Tonight I am going to Wesley Yang's birthday party. I will have to
make an effort not to call him Weasel Yang as I have in my head
for a while now.
Weasel-ly is a magnificently liminal person. As per Alice's
formulation
of the platonic Canadian ("almost normal... not quite")
he is weird in
dimensions that are only remarkable for his perversion of them. I
can't think of any good examples now.
I can, though, think of some other subtly disconcerting things. One:
that cardboard cut-out of Kobi by Stan's apartment, in which Kobi
appears
about 85% his regular size. Instead of looming over me,
cut-out-Kobi is
about my height, with hands the same size as mine.
Two, the reverse: horses. Also, the women that de Kooning painted.
Both horses and 'Woman with Bicycle' are overscaled just enough to
make me uncomfortable. Unlike shrinky-dinking, the inflation of
people
or animals suggests an almost biological danger: I can't fathom
how
anything taller than seven feet survives*.
Striking liminality, as seen in Weasel-ly, cut-outs, and animals,
is good
for illuminating things I'd otherwise take for granted. I look
forward to tonight's
adventure in Yangsville if only because I know it will provide me
with many
anecdotes that, in their slight warp, expose my expectations of
normality.
