Pennypomes

Bundles of Connection

2010-02-02T15:05:00.000-08:00

I beg more of myself
Than of any similarly muffled ear
To attune to the consonances
Of, say, Grand Central Station,
To the luminosity and heft
Of the everyday sphere,
As I sit in this basement
With my singular longing:
To make of our talk a dance,
To bring the aural relations
More tightly near.

What does a man love when
He loves a woman?
If no-self, if anatta,
Then what bundles of connection
Come begging me to attend?
Beneath the hubbub of the market,
The rise and fall of the yen,
We hear the distant humming
Of an electron zapping through a field,
Purring in the voice of a lover,
If only electrons made noise.

(I am on the train now—
Harlem looks like a rumbling
In the stomach, an indigestion),

Which direction the words spiral
Depends on which hemisphere
You watch them move;
I stand in the east, looking west,
Or is it the other way around?
Your flesh makes me perspire,
Your eyes thump me in the groove—
But what seethes forth from
Emptiness, sibilant and arresting,
Gives form to our conversation,
Recedes inside you into nothing.

A Conversation

2009-11-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Hungry?”
“Not really.”
“How are you?”
“Eh.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s just... I don’t know... I can’t... uhgg!”
“I hear you.”

A Warm Bundle

2009-11-05T12:34:00.001-08:00

She is a warm bundle on my chest,
her breaths heaving and audible in the dark,
her arms hanging limply
then tightening, spazzing, flailing,
her tiny hands batting at my chest:
she is trying to fall asleep.

Do we know what it means to
be in the moment?
To find ourselves in the picking up
of others?

After all it was the ninth inning of
the World Series when she cried out,
when I crept into her world
to sooth her transition from waking life
to dreamland. If you think about it,
most of us still have trouble falling asleep
on our own, hence, the TV, cocktails,
our tossing & turning, tightening & unwinding.

The thoughts that pass through our minds at bedtime.

It is only when I focus on releasing
the tension in my own limbs,
on my own inhale and exhale,
that she finally gives in,
gives up, sighs a great big
baby sigh, her limbs going limp,
her body letting go into slumber.
By then the game is over,
and she and I have have edged
a little closer to the championship.

Ethics

2009-10-21T12:20:00.001-07:00

It is wrong to clip one's nails on the subway. And yet, I saw a man doing so the other day. I believe, with Socrates, that if one truly knows the right course of action, one will inevitably choose said right course. The hard part is the knowing. If only this man had known that it is wrong to clip one's nails on the subway!

Strange Boy

2009-10-08T11:45:00.001-07:00

Strange boy, he was. In the yard he sat staring at the large evergreen tree that towered in the corner of the yard. The tree bloomed over the yard like a yawning mouth. Many times, he had climbed the tree’s sticky, sappy limbs. The limbs were rather thin for such a tall tree. The pine cones and pine needles littered the shaded bed below. He stared. It was a concentrated gaze through which the boy endeavored. Endeavored to be. There was the tree, yes, he could see, and there was the boy, yes, himself he knew. But were there two? The boy was thirteen years old is all. Yet already it seemed to him there were not two but one. That he was the tree when he looked at the tree. So he stared. Trying to keep it in mind. In mind. In his strange mind the tree bloomed over the yard casting shadows in which he sat staring at the tree with his strange mind.

Attention

2009-08-14T07:42:00.001-07:00

What more is there than this curious
Faculty of ours to rest our awareness
On or in or with something, so that the whole
Of our being is immersed in that other,
So that, in fact, there is no separation between I
And, for example, a grecian urn,
Or a gathering storm cloud out my window?
The measure of a man is in the quality
Of his attention, which begs the question then of
This varying quality, that is, what is the unit of measurement
Of attention, one of depth or completeness or raptness?
What is it about attention, which on the surface seems plain
Enough, almost black & white, meaning, your attention is
Either with me or not, an either-or situation, that upon closer
Analysis, indeed, reveals itself to be more complex?
Herein lies the amplitude and frequency that gauge
The way one, as is said, focuses
Or concentrates or places one’s awareness,
And, in this way, creates meaning out of perpetual emptiness.

