One time I imaginary stole
an aging Chinaman’s baby blue sailors hat
outside a duck roasting joint on a
hilly San Francisco sidewalk.
Plastic bags of Asian groceries swayed
left and right as he staggered down the street,
shrinking a little with each step.
From a distance the hat seemed
impossible to remove,
like stealing a smile from a statue.
It was the pivotal piece of his wardrobe,
but I had to have it.
The old man’s face wrinkled inward
at the intrusion of my arm
and he dropped his grocery bags.
He flailed his tiny joints,
pointing and screaming in Mandarin,
but by then his hat was mine.
Monday, March 23, 2009
I Get Money, Money I Got
(Originally published on the Rancho Relaxo blog on June 3, 2008)
In 1987, Curtis Jackson III was 12 years old and living in Queens with his grandparents, following the murder of his mother. If his grandparents subscribed to cable television, he might have seen a music video for “Top Billin’”, the surprise hit B-side from Audio Two’s single “Make It Funky”, on upstart music channel MTV. 1988 marked the launch of Yo! MTV Raps, broadcasting hip-hop into households across America, attaching visual significations to a burgeoning musical movement. It was also the year Curtis started selling cocaine.
20 years later, Curtis Jackson is better known as 50 Cent, and he doesn’t have to sell cocaine anymore. He is the second highest grossing rapper in the world with an estimated 32 million dollars in earnings in 2006 alone. He has his own brand of bottled water, condoms, body spray, a line of shoes under license to Reebok, two video games, a best-selling autobiography, two novels, and a film career. Audio Two, the duo of emcee Milk D and DJ Gizmo, have been relegated to relative obscurity. Their two LPs What More Can I Say? and I Don’t Care: The Album (both titles referential to single “Top Billin’”) sold so poorly that their third didn’t see a release. Milk D attempted to continue a solo career with the help of producer Rick Rubin, but it received little commercial or critical attention.
Despite Audio Two’s lack of future accolades, “Top Billin’” retains certified hip-hop sure-shot status. A golden era gem, it is referenced and sampled by both the hip-hop mainstream and underground. The likes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, MF Doom, Danger Mouse, Madlib, and even Ed-Bangette Uffie have paid homage to Milk D’s laid back party rhymes and the disjointed funk drum programming by Stetasonic. But the most noticeable Audio Two reference in recent memory comes from 50 Cent on the first single from his 2007 album Curtis entitled “I Get Money.” Although it did not achieve the chart topping status of 50 Cent’s early singles (peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot Rap Charts), it was critically lauded and served as a ubiquitous promotion for Curtis, mainly through the success of the single’s music video.
Landing on the top spot on BET’s 106 & Park hip-hop countdown, the music video is an overwhelming piece of work. It begins with an LCD light marquee scrolling 50 Cent’s name in neon blue that explodes in digital flames, replaced with the minty green text “I Get Money.” The camera rapidly zooms and the shot cuts to a tightly framed letterbox image of Curtis blowing out two green candles in the shape of a 5 and 0. The candles are set on stacks of bound $100 bill bundles, as if they were a cake. Out of nowhere Funkmaster Flex declares, “This is the hottest record out.” The camera pulls back to reveal Curtis Jackson wearing a dew-rag, smiling. He wasn’t actually blowing out the candles; he was fanning them with a handful of more one hundred dollar bills.
The song’s production is minimal and aggressive. A dark meandering synth line accompanies gunshot snares, deadened kick drums and lack of hi-hat to create an undeniably sinister backing track. The letterbox frame around 50’s smiling face begins scrolling the text “I Get It, I Get Money” and the 1987 vocals of Milk Dee from Audio Two are sampled into a stuttering declaration of wealth, forming the song’s hook, “I get money, money I got.”
