincere.

Each dome doll is single use only. Do not attempt to remove a doll from the scene of an emergency. Once free, they must remain free.

Keep away from children under the age of eight. Not intended for use by individuals over the age of thirty. Sale prohibited in the Netherlands.

Object No. 10 of 50 -- Significant Objects v3

[The bidding for this object, with story by Blake Butler, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $59.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to Girls Write Now.]

My granddad’s granddad had a box under his bed. If you got to open the box (you had to beg) you would find a little door. The little door had a combination on it that you had to know to get inside the second box, which I did. I had the combination tattooed on my spinemeat when I was four while on a trip to see the circus. The tattoo was free. My granddad’s granddad was very powerful and rich.

With granddad’s granddad in the bed asleep above me, I opened up the box inside the box. My knees were bloody from the begging. I could see way down into the box. There was a black pattern, then a ladder. I fell forward and grabbed ahold. The inside of the box smelled like the backyard where the money got made from skin. I began to climb along the ladder, getting older every rung. I was a very special boy.

The room under my granddad’s granddad’s room was octagon-shaped. As I climbed into the room, the mouth to it closed. The walls along the room were lined with little cubbies. There were more cubbies than I have days I’ve lived, or hairs that I have grown, which is also more than how many mouths I’d put my mouth against if I lived to be very, very old.

In each of the cubbies there was a little globe. Each globe held another little thing, each named with a label for what the thing was. There was a cubby with a globe containing FIRST EVER REDWOOD TREE. One containing PERRY MASON. One containing PEAS. The globe containing JOYOUS LONGING held a bright pink liquid smoke. PERRY MASON looked pissed off.

The globe containing UTAH made a burning sound against my head, and there were all these people chanting, and face got all sandy and all wet. I shook it and it made my blood tingle and some coins appeared in my hands. I had so many gold coins I could live forever. Some of the coins were chocolate, which was food.

The ladder would not come back down. I could find no door in all the cubbies. No doorbell or key or gun.

In one cubby I could see out of the room beneath granddad’s granddad’s room. I could see back into the house where I’d grown up. In a little mirror on the counter across from where I was I could see back onto the label underneath the cubby in the house that held the globe I was inside now: MY GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDSON.

Object No. 9 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Duane Swierczynski, has ended. Original price: $1.00. Final price: $16.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to Girls Write Now. ]

Hi there.

Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.

I understand your trepidation. It’s not everyday a torn suit hanging on a rack starts talking to you.

Yes.

Yes, I really am a suit, and I am indeed talking to you.

Come over here a minute.

See the pack of superfine needles over there? Right there, on the table? Pick them up, please. I need your help.

Argh… This is what I’m reduced to. Talking to myself, imaging that someone is actually listening.

***

Let me start again. My name is Ralph Rainey, and I’m a size 34 regular black Don Imprecio suit.

I wasn’t always a suit. I was born a man, a man named Ralph Rainey…

Ahhhhh fuggit.

***

Me again. It’s funny; this feels like good old-fashioned writer’s block — which I’ve had plenty of in my day, believe me. You can’t crank out endless reams of lurid pulp tales without hitting a mental ROAD CLOSED sign now and again.

But this is different, especially in that I’m not typing these words on my trusty Underwood. I’m composing these hideous sentences on an imaginary typewriter in an imaginary room in my mind. (The mind that is currently housed in the aforementioned suit.) I’m painfully aware that, at any moment, I can leave this imagined room and be right back in my tortured reality: the reality that is me, hanging on a wooden rack in the middle of a men’s consignment shop in Sherman Oaks, California.

It was a good suit, once.

Got married in this suit.

Nobody will buy me now, though, because one of my sleeves is ripped at the shoulder. And the owner of the shop doesn’t seem to want to bother with mending me anytime soon.

So if you are reading this, please do me the favor of taking one of those needles there, and some black thread, and fixing this awful gash in my shoulder?

And then we can get down to business.

***

You’re hesitating.

You think I’m imaginary, that I’m making this up.