So then let us look long and hard and again at the urn
With its timeless scene of the precipice of love,
Its unheard melodies of the piper, its never-fading beauty of the maiden,
And let us rest therein, embodying Keat’s paradoxes,
Never lifting our gaze, not to breath nor to quench
A parched tongue, for to look upon the scene of immortal seduction
Is enough, yes, to merely look upon beauty is enough.
Certainly for this particular shard of attention,
Stretched out over countless poems and days, knowing the limits
Which everywhere make human our efforts at eternity.
Every song lifted from these lips ventures only so far, enchants
Only so long amongst us mere mortals, until, at last, the spell of my art
Is broken, and we remember the rain battering at the window,
And when in this instant we leave our frozen lovers
In their ancient grasses, all is lost again, undone again,
Unborn again as it was and ever shall be in the beginning.

Sunshine

2009-07-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

The weather turns and the way we hold our faces shifts.
If I called life a parade of moods, would that suffice?
Perhaps the numbers—the scores, the accounts, the taxes—
are keeping us too tight, too inward and false.
Perhaps the weather doesn't surprise us enough.
Why else would we build our worlds so small and fearfully?

It’s the wind through the leaves
and the speckled shadows on the concrete sidewalk
that turn all ideas loose into a playpen of our own making.
What I’m saying is when the weeklong rains finally disperse,
leaving the city basking in its verve and sunshine,
something of the communal does seep into our day,
reintroducing itself as that famed Something Greater
than ourselves...

Meanwhile, birdsong is greater than myself,
in fact, I’d like to say everything is always greater than myself,
but it’s more complicated, or less simple, than that.

In other words, the gardener of this West 12th St. greenspace,
a cheerful old woman in a blue plaid shirt and baseball cap,
with whom I have discussed the tricks of teaching kids math,
is part of this larger portal that I’m trying to get at,
the one through which we sometimes choose to pass,
more easily on a sunny day

and easiest in that moment when the weather shifts,
revealing the blue sky and a kaleidoscope of shadow
and light dances before our eyes,
phenomena forever passing itself off as self.

Seven Ways to Synchronize

2009-07-13T08:42:00.001-07:00

A wink from a stranger is one way
to bring my breath and thought back into a kind of focus
that might better be characterized
as a kind of acceptance of chaos, a letting go
into a place where the frames fall off all the paintings
and even my fictions digress into endless outward spirals.

The page is always too deep,
the history always right over those trees.

There are other ways such as a sneeze
or an orgasm or a good long drink or a point in conversation where
my interlocutor and I are on the same proverbial page
of the vast and immeasurable text that we seem to be both reading
and writing, and in that moment, we really care who says what next
and why—and how!

Look, somewhere along the line, you accept
that the song on the radio is one you love,
one you know all the lyrics to, one that is going to work on you
and your recollection for the next few minutes no matter what.

“You said watch my head about it.”

It’s the Chariot, baby, it’s the Chariot, it’s the Chariot
of Now. And while one way in is a wink,
and another is hard word or constant prayer or meditation,
yet another is just giving up and moving on, meaning,
when the singer himself forgets the lyrics, you realize
that there is still something to say,
still the rhythm to keep.

Cohabitation Suite (Three Poems)

2009-05-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

I. Living Together

My girlfriend and I live together in one small room.
She went in the kitchen for a brief moment,
And sitting at my desk, I thought to myself,
How nice to be alone!

Then she came back in,
And I felt odd, like I had done something wrong,
Cheated on her in some way with the wrong thought.
But instead of confessing, I said,
“Honey, can you get me a glass of water?”

And back she went into the kitchen.

II. T.P.

My girlfriend and I moved in together,
so now there are all the little things
Like how one places the toilet paper roll
on the toilet paper holder to discuss.
Or how exactly and to what degree
she is going to cuddle with me in bed.
How much of her weight will she
ever-so-slightly shift onto me?
And how much of my weight on her?