The video’s images loosely follow the lyrical content, displaying visual proof of 50 Cent’s bank balance. As Curtis rhymes about Mercedes Benzes, Jaguars, and Ferraris, the cars are used as stripper poles by a near-naked collection of hip-hop video girls. He brags about writing child support checks before the baby is even born and hands a check for one million dollars to a woman standing next to a 5 year old dressed in matching G-Unit T-shirt and headband. After a catalog listing of euphemisms for money, 50 Cent breaks open a package of Wonderbread to reveal it to be full of even more one hundred dollar bills.
The scrolling LCD marquee from the intro letterboxes the video for the entirety of the song, adding textual reinforcement to the lyrics and images. It follows the song’s hook with the text “I Get It!!” “I Get Money!” and “I Run New York!”, but also divulges from the lyric content, baiting other rappers with lines like “Pay Attention Stupid This Is Hip Hop” and “Watch This Sucka, Curtis Is Comin’ I’m #1”. The neon text declares “I’m Still Undefeated Undisputed, Hahahaha Straight To The Bank.” The subtitles conclude with a smart bit of marketing, a listing of the producers featured on 50’s new album. Curtis sold 691,000 copies in its first week.
But let’s backtrack 20 years. Back to when 50’s sneakers were a few sizes smaller and they weren’t his own signature Reebok model. In 1987, the release of “Top Billin’” by Audio Two was accompanied by a video of it’s own. It begins with a lo-fi digital wipe to reveal rapper Milk Dee drinking milk from a glass bottle.
The first striking parallel between the two videos is the use of textual supplements. Instead of the Technicolor scrolling marquee that letterboxes 50 Cent, Audio Two uses white poster board, held by extras that are presumably friends of the group. The poster-board subtitles stick to the song’s lyrics. Instead of reiterating Milk D and DJ Gizmo’s wealth, they serve as textual accompaniment for the subject matter of the lyrics. The low-budget aesthetic ads to the playful, relaxed and informal tone of the video.
From here things start to get confusing because I have a certain reverence for old school hip-hop music video aesthetics. Production values are so low they’re nearly non-existent. The locations and crowds couldn’t feel more authentic and relaxed. Everyone in the videos just seems to be having a great time, proud to claim the spotlight and show the world how they live. For a fan of old-school hip-hop who wasn’t ever a participant in the early subculture, these videos are a testament to my after the fact nostalgia for hip-hop’s roots.
Audio Two’s dingy production values, candid-style footage of the group, and choice to include footage of a concert performance, albeit one most likely staged for the filming of this video, captures that sense of realism that fuels my appreciation of older hip-hop. But by getting wrapped up in the joyful, asexual movements of Audio Two’s dancers, the genuine excitement of the crowd shots, and the silly milk bottles everywhere, it’s easy to ignore that both songs are essentially proclaiming the same thing. Milk D rhymes about partying, girls, money, and being a better rapper than just about anybody else. 20 years later 50 Cent is rapping about the same things, the difference is that he has the bank account to back them up.
The hip-hop stars of the eighties could not fathom the wealth and excess of rappers like 50 Cent and I love them for it. The bragging about money and fame seem an after-thought to the good times displayed in the video, not the driving force behind them. The depiction of money in Audio Two’s video is so detached from the duo that it’s almost ignorable. The shots of small-faced $100 bills are shown in passing, a quick cut to the bills blossoming out of an extra’s jean jacket pocket. The signification of money isn’t directly attached to Milk D’s image, it is acknowledging a consequence of his success. The shift is subtle but incredibly important. Money is a result of his identity, not a defining characteristic.
Many of the prominent symbols in the videos have evolved to explicitly include money in their significations. Audio Two’s matching embroidered jackets have warped into a bulletproof vest encrusted with diamonds spelling out Curtis. The hip-hop video girls have gone from wearing discreet black leotard pants and tube tops to G-Unit stripper wear. Instead of serving as silly ambiance, children are depicted wearing gold chains and showing a gleeful dependence on Curtis Jackson’s bank account. The charm of these visual signs, formerly rooted in sincerity, has evolved with cold calculation.
