564
THALIA SELZ
quite without knowledge of Joshua's work. No one came to
know Joshua's work.
Usually he used shoe-boxes without lids, or he would cut
holes or little doors in the lids or sides and sheet them with cello–
phane so you could peek through. This was in the beginning.
When he began earning a few dollars he bought scraps of lumber
and hammered together boxes which he fitted with glass tops.
"What's
that?"
"A platypus."
"What?"
"A clong. A schnoo. A fllmnp. - Daphne!"
It is impossible to
describe
a work of
art
(which is what
these were) without driving out of it that very quality of un–
expected, perfect resolution which makes it art. I said these boxes
were queer, and they were, but in spite of my adolescent fears,
shames, and proprieties I rather liked them. They reminded
me of the doll-house I had played with till I was ten and was
ashamed (but yearned) to play with now that I approached,
queenly, the years of high school.
In the boxes and in precise, painstakingly considered juxta–
position he placed all manners of madnesses: coils of thin wire
and snippets of hair (one of my shorn curls went into a box
labeled "Little Side-Dream": I was delighted by the curl but
obscurely hurt by the title), fragments of newspaper photographs
and print, toothbrush bristles and fingernail parings and empty
lipstick cases, shreds of cloth and bits of broken glass or china,
pebbles, the insides of watches, pencil stubs, even one of Jason's
molars. My mother got to saving all the non-decayable refuse
of each day for him to pick over at night.
"I don't like them or understand them," she said, "but he
has the
right,
I believe." She could be very romantic about her
principles.
At night Jason and I would hurtle down to the basement
to watch him work till bedtime. He never complained at our
presence though he talked very little while he worked. We jab-
