This section of the book contains two short stories and two long poems (an ode and a ballad). All of these selections, both short stories and poems, make use of colorful, geometrical shapes (rectangles, ovals, and circles) in place of some names and other shapes.  Click here for an example.

The intention in doing this was partly self-censorship, partly a desire to pass beyond the limitations of words and still maintain meaning within the containing form of a verbal structure.  As A.J. explains:

"The use of color rectangles in place of words occurred to me in 1987. I cut out little rectangles from different color sheets of construction paper and glued them over words in one chapter of a science-fiction romance I had written some years earlier. I then set these pages aside for 19 years.

"In 2006, I sat down at my computer and, using my earlier work as a guide, made an electronic version of what I had earlier done with construction paper. I titled the selected pages with a large orange rectangle, the first page of which is presented in the example cited in the hypertext above. I went on to edit other of my stories and poems, adding circles and ovals to my repertoire of geometrical shapes.

"It was after having completed this work that I chanced upon Gene Davis's 'Wall Stripes no. 3' (1962) at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The painting presents seven long rectangular panels, each a different color, each aligned in parallel with the one directly above or below it, and each with an equal interval of wall space between it and its neighbor.

"The panels are bright solid colors like my shapes: reddish, purple, greenish brown, light blue, green, orange, and blue. According to explanatory material on the wall of the museum, this particular painting exemplifies a school of painting known as color field painting, which itself is part of abstract expressionism.

"I recognized Davis's painting as doing in pictorial art what I strove to do in verbal art--evoke emotional and psychological meaning beyond verbal language. Yet in my work, I went further, linking color to language through simple juxtaposition on the page, all in keeping with the theme of sexual love."