{"id":6562,"date":"2015-02-04T08:54:06","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T15:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6562"},"modified":"2015-02-04T18:42:53","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T01:42:53","slug":"built-to-last","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6562","title":{"rendered":"Built To Last"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Dunham<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSamson, what are you doing<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t even stepped inside the hole, and Bertha is already admonishing me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fine, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it\u2019s not fine.\u201d She\u2019s looking for the shovel. \u201cIt\u2019s our backyard.\u201d\u00a0She\u2019s looking for the wheelbarrow.<\/p>\n

Four years ago I built a scarecrow. It was a cross-dressing clown.\u00a0Bertha didn\u2019t get it. My clown e-lude-ed her. Maybe she didn\u2019t understand that it was a clown. Maybe she didn\u2019t understand that it was cross-dressing.\u00a0I never painted its face. I never gave it sexually distinguishing anatomical parts. It looked potato-faced.\u00a0It looked androgynous.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n

Bertha stands on the hole\u2019s precipice and looks for China (or is it Australia?).\u00a0She doesn\u2019t wave. She doesn\u2019t bridge the cultural gap with a small gift or token.\u00a0She just gazes deep into the hole I\u2019ve dug. It\u2019s so deep she can\u2019t see the bottom. It\u2019s so deep it piques her mind with existential questions like Why? and Who? and How Much?<\/p>\n

Three years ago I built a statue. It was a monkey selling cotton candy at a minor league baseball game. I had to annex the neighbor\u2019s yard to build it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did you buy Casey\u2019s house?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need the space<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more pertinent question would have been, \u201cDo you really need to build the diamond and the dugout and the parking lot and the highway and the oceans and the Earth and the solar system and the universe and Time and God Himself?\u201d not, \u201cWhy did you build this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt completes the picture, baby,\u201d I would have told her.\u00a0\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bertha sits on the ledge and kicks her heels.\u00a0She digs her own holes inadvertently, two tiny eyes of darkness, the debris falling into my abyss.\u00a0She doesn\u2019t say a word.\u00a0She doesn\u2019t hum a song. She\u2019s silent.<\/p>\n

I sit down next to her but she ignores me. She\u2019s looking for the backhoe. I\u00a0try to embrace her but she slides out of reach. She\u2019s looking for the excavator.<\/p>\n

Two years ago I built a shopping mall.\u00a0No one came because I refused to build a food court.<\/p>\n

Bertha would yell at me, \u201cWhy would you build a mall without a food court?\u201d<\/p>\n

And I would tell her, \u201cBertha, baby, we have a Macy\u2019s and <\/em>a Sears.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she wouldn\u2019t hear of it.\u00a0She needed her cheeseburgers.\u00a0She needed her free samples of Asian cuisine so she could call herself \u201ccultured.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bertha\u2019s on the other side.\u00a0She\u2019s three hundred and sixty degrees away.\u00a0I beckon for her to come back but she\u2019s motionless.\u00a0She\u2019s looking for the thousand years of wind.\u00a0I wave and hope an incandescent smile can be seen from where she is but she\u2019s stone as a rock.\u00a0She\u2019s looking for the meteorite.<\/p>\n

Last year I built a pyramid.\u00a0Unlike the Romans, or whoever it was that built the originals, I built mine by myself.\u00a0I used limestone, marble, claystone, dolomite, ironstone, and quartz, and Bertha yelled at me. Told me I blundered worse than the Greeks (I guess I was wrong).<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have used gneiss.\u00a0And only gneiss,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She was right. God weathered my creation in only a few weeks\u2019 time.\u00a0I should have called Greekland.<\/p>\n

Bertha raises her hand like she\u2019s in class.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d I say\/ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cUm, Mr. Weir?\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t say anything else, but I know what she\u2019s thinking.\u00a0She\u2019s thinking, \u201cHow did you do it?\u00a0How did you create something that can\u2019t fade away?\u00a0How did you prove your awesomeness?\u201d<\/p>\n

So I tell her, \u201cIt\u2019s a hole<\/em>, baby.\u00a0An idea<\/em>.\u00a0It can\u2019t go anywhere if it doesn\u2019t exist<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she dives in.<\/p>\n

No thud.\u00a0No clunk.<\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/p>\n

Bertha\u2019s rockin\u2019 out in China.\u00a0She\u2019s groovin\u2019 in Australia.<\/p>\n

I feel like I should dive in after her, but I don\u2019t.\u00a0I feel like I\u2019d be better off if I did, but I stand up and step back. I feel like I should start filling the hole, but I can\u2019t seem to remember what\u00a0I did with all that dirt.<\/p>\n

RYAN DUNHAM<\/strong> is currently a PhD student at Ohio University in the Media Arts and Studies department. He also has a B.A. and an M.A. in English: Creative Writing from Binghamton University. Ryan is a huge deadhead, but Phish keeps trying to convert him. He would only eat Chicken McNuggets and Sour Patch Kids as a child. Things have pretty much stayed the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Dunham \u201cSamson, what are you doing?\u201d I haven\u2019t even stepped inside the hole, and Bertha is already admonishing me. \u201cIt\u2019s fine, baby.\u201d \u201cNo, it\u2019s not fine.\u201d She\u2019s looking for the shovel. \u201cIt\u2019s our backyard.\u201d\u00a0She\u2019s looking for the wheelbarrow. Four … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":6558,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6562","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-1HQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6562"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6582,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6562\/revisions\/6582"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}