Even the chorus of “I Get Money” holds a fundamentally different signification than Audio Two’s original lyrics. The sampled line from the Audio Two song, “I get money, money I got”, is a party-rhyme twist of syntax that allows Milk D to use the words hunnies and hot to brag about his sexual appeal in the following line. It supports Audio Two’s chorus, “What more can I say, top billin’”, by building an image of self esteem that isn’t directly tied to any single signification in the video, but rather Audio Two’s overall success. 50 Cent re-appropriates the line as part of a branding statement, a specific and fundamental idea that drives his image and lifestyle.
I’m not trying to say that Milk D wouldn’t flash a smile if someone put a stack of hundreds in his hands and told him to use them to fan out candles spelling Audio Two. Filming a video for “Top Billin’” in 1987 was a financially driven marketing decision, but also served an important and authentic document of a cultural movement that hadn’t quite yet hit the mainstream. It was an investment into the talent, charisma, and legitimacy of a growing musical genre. 20 years later, “I Get Money” and 50 Cent’s entire mythology isn’t a slap in the face of hip-hop’s original values, but a reaffirmation of their power. It stretches the ideas to their absolute limits, detaches them from their original signification, and hollows the core, creating a social figure whose perfect exaggeration of a culture has come to define it.
In 1987, Curtis Jackson III was 12 years old and living in Queens with his grandparents, following the murder of his mother. If his grandparents subscribed to cable television, he might have seen a music video for “Top Billin’”, the surprise hit B-side from Audio Two’s single “Make It Funky”, on upstart music channel MTV. 1988 marked the launch of Yo! MTV Raps, broadcasting hip-hop into households across America, attaching visual significations to a burgeoning musical movement. It was also the year Curtis started selling cocaine.
20 years later, Curtis Jackson is better known as 50 Cent, and he doesn’t have to sell cocaine anymore. He is the second highest grossing rapper in the world with an estimated 32 million dollars in earnings in 2006 alone. He has his own brand of bottled water, condoms, body spray, a line of shoes under license to Reebok, two video games, a best-selling autobiography, two novels, and a film career. Audio Two, the duo of emcee Milk D and DJ Gizmo, have been relegated to relative obscurity. Their two LPs What More Can I Say? and I Don’t Care: The Album (both titles referential to single “Top Billin’”) sold so poorly that their third didn’t see a release. Milk D attempted to continue a solo career with the help of producer Rick Rubin, but it received little commercial or critical attention.
Despite Audio Two’s lack of future accolades, “Top Billin’” retains certified hip-hop sure-shot status. A golden era gem, it is referenced and sampled by both the hip-hop mainstream and underground. The likes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, MF Doom, Danger Mouse, Madlib, and even Ed-Bangette Uffie have paid homage to Milk D’s laid back party rhymes and the disjointed funk drum programming by Stetasonic. But the most noticeable Audio Two reference in recent memory comes from 50 Cent on the first single from his 2007 album Curtis entitled “I Get Money.” Although it did not achieve the chart topping status of 50 Cent’s early singles (peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot Rap Charts), it was critically lauded and served as a ubiquitous promotion for Curtis, mainly through the success of the single’s music video.
Landing on the top spot on BET’s 106 & Park hip-hop countdown, the music video is an overwhelming piece of work. It begins with an LCD light marquee scrolling 50 Cent’s name in neon blue that explodes in digital flames, replaced with the minty green text “I Get Money.” The camera rapidly zooms and the shot cuts to a tightly framed letterbox image of Curtis blowing out two green candles in the shape of a 5 and 0. The candles are set on stacks of bound $100 bill bundles, as if they were a cake. Out of nowhere Funkmaster Flex declares, “This is the hottest record out.” The camera pulls back to reveal Curtis Jackson wearing a dew-rag, smiling. He wasn’t actually blowing out the candles; he was fanning them with a handful of more one hundred dollar bills.