Well — to me, you’re just as imaginary. So we’re even.

The needles.

Right over there.

On the table.

Object No. 49 of 50 — Significant Objects v2. Note that UNY found two toy airplanes at Dead Horse Bay; the toy shown here isn't being auctioned off, but the one below is.

[The auction for this item, with story by Robert Lopez, has ended. Original price: $1.00. Final price: $19.50. Part of a special collaboration with Underwater New York, this object's story shipped rolled into a vintage bottle found on the beach of Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn. Proceeds from this auction go to 826 National.]

A man on a park bench then another man next to him.

The first man there for no good reason.

The other man the kind of man who sits next to strange men on park benches.

This other man has with him a toy airplane.

He holds the toy airplane in his right hand, which is battered, bloodied.

It looks as though the other man had been in a street-fight and was declared the winner. The toy airplane his trophy.

The other man holds the toy airplane like a trophy.

The day has in it the sky and sun.

There are clouds and women.

It is routine.

The first man looks at the other man. He looks at the toy airplane. He says nothing.

A week goes by. Then another.

Then the man holding the toy airplane speaks.

And of course to make a long story short, he says, anyone living in a pretty how townhouse can look beyond themselves into the kitchen breakfront and clearly see between two pieces of ordinary china that every second of every livelong day of an already long week in a rather long month can often lead to an even longer year and subsequently is almost always followed by a long decade which is only one tenth of a long century and compared to the long long millennium is practically insignificant on this or any other beautiful Sunday morning.

The first man says, I know what you mean, and leaves.

The other man remains on the bench holding the toy airplane for the rest of his natural born life, which concludes twelve years later on a Thursday evening, just before dusk.

The body goes undisturbed until the next day when a passerby alerts the authorities. Two hours later the body is removed and taken to the county medical examiner’s office.

There is no mention of the toy airplane in the medical examiner’s report, only a note concerning the right hand in which the subject held the toy airplane, which was strangely contorted and atrophied.

PHOTO: Nura Qureshi

]]> http://significantobjects.com/2010/02/11/toy-airplane/feed/ 0 http://significantobjects.com/2010/02/10/yellow-bear/ http://significantobjects.com/2010/02/10/yellow-bear/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:32:16 +0000 Kathryn Davis http://significantobjects.com/?p=3972 Continue reading →]]>

Object No. 48 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this item, with story by Kathryn Davis, has ended. Original price: $1.00. Final price: $51.00. Part of a special collaboration with Underwater New York, this object's story shipped rolled into a vintage bottle found on the beach of Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn. Proceeds from this auction go to 826 National.]

The sorcerer drove too fast. He always did but only because his mind was somewhere else, not because he was in love with speed. He was slow, really — sorcery is not a speedy business. What’re speedy are the events that make sorcery necessary. His mind was on his wife, Mary, who sat day after day at her sewing machine turning out small pink dresses, some trimmed in white eyelet, some in lace. Today he was more distracted than usual, this being the same block he’d been driving down the night he first saw her, a skinny girl wearing glasses, balanced on one leg like a stork. The sycamore trees were taller now, full of nests. A shadow leaped from between two parked cars. It was twilight and the papers on the back seat came flying in a white fan around him.

Mary wanted a child more than anything and he’d conjured one up, only to run it over — that was his first thought. Then he saw that what he’d hit was no human child but a yellow bear. It had leaped out though — he was sure of that. The car had inflicted no damage the sorcerer could see. When he picked the yellow bear up it was smiling at him, its little mouth slightly open and eager, revealing the tip of the tongue but no teeth. It held its forepaws against its chest in a posture the sorcerer knew signified submission. Mary wanted a girl and the yellow bear seemed more like a boy, but then again it didn’t have genitals. The sorcerer wiped it clean and took it home with him; every now and then he could hear a jingling sound come from it like it was a hard rubber cat toy with a bell inside. But the bear wasn’t made of hard rubber; it was made of something soft and warm more like skin.

