Across Mineral Spring Avenue from the Lorraine Mills stands a complex of nondescript Civil War brick. The parking lot expands behind into a veritable menagerie of giant abstract creatures sculpted in massive plate steel outside the industrial studio of Donald Gerola.

Don’s pieces range from intimate atrium accents to monumental monsters upward of 40 feet. The bigger ones move, prodded by breezes into gentle acrobatics, depending upon the size of the moving element. Giant rotors gracefully pivot, pinwheels twirl, weather vanes steer windward, and massive arcs waver almost imperceptibly. Their motions are asynchronous, each part doing its own thing, like cats or people. This may not seem so impressive until you consider that one rotor weighs as much as a small car with a skinny passenger. You can only estimate the overall weight in tonnage.

Ordinarily, sculpture is about stasis, a form gracefully occupying a single space over time. All of Gerola’s works are about movement. Movement fascinates. People pay hundreds to watch athletes run or cars race, pay thousands to race themselves and watch scenery flash by. Even in his static sculptures there’s a sense of flow, rhythm, struggle, twist and turn; they seem to sprout from the very ground and reach toward heaven. The kinetic pieces play in the wind. Elementals are always represented, whether the metal itself, formed in fire, or its reaction to wind and water, or set on stones or timbers or next to tree lines. Encouraged to rust though initial chemical treatment then left to oxidize, they form a unique patina reminiscent of rust belt rejects or steel yard wrecks, so South side exposure to direct sunlight looks different than North side. Consequently, they present a unique appearance every time you see them, never quite the same, possessing an amorphous quality. Some even flash lasers, shoot flames or spray fluids. This reminds people that they too are part of nature, made of air, sunlight, stone and water.

Kinetic art was invented in 1913 when Marcel Duchamp stuck a bicycle wheel on a kitchen stool. This “happy idea” of combining “ready made” objects sprung from Duchamp’s absence of taste, or as he put it, “visual indifference… a complete anesthesia.” Bicycle wheels can be inspirational, made with fragile components harmoniously united for strength. They spin hypnotically. Duchamp said this calmed him, but not necessarily his critics. “A work of art is not complete without viewers asking questions.”

So can be said of Gerola’s sculptures. His abstract, modernist objects startle, then take on a life of their own in your mind. Kinetics have been realized by scores of important artists, notably Alex Calder. Gerola isn’t interested in duplicating anyone else’s work, nor even his own. “Representational art of animals, figures, mountains have already been explored thoroughly; I get my inspiration from what I don’t see, influenced by nature and senses. Things in nature are casual, imperfect, and wonderful.”

Apart from Gerola, who studied Physics at University of Dayton, Ohio, few artists function on such an advanced level. Seldom is sculpture pursued from a balanced perspective, one equally influenced by eastern philosophy, technical knowhow, and western discipline. Indifference be damned, Gerola’s work gets you to look and think attentively. During three decades of recognition, Gerolas have headlined Art Expos, garden shows, juried publications, museum exhibitions, and sculpture gardens including Boston’s ICA, The National Gallery,and Springfield Musem. He has several installed in Providence along Hope Street; the kinetic at Waterplace Park is his, as it the one at the Courthouse Center just past URI on Ri-138. Pawtucket has one at the Slater Mill and owns another in Slater Park. RI PBS ran a half hour profile on him. Your initial admiration grows when you consider in full what you’re seeing.

Steel is a curious medium, as confrontational as it is utilitarian. With it they build bicycles, bridges, jetliners and vehicles for commerce and communication, as well as weapons to destroy. There a literal shortage of it nationwide, after exporting all scrap to foreign smelters. Steel abused or misused is ghastly. Don knows this better than most. His mentor/stepfather was the Chief Engineer of Materials for the fallen World Trade Center. Better to beat sharp swords into rusty plowshares. Working in wood or textiles is much easier than the same material used to cut both, only up to 5″ thick. But how do you imbue steel with whimsy? Takes a lot of imagination and skill, a multidisciplinary background, and a couple decades of your life.

Creating sculpture is an esoteric and gritty enterprise. You almost never see a piece being made, still jagged from months of cutting, grinding and welding, before its surface is painted or treated to pay homage to its intended site. Unlike Duchamps’ first kinetic almost a century ago, not one segment of a Gerola is from “found” material. Each is individually CAD drawn, extravagantly cut from native, virgin hot rolled plate, then painstakingly fitted and welded.

Each arrives through his “process”, as he calls it. All start as an inspiration from nature, whether horses galloping, human limbs exercising, meandering curves of a river, organic forms of craning bird necks or flowing grasses, or sinuously twisting tree branches and roots. Some of his best forms resemble creatures, grasses or trees stretching from earth to embrace sky. Subconsciously, he fuses these into a singular manifestation, which resurfaces as a two dimensional drawing.

From drawing, a working model is constructed. Over the course of months each model is tested and altered so it reliably performs. Then high tech bearings and virgin hot rolled steel of varying widths are purchased. “No scrap metal is used,” Don says, “You can’t find these forms lying around in a junkyard.” A computer assisted design (CAD) file is developed for the high intensity gas and laser cutting machines to follow. Each small segment is laid out and individually welded. Usually, wherever there is a weld, a thinner piece is joined to a thicker one, which creates a bas relief not immediately noticed but enjoyed as sunlight shifts slowly over its surface. Then welds are laboriously ground by hand and surfaces finished like jewelry, although at least 10,000 times more substantial, some priced for about the same as a decent diamond. Objects for indoor atriums are sometimes sprayed in brilliant catalytic paints and many clear coats, something usually reserved for the most expensive exotic cars or motorcycles. Outdoor pieces are allowed, in part or total, to form a leathery scale which stabilizes after a few years and leaves underlying material integral for centuries to come.

