KNOW WHEN TO HOLD ‘EM, FOLD ‘EM, WALK AWAY, RUN

The nurses were getting significantly lazier. The patients could all tell. They talked about the issue amongst themselves, gossip trickling through half immobilized mouths; the news wobbling through porcelain incisors, forcing itself through plastic ear tubes over contentious games of euchre. Nobody new was allowed in due to overcrowding and nobody was leaving due to the fact that nobody was ill and nobody was dying. Everyone wanted them to be sick—at least, that’s what Elizabeth and her group of sycophants would preach over the polyethylene game tables in the cafeteria—but to the overlord’s chagrin, all of the charges were perfectly healthy. They were all just old. 

So, as Elizabeth, the ringleader with the velcro-sounding voice and impeccable hay blonde coiffe foretold, the nurses were testing the simple philosophy: do rules maketh man? If the lunches were laid out in the late afternoon or early morning, would it really matter? If the staff took a smoke break inside or outside, how bad could it be for a population that seemed immune to the social ills that had befallen the rest of the world? All they had was here, in this facility. They had no money—just memory and material that they planned to, eventually, pass down to their troublesome next of kin.

Elizabeth is why the whole ring started. Somewhere outside of the small care facility, the center was not holding. Was there ever a center at all? Elizabeth posed, fingering an Ace. Our times were just as troublesome. So, with whatever they had—money, time, heirlooms, stories, the charges began to obsess over the making of rules. Which ones were important? Which ones were negligible? What was the best way to circumvent a bad one? Best way to honor a good one?

REMOVE ALL HATS, SHOES, BAGS CELLPHONES, ELECTRONICS, AND PLACE IN THE CONTAINER

Elizabeth liked to lead her disciples through a series of rigorous memory-jogging exercises so they wouldn’t expire early, much to the chagrin of the increasingly zombielike caregivers who filtered in and out of the fluorescent rooms at a glacial pace, much closer to ghosts than their elderly charges. One day, Elizabeth led all 35 of her pupils into the conference room and asked them. What can you remember of the rules outside?

Many of them could not recall, or could not hear. Miss Blondie herself would not admit it, but she could not remember either. She decided to make a game out of it. Did anyone remember what TSA let through their machines? She curled her hands around a sharpie. and started drawing on the wall. Who was going to clean it? Certainly not the sluggish nurses!

CAN’T TAKE THROUGH TSA

Liquids over 6oz 

Peanut Butter - No matter how delectable

Tent Stakes -Why would you be flying to your destination in the first place? This is a rule that excludes lazy people. You do not deserve to fly if you’re lazy. 

Magic 8 Ball - The most divine, mystic thing that has possibly happened to humanity has already happened. It is human air transport. Hundreds of thousands of earthlings per day hurdling through the stratosphere at tens of thousands of feet of altitude. You can’t bring something more mystical on planes than that. It would be a battle of whimsy!

CAN take through TSA

A toy lightsaber 

A live lobster - This is permitted and encouraged but MUST be transported through a clear plastic container

A bag of animal bones and antlers - You know how the 8 ball isn’t permitted because of its enduring mysticism? Well, you’re allowed to participate in other rituals. Who wouldn’t want to engage in some paganism in the sky?

Laser hair removers - Just do not, under any circumstance, use them on the pilot!

IT’S ALL THEATRICS AND MISNOMERS, FOLKS!

So, the airports had shut down, so the patients had heard from the rare murmurs of their zombielike nurses. The news channels, which were a source of regular entertainment for the crew, had stopped working. The phones, which had never hosted a steady stream of communication due to the remote, cheap nature of the nursing home, (families that had real money to spend would never send an elderly family member there. Families that liked to visit their family members would never consider a room at the Oaks and Pines Love Home 45 miles from the nearest stoplight), had completely stopped ringing. 

There was, briefly, a rumor that, perhaps, everything was working fine on the outside and the nurses just actually didn’t want to pay the television or telephone bills. But, as one could only expect at the Oaks and Pines Love Home, the rumors were mangled beyond comprehension due to the old vessels through which they filtered. One of Elizabeth’s disciples began to openly weep during one of the brain-sharpening sessions because she had heard that the pharmacist was secretly feeding the patients WINE and thus keeping them docile. She hadn’t imbibed any liquid for days due to her misinterpretation of the original rumor. Elizabeth had to remind her that she had to keep the theatrics to a minimum, please. There was real work to be done and that work was KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE AND ALERT while the caregivers continued to drift aimlessly. The soul lives because of ORDER, not because of DRAMA!

ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE OAKS AND PINES

Line, Shape, Space, Value, Color, Texture, Form, Movement, Rhythm, Contrast, Balance, Unity, Pattern, Emphasis, Repetition. Elements of art and the principles of design. The last thing I need is you telling me I told you so. 

Everything had turned upside down. Nobody could function because everyone was too subversive. I’m telling you, there was no meaning anymore because everyone thought they could be a capital R-Rulebreaker but didn’t actually have the gall to follow—or break—any rules. Line, Shape, Space. I wish people were perverting and undermining and grifting but actually, they were just drifting closer to the conclusion of a zero-sum game. I thought, okay, sure, this could be a generative laziness for me. I’m a painter and I can stand out. But then things got really really bad. Like, the opposite-of-anarchy-bad. Total societal stasis. I thought, Hey, I would like to talk to my grandmother Elizabeth about this. She’s a real stickler for the rules and she would have something interesting to say.  Value, Color, Texture, Form.

Well, she was a real stickler, but we kind of thrust her out of the city because she was insufferable to live with and, frankly, quite close to her own demise anyway. I was going to give her a call before the power grid fell. , Movement, Rhythm, Contrast, Balance, Unity, Pattern. Then I was going to visit her before the gas stations closed.

Emphasis, Repetition. Now, I think I’ll just walk. I have a feeling she’s up to something strange out there.  She’s the only person I can think of that liked to live so much that she was willing to make rules just to break them. She played inside of them like a true artist. Maybe that’s what it is to live. To make rules. To break them.

Photographed by Elle Johnson

Styled by Hannah Roy

Produced by Annie Bush