Mary loved the Yellow Bear the minute she laid eyes on it; she held it to her cheek and smiled. “The baby’s tired. She wants to go to sleep now,” Mary told the sorcerer. She put it in one of the pink dresses and carried it upstairs with her, then she got into bed with it and turned off the light.

In the morning when the sorcerer brought Mary her breakfast tray of tea and toast he found her propped on her pillows, the bear at her breast. Mary was no longer smiling but had tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t know if I can do it,” Mary told him. The jingling sound was very loud now, ear-splitting. “She won’t stop,” Mary said. “She needs something from you, too. That’s how babies get made, in case you forgot.”

“She’s no baby, she’s a toy,” the sorcerer said, but when he went to show Mary the rubber seam running across the top of the bear’s head, the baby sank its teeth into his thumb clear to the bone.

Later, when Mary had cried herself to sleep, the sorcerer snuck the bear from her breast and filled it with something secret. “Pablum,” he told Mary when she asked, because now there could be no question, the child was alive and thriving and cute as a button. Buttercup, the sorcerer called her. But Mary knew better and treasured these mysteries deep in her heart.

PHOTO: Nura Qureshi

Object No. 45 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this object, with story by Luc Sante, has ended. Original price: $1.50. Final price: $51.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

After my friend Claude had his accident I went to visit him in the hospital. When I saw him I had to cough to divert a laugh. He looked like a guy in a cartoon, his entire body wrapped in bandages. He had broken everything that could be broken, from his skull to his toes. Somehow he was conscious and could speak, although to hear him I had to put my ear right up to his mouth-hole. I thought he said “door,” so I shut it, but he was still agitated. Eventually I got it: “drawer.” The one in his bedside stand contained a single object, a ball of wrapped flannel that looked like his head, only more colorful. I went to pick it up with my fingertips, but then had to readjust. Astonishingly, the thing weighed at least five pounds. I gaped at it, but Claude was making noises. I finally understood: “Don’t unwrap it.”

Claude went to glory a week later, felled by some hospital bug. The ball sat on the shelf next to my bowling trophies. Occasionally I’d blow the dust off and pick it up just to feel its weird heft. After a while I forgot about it, as stuff got parked in front of it and stayed there. One night I was rooting around trying to find my paintball gun and there it was. When I picked it up it seemed twice as heavy. I got spooked and reburied it.

Time passed. The seasons came and went: hockey, muskrat, sweeps week, estrus. I grew a mustache and shaved it off, twice. I enjoyed the stylings of eight cars for varying lengths of time. I fell in love with Sheila, Bambi, Marla, Candy, Darla, Brandy, and Concepción. At work I climbed from office boy to field officer to regional sales manager to CFO, and then back down again. My apartment grew ever denser with stuff. I could barely move around, and tended to use and wear only things from the top layer, a fleeting category. One time I was poking around for some itch cream when my hand grasped the ball. I couldn’t move it.

Then, on a dark November morning, as I was lying in bed watching paragliding accidents on TV, the crash came. My shelves buckled and caved in the middle, one by one. There appeared a sinkhole in the floor, which sucked piles and piles of stuff down to hell, or at least the garage level. Then cracks appeared in the walls.

As the other residents and I huddled across the street in our bathrobes, watching the fire department string caution tape around the building, the whole thing shuddered briefly and then dissolved in a blizzard of concrete. We stood transfixed and mute as the dust died down, what seemed like hours. Then something emerged from the ruins, a colorful little ball that seemed to shoulder its way out and then rolled straight to my feet. I picked it up. It weighed nothing.

Object No. 42 of 50 - Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this item, with story by Willy Vlautin, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $20.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

When he woke up in the middle of the night she was laying on top of him and he thought he was dying. It was summer in Houston and the air conditioner on full kept the bedroom just under eighty-five. He pushed her off and stared at the coconut pirate her father had given her before he moved in with a nineteen-year-old girl outside of Vinh, Vietnam.

She brought up her father a few times a week, and at least once a month she’d break down in fits over him.