All self funded, the most complicated one has over 100 components and took over $100,000 and a solid year of intense effort to fabricate. They make locomotives and submarines this way, but that’s with thousands of workers and tax dollars, not one guy paying a few infrequent helpers. With each such a huge personal investment, it doesn’t seem that he’ll be making any more soon except upon commission.

Gerola then lends them to cities, colleges, corporate campuses, museums, and parks, anywhere there’s an ideal spot. Yet it takes gatekeepers forever to say yes. Engineered to last forever, unburdened by typical weight bearing loads, what is there to fear? Yet installations cost him money he no longer has to spend.

“Siting a piece is especially important,” Don explains. “Each wants to occupy a site in its own way, to sing its own song, turned to compliment scene, face sun, settle into weather of its micro-climate. Sacred spots are ideal, a combination of prominence, sun, surf, suitable wind strength.” Different rotors present different operating requirements, designed for light breezes, or mountain updrafts, or steady shoreline winds. Pieces need to stand out from a distance, draw you in to impress you with their intimidating presence up close. They belong in national parks, or to have parks built around them, destinations in themselves. None takes anything from nature; they do not exploit, but respond merrily to the right environment, a timely message humans might take away from viewing them.

Although collectors and curators would like to divvy up Gerola’s catalog, the hope is that some foundation might acquire a major portion and tour it around college and corporate campuses here and abroad. “They need to be where students can see them and be inspired.” The 300 or so pieces not yet in private collections are spread on loan from Maryland to Maine, but the nicest kinetics are nearby for the time being. Cost of moving a multi-ton steel sculpture as tall as a house isn’t pocket change. It takes a crane, a few thousand bucks, and years of skill. Unless special care is taken, work could be damaged or a rigger crushed or killed. Slings hold sections erect while Gerola climbs and bolts sections together. Once his sculptures are sited, though, they are again extremely stable. This seems ironic, since many of them are kinetic, and move by themselves.

These loans represent a central conflict in Gerola’s story. He envisioned keeping his collection intact as a single giant menagerie. Yet distributing them where they can best be appreciated enhances their value and gets them seen. Several still reside at Sussex County Community College in Newton, New Jersey, Don’s old stomping grounds. “It’s not about the money… I’m not actively seeking commissions.” “Clearly he is no superhero”, but you have to wonder how anyone accomplished so much.

Despite this dream, he can’t go on forever without funding. He sells paintings based on similar principles, constructed of applique, paint, sand and seed on stable board, and original steel objects in the 4 to 6 foot range, as if souvenirs of the real sculptures. Discriminating collectors seek him out, and sales have increased recently. After a successful career building a renowned sculpture park of his own and supplying influential landscape architects, he still has a head full of unrealized designs to add to his vast collection of existing pieces. A charitable foundation or corporate sponsor could acquire a major piece or two, or commission something new, or send pieces on a whirlwind world tour, a new meaning for kinetics. After all, steel vehicles move, Rolling Stones have been on tour forever. Why not sculpture?

To see more of Gerola’s work, visit http://www.donaldgerola.com

~Jonathan Franzen, First City

This is not one of those stories about 20-somethings who move to New York City and find themselves humiliated and demoralized in ways they never dreamed possible. Because, it turns out, New York is a magical place beyond the traditional conception of public shame. That’s why, instead, this is a story about who’s watching when you pee in Times Square.

About two years ago, on a cold weekday night at the beginning of December, I sat in one of Charmin’s much-hyped Times Square bathrooms with my new pinstripe slacks down around my ankles, swaying ever so slightly to the surround-sound stereo. The music was a highly-branded, chipper blues piece:

There’s a brand new dance that’s been sweeping the nation

It’s a Charmin party mambo dance sensation

East coast west coast kids a-groovin

You try it one time and you can’t stop movin’

The ambiance and design of the bathroom complex itself was clearly meant to relieve concerns about being goosed or infected or peeped at or simply unable to find a respectable receptacle in which to dump your waste. It did nothing, however, for my anxiety about soiling this pristine porcelain monument, looking like a no-good dirty tourist, or leaving behind my small-town beginning and making it big in the most unforgiving city in the nation.

When there’s a soundtrack, no one can hear you pee.

I arrived in New York City in June of 2006. I meant to arrive four years earlier, for college, but I failed to realize that Long Island doesn’t count. My ignorance was understandable. I’m from a college town in upstate New York that strangers can’t pronounce. We used to hang out at Wal-Mart. By the time I turned 21 I was thoroughly petrified that that would be my life, so I moved to a large city that everyone has heard of and which doesn’t have a single Wal-Mart. I had declared my intent. Soon, I would be a legitimate, bona fide, real New Yorker. Take that, podunk hometown!

The first hurdle was the money. They say that English majors can’t get jobs, but I proved them wrong. All it took was three months living in my spinster aunt’s house at the ass end of Queens, with her perpetually leaned in over my shoulder, peering at my monitor and asking “any jobs today?” Sometimes when she did this her copious boobs squished against my upper arm.

At least I didn’t move home.

By September, I had my respectable publishing job, had my own place in Astoria (a traditionally Greek neighborhood now burgeoning with young professionals, sandwiched between a major power plant and LaGuardia airport), had my monthly subway pass, for god’s sake. Commuting goes a long way toward that Real New Yorker feeling. At my Aunt’s house, where she had lived as a City Girl for over 50 years, I was still the naïve niece from out of town. Now, Metrocard in hand and business casual on my back, I was finally “passing.” I rolled myself up in the crowds and smiled to think that they would never know.

December began and I prepared for my official envoy back to Oneonta, practicing passionate extollations of how amazing The City is.

