Cast-Iron Airplane Michael Bazzett I have an airplane made of cast iron. It has no engine. It does have rubber wheels that allow me to wheel it into open fields on sunlit days and climb into the cockpit. Or maybe the day isn't sunlit. Maybe a light snow is falling and the frozen grass is slowly being covered, and the only sound is the crunch of my footfalls and the creaking wheels, my breath coming in little white huffs. I slip into the pilot's seat and sit gazing at the dark pines that line the edge of the field. Then the plane begins to rumble, trundling across the field before it climbs into the air, heavily but steadily, and silent as the snow itself. If you're going to fly a cast-iron airplane with no engine you might as well do it while it's snowing. The risk abates once you crawl above the clouds. The view is the only real reason to own such a machine. And to be honest, I don't own it. I just kind of borrow it sometimes. And now the whole contraption has disappeared and I'm just up here, zooming along in a tiny seat, shirt-tail whipping madly, no plane whatsoever, just me feeling the wet breath of cloud on my cheek, staring down at a world that looks as if it were a meticulous model train lay-out in the basement of some guy. Maybe a guy with too much time on his hands. Or maybe that's unfair. Maybe he has just the right amount. Maybe he believes in the world enough that he wants to remake it, small and dear and delicate in his basement, where he goes and sits sometimes, and opens a beer, just one, and his eyes rove over his little world, hungrily taking in every detail, with a feeling more quiet than love.
Here's the little story itself... Thanks again, to Wigleaf!
![Excerpt from The Museum of Unnatural Histories HR Guide
[following text is in a box]
Policies and Procedures
IX.
When providing interpretive text for images where the subjects are not named. The Curator of the Museum of Unnatural Histories follows best practices, as outlined below:
1. Wrestle with the naming.
2. Refuse the label anonymous.
3. Ask, without irony, what's left.
4. The naming.
5. Memorize her face.
6. Remember you are a creature
7. soft and tender.
8. remember: names are only part of love.
9. Make an offering.
10. Your struggle is not the offering.
11. The only offering is tenderness.
12. Name once known by those that beheld her.
13. Make an offering.
14. Call her Precious.
15. Call her Beloved.
For further assistance please contact your mom, a close friend, or your mentor. The Department of Policies and Procedures is unavailable for assistance on this matter.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zdfxqin2sdxjsbsmrcjuqbw4/bafkreibpmmegmp7tmrdvno3dtzqpitije3jlmh4bhjhijy3gqzdezhxrca)
![Self-Portrait as Jackson Pollock
You'll need a ladder to see
this one
in its entirety. One
with four steady legs.
The kind that won't
wobble when you stand
on the step below
the top one that warns
you not to step any higher.
You'll need to risk the final step
to see this one.
I don't make the rules.
I only make the mess
that's said to be art
but looks exactly
like a mess.
I have a gift for mimesis,
I've been told.
[the following is in a box and in smaller print]
Before the mind, the heart
resumes
its beating.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zdfxqin2sdxjsbsmrcjuqbw4/bafkreicfjucjgmnf4fovxc3hohsjrnfkmqwlzyq7n5y4lxqpfp6tmu3gzq)