“How could he leave us for a nineteen year old girl?”

“I don’t know,” he’d say.

“All men are perverts,” she’d cry.

“Jesus, not that again,” he’d say and then it would start and it would take a long time for it to stop.

He looked at the coconut and flipped it off.

The coconut cleared its throat and said, “Just wait, she’ll be on your ass day in and day out. She’ll take every cent you make and then complain about it. Did you notice how she quit her full-time job when you told her you were moving in? That weren’t no coincidence. All the women in their family are like that. Why do you think I got a job on a ship? I was seasick for five years before I got my legs. I woke up puking and went to bed hurling and still it was better than where you’re at.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“She’ll climb on you and try to heat you to death but she won’t climb on you and ride you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I have to watch. Begging doesn’t look good on you.”

“Christ,” the man said after a while. “If you’re so smart what should I do?”

The coconut started laughing.

“Where the hell am I going to go, I’m broke” the man thought.

“Move in with your brother in Shreveport,” the coconut said.

“What?”

“I can read your mind. I told you not to buy her that car and the computer.”

“It’s for her career.”

“Some career, all she does on the computer is look at shit she wants to buy. And it ain’t fancy underwear for you.” The coconut laughed so hard he fell off the dresser.

“I’m alright,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, just get me back up. You guys got cockroaches the size of cars here.”

“All this worrying is making me hungry. I gotta get something to eat and I don’t want you coming with me.”

He set the coconut pirate on the bed next to the woman.

“Don’t,” the coconut cried. “Please!”

The man drove halfway to Otto’s Burgers before he turned around.

“Let me ask you son, why did you come back and save me?” The coconut was in the seat next to the man as he drove.

“I hate eating alone,” was all the man said.

Object No. 37 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this item, with story by Annie Nocenti, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $36.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

This cold ceramic bear witnessed some electrifying poker hands. Saw leather-faced wide-brimmed Doyle Brunson run a ten three offsuit. Watched matchstick-thin Amarillo Slim bluff his fictive straight to the river. Set his beady eyes on longhair Chris “Jesus” Ferguson as he parsed stats hand after hand like a machine till small-baller Daniel Negreanu fried his circuits by chattering his all-in with a lowly three seven to a win.

When playing No Limit Texas Hold ’em, the greatest game in the world, some of us take faith in a lucky weight, a talisman that squats on our hole cards, a little trinket with an invisible antenna pulling for luck. Amulets that we rub and stroke. A dinosaur. A sneaky fox. A strutting rooster. A river stone shaped like a frog. Even an inch tall they pretend to be fierce warriors guarding cards and shazaaming the table. Bluff Daddy, he had his inane white bear; thing didn’t even have a body. Just a head on top a’ feet. Not even feet, just six black toenails. Tongue-hanging-out bear. Blank white eyes ringed in black. Holes in the head. It’s a salt shaker is what. Bluff Daddy is ever lifting his teddy between bets and tossing salt over his shoulder.

We’re in a big hand, me and him. My gut says he’s got ace-high rags on his way to a longshot flush at the river. I’ve been praying for this hand all night. Playing loosey-goosey, mixing up my play then closing the gate like a clam. I’m impossible to read. The way to lure suckers into a pot when you’re holding the nuts, you gotta spend time projecting false tells. Jiggle a leg, chatter too much or go stone mute, work it all night till the other players think they’ve got you pegged. The tell and reverse-tell is a maddening thing. When the tell is flipped, a monster pot can be stolen.

Just before the dealer turns the river card, that white bear puts the whammy on me. Tongue hanging out, face smeared in bear lipstick. No. Not lipstick. It’s bleedin’ out the mouth. I swear. Then Bluff Daddy hits his flush. His bad luck. He goes all in, he has to. You can’t beg off the high card flush. My stack is bigger than his; he can’t match my all-in. So I say to him, want to match it? I’ll take that bear. He shoves it right in and instantly blanches white as his bear. That donkey betrayed his own lucky charm. I mean, Bluff Daddy even looked like that bear. Like that bear was his lucky spawn.