Also making its move on the Big Apple in the winter of 2006 was Charmin. After a great success providing toilets stocked with its signature paper at the Ohio State Fair, Charmin decided to take the plunge and open a public toilet facility smack in the middle of Times Square: a place where the brand manager felt the “bathroom tissue message would be relevant.”

The “Advertising Gimmick Bathroom Here” message was conveyed up and down 42^nd street by a giant blue billboard some four stories high, a family of happy, fuzzy bears frolicking across. Does a bear, in the woods? Maybe, but when he does in Manhattan, it’s a lot more posh.

I am somewhat ashamed to admit the reason I was in Times Square in the first place—to buy cheesy New York souvenirs as Christmas presents. I don’t remember who in my life I thought would appreciate an NYC bottle opener, but I did buy one. On the way back to the subway, I glanced up at those frolicking bears, felt a familiar tingle in my bladder region, and thought “You know, I could pee.” That’s where the dilemma arose. Sure, I could wait until I got home. Take the train out to the end of the line, and sit down to pee in my tiny but secure Astoria bathroom like I did every day of the week…or I could take this opportunity to see what those bears were so happy about. I hadn’t left Oneonta to pass up such adventures.

But every city has Rules. In New York, the first rule is Don’t Look Like a Tourist. Don’t look up, don’t unfold a map, don’t look too happy to be there. And definitely don’t be caught in a tourist junket with your pants down. Twice I walked by those gold-trimmed doors hidden beneath the giant blue billboard, too conflicted to commit either to Charmin or the subway.

I’m a writer, which means I do a lot of things on the basis of “it will make a great story,” regardless of whether or not this turns about to be true. It’s what helps me get through the most embarrassing, infuriating, or otherwise demoralizing moments of my life—the promise of future storytelling glory. Ultimately, it made my decision. I’ll admit, I was very much looking forward to the fact that I would now be able to use the line “I peed in Times Square.”

At the lobby entrance stood five Charmin employees in blue shirts. Two of them rushed to open the door for me. I wondered what the hourly rate was for Charmin greeters. How one would apply for such a thing, and if they’d told their friends they got the job. Or were they actors? Did they get points toward an Equity card? I never saw any of the “Charmin representatives roaming the streets dressed as toilets” that the Times article touted. How often did those poor people have to suffer the humiliation of drunks and smart-asses pretending to shit or piss in their lap-bowls? Roaming toilets do have to show their faces…only the ones in the bear suits can hide.

Inside, a grand staircase ascended in front of me at a dangerous angle. Large helpful arrows pointed my way up. Straight ahead for excretionary satisfaction. Once I hit the second floor, everything was covered in blue carpet.

“Welcome!” said a Charmin girl posted at the top of the stairs. “How are you?!” Between entering the building and finally sitting down in the bathroom, I was greeted no fewer than six times. Where was my big, anonymous city? Every person in that place smiled right at me. Looked me in the eye. I tried to look at them, but I couldn’t hold their gaze.

They all knew what I was there to do.

I soldiered on into the Charmin fishbowl. Every 10 feet huge plasma screen televisions hung on the wall. High-definition Charmin bears danced to upbeat elevator jazz tunes alluding heavily to the joys of toilet paper. More charming Charmin employees stood in the middle of the floor and on the blue-carpeted half circle benches. Half had clipboards, and the other half were dancing along to the soundtrack with only the slightest hint of irony. Irony which stemmed mainly from the fact that the lounge area was completely empty. Accounts of a “potty palooza” had been greatly exaggerated. I’d expected a line. Apparently, so did the Charmin corporation, because before I even got close to the bathroom, I traversed a winding maze of retractable barriers. Instead of making a straight shot across the void, I traveled easily five times the distance, turning up and down the artificial alleys. In front of me were maybe three people doing the same, spaced roughly twenty feet apart. Easily a few hundred could have queued up here …and waited hours to pee.

My aunt’s friend’s son was also trying his hand at 20-something NYC dreams that year. I’m sure many people would have considered him a success; he was an intern for the Late Show. His job was to solicit audience members by trolling long lines at the TKTS booth asking David Letterman trivia. Anyone suspected to be from the greater New York area was disqualified. The Late Show wanted foreigners, tourists. He wanted a job where he didn’t have to stand outside for hours at a time, without bathroom breaks. Did the Charmin billboard taunt him?

I came to the end of the line, and yet another guy in a blue shirt welcomed me up onto a staging area made of beautiful hardwood floors, surrounded by a bank of twenty beautiful hardwood doors. He was the kind of hot that I’d only begun to accept as viable in real life—an Abercrombie runner-up, on an island where men with sandy hair and cut cheeks congregate. Another Equity hopeful.

“Hi there!” he said. So enthusiastic. He held up his hand.

Enter stage fright. The confusion of a stranger in a strange land. Was it a…did this man really want to…?

High-five me?

Apparently not, because when I brought up my hand, just as I committed to forward arm action, better half of my dignity screaming “what are you doing!?” he turned to point me toward my designated stall. Door number 1. I hurried inside and locked the door behind me, afraid the Charmin army might start clapping encouragement.

It was truly a luxurious public bathroom. The toilet had a lid. The door went all the way to the ground. It had a functioning lock—a nice one, not one of those cheap slide pins. Every surface was spotless, and glinted in the warm lighting. The music from the waiting area was piped in, but no plasma screen.

A little wiggle to the left

A little jiggle to the right

Cuz when I’m close to you

It’s a sheer delight.

Cha cha cha! Charmin!

