Lunar Follies

ALTAI SCARP

Here are the stars of eternity, some dressed as imitation ladies. In attendance, two-inch engineers, cut out of cardboard, and curious in transparent socks. The sun, which shines on the tableau, is red, and, as usual, round, something like the dial of a watch. The stars, it should be noted, cluster about a red table upon which are displayed a wooden spool that apparently once held thread, a scatter of paper clips, a tin airplane, and a few old elastics, or, as they are usually called, “rubber bands.” These items may, possibly, be glued to the table’s surface. There is, too, an unappetizing dinner rather carelessly crowded onto a small area of the table, where it has grown stone cold. In a corner of the room, a trunk, leather and lined with leather, ready for the stars’ vacation, is “gummed” all over with red stars and small photographs of tables and trunks; and next to it are its trays, removed so as to display their contents, nothing more than a number of hinged boxes, filled, almost to overflowing, with small discs of white cardboard edged with nickeled metal of some sort. Each disc has the same words carefully inscribed, in red ink, on one side: DARN, CONVEY, DISCOVER, SUCK; and on the other side: FASTER, TISSUE. It appears that the stars, or in any event those stars dressed as imitation ladies, refuse to examine or, for that matter, even glance at these “messages,” and that they will continue to refuse to do so.