The song’s production is minimal and aggressive. A dark meandering synth line accompanies gunshot snares, deadened kick drums and lack of hi-hat to create an undeniably sinister backing track. The letterbox frame around 50’s smiling face begins scrolling the text “I Get It, I Get Money” and the 1987 vocals of Milk Dee from Audio Two are sampled into a stuttering declaration of wealth, forming the song’s hook, “I get money, money I got.”
The video’s images loosely follow the lyrical content, displaying visual proof of 50 Cent’s bank balance. As Curtis rhymes about Mercedes Benzes, Jaguars, and Ferraris, the cars are used as stripper poles by a near-naked collection of hip-hop video girls. He brags about writing child support checks before the baby is even born and hands a check for one million dollars to a woman standing next to a 5 year old dressed in matching G-Unit T-shirt and headband. After a catalog listing of euphemisms for money, 50 Cent breaks open a package of Wonderbread to reveal it to be full of even more one hundred dollar bills.
The scrolling LCD marquee from the intro letterboxes the video for the entirety of the song, adding textual reinforcement to the lyrics and images. It follows the song’s hook with the text “I Get It!!” “I Get Money!” and “I Run New York!”, but also divulges from the lyric content, baiting other rappers with lines like “Pay Attention Stupid This Is Hip Hop” and “Watch This Sucka, Curtis Is Comin’ I’m #1”. The neon text declares “I’m Still Undefeated Undisputed, Hahahaha Straight To The Bank.” The subtitles conclude with a smart bit of marketing, a listing of the producers featured on 50’s new album. Curtis sold 691,000 copies in its first week.
But let’s backtrack 20 years. Back to when 50’s sneakers were a few sizes smaller and they weren’t his own signature Reebok model. In 1987, the release of “Top Billin’” by Audio Two was accompanied by a video of it’s own. It begins with a lo-fi digital wipe to reveal rapper Milk Dee drinking milk from a glass bottle.
The first striking parallel between the two videos is the use of textual supplements. Instead of the Technicolor scrolling marquee that letterboxes 50 Cent, Audio Two uses white poster board, held by extras that are presumably friends of the group. The poster-board subtitles stick to the song’s lyrics. Instead of reiterating Milk D and DJ Gizmo’s wealth, they serve as textual accompaniment for the subject matter of the lyrics. The low-budget aesthetic ads to the playful, relaxed and informal tone of the video.
From here things start to get confusing because I have a certain reverence for old school hip-hop music video aesthetics. Production values are so low they’re nearly non-existent. The locations and crowds couldn’t feel more authentic and relaxed. Everyone in the videos just seems to be having a great time, proud to claim the spotlight and show the world how they live. For a fan of old-school hip-hop who wasn’t ever a participant in the early subculture, these videos are a testament to my after the fact nostalgia for hip-hop’s roots.
Audio Two’s dingy production values, candid-style footage of the group, and choice to include footage of a concert performance, albeit one most likely staged for the filming of this video, captures that sense of realism that fuels my appreciation of older hip-hop. But by getting wrapped up in the joyful, asexual movements of Audio Two’s dancers, the genuine excitement of the crowd shots, and the silly milk bottles everywhere, it’s easy to ignore that both songs are essentially proclaiming the same thing. Milk D rhymes about partying, girls, money, and being a better rapper than just about anybody else. 20 years later 50 Cent is rapping about the same things, the difference is that he has the bank account to back them up.
The hip-hop stars of the eighties could not fathom the wealth and excess of rappers like 50 Cent and I love them for it. The bragging about money and fame seem an after-thought to the good times displayed in the video, not the driving force behind them. The depiction of money in Audio Two’s video is so detached from the duo that it’s almost ignorable. The shots of small-faced $100 bills are shown in passing, a quick cut to the bills blossoming out of an extra’s jean jacket pocket. The signification of money isn’t directly attached to Milk D’s image, it is acknowledging a consequence of his success. The shift is subtle but incredibly important. Money is a result of his identity, not a defining characteristic.