So the toilet paper was again rolling out
from underneath this morning,
And I can’t stand it that way,
how it spills all over the floor,
How it makes us look like barbarians:
t.p. must roll out from over the top!
So I talked to her about it this morning,
and I think everything went swimmingly.
We saw eye to eye on this crucial issue,
and certainly this bodes well.
I imagine all will continue to go
as smoothly when the baby arrives.

III. My Girlfriend Struggles With Her Key At The Door

She is back from yoga, her key in the door,
And I hear her jiggling it, back and forth,
In and out—the damn key doesn’t fit quite right—
And I sit here thinking, Should I get up and open
The door for her? I wait. The jiggling continues. I wait
Another moment, listening to the struggle. In the end, I wait it out,
Saying to myself, Now is my chance to finish the line I’m working on.

Scattered Thoughts Are The Best You Can Do

2009-05-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

for Chögyam Trungpa and Czeslaw Milosz

The quietest day in some time.
An old bawdy joke is seeking to be remembered by me.
Gray, misty with moisture.
No car alarms, only the hint of a siren—
Far off, growing closer now, Dopplering by.
No grand system of symbols
Within which to work, that is to say,
My crucifixions look nothing like what you might remember.
Yet, I cannot bear another silent moment.
Still, I cannot endure another mad poem.
Is it true, what Milosz implied when he said,
What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
But, Czeslaw, there is nothing to be done,
No one to be saved,
No one in need of salvation.
The throat will be slit whether I cry out
Or not, and the wrong man will be arrested,
A forgotten joke on his lips at execution time.
So I leave here and return
At eighteen hundred hours
To report again the goings-on of consciousness.
At one hundred and eight thousand hours.
Ha!—that’s an important number in some circles.
School is being let out on South Third.
The kids are crazed with spring.
Well, the whole of it is a sack of potatoes.
Some edible, some rotten.
I narrate, breathe, narrate, expire.
And you’re right, Chögyam, the goal of poetry very well may be
To exasperate everyone so that we die laughing.
Which reminds me of a joke.

Birthing Classes at the Local YMCA

2009-05-07T12:15:00.001-07:00

Soon enough
when the bellies empty
the twenty of us will become
thirty,

a biological phenomenon
nearly indescribable
without resorting to the usual
empty adjectives:

Wild, crazy, surreal
perhaps uncanny
though obviously nothing other than
natural.

Go forth and multiply
said our instructor
at the end of eight weeks
as we,

The twenty, shook hands
bid each other good luck
laughed at the inscrutable
force

That had gathered us strangers into
these tiny wooden chairs
to discuss the benefits of
nettle tea.

In Between

2009-05-06T08:37:00.001-07:00

In between our rotten moods we find the subtle stuff,
I’d call it energetic work if that didn’t sound too fluffy,
But once you’ve signed on there is no going back, to before
When your breath did not always heave with the room but
Rather was just your breath, something you could do with
As you pleased. People are forever in between
Projects or relationships or states of mind,
But what we can’t quite figure out is how to pick
One or the other: the mood or the space just before the next mood.
It is the same distinction that exists between the self-conscious performance
And the so-called genuine article, meaning, whenever
We are unsure of what side of the Here-I-Am spectrum we’re on then
We fall into this space I’m talking about. “I just don’t know
Where to go with my work,” my friend says, “I’m between
Styles.” My whole life I’ve hunted like a rat in a maze for
The way out of the in-between, but the lines blur
Like twilight on the horizon and now it is true that I cannot be
Bothered with such pursuits because there is something here for me
After all, a kind of suspended tension that reminds me
Strongly of what Goethe was writing about when he spoke of the good old
Eternal feminine—not that we even need such grand ideas,
Really, we don’t because we all know the chaos and confusion
Of looking at an abstract painting, something scraped and splattered
And hanging on the wall in front of your eyes at the gallery,
Imbuing you with that singular sensation of the not-quite-formed
And maybe that’s the whole idea, evolution and progress notwithstanding,
Namely, to feel that reiki-like energy that gathers between flesh,
To hover therein and feel settled nonetheless,
So that all my shifting moods are me and I am nothing more
Than my shifting moods, and the invisible electricity
That flows between the fingers of God and Adam in Michelangelo’s
Masterpiece can course through me freely, making my moods,
And the spaces between them, if not always lovely, bearable.

