Monday, September 28, 2009

Culture


American Gothic ~ Grant Wood

The Museum of Obscure Memories harbours all manner of disconnected objects.
A random sample includes the following:
  • A pair of solar-heated sandals.
  • Shin guards for Tuesdays.
  • An interview with Onan.
  • A heart shaped litmus test for love.
  • An air-conditioned hat.
The museum’s eternally optimistic curator waits on the edge of his plastic seat for the tourist busses to stop by, drawn in to this dusty lay-by by the promise of:

“SANDWICHES – Next Left”

which he'd elegantly hand-painted onto a large rectangle of weathered plywood and propped against the speed limit sign some half a mile down the road.
His wife, a long-suffering brunette with a platinum blond heart, serves the aforementioned sandwiches from a silver bullet-shaped caravan that the curator has converted into a café.
She serves the coffee in once-white mugs and her customers are encouraged to help themselves to milk and sugar from a silver jug and a mug-matching once-white sugar bowl containing a tarnished silver spoon encrusted with coffee stained sugar.
The spoon was originally purchased to commemorate the christening of a child that was never born; a constant source of tension between the curator and his wife.
In a departing bus a tourist with the green hair removes a grain of sugar from a sulky lower lip. She places grain-adorned-fingertip to tongue, causing the sugar to dissolve like the obscure memory of museums.


Tales for the attention deficit reader

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have such a coffee mug...but always drink it black. The duo should set up next to the Mutter museum.

Garth said...

Subby: No sugar then? :]

the walking man said...

The stream flows swiftly slow and the consciousness of being at the museum cafe made for an interesting souvenir, even though it dissolved when tested by taste.

Anonymous said...

Pisces, well there was that one time 'twas added on a mixed-up order....ugh! The caffeine is enough of a wire :)

Garth said...

walking man: by capitalising the words Culture and Heritage we turn them into fossils - I think what I'm trying to convey with the sugar analogy is that by the time we name something culture it is already dead. Culture (unnamed and uncapitalised) is that which is hapening now and has not yet been defined.

Subby: Sugar: the sweet taste of dead empires.

James Higham said...

Solar heated sandals, eh? Might pick up a pair of those.

Garth said...

James: wise choice for the coming winter :D

Harlequin said...

I kept thinking of an old mantra: too much too soon too little too late...

the heart shaped litmus test for love caught my eye... I could place it next to the purple helmeted warrior of love...or maybe work on the shape a bit, make it more like a black hole...

Garth said...

Harlequin: you're walking a narrow line there- not sure if I approve of that sort of thing :D

Confessions of a Temporal Lobe said...

Solar heated sandals. That thought cracks me the hell up.

Garth said...

CoaTL: gotta keep them feet warm and heads cool :)

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