Many of the prominent symbols in the videos have evolved to explicitly include money in their significations. Audio Two’s matching embroidered jackets have warped into a bulletproof vest encrusted with diamonds spelling out Curtis. The hip-hop video girls have gone from wearing discreet black leotard pants and tube tops to G-Unit stripper wear. Instead of serving as silly ambiance, children are depicted wearing gold chains and showing a gleeful dependence on Curtis Jackson’s bank account. The charm of these visual signs, formerly rooted in sincerity, has evolved with cold calculation.
Even the chorus of “I Get Money” holds a fundamentally different signification than Audio Two’s original lyrics. The sampled line from the Audio Two song, “I get money, money I got”, is a party-rhyme twist of syntax that allows Milk D to use the words hunnies and hot to brag about his sexual appeal in the following line. It supports Audio Two’s chorus, “What more can I say, top billin’”, by building an image of self esteem that isn’t directly tied to any single signification in the video, but rather Audio Two’s overall success. 50 Cent re-appropriates the line as part of a branding statement, a specific and fundamental idea that drives his image and lifestyle.
I’m not trying to say that Milk D wouldn’t flash a smile if someone put a stack of hundreds in his hands and told him to use them to fan out candles spelling Audio Two. Filming a video for “Top Billin’” in 1987 was a financially driven marketing decision, but also served an important and authentic document of a cultural movement that hadn’t quite yet hit the mainstream. It was an investment into the talent, charisma, and legitimacy of a growing musical genre. 20 years later, “I Get Money” and 50 Cent’s entire mythology isn’t a slap in the face of hip-hop’s original values, but a reaffirmation of their power. It stretches the ideas to their absolute limits, detaches them from their original signification, and hollows the core, creating a social figure whose perfect exaggeration of a culture has come to define it.
Untitled Chapter 1
Stefano lay on his back next to his greatest creation. The highest points of the castle, the four corner flag posts made of marooned twigs, stood at the startling height of a half-meter. Supported by his elbows, legs towards the sea, Stefano’s eyes were even with the battlements, his back angled parallel to an intimidating range of cliffs. He leaned his back, arching his back and digging his cowlick into the sand. The rocky withered face of the cliff climbed high above the reach of the young boy’s upturned eyes. On the other side of the impenetrable mass of eroded brown rock sat his home, hidden in a deep forested valley. Today, like nearly every day, he had traveled up the green hills behind his home and through a small patch of trees, then scaled down the treacherous rocks to reach the oasis at the water.
The sand stretched long and far in each direction. Very rarely had Stefano seen another person on these beaches, except the every so often old man combing the sands for sea-glass or coming to hear the crashing waves. Next to Stefano wrapped in a kerchief from his father was a collection of broken gadgetry and several small glass beakers filled with colored liquid.
Rising from his rest, Stefano dug thin holes in the sand for each beaker and began embedding his castle with the warped and misshapen parts his father had discarded from the engineering workshop. The main battlements were lined with scraps of metal Stefano imagined to be pure silver. An irregular gear was pushed into the sides of the castle entrance, serving as show-mechanics for the drawbridge. Crooked springs were wrapped with seaweed and planted in the sand as flowers lining the inside of the walls.
The stare of the sun falling on the castle highlighted the large quantity of engineering oddments that had gone into the boy’s work. The embellishments sparkled like a blinking eye as Stefano waved the kerchief over the castle. He giggled at the rippling of the white sheet then draped it over the rear battlements, running towards the sea. His bronzed feet froze as they tasted the salty water. He reached down and pulled two handfuls of short twigs covered in seaweed from the wet sand, rinsed them, and hurried back to his castle.