Consummation

2009-05-05T09:22:00.001-07:00

I want to consummate
something

not exactly what was
in my dream
but from a like landscape

Sunlight pouring
through my pores

In my mind I make the whole
into a paradise
a brief stint in the grasses
by the water

In our minds we encounter visions that elude us
by daylight

*

We were reading poetry
you and I
in my dream

or perhaps philosophy

A tattered chapbook
or that slim volume
wherein the Frenchman writes
“Man is nothing but what he makes of himself.”

You see how the great pipe-smoker
comes back to me now

But that afternoon
by the mosaics museum
is memory, not dream

sensation
the slim red-orange volume
and the open picnic basket

wine from Dixie cups
to lips

*

One cannot make a memory consummate:
It is what it was (is and will be)

This experiment involves the edge
of what’s to come
as in
I think of a playful poke to your ribs
then I playfully poke your ribs

That
minus the narration

There is a field
a breeze, a grassy patch
simple things
cross-legged and full of leisure
beneath the tree’s
shade

we sit together

chasing our flickering thoughts
discussing our opinions of contemporaries
their devices
their failures

*

You, forever with your theories
about time
and its non-existence

How is it that I can call out to you from here?

Let us consummate
in the nether regions
of these whispers
for it is possible this is all our natures desire

To the park then!
this very moment
for the sun beckons us
or so we imagine

In fact

2009-04-29T09:34:00.001-07:00

In fact, each of us is walking down
a path made of language,
or brick-words, if you like that kind of
Gary Snyder thing. One’s world
is, in fact, the limits of one’s language.
We could, if you please, call this
one’s cosmovision, or, more plainly,
one’s view. The fact is that one’s view
is composed, alas and abstractly,
of the words which one would use
to describe one’s view. As we walk along
the path, in fact, our words change,
for example, Osiris might become
Jupiter, not that, but something like that.
In other words, there is no such thing
as not worshipping, or so says
David Foster Wallace in a book.
I am not going to beat this metaphorical
horse to its metaphorical death,
but remember that the path is tangled,
and that the best thing to do,
in fact, would be to learn a new
word each day, not because the new
would trump the former,
but because the new improves, increases,
or one might say, moves along
one’s self-awareness
of this oft referred to process.
Witness all, name nothing—
that would be ideal, but that
would be a task for
a mythical being, or a mystical being,
that is to say in other words,
for you and me, one-eyed,
flying, and, in fact, death-defying.

