Object No. 10 of 50 -- Significant Objects v3

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Blake Butler, here. 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. 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. 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, dissembled your entire internet connection, refused all blame, and insisted on getting his full fee.

Well, some people put these things at the center of dart boards. 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 50 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.

Object No. 75 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Teddy Wayne, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $20.50.]

At the Ramada Hotel and Conference Center Qualcomm Stadium San Diego, on a June weekend in 2007, eighty-two men and women from Sealy, the mattress giant, converged for their national sales meeting.  Sealy was falling behind in the burgeoning memory-mattress market and its finances were, in industry parlance, “sagging.”  One right rectangular prism made of Lucite with a “Catch the Wave” decal, half-filled with viscous liquid, was awarded to Richard Caulkins, a mustachioed sales manager from Omaha whose branches had outperformed all others in the previous quarter.  Upon his return to Nebraska he gave it to his eight-year-old son, who sloshed the liquid around for a few minutes and unsuccessfully attempted to crack the prism’s clear walls before getting bored and running out of the house to play.

But its history is immaterial.  You will receive the Lucite prism.  You will marvel at its viscosity.  You will think of a motor oil commercial from your youth touting its product’s ability to resist viscosity and fight thermal breakdowns.  You will place the prism on your coffee table as a kitschy, ironic gesture.  You will wonder if you are too old and bourgeois to be decorating ironically.  When friends come by, they will, in puzzlement, ask if you received the prism from work.  You will titter, explain that its placement is ironic, and nervously gauge their reactions.  They will smile politely and tilt the prism’s liquid around a few times, then return to the previous conversation, which will be about work problems, or sexual problems, or interpersonal problems.  These are problems with which you are familiar from either previous discussions or your own identification with them.  You will recite rote solutions or expressions of sympathy from muscle memory, meanwhile casting a surreptitious glance at the still-sloshing prism, watching its encased waves that cannot be caught, thinking about thermal breakdowns, closing your eyes and dreaming about diving into the bracing Pacific, imagining the Caulkins son’s escape from his father’s suburban row house with the aimless adventure only children possess, and, when you open your eyes, the liquid’s viscosity will have brought itself to rest, thickly, silently, within its six clear walls.

Object No. 70 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Charles Ardai, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $20.50. ]

The telegram arrived too late. The morning mail had brought the box, wrapped in a double thickness of brown paper and covered with fibrous packing tape I’d had to dig out the heavy Wüsthof cook’s knife to slice through. Inside, upon a bed of cotton batting, lay a ceramic ball painted with images of flowers in a wicker basket and tiny, gold-bellied birds. There was a plastic stopper in the base, a loop of ribbon at the top, and a diamond pattern of pinholes on either side. I looked at the return address on the torn and crumpled wrapping: Gabriel Hunt, Trebišov District, Košice, Slovakia.

The illustrious Mr. Hunt, a centimillionaire and renowned world traveler…why, I wondered, would he send me this oddity? I had recently completed co-authoring a book with the man (by which I mean that I wrote all the words the book contained, save three: ‘by,’ ‘Gabriel,’ and ‘Hunt’), but that hardly explained the appearance in my mailbox of this rara avis.

The explanation arrived an hour later, in the form of a half-size sheet of paper bearing the logo of Western Union. “Charles,” the message read, “you will receive a package from me shortly; do not, repeat do not, open the object you find inside. I send it to you for safekeeping, so I beg you, keep it safe. Hang it, please, in a cool, dry place, away from noise and direct sunlight. Do not listen to it. Do not attempt to peer inside.

“You will be curious as to what the piece contains. I will tell you, so that you might avoid accidentally doing irreparable harm. This innocent-seeming container is the handiwork, Charles, of the renowned Slovak metaphysician and sculptress Mária Gruska. She fashioned it with clay from the basin of the Tisza River, the burial site of the great Hun chieftain, Attila. Some incantations followed – I don’t know the details, Charles, and since Gruska has recently passed on (rather violently, I’m afraid) I doubt we ever will. But incantations there were, and a pentacle inscribed on the ground, and certain other bits of ritual that resulted in the ancient chieftain’s soul being drawn back from whatever midnight realm it had so long inhabited and stoppered up in this spherical chamber.  The art on the outer surface is functional: as anathema to the inhabitant as holy water to a vampire, it keeps him penned inside.  The holes permit communication, but not escape.

