No Equals I is about attachment and no attachment, engagement and no engagement, in-born drives, and the human heart. A description and conception of issues both personal and societal.
US$16.30
340 pages. 111,000 words.
contemporary literature, fiction, romance, philosophy and ethics.
pocket size, paperback.
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2.3
At least we don’t hold the heads of Micronesians underwater with our own two hands. Avoiding action is a strong basis for ethics. This broadcast sympathy to all forgotten peoples. They will learn of our good vibes from their new ‘fugee camp — American Samoa.
Shade as agent of relief in the coming hundred years is laughable. Its temp’ratures will be more than we can bear. Zygotes are the only ones with rights to be untrodden, and we protect poorly even them. Send all expectant teen moms to Kiribati and marvel at how quick America directs the Army Corps of Engineers to go there and protect the island chain from the rising sea level.
Get the biggest kooky priest to baptize every islander en masse and count the hours til America reduces climate change. As it is, we don’t let the untrodden do squat. We have to trod upon them first. It’s only fair, here’s the hoops we’ve made, and here’s how you jump thru them. Make your children try. They will get it quicker.
Soft! Life now idly hovering, the stasis of complacency, result of satisfaction.
2.8
Our heroine the woman of eighteen got the idea for a new art installation. She called it Mattress Paper. She’d take the sheets off her bed and cover the mattress in layers of blank newsprint, then she’d have glorious unprotected sex the full thirty days of the month. The stains and leavings made abstract blots of quality. She pitched the newsprint to Gagrossian who gave her 1.7 million on the spot(s).
Our heroine was living high til copycats flooded the art market which turned her from trailblazer to kitsch. The French press eviscerated her comeback show as paint by numbers, and her collages as “evidence she couldn’t keep a shoelace tied with tape.” She’d have to find another way to make it. She got into butchery, choosing gelatin as her medium. At times the nearly rendered collagen played scenes from her future in its bubbles and its slick. It scared the bristly pig hairs out of her. It revealed to her a poor-made stew that showed her her wedding. It would be in a soaring marble hall, with flag bearers, classical musicians, and a choir of old castratos. There’d be a silver tea service and the rarest Bombay gin, which had a drop of Union Carbide well water in it, for a unique kick. The bride’s face was obscured by a veil of Belgian lace, or perhaps just hooven flakes collecting in the swirl. The ceremony was presided over by a priest, which surprised her, until she realized it was the High Priestess of Funk. And errebody got down.
Her next installation was called Full Virgin Presenting, subtitled Head Trunk. It appeared as old time train luggage. For effect it was an autopsy. It had top Hollywood fx create a dummy of the virgin, splayed open on the operating table like a science frog. The contents of the body were all the junk it ate. Instead of blood, it was high fructose syrup. Viewers were encouraged to dip their pinkies in and taste. Their reaction was a surprise at the sweetness, which underscored the horror of the scene. The dummy was ultrarealistic. The fat atop the muscles was a delicious chicken grease. Soda crackers were nearby to scoop it for a taste. Not too many viewers did. The brains were a sculpted mass of malt and dextrose, chemical cousins of sugar that cause mood-crashes in a percentage of the population. It was a nauseating hit, but the exhibition closed after the subway homeless treated it like a buffet. The virgin’s insides were devoured. But our heroine foresaw this and had multiple action cam’ras on and running. The low light, short fps footage looked like a zombie attack, which gave her her next video installation. It was a success, called the greatest found footage since Darger and Leigh, and it ran at the Soho Gagrossian for several autumns in a row.