GOD RIBBON
It was the first of many suffering and sticky days in July, and the air clung to the people’s skin vulgar, like hot breath. The sky seemed to hang lower than usual, a collapsed tent that limited oxygen intake and made the air feel stale and recycled. The heavy mat of silver clouds above hung thickly draped, and mercilessly appeared to be on the verge of falling on everyone’s heads. The day went on, lackadaisical and stupid, until all those who managed to stay awake finally surrendered to bed.
The second day of July the sky was tighter, and infants were crying as if swaddled too violently. The air stank of old bedsheets, and everyone seemed ugly glistening with desperate sweat under the diffused gray light. Panting dogs found useless shade under the avocado trees. The day was long and agonizing until gradually the night cooled the asphalt and provided a brief rest to the people of Guayaquil, Ecuador.
The third day of July felt like the beginning of an emergency. The general discomfort had led to an interminable itch that spread like poison ivy through the people in the city. There were revolts. Fireworks were shot into the sky at night in an attempt to rupture the thick layer of gloom, but they were swallowed up whole. The world below was stiffening, starting the slow process of petrification. The people thought they would be buried alive. The cloud showed no signs of change, no signs of ever leaving. The air was wet and steamy, hot with garbage and dirt and saliva smell.
The fourth day brought together a council, and elected four brave explorers to travel in each of the cardinal directions to report back on the state of the sky in the nearby towns and villages. The city’s premier astronomer, glad to be of use in a crisis, called his colleague at the observatory to get a satellite picture of the stagnant storm from space. Once a report could be issued, the council speculated, we can inform the citizens of Guayaquil when this disaster might pass and where it might pass to.
The fifth day yielded nothing. The explorers had exhausted themselves and found further heat and further gray, impenetrable and malicious. The only hope came shrouded in extreme skepticism, when the northern traveler mentioned that she perhaps had seen, or imagined, a band of clean and pure blue in the distance. The astronomer bit his cheek and waited. The only thing left to provide an answer was his weather report. He was often scolded for being useless, having no practical skills other than complex math, and was always the last picked during desert island scenarios.
The sixth day of July required serious scientic inquiry. Calls were made to distant and baffled experts. This was all so unanticipated. No answers were located. We have to wait for the satellite image, reminded the astronomer. Few people listened– they were occupied by ideas of cannonballs, massive nets, mile long hooks to pierce the cloud and pull it into the sea so it could melt like cotton candy...
The seventh day of July was long and uneventful. The astronomer sat for hours sticky and miserable at his computer and fantasized about melting into the floor. Near supper, the satellite image finally arrived, along with an alarming notice.
THIS IS AN EXTREME ANOMALY. UNPRECEDENTED PHENOMENON. GLOBAL AUTHORITIES INFORMED.
Below was an image of the planet he knew so well, tied around the middle with a white silk ribbon, which cinched the Earth tightly at the equator.
He called an emergency council meeting immediately, still quivering with the sour electricity of his discovery. The image of the Earth was burned into the back of his brain, primal and embarrassing, like glimpsing someone undressing.
Seamlessly the eighth day arrived. As did the military, and the fire department, and the police, and a crisis management team. The residents of the city were called to evacuate, to urgently pack their belongings to flee north or south of the terrible ribbon. The sky had almost met the top of the highest building. The city was sticky with condensation, and had become empty and hollow without its inhabitants. The sun went down somewhere, but that fact was indiscernible and irrelevant under the current circumstances. It will just be one long quiet night from now on.
The ambient shuffling of the city had dissolved into the humid ground, which was now lifelessly mute. The air in the astronomer’s bedroom was stagnant, breeding, sweaty. Feverish with dread and heat, the astronomer slipped into a fitful sleep in his bed without even noticing. He dreamt of the satellite image again, the white silken ribbon tightening around Earth’s waist slowly until the oceans and continents above and below spilled out. It reminded him of his first girlfriend, back in high school. She wore a garter belt that was slightly too tight, and he had his first memory of a truly lustful thought when he disrobed her and saw her waist and thighs constricted by the satin, a rim of fat peeking over the sides of the lingerie. The excess seemed profoundly indulgent. The white silk ribbon tightened, reaching an apex where it could pull no further, reaching bone or molten core.
He woke up wet, sticky, and dehydrated. His sheets were saturated with salt and the acrid stench of semen. He hadn’t been touched by a woman in years until last night. His packed bags leaned abandoned against the wall, only moving slightly as they were pushed aside by the fervent opening of the front door. The astronomer knelt, unburdened by his luggage and any risk of public observation, in the center of the terracotta town square. He tilted his head up to the swelling sky, drinking in hungrily her rapture and anticipating her arrival with an obsessive fixation.
The next four days were a proper courtship. Enchanted by her beauty, he rolled around on the pavement, unable to break his gaze. He got to know her better the closer she got. He affectionately called her God Ribbon. She teased him as she swallowed up the tops of buildings, then the avocado trees and the street signs, the lamp posts, and then finally the benches. She was inches away from his face, and reflected his hot and loving breath back to him with the illusion of intimacy. The sky was dark now, and God Ribbon was black and velvety, stuffy and relentless.
On the thirteenth day they finally kissed. It was a gradual and warm embrace, one that became progressively more passionate as she held, then pressed, then crushed him, and everything else, forever into the center of the planet.
R. Jamin, Los Angeles - USA ✯ www.rjamin.net
“R. Jamin is an artist working primarily with drawing, video, and sculpture, though obviously on occasion adventuring into unknown territory when it feels necessary. Her work primarily focuses on the linguistic structures of religion and science, particularly those that lead to feelings of an ecstatic revelation, absolute dread, or tender humility in the face of something greater. She was told once that it can be suffocating to make work under the history of great tradition, to which she replied, sounds kinky.
To see her work and/or catch an upcoming show, visit www.rjamin.net”