The Fort

2009-04-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

for my nephew Carter

Let us commemorate the building of the Great Fort of Weatherly, Pennsylvania, erected in the woods on the day before Easter Sunday in the year of our Lord two-thousand and nine. (Carter, you should know that our calendar is based on the approximate date of the birth of Christ, who was born in Nazareth in 2 B.C.(E.), but that there have been and will be other ways to measure time, which itself is beyond measure.) Building forts is important, as is a. Singing rocks songs from the 60s, 70s, and 80s out loud in a moving car on long or longish road trips; b. Going on long or longish nature walks during which you take your time, smell flowers, and try to learn the name of a tree or two along the way; and c. Ever so slightly embellishing your life-stories when telling them to other people so as to imbue both you and your listener with a sense of life’s greatness as well as the ultimate dignity of each human individual, yourself and your listener included. Our fort was most excellent, its thick log and central beam stretching from the ground to the V high in the tree, the smaller logs and branches leaned against the central log at appropriate angles so as to create the fort’s basic structure, twigs and leaves thrown thereupon for further shelter from the elements. We sat in the fort and told secrets and stories. Telling secrets and stories is very important; the former, because we would perish without the disclosing of our secrets, which eat at our innards like mean, slimy pond bugs; the latter, because the very space we live in is made up of stories, so to tell a story is to create space, if that makes any sense to you. (Carter, don’t let them tell you the world is made of matter, or molecules, or subatomic particles, or any of that scientific gibberish—the world is made of colors and shapes and sounds and stories, end of story.) You told me your secret, that you “ripped off” your sister in a Pokemon card trade, and I want you to know that I forgive you, and that if you ask Selah for forgiveness, I imagine she too will forgive you. I told you the story of the lonely Indian boy, who used to live in those woods, and who was unbearably lonely because his father hunted in the forest and his mother worked in the garden all day, but how the little boy, with the shaman’s help, eventually found friends first in the woodland creatures, then in the crazy creatures of his dreams (“Pollywags!”), and finally in his newborn baby sister. After we finished with the telling of secrets and stories, our fort was sacked. It was a terrific onslaught. We tried to fend off our attackers, but they were too strong for us. (Do you remember our attackers, Carter? Do you remember why we left the perfect peace of our fort?) We said that we would have liked to stay in the fort forever, to sleep there, to eat there, to live there, to tell our secrets and stories until the sun rose and set a thousand million times. But in the end, our attackers won, and our attackers were on the inside, as they always are. (All battles are inner battles, buddy.) In the end, our attackers won and we left the Great Fort of Weatherly behind because our hunger and restlessness were too much to bear, so we went back up to the house, where it was warm and where dinner was waiting.

To my fellow countrymen

2009-04-20T08:39:00.001-07:00

Moths, battering at the source
of what appears as light,
turn, I implore you,
towards what appears as dark,
behind you, inside you, overseas,
utterly unadvertised,
in the as yet unplumbed depths
of your body’s cells, your slumbering
conscience, overseas,
there, and only there, will you find
not only your freedom
from the flickering porch lantern,
the sheer insanity of that,
but also your endless night of desire,
fulfilled and fulfilling.

Four Quotations, Four Allusions

2009-04-15T12:05:00.001-07:00

How solid the poems appear to us. Let us go then, you and I. How firm the words, like so many stacked stones. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree. Yet at the same time, mysteriously, how utterly fluid. We will arise now and go, you and me and Michelangelo. How like the hollow bones of the dead the poems sleep in my mind. Stones and bones are things with feathers, perched in my soul. What wind could blow them free. What force could wipe them clean, like a blind hand swiping at cobwebs in the dark. Let us loaf and invite our finely feathered souls. How solid they too, the souls, appear. How they draw away and then creep near. And what miles they have to go before they sleep. These infinite miles, these senses of self, how solid they both seem. Are they or are they not / that is the question this poem is posing. They being the words, the souls, the stones, the feathers and minutes and miles. All of it. There is a state of dreaminess I seek beyond here, where everything appears so solid. A place where the hard stones are revealed to be secretly stuffed with feathers. A place where the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind and through the hollow centers of banana trees. It’s fine, in summer, to visit the seashore. So let us go then, you and I, and Shakespeare too, that old chap, and let us host a grand recital and wish all the fine poems into the undulating sea.

Welterweight

2009-04-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Tony the neighbor used to mow our lawn with a mower that moved along on its own. He just walked behind it and steered. When he mowed, Tony did not wear a shirt. He was absolutely principled about his shirtlessness. I knew even then—I was only nine or ten—that Tony was good-looking. And I knew that he knew this, and that this self-confidence heightened his appeal. When he came in to get the lemonade from my Mom—clichéd, sure, but it was always a cold glass of that pink, gritty, I-believe-in-me! Crystal Light that she served visitors—Tony’s sexiness dominated the kitchen.

—Sure is hot, he wiped his brow.

—Have another glass, said my mother.

She stood at the counter, eating celery in her constant effort to “watch her weight,” her calico apron cradling her stomach. I never considered my mother overweight. Rather, she was Rubenesque, with a lonely sweet tooth and a clean-plate ethos. But the way she talked endlessly of Weight Watchers and calorie counting and clothing sizes revealed that her figure was her Achilles heel.

