photo: timothy frederick
A LITTLE LADY lives comfortably in the head of a happy giant. She never sleeps. She’s always cooking up some project or perfecting a complex routine.
When the giant’s awake, she peeks out through his eye-holes, collecting the raw materials she’ll use for her dioramas: the silhouette of a damselfly pinched still by the beak of a starling, a strand of yellow yarn threading the twigs of a starling’s nest, the copper bite of well water, the stench of butchered pig.
When the giant falls asleep, the little lady goes to work, weaving her gathered memories into yards of exotic textiles. She bangs out cartoonish harmonies on the keys of a soap-bubble piano, pouring songs into the ears of the giant. She brews perfumes with funny names like Miss Oleo Mystique and Claudette Regeneration and spritzes them up his nostrils. Last Wednesday she staged Rapunzel as a gritty romantic comedy starring a wig of yellow yarn on a duck egg as Rapunzel.
At sunrise each morning the little lady rakes the tines of a crooked hazel branch across the coals of her glowing campfire, hoping to lasso the attention of the giant as he awakens. Every now and then an ember finds his eye, and he winks.