Stefano sat next to the three bottles full of colored liquid and rolled the sticks in the sand until each was thickly coated in a layer of beige grit. He took the first bottle and emptied it onto the pile of sticks, coating them in a pearl-white paste. Next to this pile of sticks Stefano emptied the second bottle onto the sand. This light blue liquid was less viscous, but caused the small patch of sand to clump together. With the third bottle the child walked to the cloth he had used to cover his castle. The cliffs at his back were turning from gold to tan as the sun fell behind a set of clouds. Stefano emptied the dark vial onto the cloth and watched as a stormy grey color enveloped it entirely. He grabbed the now blackened kerchief and tied the corners to the red and white striped castle poles. At this point the boy began to dance, palms uplifted towards the sky, and uttered his first sounds of the afternoon.
He grabbed a pinch of the blue stained sand and threw it side armed at the castle. Underneath the dripping grey cloth the grains skipped like stones, bouncing over the metal laced battlements and wetting the palace grounds blue. When both hands were empty he grabbed an even larger load of blue sand in his left hand, and with his right a handful of the dyed white sticks.
The blue sand was flooding the interior of the castle. The lightning white sticks made curious noises, thudding off metal and sticking in the sand. The boy’s toss and his voice grew more furious. “Cracck! Krcacakadachkkkuk!” The wind began to compete with Stefano’s hisses and booms, rippling the clouded-grey sheet. It turned in every direction, and sounded like a muted snake. More and more sticks flew from Stefano’s hands. They were causing significant damage to the castle walls, filling the moat with white pieces of wood and uprooting the coiled pieces of metal. Once all the twigs were used, Stefano fell to the ground laughing, his wet ankles coating themselves in the remainder of the dyed sand.
Blue footed and smiling, Stefano fell asleep and dreamt of flight. He emerged from his house in the small valley with a tablecloth folded into a bag. Tied to a tree branch, it was checkered with blue and green stars on both sides and filled with pristine mechanical parts the likes of which even his father had never seen. He pulled out a curious rope with two mismatched shoes tied to one end and a large seashell to the other. Stefano hurled the seashell end of the rope onto the roof of his house.
He pulled the rope twice to check its stability and suddenly the house was not a house. As if by some secret password the stone wall of his home became the steepest and most rocky portion of the cliffs leading to the beach. Stefano made two additional tugs on the rope for good measure and began his ascent without hesitation. What was originally a 10 foot high wall of brick and a wooden roof had grown into an impossibly dangerous cliff of indeterminable height. The length of the rope grew as well, and the one pair of shoes notched to the end was now one hundred, the rope dangling in between like the body of a centipede.
Stefano began his climb by placing his left foot into the first shoe. Next his right foot entered a shoe an entire leg length higher. As he looked down, bag clenched in teeth, the ground fell like a stone and splashed into a body of water the color of which Stefano could not decipher. His eyes turned upwards towards his goal, the seashell anchored casually at the top of the cliff. He continued, one shoe at a time, each new foothold seeming further and further away, eyes rarely straying from the pink coiling sea relic.
When he lost his focus on the shell his thoughts confused and scared him. Stefano saw busted faces in the rock, close to human, but damaged and exaggerated in ways he had never seen. They made terrifying shrieks and used words of discouragement, telling Stefano that he would not be able to reach the top. But when he kept his focus on the seashell at the top of the ledge, he was able to tune them out.
Propelling himself upward, Stefano’s legs stretched, growing to meet each new foothold. He felt confused by the ability. By the time Stefano had reached the summit, he was sure he had traveled upside down at least once, climbed three consecutive left shoes with his right foot, and sneezed a small cave into the side of the cliff where a small animal tried to talk to him into buying some food.
