Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2003, 4:09 PM

A love story



It was the music that kept him going long into the night, scribbling furiously the last of his mind unto the walls with crayon. The music playing in his head. It was Them playing. Them played all the time now and all he could think to do was write down everything he knew as he had first learned--with the burning bright hues of wax that had proliferated in his childhood. So that is what he did, every night until he died, but not before he was able to write down his story on the walls, and illustrate them upon the ceiling like a child's rendition of the Sistine chapel to the tune of Pine Green, Apricot, Vivid Tangerine, Sky Blue, Magenta, and Brick Red. He had laid upon his table which was precariously balanced upon the chairs that normal flanked it's sides, resting on a flat plywood board upon a foundation of milk crates stolen from a nearby supermarket that had reported finding letters scrawled in crayon every morning for a week where a milk crate had been the previous night. Each one was a promissory note guaranteeing the return of each recycled plastic cube as soon as they had helped him to beautify his world.

His story was orderly. It didn't ramble nearly as much as his thoughts, though he did change colors randomly--sometimes in the middle of a word, segregating an occasional prefix or highlighting a particular syllable. And sometimes he would write across a wall in perfectly parallel and horizontal lines, and other times he would slant his sentences at a perfect 45 degree angle, sending his thoughts spiraling into a corner. The whole thing was block printed except for the word "love" which was written in a looping cursive style so large that the lines before and after each reference had to be written around the word. This meant that at some point he had gone around his home writing the word "Love" in flowing cursive letters horizontally, diagonally, and on one wall, upside down, before he even embarked on writing his story. But it fit. Each reference fit perfectly into the story. Each looping "L" that sometimes pushed itself in between the words as far as three lines above had a place carved into his tale--his tale written around and embracing love.