“Gruska had it hanging, Charles, from a cast-iron hook in her cellar.  Her mansion was aflame when I found and rescued it, escaping mere instants before the building collapsed into a heap of rubble.

“Now it’s in your hands. I realize you may not believe that Attila is in there.  Humor me at least. I will take it off your hands when I return.”

I would have done as Hunt requested – very gladly. But by the time I read this I had already slipped a thumbnail beneath the stopper’s edge and, with a tug, removed it. It had come free with an audible pop and I’d felt a strange breeze, as though there’d been a window open nearby. There was a scent in the air as well, like roasting meat or burning wood. But it passed, and I’d thought nothing of it – until the telegram.

On his return, Hunt was inconsolable.

I have used the container ever since to hold salt.

Object No. 67 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Klam, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $15.75. ]

I acquired this object at a flea market in the parking lot of a bilingual high school. Its little hands are smooth flippers. I believe it to be quite valuable, possibly antique, based on dates of patents listed on the ornate bronze panel on the inside door. Chinese in origin. Solid cast iron. Quite heavy. Designed to resemble the lead character of the short lived American cartoon, “Chucky the Chicken.” I never saw that show. There are knockoffs out there, and research indicates that knockoffs are made of brass or cheap plastic, but this one is well built, from original specs.

You may keep it in your car. You may keep it in your home. You may carry it on your person.

Be warned. There is a loud clicking sound coming from the control module.

For a while I kept this in my glove compartment. The original instruction manual mentions that the magnetic field it emits can change traffic lights from red to green. THIS DOES NOT WORK. Also, you will cause a pile up!

If you decide to keep it by your bed (as I did) and begin seeing colorful lights reflected on the walls and windows as you try to sleep, DO NOT WORRY AS THE OBJECT IS OPERATING NORMALLY.

DO NOT touch it or disrupt the cycle as this will cause IRREPAIRABLE HARM and may give you a POWERFUL ELECTRIC SHOCK. KEEP AWAY FROM CHUCKY UNLESS INSTRUCTED BY CHUCKY HIMSELF.

• Phase 1/Initial Phase: Transmission of messages.
• Phase 2/Functional Phase: Chucky cycling normally.
• Phase 3/Unity Phase: Walls bleed beautiful colors.
• Phase 4/Perfected Phase: Controller/controlled.
• Phase 5/Paradise Phase: Identity of Supreme Dictator revealed.

Chucky said to me, “HELLO MY LITTLE FRIEND. I am your GOD. Shift administrative tasks to your REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY. Prepare for LOVE SYMBOL.

Ha ha. And well we know what that love SYMBOL is now, DO WE NOT?

Certainly this object may have other uses. Keep it as an antique vase or planter, or with slight modification use as liquor locker, gun cabinet, bomb safe, champagne cooler, cocktail pitcher, etcetera. Dental detail alone is worth the price. Cannot verify that all parts are included. Cast iron is in excellent condition, however: do not microwave!!

Do not touch the outer shell with your tongue. Do not form contractions. FOLLOW THE MANUAL. Do not attempt modifications. Try to keep the dust out of his middle. CLEAN the inside WITH YOUR TONGUE if your TONGUE is long ENOUGH. THIS IS NOT HARD TO DO if you stick your tongue out. FARTHER. A LITTLE FARTHER.

N.B.: Cast iron may actually be ceramic. Bronze panel and inside door may be difficult/impossible to locate. Instruction manual not included.

Object No. 61 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Myla Goldberg, has closed. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $36. ]

This is not a toy.  Only the young or the hopelessly commonsensical dip it into liquid soap, content with bubbles.  Curl your fingers around the handle, lift it to your mouth, and flick the switch.  Say what you long to say.  The fan is small, but its aim is true.  You will be heard.