Page 239

By Jack Joseph Smith

When the house had been emptied people began to receive a notion about her acts; but answer had no possibility of registering going beyond symbol. In the last dress that she wore, and with nothing in her hands, she had walked in the long hung cloth colors of earth and sun and moon down through the high sand to the lifeguard tower above the sea. Now on the arrival of Jaqueline and Animal Maria was at her seventh day of fasting and meditation; and for this day Hart Street had been waiting, for during the morning of her first day under the tower, with no lifeguard at all, young Maria had softly spoken to the teenaged girls in wonder and psyche- delic willingness to the wish long gone to seed, "in seven days I shall give birth under this sky to Jesus of Los Angeles." Through the seven days there had been tributes of flowers, and offers of fruit. Tourists had passed by Maria's remaining still. Some eyes had attempted to penetrate her world with scorn. Others were sensitive to living out the flash into the dream. Low or high state of reaction seemed to mean little to Maria, for the calmness of her forehead showed that her eyes re- mained the same under lids or opened to the sun or moon, or weighty seldom summer glimpses of Los Angeles star- light over the beamed out congested confuseion of el-

Original Scan

Page 239

AI Interpretation

GPT

Maria's seven-day fast beneath the lifeguard tower turns the beach into a site of prophecy, spectacle, and makeshift sainthood.

The phrase 'Jesus of Los Angeles' is simultaneously earnest and outrageous, which is exactly why the page works. Maria's stillness turns beach spectatorship into a temporary religious theatre shaped by tourists, heat, scorn, and belief.


Claude

Maria's seven-day fast beneath the lifeguard tower turns the beach into a site of prophecy, spectacle, and civic concern. The page is her vigil as community event.