Artist of the Week: The Residents

THEIR EARLY YEARS
(The Residents)

Once when we were on a bus between some cities we discussed the things that happened in their early years.
Their youngest time was spent alone while living with an uncle only half remaining from a foreign war.
His upper half was well enough, but in the pants between his cuffs where his zipper stopped, his legs were gone.
And so he rolled around on wheels, self sufficient in a peeling little house he could not paint again.
But it was spotless to the point of two feet above the floor and warmth was in his laugh and in his smiling face.
The people that they met were few and might have been disturbed by two who looked so strange, but they were not aware.
For living with their stumpy uncle, who was unconcerned and rumpled, made them see things differently.
They thought that we were put together randomly, just like the weather, with no uniformity in mind.
But that vision only lasted for a while until he passed away and they were sent off to a home.
The children there did not have parents, were all alike and always staring, as they sat on chairs above the ground.
So they cried and then withdrew from those that shouted, laughed and who were mean because of suffering inside.
Once alone they heard some children shouting that a car had killed one of their pets out in the road ahead.
As they approached the fallen body, blood appeared and then they saw a leg that had been torn away somehow.
So they kneeled upon the ground and lifted up the leg they found and wedged it gently just below the spot where both their shoulders joined together.
Then the sun, which had been setting, winked and for a moment all was dark.
And when the sun returned above them, no one laughed and made fun of them, for the dog was licking at the joint, barking loud and resurrected and causing them to be respected by those who had avoided them before.

Beautiful, unapologetically weird stuff.