Lunar Follies

PLATO

“The enormity of the old tableau’s collapse cannot prepare us for that which will happen sometime next month.” So reads the entire text. The nicely designed placard informs us of other “things to come” as well, including the imminent arrival of Carter the Great, the World’s Weird Wonderful Wizard. The visitors, who may purchase logo ties and sweatshirts, as well as souvenir cups and other items that would seem to be nameless, are part of the missing tableau. Words not only make statements, but when tossed about on the page, make more, much more, than mere statements. Observe these words and their potential for scattering. One is tempted to inquire, and be done with it at last, “performance art?” But we will never, it appears, be done with that. There is one word in the corner of the placard, just blinking on, with the sense of total aliveness that it may soon have! (Scissors are available at the logo desk.)These words make a statement, of that there can be little doubt; oh, not the usual stale conceptualizations, but the usual stale reconceptualizations, or “the ticket.” Two of them, as a matter of fact, are at the far edge of another placard, over there. Dislodged from the shackles of the diachronic, if “dislodged” is the word, or, for that matter, a word, the letters may be readjusted to suggest, as they are currently being readjusted to suggest, up there near the ceiling, or what we have agreed to call the “ceiling,” as the glittering new millennium lurches into being: 1937: GERMANY’S FESTIVAL YEAR. It’s just a little too close, however, to the air duct, to be wholly satisfactory. And yet, and yet: the plain, functional duct seems, quite marvelously, to be.