If, in some drunken contracting error, Charmin had added a bathtub to the left of the sink, the stall would have been the same size as the bathroom in my apartment, where I often woke to find my roommate’s discarded Q-Tips floating in the toilet bowl. The standing room was roughly equivalent – the size of a standard toilet rug. I said earlier that the first obstacle to New Yorkerness was money. You never forget it here, where every inch of the ground you walk on has value, and so much wealth stands concentrated right before your eyes but just out of your grasp. Details of the lease agreement were never released, but real estate in the vicinity of the Charmin potty palooza was at the time going for between $150 and $225 per square foot per year. My private little slice of Times Square cost the developers upwards of $2,200. Just so I could have the privilege of sitting there.

I sat. At my right hand hung six rolls of toilet paper. The softest, quiltedest toilet paper to hit my skin since as far back as I could remember. It would never run out. I lingered, appreciating the endless bounty of sparkling white porcelain. My coat hung on the door hook like a tidy domestic scene.

Domesticity and cleanliness is not achieved without sacrifice. Every tidy domestic scene hides a sinister underbelly. Jealousy, that domestic scene x is just that much tidier than yours. Suspicion, that the proprietor of the scene cleaned up the evidence. Upon moving to my Astoria apartment, I learned that all kinds of things get dirty that I had never imagined before. The racks in the refrigerator. The top of the toilet tank. I didn’t have my mother’s unlimited drive for keeping a house clean. Charmin, on the other hand…they cleaned every single one of those twenty bathrooms after every use. I could show up in a random restroom just as the janitor was departing with her rolling cart full of cleansers, and it would still be nothing compared to the sublime clean of the this place. No, scrubbing alone would not account for the Charmin bathroom. It’s a social phenomenon: with so many people watching, no way to disappear into the crowd, who would dare leave a mess? “That’s her,” they’d point at my back on the way out, “That girl peed on the seat. She clogged the toilet. A thousand people crapped here yesterday and we’ve never had to plunge before…”

Earlier that winter I’d taken the 7 train in to Manhattan, because my beloved NW had let me down with delays. It was crowded, but we commuters formed a polite buffer circle around the homeless man sleeping on two seats. Once the train was in motion, he woke up, scratched himself, left his nest of filthy blankets and garbage bags, and went out to take a shit in the space between the cars. There was no toilet paper involved. And no shame, private or otherwise.

After a year of living in New York, I learned another valuable use for the crowds, beyond a tacit sense of belonging. Among City people, it doesn’t matter what you do—I flashed a thick crowd in Lincoln Center when I bent down to fix my shoe at the Midsummer Night Swing—they’ve seen worse, and you will never see them again. Your humiliation is yours alone, a matter between you and your self-image.

In my private luxury loo, I washed my hands with fragrant soap under deliciously hot water. I dried them thoroughly under the hand dryer, instead of wiping the water off on my pants. And then, as soon as it began, it was time to leave.

I didn’t stay to chat with the dancing employees surrounded by the dancing bears. I pulled my scarf up around my chin and waved with my eyes down at the gauntlet of goodbyes.

“Would you mind filling out a survey about your experience?” one of the clipboard-holders at the bottom of the stairs asked me.

Demographic information: Female. 22. New York resident. Excellent Charmin Restroom experience. They wanted my email address. So they could write and ask me about my toilet habits in market research detail.

“Sorry, I have to go.” I excused myself out onto the anonymous street.

One of the main concerns the advertisers had about the Charmin Times Square project was that they wouldn’t be able to measure the direct impact, if any, it had on the company’s market share. Sure, sales had spiked in Ohio after the fair, but that was in a state full of Ohioans. Times Square is full of transients and transplants; I could be anywhere by now. I don’t think they’d be pleased to hear from me anyway: I’ve never bought a single roll of Charmin. But I don’t feel ashamed.

+ + +

For years people have spotted Jesus in places one might never think to look for him.  In 1977 a woman in New Mexico, making burritos for her husband one cool October night, recognized the face of Jesus Christ burned into the tortilla.  Shrugging off cynical claims of coincidence, the family framed it and made it into a shrine.  Over 10,000 people have visited it to date.  I imagine a line of people waiting outside of the house made of sun-dried clay bricks.  They take turns walking through the small gate and broken sidewalk leading up to the front door.  Upon walking in, there is the smell of last night’s dinner, and a slightly overweight woman greets them eagerly, anxious to show off the tortilla, even though she has done so at least forty times this week.  Her eyes light up as she recounts the story once more.  It never gets old.

Jesus often appears in food.  A man in the Netherlands saw Jesus in his Kit-Kat bar on his morning break at work.  He immediately showed his colleagues, and two of them confirmed the sighting.  One took pictures for proof that have circulated the internet with captions like “Take a Heavenly Break” and “Food of the Gods.”  I find it interesting that he took the time to look at his candy after taking a bite.  I, myself, would simply devour the chocolate, enjoy the taste on my tongue, feel the crunch of the wafer between my teeth.  This man must have felt a pull to glance down at his next bite.  He must have instantly recognized the face of Jesus, or what was almost the face of Jesus.  He might have nibbled on the edges just enough to give more definition to the face, then when it was perfected, he yelled for his friends to come and see.

A father making pancakes for his family one morning almost flipped when he saw the image of Christ on the pancake.  He and his wife listed the pancake on eBay with a starting bid of $500.  I can imagine the conversation between them.

“We should sell it!” He says.

“No one is going to buy a pancake with Jesus on it.”

“You don’t know that, some guy bought a piece of Elvis’ hair for thousands.”

“Well, I guess it can’t hurt to try.  We could use the money.” She concedes.