I show him my full house. Pass the salt, I say. I won that bear, fair and square. After that hand? Me an’ my new bear, we dominate the table all night.

Bear Shaker — closeup

Object No. 23 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Rachel Axler, has ended. Original price: $1.49. Final price: $56.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

10/12/91

Q: Does John like me? A: TRY AGAIN

Q: Does John like me? A: TRY AGAIN

Q: …Does Alex like me? A: YES

11/27/91

Q: So I asked John out, and he said okay after only a little thinking, and we went to the movies and it was great! Actually, it wasn’t great, but we definitely went to the movies. Three times! I paid for his tickets, and he brought a friend along and paid for her tickets. Sometimes he and his friend would kiss a little. Is John my boyfriend? A: ASK A FRIEND

Q: I asked Ashley because I figured she’d know, since she’s been coming to the movies with us so much. She said no. Is that because Ashley’s jealous? A: TRY AGAIN

Q: …Does Alex still like me? A: YES

12/07/91

Q: What should I wear on Saturday when I see Hook with John and Ashley? A: TRY AGAIN

Q: Sorry — I forgot I have to phrase these questions in a certain way. Um… should I wear a dress? A: NO WAY

Q: Jeans, then. But a cute sweater? A: TRY AGAIN

Q: …You want me to wear scrubs again. A: YES

Q: Really? Again? A:  YES

Q: But they look so bad on me. A: YES

12/24/91

Q: Merry Christmas tomorrow!! I’m thinking of getting John a present, since he’s my boyfriend. A:  NO WAY

Q: I know, right? It’s a big step. But that wasn’t the question. My question is — how about, like, a CD? You think he’d like that?  A: MAYBE

Q: I wonder what his favorite band is. A: YES

Q: Really? That’s weird. I thought maybe he might like that new band, Nirvana. But you think I should get him 20-year-old British prog rock? A: DEFINITELY

1/6/92

Q: John showed everyone at school the weird CD I got him and everyone at school laughed at me. Except Alex, who looked kind of hurt or angry or something. That was a jerky suggestion, fortuneteller… Why are you shaking? You’re shaking a little. Are you laughing? Are you actually laughing?! A:  MAYBE

Q: I can’t believe this! You’re totally evil! Are you purposely giving me terrible answers? A: NO WAY

Q: You just don’t want to admit how in love with me John is! You’re trying to break us up! A: MAYBE

Q: That’s it — I’m never consulting you again. I hate you. You suck. [FORTUNETELLER PLACED IN BACK OF CLOSET; ANSWER UNCONFIRMED]

6/1/92

Q: Hi. It’s me again. Um, John and Ashley are going to prom together. And I wasn’t invited along, so I guess they’re a couple now. A: NO WAY

Q: I know. They’re big jerks. Oh, but Alex got me a birthday present. Off the Deep End, by Weird Al. It’s pretty dorky. But funny. A: YES

Q: So, what do I do about prom? I can’t show up alone. I’ll be mortified. A: ASK A FRIEND

Q: …You want me to ask Alex, don’t you? A: DEFINITELY

6/24/92

Q: So, we didn’t just go to prom together. We also went to the movies. Alone! I mean, with each other, but nobody else. Except the other people in the theater. Oh, who, by the way, included John and Ashley… and Laurel. John sat between them, and in the middle of the movie, Ashley got up, and she was crying, and she dumped popcorn all over John. It was better than the movie. A: NO WAY

Q: Seriously. But anyway, I guess I didn’t have a question for you. A: —–

Q: I just wanted to say… we had a good time. A: —–

Q: You were right. A: I KNOW.