When Stefano reached the end of his climb he sat Indian style on the summit, only half remembering the cliff faces and other strange happenings. Clearing away a patch of snow that had no place atop the dusted cliff, he unfolded the blue green starred cloth in front of him. There were no remaining contents. The cliff summit was now barren besides for the tablecloth and Stefano, the seashell forgotten. His blue and green starred fabric suddenly decided it was no longer useful as a napsack, flew up from the ground, and tied itself around Stefano’s neck.
It was now a cape. Blue and green stars rippled in the wind like dancing constellations. The child stood and faced the sea, taking a great sniff of the salty air and extending his arms. The smile was audible, its sound called his parents into the scene. They stood hundreds of meters down from the cliff and yelled to him from beside their house.
“Stefano!” He dropped his arms and turned. His parents were small as specks but their faces were magnified. “Please be careful!” said his mother, narrowing her eyes and stressfully twisting the ends of her curly brown hair in one hand.
Stefano turned back towards the sea and although he couldn’t see his father’s face, he imagined a smile. He extended his arms, spreading his cape. Suddenly the wind lifted him from the ledge.
He flew down towards the sea like a kite being brought in. After catching one soaring updraft, Stefano’s head felt heavier, his body bulky and suddenly graceless. His eyes turned from the cloudless sky to the water below and suddenly his fall seemed inevitable. Nearing the sea headfirst at tremendous speed, Stefano somersaulted his frame, landing in an upright stance on the water. His heels submerged with a slight splash, but he managed to retain his balance, standing carefully on the surface of the sea, completely surprised.
The sand stretched long and far in each direction. Very rarely had Stefano seen another person on these beaches, except the every so often old man combing the sands for sea-glass or coming to hear the crashing waves. Next to Stefano wrapped in a kerchief from his father was a collection of broken gadgetry and several small glass beakers filled with colored liquid.
Rising from his rest, Stefano dug thin holes in the sand for each beaker and began embedding his castle with the warped and misshapen parts his father had discarded from the engineering workshop. The main battlements were lined with scraps of metal Stefano imagined to be pure silver. An irregular gear was pushed into the sides of the castle entrance, serving as show-mechanics for the drawbridge. Crooked springs were wrapped with seaweed and planted in the sand as flowers lining the inside of the walls.
The stare of the sun falling on the castle highlighted the large quantity of engineering oddments that had gone into the boy’s work. The embellishments sparkled like a blinking eye as Stefano waved the kerchief over the castle. He giggled at the rippling of the white sheet then draped it over the rear battlements, running towards the sea. His bronzed feet froze as they tasted the salty water. He reached down and pulled two handfuls of short twigs covered in seaweed from the wet sand, rinsed them, and hurried back to his castle.
Stefano sat next to the three bottles full of colored liquid and rolled the sticks in the sand until each was thickly coated in a layer of beige grit. He took the first bottle and emptied it onto the pile of sticks, coating them in a pearl-white paste. Next to this pile of sticks Stefano emptied the second bottle onto the sand. This light blue liquid was less viscous, but caused the small patch of sand to clump together. With the third bottle the child walked to the cloth he had used to cover his castle. The cliffs at his back were turning from gold to tan as the sun fell behind a set of clouds. Stefano emptied the dark vial onto the cloth and watched as a stormy grey color enveloped it entirely. He grabbed the now blackened kerchief and tied the corners to the red and white striped castle poles. At this point the boy began to dance, palms uplifted towards the sky, and uttered his first sounds of the afternoon.
He grabbed a pinch of the blue stained sand and threw it side armed at the castle. Underneath the dripping grey cloth the grains skipped like stones, bouncing over the metal laced battlements and wetting the palace grounds blue. When both hands were empty he grabbed an even larger load of blue sand in his left hand, and with his right a handful of the dyed white sticks.