—Your flowers sure look nice, Helen, said Tony.

—Thank you, my mother blushed.

I was right there, pretending to do my homework, listening.

Tony was Italian, upfront. He lived on the dead-end with his parents and a whole swarm of interchangeable brothers—I never did get the count. They all worked together in the family landscaping company, the Giovano Brothers. Whenever I saw the brothers at work, I’d think about how much money they were saving the company by going without shirts. Everybody in the neighborhood hired them to mow their lawns, except where dads did the mowing themselves. My buddy Randall’s father took pride in lawn care. I remember how excited he was when he got his first leaf-blower.

—Get a load of this lift, he cried, revving the two-cycle engine, blowing dirt in my eyes.

Tony played the hardworking and charismatic bachelor. He had a motorcycle, seemed to have everything together. But he was a loner. I’d see ladies on the back of his bike, always a different girl, cruising out on a Saturday night. He’d take his dates to the pizza place where my friends and I hung out, then ride around town with them, forcing them to cling to his abs as he careened around the bends. It made sense to me that he’d conduct his dates on the bike, in all that noisy wind—I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what they’d talk about over their pizza dinners.

Around the neighborhood, Tony would joke with me, punch me on the shoulder and whatnot, but I didn’t care for his banter. I just wanted to be old enough to walk behind a mower myself.

Sometimes you have a beat on certain people, meaning, you know when they’re around and what they’re up to, and I had this beat on Tony. What I mean is I was always running into him one way or another, and half the time I felt like I’d caught him in the middle of something. Like when I came out of the bush once—I’d been fetching a basketball (the Giovanas let us use their basketball hoop)—and caught Tony smoking a joint on his back porch.

—It gets you high, son, he exhaled with effortless cool. Makes the world seem softer.

I too wanted to feel that languid and free. There was something in Tony’s way, his detachment, or rather his ability to remain unattached, that I found myself observing closely, taking notes for the future. As much as he could rub me the wrong way, Tony had figured something out—about being cool, or about being a man, I wasn’t sure—and if I didn’t exactly admire him, I did look to him for clues to an as yet unnamed mystery.

Once I turned the corner of our living room and I saw him leaning up against the wall in the hallway that led to the bedrooms of our rancher. My Mom was on the far side of him. He was drinking his lemonade, shamelessly hitting on my her.

—Must get lonely, he said, living here all alone.

—I’ve got four kids, Tony, Mom said.

—You know what I mean, Tony said.

My Mom couldn’t see me there, on account of Tony standing between us. Grass clippings clung to his slick back under the pale hallway light.

—I’m not sure I do, Mom said.

To this day, I can’t remember if she said it coyly or flatly. On the surface, my Mom was a good, reliable, Christian woman. So I tend to remember a flat tone. But when I try to re-imagine the scene, when I try to get the story straight in my own mind, I tell myself, Well, depending on her mood, I suppose she could have said it either way: coyly or flatly. Because that’s the way people really are: unpredictable, creative, capable of anything in the moment.

His back glistening, Tony took a step toward my mother. She was in her white robe. Her arms, which she had held crossed beneath her chest, fell to her sides. Tony stopped and emptied his glass of lemonade: the right elbow of his drinking arm raised higher than the glass, which was pitched nearly perpendicular to the floor above his mouth; the ice jingling down upon his upper lip and then back down to the bottom of the glass after he had finished. The extended, pleasure-filled Ahh. As Tony bent low to place his glass on the carpet, my mother said,

—Don’t put that there.

She said that curtly, raising her right eyebrow.

Tony noticed my presence behind him—he kind of had a beat on me, too—and he turned and made a comment about the day that I’d become the Household Lawnmower. As he passed me, he gave me a lighthearted knuckle jab in the kidney, and I hit him back hard in the thigh. He laughed and said,

—Got a little Rocky Marciano on our hands, don’t we?

He wrestled me to the ground, his sweat all over me. I yelled at him to get off, flailed a swing at him, missed.

—I best get back to that yard, he said, crawling off me. Call me sometime, Helen, after all, I live right across the street.

