Division (Architecture 5), and: “Adopt” as in “a Program” (Architecture 11), and: The Second Idea of Absence (Architecture 12), and: Nest (Architecture 17), and: Nest III (Architecture 102)

Division (Architecture 5)

Let’s watch the process one more time. During the first stageof mitosis, prophase, we see the classic chromosome structure.Notice the DNA condensing. Outside, my neighboris watering the new tree they plantedto replace the one they had to remove, and in both her and the tree,microtubules are appearing and the nuclear membraneis breaking down. So many places to go wrong:metaphase, when the chromosomes are alignedat the center of the cell, or anaphase,as the chromosomes are moving apart.Telophase is then marked by the appearanceof new nuclear membranes. And this is the endof mitosis. About 80 minutes, and two new cellsare ready to grow and perform their specialized functions.

I wasn’t there when my mother died. My brother Richard and Ihad been there, called by our dad, when her organsstarted shutting down. But when we got there, she rallied,her organs started functioning again, and we had work,so we left, and then she died. I can see her, though, as she was then,wax statue, Alzheimer’s to a stroke to a coma, in and out.My father is still fighting, demanding it was dementia instead.It’s become his meal of rocks. He took care of herthat last year, and several things I was sayingabout Alzheimer’s care, playing music, etc.,he didn’t like or want and turned back, folding into himself.

We want it to be our show, how we die, but it isn’t.My mother, younger, told us that if she went senile,we were to take her out to the backyard and shoot her.She didn’t mean it, but what someone means at a moment like this

is complicated, as the slow milling of the oceansand land, geese rising from a lakeand back down, some clock beneath these hills.

“Adopt” as in “a Program” (Architecture 11)

Something falls from the sky. And we all know anything that fallsfrom the sky is a gift from the gods. Grape seeds maybe. Bread.Lottery checks. It’s the premise of the Cargo cultsdotted across the 20th century, deriving from the beliefthat ritualistic acts such as the building of an airplane runwaywill result in the appearance of wealth. It’s logical conclusionsfrom faulty premises. As one might imagine a questionof chickens and eggs a real question, formed under conditionsof social stress, often linked to an ancestral efficacythought to be recoverable by a returnto traditional morality, characterizing the present stateas a dismantling of the social order, that social hierarchyand ego boundaries have broken down,and we need to make whatever place great again.

You have to be careful not to fall in love with the spectacle. Spectaclesare easy. There’s also the rest of the day to consider, as the torsoof Apollo whispers: how old and broken things can create in onea fondness for memes and tote bags. “The themeof this year’s Fall Harvest Ball is ‘Fall Harvest,’” the flyer proclaimsthat fell from the bulletin board at the community centeras I passed. The theme is theme. We write it on our masksand go running. We’re exotic aliens to ourselves.

I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008,wanting to get a little something to take back to the Midwest,and their floor-wide installation turned out to be tractors. It’s allin how you define it. The theme unfolds, cult to denominationto nation, adopting a program, adopting a pet, a child,from the Latin, adoptio, from ad- ‘to’ + optio ‘choosing.’ To choose.I’m on a fact-finding mission to the center of my soul, working outmy family tree, birth and adoption, 2,000 people so farand still no mother. I wishI believed in ghosts. Maybe I halfway believe in ghosts. [End Page...