Jesus continues to find his way into one particular snack food across the nation.  In Missouri a woman found the image of Jesus on the cross in her bag of Cheetos.  After showing it to a local pastor, who agreed with the likeness, but denied any holy meaning, she decided to keep the Cheeto in a safety deposit box for her family to enjoy, but not eat, down the road.  A year later a man and woman in Dallas were sharing a snack when the woman looked at the last Cheeto in her hand only to realize that it looked like a person praying.  Upon further inspection the couple agreed that it looked like a man with long hair and a beard, wearing a robe, praying.  The man admitted that the figure was missing a right arm, but other than that was perfectly constructed.  The couple named the figure Cheesus.  Cheesus had already been coined by a teenager in Houston who gave the name to a lesser snack, a Cheese Curl bearing the likeness of Christ that his youth minister discovered.  The minister kept the snack on his bookshelf as a reminder to himself and others that, “God sends all kinds of signs to remind us of Him.”

There have been many other notable food sightings of Jesus.  One woman upon looking at her banana exclaimed profoundly, “Oh my God!  It’s Jesus on a banana!”  A young woman in Florida found Jesus on a Pringle, and refused to eat the chip due to the symbolic nature of it.  A father fixing dinner for his kids neglected to pay attention to the time and burnt some fish sticks resulting in the likeness of Jesus, Fisher of Men.  On Palm Sunday his picture showed up in a pierogi.  Some foods, such as pita or toast, lend themselves to sightings of Jesus.  Something about Christ seems to be at home in bread.

+ + +

When early theological scholars tried to pin down the defining characteristics of Christ they named him omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.  This trinity of ultimate presence, power, and knowledge combine, as if the ultimate superhero, and enable him, among other things, to show up on more than just food.  His reflection was seen in an old refrigerator sitting on a porch in Tennessee.  The woman who put the fridge outside was oblivious at first, busy enjoying the newer, better refrigerator inside.  As she probably whistled and rearranged the shelves in the new fridge to the right height to hold her ketchup and mustard bottles, others were outside staring at her old fridge, unable to understand why she would get rid of such a sacred piece of furniture.  Eventually, a neighbor helped her discover the image, and soon people began to pilgrimage to the porch in order to see his face for themselves.  Of course there are always skeptics.  One neighbor, amused but frustrated by the visitors commented, “When the good Lord comes back, I doubt it will be on a major appliance.”

One woman almost wrecked her car when she recognized Jesus on an oil tank in Ohio and found herself swerving off of the road.  The paint was chipped away to form the image.  She regained control of her car, and the tank was painted to cover the distracting icon. Having never lost control of my car, I am not sure I understand an image so striking that it would cause me to swerve off of the road.  To this day I bet she thinks about it, wishes she had gotten out of the car to take a picture with her cell phone, wishes she had been in less of a hurry, wishes she could remember the way the sun shone on the image and the angle of the tilt of its head.

A college student walked into his apartment one afternoon to discover Jesus on his couch.  The microfiber had shape-shifted to form a 3-D image that “seemed to look at you from any angle.”  Knowing that Jesus was watching him I imagine it altered his behavior.  He probably blocked off the portion of his couch with yellow police tape to make sure no one sat on it, but instead of drinking his beer in front of the TV as usual, he stood by his sink where the eyes of the figure couldn’t see.  Until one day, when an ignorant friend came in and burst through the tape, jumping on the couch, distorting the image.

In 2004 an Arizona dentist clearly saw Jesus glowing in a patient’s x-ray.  The patient admitted to being a devout Christian, but had never seen Jesus in an object before.  His exam was perfect, and how could it not be.  As the dental assistants and dentists stood around the fluorescent light they must have been distracted, unable to notice the cavity creeping up on the left molar.

Floor tiles, fences and curtains, car windows, concrete, and the tailgate of a blue truck, iron, wood, and aluminum have all been mediums for the Son of God.  It seems as though he does not discriminate, but loves them all equally.

Given that his father is the creator of the world, Jesus has a deep connection with nature.  He thought it was good when he made it, and still gravitates toward this natural revelation.  On a hill, overlooking Raleigh, North Carolina, kudzu vines began to climb various surfaces overlooking the train tracks.  The figure was named Christ the Trainspotter.

One woman, while doing her yard work, came upon a maple leaf with an image etched in it.  She likened it to finding a four-leaf clover, an accidental miracle.  The woman could not have been working very hard to be able to spot a single leaf that looked differently than the rest of them.  She could have been taking a break from raking, drinking her watered down iced-coffee, kicking the leaves at her feet around.  I wonder if it inspired her to get back up and keep cleaning, or if she forgot her task altogether and ran inside to tell someone.

A furniture maker in Pennsylvania cut into a tree only to find what he thought to be Jesus ascending to heaven in the tree rings.  Though he debated selling it on eBay, he eventually crafted the piece of wood into a centerpiece to compliment his furniture.  I wonder if this guy remembered that Jesus was a carpenter too.  The similarities between them combined with his finding might have been a complete reassurance, confirmation that he was on the right path in life.

One particularly common phenomenon is to see Jesus in rock.  One woman found a rock in Lake Huron with his likeness.  In Alabama, a boulder embedded on the side of the highway bearing the resemblance of Jesus has convinced locals that the stretch of road is protected. The road is curved and has a steep drop off of one shoulder.  Odds are that the road is not protected, but the face causes people to slow down resulting in fewer wrecks.

The Hubble telescope captured a picture of flowing gasses that formed a nebulous nebula in the shape of Jesus Christ.  The heavenly image is often cited as confirmation that God is watching over the universe.  The scientists who found this were not believers, but could not deny the likeness in the sky.