Object No. 17 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Joe Lyons, has ended. Original price: $2.49 Final price: $61.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

It’s true that there are many accounts of fascinating Amish dinnerware, but none is more interesting than Samuel Stoltzfus’ Divining Plate, forged in 1881. “Limpy Samuel,” his nickname after a disagreement he had with a mule, originally created the plate as a gift for his son, Moses. Samuel meticulously etched the alphabet and numbers around the edge of the plate, which was forged from scraps of metal and discarded Civil War muskets that could still be found in the fields. The hope was that his son, who had difficulty with his lessons, could learn while he was eating. But the plate would prove to be far more useful than an educational tool for Moses, who was a lost cause anyway.

For you see, one of the muskets that Samuel melted down for the plate was responsible for the bludgeoning death of Thomas Becker, a Union soldier and the fourth son of Martin Becker (who was also a fourth son). This, combined with the fact that 1881 was an astrologically perfect year for inter-dimensional rifts, made the plate particularly susceptible to otherworldly influence… which is exactly what occurred when Samuel etched the letters and numbers on it. Doing so invoked the essence of one of the Good-But-Not-Great Old Ones, an otherworldly deity as old as time, whose name contains all of the letters of the alphabet and the numbers zero through nine. The only way to come close to pronouncing its name is to say “Abercrombie Snooze Mine” slowly, while slapping oneself in the throat.

One day Samuel was using the plate to cool down nails he was making in his shop. He looked down at the metal shavings floating in the water he had in the plate and said aloud, “Will these nails hold true?” Suddenly, the shavings joined together and floated to the edges of the plate until it spelled out “Yes.” Intrigued, Samuel continued: “How many will I need for Jonathan’s barn?” The shavings pointed to two, then five, then zero. Convinced his eyes were deceiving him, he asked, “What happened to my best hammer last spring?” After about fifteen minutes, the shavings eventually spelled out “Hezekiah pilfered it.”

From then on, after the vicious shunning of Hezekiah, Wise Limpy Samuel (his new nickname) used the plate and its gift to become the most respected elder in his community. Samuel always seemed to know how the weather would affect the crops and whose thoughts were the most sinful. The plate was always Samuel and Jesus’ secret, since he assumed it was Jesus in the plate and not an inter-dimensional being, and he only used it to help his people.

After Samuel passed, Moses sold the plate in Harrisburg for two dollars, which he then spent on rock candy. Today, it sits on the back shelf of an antique store near Philadelphia, where it continues to answer questions, but its revelations, which have included World War II, Disco, and the fact that six year old Stephanie Lewis of Baltimore would one day marry Michael Huther even though she thinks he’s “gross,” go unnoticed.

Object No. 15 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Shelagh Power-Chopra, has ended. Original price: $.25. Final price: $24.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

Annie won the doll after a giddy round of skee ball. A stooped man behind the dirty balls handed her the doll and she pushed it into my hand as she rambled over to the tilt-a-whirl with her brother. I held it by its feathered boa at arm’s length as if getting any closer would have induced a pox outbreak. I studied it as I watched the two of them tilt and whirl and bicker like an old married couple.

I couldn’t be sure of its nationality – it could have been Mexican, South American, even Indian? It seemed an amalgamation of nationalities, as if its creator had been harshly commanded: “I want a doll and make it colorful and enticing. What?? I don’t give a shit where it’s from!”

And its sexual inclination? Ambiguous at best: the eyelashes, painted by Liza Minnelli’s understudy? Or the lips: rotting guavas mashed by the fist of an angry Mexican servant? And those thick, blue bandages, covering the hurt of the world. Of course I tore them off – and what do you think I found? Pustules — rotten and mean like a festering mob of little elves. Then, I heard a small cry and looked up at her face.

“Señorita (oh, we have discovered her origins!),” she said, “I am lost. Please, I beg you, por favor, to return me to the suburbs.” “What are your wounds?” I asked gingerly, fearing she would leap out of my arms and run towards the tilt-a-whirl and get crushed, her little plastic limbs coiled violently within its gears. She answered solemnly, her red lips swaying from the heavy words. “I punish myself for seeking fama – la fama y fortuna! The goat’s parade – the lights, the smell of swollen Chorizo!”

