The trajectory of "Yard Gal" predictably takes the form of stripping away the brazenness to find the emptiness and fear beneath.
When a mind of ultimate analysis searches for the table, it finds the emptiness of the table.
I was six years old, stepping out the back door to see the vast fluttering presence of the willow only to find shocking emptiness.
When, finally, they had a halfway decent apartment, good jobs, a car, had paid off their debts and even had some money to spare, he said, "we suddenly found a terrible emptiness inside".
Now I just feel emptiness".
"Dad found comfort in the emptiness: the lonely ribs of a long, gravel road, a makeshift bed under wild stars in an insect-sung night".
But there was also vitality and community on those blocks, and Ms. Momber documented the lives of local people who found inspiration amid the emptiness.
"I found him in the Emptiness," 5 says of 9 at the start, which is the kind of line you might have used when introducing a friend to Jean-Paul Sartre, but not now, and certainly not when the friend in question looks like Piglet.
His plays often spoke in hilarious non sequiturs ("The Bald Soprano"; "The Lesson," 1951; "The Chairs," 1952), in the crazy symmetry of dreams ("Victims of Duty," 1953), and in fantastical transformations ("Amedee, or How to Get Rid of It," 1954; "Rhinoceros," 1960 --and they all announced a refusal to suffer while acting out the dislocation and the strange emptiness he found in the world.
