THE WALLS

The crucifix of Christ shuddered and he jumped off the wall. Caesar's head was cut off and fed to the barbarians waiting outside the walls of Rome. Salvador Dali wore one orange sock and one white sock on days he went to eat breakfast in restaurants. On days he stared at walls, he wore no socks at all. Yukio Mishima sheathed his knives in thick whale oil, claiming such creatures of the deep were the only ones who understood the art of sacrifice. Sitting Bull had fourteen wives he lined up against cliff walls, closed his eyes, and walked blindly toward them with an erection, promising he would take the first one his hard tip would touch. Crazy Horse watched from the cliff above. J.D. Salinger scribbled on his bedroom walls as a boy, promising his mother to whitewash the story the first time he was caught. Joan of Arc climbed over the walls and fell on top of the castle guard, the commotion bringing the soldiers who swore the wall opened and she escaped by walking through. The crucifix of Christ trembled and simply fell off the wall. Nikita Kruschev stared at the wall of nuclear buttons and knew it was a green one they told him to push, but the triggers were every color except green. Hernan Cortes' men met a wall of arrows, turned and ran. Moctezuma's warriors met a wall of armor, knelt down, and wept. Carl Jung opened his eyes to find himself sleeping against a wall of flowers, the beautiful smell giving him the answer he had been looking for. The Dali Lama stopped before the wall of snow and bowed his head to pray. Virginia Woolf's last memory before she drowned was the wall of family portraits, the photos of her father and brothers so radiant in the river fog. Billy the Kid simply cut a hole in the adobe wall of the jail with his knife and walked away. No one knows his Tu Fu encased himself in a wall of bamboo, staying inside the tube for two years, never saying a word, his feet having become the roots of bamboo within the first few weeks of his silence. Pablo Neruda woke up one morning, two weeks before Salvador Allende was gunned down, to find the walls of the room where he lay ill covered in hundreds of clinging starfish. The crucifix of Christ simply faded and left its yellow silhouette on the wall.

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