The kids had just gotten off the ride and were dizzy; they grabbed my sleeves and laughed like wild hyenas. Annie seemed to have forgotten about the doll and rushed towards a cage full of bears. Later, I dropped the doll on a side street in town across from a simple house with a clean wooden fence. She smiled, her feather boa now drooped like a sickly flamingo, and limped gracelessly down the stone path to the door.

Object No. 10 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Wayne Koestenbaum, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $37.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

Gloria Swanson owned a duck nutcracker. Guests, including Jean Harlow and Franchot Tone, cracked nuts at Gloria’s cocktail parties.

After Gloria died, John Travolta inherited the contraption. He brought it out as a conversation piece when Roland Barthes came calling.

Then the duck nutcracker fell out of favor.

I found it at a hand-me-down tchotchke shop in Culver City and bought it for Nicole Kidman.

Nicole grew furious at the nutcracker’s improper performance.

“The stars are peeved at me,” thought the duck.

And: “I’m not to blame for the rancid walnuts that enter my body.”

Nicole gave the nutcracker to Miranda, her dipsomaniacal cook, who returned it to me.

I put my wedding-ring finger in its vise and broke my knuckle.

The duck asked to be psychoanalyzed.

The duck is not fake! The duck has an unconscious!

The duck wished that Jayne Mansfield were alive. Only Jayne understood the duck’s delicate sensibility.

“I, too, had a career,” thought the duck, remembering happy-go-lucky, pre-doom days, when The Girl Can’t Help It set the tone.

The duck was delusional.

“I’m a Valkyrie astride her wingèd horse,” thought the duck, stuck in a phase of adolescent rebellion against invisible authorities.

I forgot to mention an important fact. The duck was made in Lisbon in 1925 by a Jewish mystic named Abraham Pacheco, who lived in a dusty, book-crammed atelier on the Largo de São Carlos, near Fernando Pessoa’s house. Abraham overcame a mild case of tuberculosis, fell in love with a dissident nun from the Convento da Ordem do Carmo, and eloped with her to Hollywood, where they opened a duck nutcracker shop, frequented by the stars.

Object No. 87 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Merrill Markoe, has ended. Original price: 59 cents. Final price: $21.80.]

Any image that has been carefully placed in an antique gold frame embossed with angels and laurel wreathes becomes transformed in to something elevated and celestial. “All you need to know about this old person/building/animal/plate of food/scenic vista/bleeding martyr is that it is sacred to me and  holds a very special place in my heart,” the frame seems to tell us.

But what if you are the kind of person who wishes to remember the bad times? You believe there is wisdom in being surrounded by cautionary tales—reminders of your most fatal blunders. How else to remind yourself to never again respond too quickly to a seemingly harmless social invitation and risk becoming mired in an evening so vile it undermines your sense of self worth? So you bring home a memento of that detestable event: a whimsical cocktail stirrer or a personalized matchbook. But where do you put these wretched things? Or the snapshot you still have of that person you dated who stole your credit card and talked with a phony English accent? Let’s not forget that former best friend of yours who calls to brag about the good things that happen to him by disguising them as disappointments, tragedies and inconveniences. “I’m so depressed,” he says, “That deal I closed has moved me in to a much higher tax bracket.” Then he leaves you with a faux ironic  autographed photo of him standing in between Spencer and Heidi. You need a place to put that unpleasant souvenir of friendship gone sour. One that will admonish you never to take his phone calls again. Ditto the business card left behind by the tech guy who came to fix one broken USB port, disassembled your entire Internet connection, refused all blame, and insisted on getting his full fee.

Well, some people put these things at the center of dartboards. But that has become a cliché. And why run the risk of attracting unwanted dart games? No, when you want to demean an image, hold it up to spite and ridicule and single it out as something worthy of scorn, you want a frame that conjures a rage like the one that overwhelmed that Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush. You want a frame that says “I step on you with my bare dirty feet.”

