The Brancusi across the street

You're sitting in a nice little corner cafe in a quiet unpretentious neighborhood in Paris, eating steak frites and drinking a glass of red wine when all of a sudden you're dead.

A week later you're sitting in your favorite sushi bar in Portland, Oregon, eating hamachi sashimi and drinking a 20 oz. Kirin and all of a sudden you're dead all over again.

Well, how does the ship get back in the bottle when you don't know how the ship came to be in the bottle in the first place? Such a big ship, such a little bottle! How did that big green couch get through the front door of the tiny apartment? And who had the presence of mind to stand it on its head so that it could be exhibited as a work of art?