+ + +

The images of Jesus are sometimes confused for other famous figures.  Like a Magic Eye picture from the mid-nineties, one must tilt the head, blur the eyes, stick the tongue slightly out in order to catch a definitive glimpse of the image awaiting recognition.  In Georgia a woman was convinced that she saw the face of Jesus on a Pizza Hut billboard advertising pasta.  He was in the swirled pasta.  Others confirmed a face in the pasta, though some saw Jim Morrison, and of course being in Georgia, many claimed the face was that of Willie Nelson.  The woman who originally saw the pasta Jesus was trying to decide whether or not to pursue her dream of singing, or to give in to practicality and become a teacher.  Upon her sighting, she dropped out of her classes and moved to Nashville to fulfill her dream.

The earlier mentioned maple leaf was viewed by a man who thought it looked more like Bob Marley or John Lennon than Jesus.  The banana image was appropriately mistaken for a monkey, and inappropriately mistaken for Elvis. The earlier mentioned Jesus pancake was removed from eBay and the listing user accused of fraud due to the fact that there is an actual pan with the picture of Jesus impressed into it, known as the Jesus Pan.  Other users complained that it never looked like Jesus to begin with, but much more like Osama Bin Laden.

Because of the fifteen minutes of fame, or in some cases, money associated with finding Jesus in an ordinary object, there have been many fraudulent reports.  These reports are usually more than just doubters, and are often the results of photo-shopped pictures.  One of the oddest of these pictures is that of a dog’s butt.  In the picture the dog’s anus is the head of Jesus, and the white hair leading down the dog’s legs looks like the robe of Jesus.  To the untrained eye the picture looks completely legitimate, but having been passed around on the internet, many viewers have deemed it a fraud.  Photoshop works wonders to create images that are not real, but the question remains as to why anyone would want to create a silhouette of Jesus in the butt of a dog.

In 1980, televangelist Oral Roberts insisted that he has seen a 900 foot Jesus in Oklahoma.  He convinced followers that the giant Jesus demanded eight million dollars or else he would “call Roberts home.”  His devotees answered the demand with over nine million dollars.  There is no proof that Roberts was lying, though no one else saw what he saw, and the demands that the 900 foot Jesus made are inconsistent with the basic character of Christ.  With profit like that to be gained, it is understandable why some people might insist upon having seen Jesus.

+ + +

What is unclear is the reason why people see Jesus.  In most instances the discoverer is not searching for Jesus.  As discussed, it is during cooking and eating, cleaning, or driving that he makes his appearance known.  The unearthing of these sacred findings is not limited to religious people, but also shared by those with no faith at all.  They are found by young and old, men and women, and varying ethnicities.  Some people pay homage to locations where the image of Christ has been seen, others pledge money in honor of these visions, or to try to purchase these now holy objects.  Some lock their prize away for a rainy day; others display it proudly as a shrine.  No matter what the object is, no matter how the likeness is depicted, no matter what is done with it in the end, or how many people bear witness, it is unclear as to why people see him.

Some believe this is all coincidence.  These people cling to theories of face recognition, which suggest that our brains are trained to recognize certain iconic or important faces.  While this explains why people mistake Jesus for famous singers and political figures, it does not explain why they notice in the first place.  Our fast paced lives rarely leave us time to stare at the pancake we are cooking, or notice the leaf at our feet.  The combination of the image, the object, and the awareness are a miraculous concoction and must serve a purpose.    I realize this purpose might be different for every person who sees him.  It might serve as a confirmation to pursue a dream, or open doors for fame.  For some it creates a conviction and results in a life change.  Others begin believing that there is meaning in the world, that their existence matters, that someone is looking out for them.  While I am sure that there are some people who don’t associate any purpose at all with a Jesus sighting, I think it is safe to say that those cases are largely unreported.  For the sightings reported, there is always a purpose, otherwise, why bother telling?

I like to think Jesus is the one in control.  That he appears to them, revealing himself at crucial moments in life.  This is, after all, how it was for me.

+ + +

The cleaning ladies in my dorm in New Orleans were famous for laughing loudly and eating red beans and rice during lunch break.  They were not known for their janitorial skills.  And so when I stepped into the third grey stall, the one closest to the bathroom wall, I was not surprised to see dust gathered at the top of the shower wall, the part that obviously never got wet.  My cheap Old Navy flip flops squeaked as they came in contact with the remains of the water from the previous person’s shower.  I hung up my towel, and turned on the water, stepping in when the temperature was hot enough.

As the water washed over my hair and face, I thought about the day behind me.  I was not who I claimed to be.  I was a hypocrite at best, and my lack of sincerity made me feel dirty.  I opened my eyes and they landed on the gathered dust.  I stared noticing that the dust made a face.  The eyes were there, a small but defined nose, and a slightly smiling mouth.  The hair around the face was long, and it ran into a beard.  It was clearly Jesus.  He found me even though I felt so lost.  After I made sense of the image, I wanted to touch it.  In dramatically slow motion I moved my hand toward the wall.  My finger swiped the beard and I watched the dust mix with the water on my hand and drip down the shower wall.  I flattened my palm against the face and in a swift motion transferred the dust from the wall to my hand.  The now distorted image stayed in my palm until I pressed it against my chest, over my heart.  The water mixed with the dust and ran down my body, across my stomach, down my thighs, and eventually swirled around my feet.  It was caught up in the current and flowed into the drain, taking with it the dirt from the day.

My mother never ironed, or at least, not in the way that Amy Pellegrini’s mother ironed. Amy’s mother had an empty room with just a laundry basket, the ironing board, and a small black and white TV on which she watched soap operas and “The Little Rascals” re-runs. Amy’s sister had a color-coded closet, with pastel-colored oxford shirts arranged from lighter to darker, all ironed.

