1905

6 the minnesota review Deborah Small 1905 It is 1905. Albert Einstein postulates the equivalence of mass and energy in his Special Theory of Relativity as space and time are amalgamated into a 4-dimensional space-time continuum. It is 1905. The Fauves, or wild beasts, liberate their violent and explosive color from the content of their paintings. The same year Picasso begins a series of drawings for Les Demoiselles d'A vignon. It is 1905. Albert Einstein is 26 years old. There are 26 letters in the alphabet. There were 26 islands in the Bikini Atoll. Three islands vanished during the nuclear testing. What if 3 letters were to disappear. Say a e i. Or o u and ?. X marks the spot. X marks the spot. Out damned spot! out I say, Lady Macbeth wails as she washes her hands to no avail. Tide might get tough spots out of dirty laundry, but it is not strong enough to remove the polka dots from a bikini. The larger the spots, the bigger they are. It is 1905. Cezanne paints his monumental GrandBathers, where a group of corpulent women are pictured bathing not in bikinis or 1-piece suits but in the nude. The nude female may be OK for art but it is not OK on beaches where women are arrested for appearing in anything that is corisidered too brief. 12 3 4. Tell the people what she wore. It is 1905. Einsteinium, the 99th element in the periodic table of chemical elements, does not yet exist. It is 1905. Energy now equals mass times the speed of light squared. E = mc2. E for Einstein. E for energy. E for enlightenment. E for exacerbation . E for explosion. E for exposure. A photograph is overexposed when it is too light, when the details are obscured. A female is overexposed when her garments allow too much of her anatomy to show through, when the details are not obscured enough. small 7 It is 1905. The bikini bathing suit has not yet been designed. It is 1905. Picasso begins not only a series of drawings but also his "pink" period. Overexposure to radiation is responsible not for pink but for orange coconuts on Bikini Atoll. Overexposure not in 1905 but from 1946-58. It is 1905. Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungleexposing the malpractices of the meatpacking industry. Meat is contaminated not by radioactivity but by red dyes, rat poisons, and the remains of employees who have fallen into vats of lard. It is 1905. E = mc2. The speed of light is a constant: 186,272 miles per second. 1 +8 + 6 + 2 + 7 + 2 = 26. It is 1905. Upton Sinclair is not 26 but 27. It is 1905. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, George Santayana writes. To repeat it. Tomorrow and tomorrow and . . . Tomorrow, like Einstein and exposure, is an 8 letter word. Ate is the past tense of the word eat. People who ate orange coconuts very likely became sick. It is 1905. It's a jungle out there, people are known to murmur among themselves. The 8th most important event in American history, according to an Associated Press poll, is Watergate and the subsequent resignation of Richard Nixon. Nixon makes his famous Checkers speech not in 1905 but in 1952, the year George Santayana dies. The same year Einsteinium is discovered in the debris from the first thermonuclear test on Eniwetok Atoll, neighbor to Bikini. 1952. 8 rhymes with late. 8 years later John Kennedy wins the presidentail election defeating Nixon in 1960. The year Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini is released. The same year Red #2 dye receives provisional acceptance from the Federal Food and Drug Administration. 1960. John Kennedy is 43 years old. The same age as the number of bombs exploded in Eniwetok Atoll. It is 1905. The Fauvist Maurice de Vlaminck paints the face of his Reclining Nude in red, white and blue. 8 the minnesota review Red. Like the now banned Red Wl dye. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand, Lady Macbeth wails. No, this my hand will rather...