This poorly articulated caricature of a foot wearing a flimsy multicolored flip-flop sits atop a frame that boldly declares, “Whatever I have enshrined here is something I hold in contempt. He/she/it is sub-par in every way: cheap, shallow, unimaginative, disposable, as void of any real value as the very worst, most despicable gift catalog. And just like the frame itself, they too are under the false impression that they are adorable and a welcome addition wherever they go.” May they eat every meal for the rest of their lives from a plastic plate festooned with Santa’s adorable helpers, listening to a never-ending loop of the opening line of “Up, Up and Away,” by the Fifth Dimension.

Object No. 84 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Betsey Swardlick, has ended. Original price: 25 cents. Final price: $26. This story is the third in a three-part series produced in collaboration with The Center for Cartoon Studies. ]

Object No. 78 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by R.K. Scher, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $157.50.]

Visitors never fail to ask about my squaw. It’s what I like to call her, although one of those visitors, an earnest young art critic, did try to impress upon me the incorrectness of the term. Small as she is in stature, the squaw demands attention. Hers are the only colors in my entire studio. I’m a Minimalist, after all… or as my art dealer has it, a Neo-Minimalist.

I used to enjoy telling the story of how I came by the squaw but one too many art collectors demanded her price. The story that doesn’t get told any more goes like this.

Not long after I didn’t graduate from high school, a crumbling cluster of old houses adjoining our property was slated for demolition. Exactly eleven acres of old-growth trees, two Spanish-style houses and three cottages would be razed to make way for a new suburban development. It would take all summer long and it was all I thought about.

My ideas evolved over time and became less ambitious when my parents forced me to get a job. That was when I abandoned plans to booby-trap the houses and create a homemade minefield.

Instead, every evening I took pictures of what was still there after a day of destruction and the space of what wasn’t. I made a detailed map of the whole property in pencil and erased each day what got knocked down and carted away. I spent a lot of time sitting on cut logs, stroking my old dog and taking in what happened when ancient root systems were hauled out of the ground.

One day I realized that I had to decide what to do about things that appeared instead of disappeared. The plan for the map was to end up with a blank page. I hadn’t figured on the things that get shaken out of an empty house when it’s destroyed: the objects fallen through floorboards or just left behind. There were some broken dishes, some sodden books, a bicycle wheel, a Frisbee, an empty coin purse… and the squaw.

The thing about the squaw was that she changed places. The first time I saw, and photographed, her, she was half driven into the dirt. The next photo shows her lying on some dead leaves. Then she disappeared for three days. The fourth day found her fifty yards away. This time, I plotted the location on my map, in ballpoint pen. It went on like this for weeks, an old souvenir hopscotching across a blanker and blanker landscape, followed by my ballpoint pen.

At this point in the story I usually got asked, Who was it? Did you ever find out who – or what – was moving the thing around? The answer is, No, I never tried. The day the pattern of her movements closed in on a perfect repetition is the day I picked her up and brought her home.

This is the pattern I have been drawing ever since.

Object No. 77 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Nick Asbury, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $11.61. ]

Kenny is a funny clown

Kenny is a funny clown.
He sees the whole world upside-down.
Kenny is my best friend.

The day before Kenny was born, he said
“I bet I can live life standing on me ’ead!”
Kenny is from the North of England.

Kenny sometimes says to me:
“I am the King of Comedy!
Just don’t ask me to do stand-up!”

It’s funnier when Kenny says it.

Kenny’s favourite food
is upside-down cake.
Except he calls it right-way-up cake.

Kenny likes to chat up the ladies.
He says “Hey! I’ve fallen for you baby!”
and the ladies all fall head over heels
and Kenny says “Now you know how it feels!”

Kenny says he has to move on.
“It’s time I stood on my own two feet,
paid my way in this world,
met some new people, maybe a girl!”

Kenny will make someone very happy.
He’s a stand-up guy for an upside-down chappy.
He cheers you up on the days you’re down
and turns any frown upside-down.

Kenny has also asked me to mention
that he is an expert breakdancer.

So long Kenny! See you around.
Keep your feet in the clouds
and your head on the ground.