I didn’t know what starch was until I was a teenager and hung around a friend of my mom’s who was much younger than my mom and whose husband had died. She lived in Warwick, and had two kids, high cheekbones, and a boyfriend named Danny. They slept together in her waterbed. I used to sit in her kitchen and watch her spray starch on her Hawaiian shirts before going out with him.

Her house wasn’t anything like the Pellegrini’s. She had a small dog named Muffin who left little hard poops all over the house. When I babysat for her kids, I would go around with an inverted baggie over my hand picking them up and throwing them out.

My mom never used starch, and, like I said before, she never
ironed. Actually, she did iron on rare occasions, like the night before christenings, weddings, funerals, or other holidays in which we would be going to church and then to dinner at my grandparents’ house in Cranston. Normally, she just hung all my dad’s shirts in the shower after she took them out of the wash and let them drip dry.

This system was in line with her plant-watering mentality. On Saturdays when it was warm enough, she sent the four of us out to the back yard with all the plants from inside the house. We went crazy with the hose, spraying the plants and each other until we had been out there long enough for her to believe that the plants were well saturated. She would then yell for us to come in and start changing the sheets on our beds.

When I told my mother that I was not reapplying for my art professor job this year and that I was going to stay home after the baby’s born, she said, “well, just make sure to keep a toe in.” I immediately had visions of my professional life growing into a dim memory as I turned into what I thought she had been for all those years: dissatisfied and annoyed at the kids who took her from her real love, which was being a nurse.

Now she is head nurse in the maternity unit of the local hospital. She takes care of people and bosses them around and is crusty and obnoxious and sweet all at the same time. I realize that she is just the same as she has always been, only now someone gives her money for it.

Which brings me back to starch. My mother, the nurse, treated housekeeping like triage. Do the worst first, patch the bloodiest wounds, and let the small stuff go. Our refrigerator never smelled, like some people’s. (Of course, the Pellegrini’s never smelled either.) And we always had plenty to eat, though we didn’t always like it. (Amy’s mother let her eat Lipton’s chicken noodle soup and cheerios whenever she didn’t like what they were having for dinner.) In between changing diapers and hanging clothes on the line and making meatballs, my mom went out and taught people about having babies and how to breathe through labor so that you don’t kill your husband as you birth your baby.

I, however, am very interested in starch, and not so interested in birthing babies, except my own. And I am interested in art, and in making stuff, and in doing a lot of the things that my mother rushed through in order to do what she cared about.

Part II: A Trip to Stop and Shop

I went to Stop and Shop, parked illegally with the dogs in the car and the windows open, and rushed through the laundry aisle hoping that no one from the dog park drove by and recognized Sam and Ellie sweltering hopelessly and dangerously in the 90 degree heat. Normally on such a hot day, I wouldn’t have the dogs in the car at all but I was between a trip to the vet to get Sam tested for Lyme disease (again) and a trip to the pet store to get the dog hair clipper fixed (again.) There were only a few brands of starch on the shelf.

I was surprised. There seem to be something like thirty-three brands of shampoo, eleven brands of toothpaste, and at least twelve different types of laundry detergent. Four of the starch brands were in aerosol cans. I feel guilty buying aerosol cans. They offend my complicated yet internally logical sense of aesthetics and politics. They look like they are bad for the environment, and I like things that look like they are good for the environment, even if they aren’t any more ecologically friendly than the things that look bad. Like containers in simple packaging with little pine tree icons on the side. The worst are the containers that look bad but may in fact be better, such as, I have heard, Styrofoam cups. Apparently paper cups are somehow worse ecologically than Styrofoam cups. I don’t know why this is. I just know that I was told it in college by someone whom I regarded as a radical environmentalist. Maybe it was a plot to keep me from buying any disposable cups at all. I don’t know. But I do know that I was momentarily paralyzed in front of the starch shelf because the aerosol cans may or may not have been recyclable, while the plastic gallon jug of starch most certainly was recyclable.

Maybe I should have gone to the natural foods store down the street and paid five times as much to dispense bulk starch into my own glass container. Actually, I looked for starch there yesterday and couldn’t find it. Maybe starch itself is environmentally bad. Oh shit. And the dogs are sitting in the car probably starting to hyperventilate from the heat. I should buy the gallon container but there are no empty spritzer containers right there, which I would buy in a minute, no matter the price. I know that we have spritzer containers at home because I bought some once in another fit of misplaced environmentalism, but the only one that I can locate for sure in my mind is the one we keep under the sink. That’s the one with the special liquid for removing dog pee from carpets. (Note: this product does not work on white oriental carpets borrowed from one’s husband’s grandmother.)

I buy the aerosol can with the simplest graphic design and drive home, the dogs panting in the back seat.

Part III: To Steam or Not To Steam

Clearly the makers and packagers of starch assume that the consumer possesses a certain familiarity with the product. The directions on the can are amazingly vague. My only direct personal experience with starch occurred six years ago during my graduate school. We soaked Rives BFK cotton rag paper before using it to print our etchings. Soaking released the starch from the paper. Or rather, released the sizing, which I think is the same thing, sort of. I have never personally attempted to infuse starch into an object. It is more difficult than I would have thought, though I must say that I do
believe that I am now fairly adept after a two-hour stint at the ironing board. The directions on the can were of little assistance.

I quote, “Set iron at recommended fabric setting.” How do I know what is the recommended fabric setting? If I am ironing a cotton shirt, and I set the iron to “cotton” and sporadic bursts of steam form puddles on the shirt, and the starch forms thin translucent sheets which stick to the iron, does this mean that I have done something wrong? When starching, do different rules apply regarding temperature and steam?