My Mom pursed her lips and shook her head, found the line crude, that Tony would say such a thing in front of me. My mother considered herself quite sophisticated. At bedtime, she used to read to me from Blake’s Songs of Innocence. I’d seen her turn back a glass of wine she found unpalatable. And she was perpetually correcting my speech. Since my father had left five years prior, she was also lonely, prone to depression, and it was obvious how much she enjoyed Tony’s devil-may-care flirtations. She’d linger with him, throw a wink. When Tony paid attention to her, she was into it. Maybe she just wanted to connect. Everyone does. So when Tony showed his crudeness, his ungrammatical shirtlessness, it must’ve irked her that much more. As Tony let himself out, my frazzled Mom hustled into the bathroom.

I watched Tony mow the back yard, looking out the kitchen window, my teeth bared back to the molars.

My friend Randall could be awful selfish. He had a habit of injecting his self into the situation. Like once when we were playing Flip Card. The idea is you flip your baseball card in its plastic casing, then I flip mine: if I match your flip—say, heads-up on heads-up—then I win your card; if I don’t match your flip—tails-up on heads-up—then you win my card. Randall and I loved this game. There was something precise, almost mystical, in trying to perfect one’s wrist flip. Mystical is a fancy word, but trying to predict and then bring about your own triumphant future made the game quite a thrill. When I won, my arms and limbs tingled. Randall and I could play for hours on end.

The problem was I always beat him. Frankly, he was terrible at the game, and I was pretty damned good. I wasn’t the best. My brother was the best, but I was pretty damned good. One day I took seventeen of Randall’s cards in a row. Do the math and you find there are fantastic odds against such an outcome in a relatively random game such as Flip Card. But with Randall as my witness, I’m telling you I out-flipped him seventeen times straight and took seventeen of his cards in a stinking row. That kind of stuff blows my mind.

So what does Randall do? He complains, he blames me, as if I invented gravity.

—You’re such a fucking jerk! he yelled.

Randall talked like that, like his dad, with the foul language.

—What? I pleaded.

—Why do you have to go and win like that? he argued.

—Isn’t that the point? I said.

—I thought the fucking point was to have fun!

—I am having fun, I said.

—Well, I’m not!, he cried in a terrific pout.

—I’m sorry, I said.

—It’s like you never even think about me. You come over to my house, eat my Pop-Tarts, drink my iced-tea, play in my room, and then you think it’s okay to just go ahead and win all of my cards. You’re mean, Denis! That’s all there is to it! You never think about anybody but yourself. I don’t like you! In fact, I hate you! You are so mean, and you don’t even know it. Get out of here! Get out of here, and never come back!

He picked up his cards—including the seventeen cards I had just won, in other words, my seventeen cards—and slammed himself shut in the adjacent bathroom. He called out again,

—Leave! I don’t want you here when I get out!

So I gathered my things and let myself out. The last time Randall had kicked me out, four days prior to this incident, I had gone to the park to wander a while, to collect myself and watch myself think. But I didn’t feel like doing that this time. Sometimes watching one’s own thoughts can be harrowing, generally when the observed thoughts are what I call negative thoughts. And what with all the things Randall had just said to me, what with all that on my mind, I figured I’d just head home and watch TV. I checked my watch—if I hustled, I could catch the dénouement of Inspector Gadget.

You ever remember the very first time you thought about something? Like the first time you thought about the Electoral College? Or the first time you thought about global warming? Or the first time you thought about why birds fly in patterns? Well, walking home, I thought, for the first time, about what makes people happy. Bummed out by Randall’s crap, I tried to figure out how, when one is bummed, one gets happy. I didn’t figure it out.

Above me, birds flew in oblong ovals against a transparent grey sky. For a moment, I connected to that image, to the birds flying in the sky—I stood still, my neck bent backwards, and I was fully absorbed by the scene, do you know what I mean?—and that, not the image but the absorption, that made me happy.

At home, I heard noises coming from the hallway. The onerous grunts I’d heard once when I walked in on my older brother in the den straining to decipher some station for which we didn’t even get reception.

