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The Resistance of Ether

video text

Alice Evermore

Jimi Hendrix climbed out of the Are You Experienced album cover and stood next to a Mego Batman doll. Together they worked their way across Lester’s bedroom carpet. Moving slowly, as if in a dream, they continued all the way over to the door and then crossed the carpeted hallway, heading in the direction of Bucky’s old room.
Once inside Bucky’s old room, Batman led Jimi Hendrix along the foot of the bed, over to a set of wooden dresser drawers. Underneath the dresser, placed all the way back against the wall, was a small, thin brownish form. It was difficult to make out in the darkness, so deep up under Bucky’s old dresser.

Jimi Hendrix: Turning towards Batman and asking in a confused voice “What’s that?”

Batman: “That’s a raw hotdog…”

Jimi Hendrix: “A what?”

Batman: “A raw hotdog… Lester put in there ten months ago.”

Jimi Hendrix: “Why?”

Batman: “Because he wanted to see what would happen to it over a long period of time? He wanted to see how long it would last.”

Jimi Hendrix: Squinting to examine the object, which seemed to be hardened and perhaps a bit shrivelled “But why would Lester want to do such a thing?”

Batman: “Because he’s trying to hold on to the hour… You see, time is constantly slipping away, forever stretching out farther and farther away from his grasp… Lester is trying to capture a certain moment, so he can revisit it over and over again, like in a View-Master reel. Since this hotdog came from a package of Armour Franks that Patty bought several months ago, it means that Lester still has some remote contact with that day gone by… In his own obscure way, by placing that hotdog up underneath Bucky’s dresser, Lester is holding back a moment of time…”

The fine line between love and hate
dissolved into a hollow swell

that strained his breast cavity with
cramps and pangs of his plebeian existence.

He could no longer bare the thought
of some unknown ghost

strolling along his county lanes,
plucking the rhododendrons and azaleas

that grew alongside his cranial nerves.

…Who was this person?
What sort of genius-monster was she?

How dare she arrive so closely to him,
passing so flawlessly before his eyes…

polluting his sanctuary with her perpetual
invitations to consume

He wanted to put her entire body into his mouth and taste her every nuance. He wanted to let her know that he existed and that there was a fire burning two-metres behind her, which she had summoned and set forth...

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Standing across from Lester’s bedroom window, situated on top of the dresser along with other Kenner Star Wars mini-action figures. Turning his small, plastic head, he looked down into the back yard “The Force is strong there, around the base of those apple trees.”

Spider-Man: Hanging upside-down from a rubber-band / spider web attached to Lester’s ceiling “That’s Lester’s soothing place. It’s very special to him…that’s where he likes to project himself.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi: “It’s important to have some special place where all the motions of the day can stop, where one can meditate upon The Force…”

Spider-Man: Gesturing towards the grass with his red-gloved doll hand “In fact, there’s a certain degree of daylight, just around the base of those trees, that tells Lester something… He can find this light when looking out the window like you are now, particularly late in the afternoon.” Gesturing farther out into the open sky)“When cumulus clouds reflect the sunset over there, fifty miles in the distance…they extrapolate a sort of tranquillity, a protracted tranquillity that consumes all of time with pink and orange gasses… And when Lester sees those coloured vapours hanging in the stratosphere, he feels very far away from himself. His troubles, if for only a short time, are made to go away and he is no longer limited to his body. My Spider-Sense tells me that Lester feels a kind of bittersweet sadness, because the day is escaping…because it had been too large and too swift for him to capture.”

© 2003