Again, I quote (this time from “Helpful Ironing Tips), “To prevent flaking, allow starch to penetrate fabric before ironing,” and, “Incorrect iron temperature and over-spraying can cause flaking, sticking, and iron coating.” I have now experienced flaking, sticking, and iron coating. Again I wonder, have I adjusted the setting to the “Incorrect iron temperature?” Or am I over-spraying? This is so unscientific. In an attempt to reduce the variables to one, I stop adjusting and readjusting the setting. My variable will be quantity of spray, and I will experiment on my husband’s handkerchiefs, of which there are many.

I know from reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie that “a good laundry does not starch handkerchiefs.” Only the lower classes carry starched handkerchiefs, in the mistaken belief that they are emulating the gentry. My husband calls on the telephone as I focus on the third handkerchief. I am feeling rather self-satisfied. Having reduced the quantity of spray, and ironing each handkerchief three times, I have achieved a result comparable to the stiffness I felt on his professionally starched shirts. He wants to know what I am doing. I tell him that I am engaged in the early stages of an ongoing performance art piece. “Oh,” he says. “Who is the audience?” “I
am,” I reply.

Sweat is dripping down my face. I unhook my size 38C maternity bra which I purchased last week at the fancy maternity store in Providence. I am 5 feet tall and have only ever had an A cup. I have never before had boobs big enough to warrant a real bra. I am barefoot and pregnant. I know how to iron and starch a shirt. I feel invincible.

“Performance Piece: Housewife” may be found in Elizabeth Castiglione’s forthcoming Stumbling in the Dark: Art, Motherhood, and Mental Illness.

Jessica perches on the edge of her seat, stretching the pages for class discussion taut between both sweating hands. Her eyes betray the zealot’s frightening glitter as she licks her lips and dives in to her rant against the semicolon. My eyebrows rise and rise and reach the upper limit of muscular contraction. “Blasphemy!” I whisper.

She freezes. “You actually like semicolons?”

“Are you kidding?” I blurt. “I’m a semicolon slut!” A frisson of titillation and dismay circles the table, every mouth in turn elongating into a surprised “O.”

;

The semicolon is the seal, still warm, of Eros on written language. It signifies union by a grammatical invitation to intimacy; the semicolon is the shared blush of a successful seduction. As with all seductions, the relationships between clauses joined by semicolons are ambiguous; this is not the punctuation of hierarchy, but of nuance.

Other forms of punctuation—periods, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, even the interrobang (a question mark superimposed over an exclamation point, denoting both astonishment and confusion)—exert themselves over their surrounding clauses with clear purpose: separation and stratification. The colon, for example, tells the reader that the words which follow it proceed in sequence from the words which come before. An apostrophe indicates either possession or what is left out of a word, but either way, its duty is to denote ownership and exclusion. Periods are the nuns in the dance hall of a paragraph, holding a ruler between swaying couples to make sure they are twelve inches apart. As for the comma, although it may at times approach the semicolon’s impulse toward union, it also tells us which clauses are subordinate, and to whom, and keeps the items in a list from bumping up against each other. Additionally, the comma insists on space in a sentence for pompous little interjections like indeed, and hallmarks of rhetorical sorting such as therefore and however. (In British English, where the comma may join independent clauses, the comma’s duties may overlap with the semicolon’s, but here in the U.S., it is not so.) Only the promiscuous little dash approaches the semicolon’s energy, but it is too hyper for real romance—too much the flibbertigibbet to sustain the consummation that the semicolon celebrates.

The semicolon proposes the union of equals, the lovemaking of the ideal marriage, but the semicolon does not reveal all the secrets of the bedroom. Although the use of a semicolon between what would otherwise be two sentences joins them into one sentence together, it doesn’t tell the reader why. This coy maneuver tempts the reader to make the interpretive leap and decide what links these two independent clauses, as one must sooner or later find oneself, at date’s end, on the doorstep, where one must choose, considering the evening’s sequence of feints and approaches, whether or not to lean in and try for a kiss. The semicolon invites the reader to puzzle out degrees of connection.

When the semicolon joins long, comma-inclusive items in a list, the semicolon represents, if not actual union, then the proliferation of the free-floating erotic energy that can surprise even the most sedate among us. Consider the surprisingly good-smelling neck of a colleague whose shirt tag, white and sharp cornered against her skin, begs to be tucked down; the muscular hands of a grocery checker (a hockey player on Saturdays) rolling a can of soup across the scanner; receiving the look-and-look-again, crossing the parking lot’s hot asphalt to the bank door, of even the chubbiest stranger; finding oneself, at a party, pinned to the floor by the grin of a man one would not so much as have coffee with: these moments are the semicolon’s to store, to log in its book of potentials. The semicolon holds these small, unlikely connections worthy of our appreciation.

As an agent of connection, the semicolon’s drives in syntax enact metaphor’s arrangements in image. In her essay “A Meditation on Metaphor,”^[i] Alicia Ostriker recovers metaphor’s etymology to demonstrate its nature:

Metaphor: a carrying across. You see the word on delivery vans in the dusty avenues of Athens. Metaphoros. A carrying across, a getting over, a bearing there, of what? Of course, of love. Of the erotic. Metaphor: that which joins, that which announces connection, overlap, shared essence, and yet retains the actual distance between whatever objects it brings together. (157)

The semicolon is metaphor’s syntactic equivalent, marrying clauses with the very joint that holds them apart. It is the unveiling, if not of love’s contents, then at least of love’s architecture.

DORINE JENNETTE’s poetry collection Urchin to Follow is forthcoming from The National Poetry Review Press in May 2010. Her poetry and prose have appeared in journals such as the Journal, Ninth Letter, Coconut, Puerto del Sol, and The Georgia Review. She earned her PhD at the University of Georgia, and earns her keep as a copyeditor for university presses. She lives in Davis, California.