The blue sand was flooding the interior of the castle. The lightning white sticks made curious noises, thudding off metal and sticking in the sand. The boy’s toss and his voice grew more furious. “Cracck! Krcacakadachkkkuk!” The wind began to compete with Stefano’s hisses and booms, rippling the clouded-grey sheet. It turned in every direction, and sounded like a muted snake. More and more sticks flew from Stefano’s hands. They were causing significant damage to the castle walls, filling the moat with white pieces of wood and uprooting the coiled pieces of metal. Once all the twigs were used, Stefano fell to the ground laughing, his wet ankles coating themselves in the remainder of the dyed sand.
Blue footed and smiling, Stefano fell asleep and dreamt of flight. He emerged from his house in the small valley with a tablecloth folded into a bag. Tied to a tree branch, it was checkered with blue and green stars on both sides and filled with pristine mechanical parts the likes of which even his father had never seen. He pulled out a curious rope with two mismatched shoes tied to one end and a large seashell to the other. Stefano hurled the seashell end of the rope onto the roof of his house.
He pulled the rope twice to check its stability and suddenly the house was not a house. As if by some secret password the stone wall of his home became the steepest and most rocky portion of the cliffs leading to the beach. Stefano made two additional tugs on the rope for good measure and began his ascent without hesitation. What was originally a 10 foot high wall of brick and a wooden roof had grown into an impossibly dangerous cliff of indeterminable height. The length of the rope grew as well, and the one pair of shoes notched to the end was now one hundred, the rope dangling in between like the body of a centipede.
Stefano began his climb by placing his left foot into the first shoe. Next his right foot entered a shoe an entire leg length higher. As he looked down, bag clenched in teeth, the ground fell like a stone and splashed into a body of water the color of which Stefano could not decipher. His eyes turned upwards towards his goal, the seashell anchored casually at the top of the cliff. He continued, one shoe at a time, each new foothold seeming further and further away, eyes rarely straying from the pink coiling sea relic.
When he lost his focus on the shell his thoughts confused and scared him. Stefano saw busted faces in the rock, close to human, but damaged and exaggerated in ways he had never seen. They made terrifying shrieks and used words of discouragement, telling Stefano that he would not be able to reach the top. But when he kept his focus on the seashell at the top of the ledge, he was able to tune them out.
Propelling himself upward, Stefano’s legs stretched, growing to meet each new foothold. He felt confused by the ability. By the time Stefano had reached the summit, he was sure he had traveled upside down at least once, climbed three consecutive left shoes with his right foot, and sneezed a small cave into the side of the cliff where a small animal tried to talk to him into buying some food.
When Stefano reached the end of his climb he sat Indian style on the summit, only half remembering the cliff faces and other strange happenings. Clearing away a patch of snow that had no place atop the dusted cliff, he unfolded the blue green starred cloth in front of him. There were no remaining contents. The cliff summit was now barren besides for the tablecloth and Stefano, the seashell forgotten. His blue and green starred fabric suddenly decided it was no longer useful as a napsack, flew up from the ground, and tied itself around Stefano’s neck.
It was now a cape. Blue and green stars rippled in the wind like dancing constellations. The child stood and faced the sea, taking a great sniff of the salty air and extending his arms. The smile was audible, its sound called his parents into the scene. They stood hundreds of meters down from the cliff and yelled to him from beside their house.
“Stefano!” He dropped his arms and turned. His parents were small as specks but their faces were magnified. “Please be careful!” said his mother, narrowing her eyes and stressfully twisting the ends of her curly brown hair in one hand.
Stefano turned back towards the sea and although he couldn’t see his father’s face, he imagined a smile. He extended his arms, spreading his cape. Suddenly the wind lifted him from the ledge.
He flew down towards the sea like a kite being brought in. After catching one soaring updraft, Stefano’s head felt heavier, his body bulky and suddenly graceless. His eyes turned from the cloudless sky to the water below and suddenly his fall seemed inevitable. Nearing the sea headfirst at tremendous speed, Stefano somersaulted his frame, landing in an upright stance on the water. His heels submerged with a slight splash, but he managed to retain his balance, standing carefully on the surface of the sea, completely surprised.
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