Keep The Giraffe Burning (28 page)

With the trunk and a wheel added, the elephant-bridge becomes a hay-wagon, the dominant symbol of dead weight creaking through
Scenes from Rural Life
as though it had lost a tyre:

But the hay-wagon easily transforms to the armoured car (in
Secret of the Old Custard
) which is called a Welcome Wagon (note the two W’s):

The elephant’s wooden leg might equally be a torch for the Statue of Liberty. In
The Great Wall
, Ms Liberty has lost her torch, and may have
handed it to one of the mob in
The Face
:

The elephant can roll up his trunk, which then equals a snake biting its own tail (as in
The Face
) or a tyre. The tyre is the centrepiece of a picnic in
Heavens Below
:

But a tyre implies a wheel, so we next look for that image. It is on the hay-wagon and the Welcome Wagon, but it turns up elsewhere: The wooden leg again may serve as a wheel and axle:

Turned on its side, the wheel and axle becomes a cake with candle (such as the cake in
A Game of Jump
):

The cake with its candle displaced to one side becomes a kind of clumsy boot (e.g., a
Space Shoe
):

The shadow of the cake with candle resembles the bomb in
Great Wall
:

But this bomb requires only a minimal change to become the ball-and-chain of
Flatland
and
The Commentaries
and
Hammer of Evil
:

The cannonball-and-chain calls to mind the Human Cannonball (
The Locked Room
) of the circus (elephants again!). His cannon is made of the wheel, the wooden leg, and the head of an elephant:

These same transformations may be performed to include the remaining stories.

Cassandra Knye

I feel that Ms Knye has missed the point, somehow.

JTS

‘Another Look’ –
Other Times
#1, © 1975

‘The Commentaries’ –
Ambit
#39, © 1969

‘The Design’ –
Ambit
#35, © 1968

‘Elephant with Wooden Leg’ –
Galaxy
, © June 1975, UPD Publishing Corp.

‘Flatland’ –
New Worlds Quarterly
#5, © 1973

‘The Great Wall of Mexico’ –
Bad Moon Rising
, © 1973, Thomas M. Disch

‘The Hammer of Evil’ –
New Worlds Nine
, © 1975

‘Heavens Below’ –
The New Improved Sun
, © 1975, Thomas Disch

‘The Locked Room’ –
New Worlds Quarterly
#4, © 1972

‘The Master Plan’ –
New Worlds
#187, © 1969

‘The Poets of Millgrove, Iowa’ –
New Worlds
#168, © 1966

‘Scenes from Rural Life’ –
Bananas
, © 1975

‘The Secret of the Old Custard’ (under the publisher’s title
The Babe in the

Oven
) –
IF
, © November 1966, UPD Publishing Corp.

‘Undecember’ –
Bananas
, © 1976

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