I walked towards the noises. Framed school pictures hanging on the walls stared me down the hallway. A mirror at the end of the hall reflected my quiet tiptoe. I heard the creak of my Mom’s bed. The grunts of a man crescendoing against my mother taking the Lord’s name in vain! Something she never did!

As I stood before the door, my conscience—that bugaboo!—told me not to open it. Do not open this door, Denis. My mind told me of the necessity of privacy. Everybody needs time alone, especially adults. I shut my eyes, trying in vain to quiet the voice. Denis, you have nothing to do with this! I took hold of the doorknob. Do not open this door!!!

I opened the door to a rank sweatiness, a glistening back, a half glass of lemonade on the bedside table.

Tony turned, held a smile over his shoulder before barking,

—Get out of here, Denis! Get!

I saw my mother’s legs up in the air, her hair splayed out against the pillow. Tony turned back towards my mother, and I charged towards his back, my fists swinging viciously, my nails digging into his skin. He defended himself, chuckling,

—Whoa, little man! Easy!

My mother yelled,

—Denis, go to the kitchen! Now!

Tony brushed me off. I was crying. My mother, covering herself in sheets, yelled at me again, and in an angry huff, I stormed back down the hallway and slunk into a kitchen chair. I heard my mother stomping down the hall after me.

—You’re never to open your mother’s door when she has company, she scolded me, Do you understand, Denis?

I dropped my head, nothing to say. Under the table, my fists were still clenched, my knuckles red.

Tony had gone outside to finish the mowing, and when my mother heard the sound of the mower’s engine catch to start up, she stormed out, screaming at him. Standing on the porch, I could hear the peaks of their terrible battle even over the deafening roar of the mower. The meanest stuff is always the loudest.

—Pig!, my mother yelled. You couldn’t even get off me when he came in!

Tony smirked devilishly, took his time with his delivery, for he knew how to ruin her:

—You. Fat. Fucking. Slut.

Fists clenched, I charged headlong. But there were no landed punches this time. Tony held me at bay by sticking his palm on my forehead and straightening his arm. My mother told me to go back inside, immediately.

—Just you and your little welterweight, Tony joked, quickly flipping to his other hand to hold me back.

He shoved me off and swaggered down the driveway, turning to give my mother that Italian fuck you, his fingers flicking forward from beneath his chin. My mother sighed, her shoulders dropping low. Perhaps she’d won the fight, but she’d lost much in the victory.

Father Giovano sent over brother Gerry to finish the mowing. Shirtless and bony, he moved back and forth across the lawn in straight, tidy lines. He was more careful than Tony had ever been maneuvering around my mother’s flower beds. As my anger ebbed, I realized I felt more awful than triumphant. I watched my mother smoke her cigarette and look out the window at lanky, awkward Gerry struggling to control that big, self-propelled mower. The roar of the engine carried through the windows. The windowscreens caught the clippings that kicked up, as the house filled with the smell of freshly cut grass. I felt the loneliness of mother and son afloat in a linoleum kitchen on a nameless Tuesday afternoon. I felt that my mother was angry with me, but at the same time that she wasn’t. Mostly, I felt confused, and that there would be more confusion to come. Yet there was nothing more to say.

I was duly punished: no TV for a week. I needed that week off from TV, not to so-called think about what I’d done, but because I had quite a bit of information to process. What goes in never comes out. I didn’t sleep well for weeks. I’d turn on my bedside radio and listen to Harry Callas call the Phillies game, but I kept imagining Tony playing second base instead of Juan Samuel. Or Tony catching a flyball in center field. Or Tony pitching, my mother at bat. But whenever I tried to actually think about what I’d seen, or what it meant, there was a gap in my mind. I could only make out the images: the tangled sheets, the grass on Tony’s back, my mother’s legs in the air.

Years later, I realized my mother was a woman first, then a mother. But delving deeper I see now how epiphanies can be misleading. How they come endlessly folded into and pitted against one another. Because when I think of the experience now, it’s not so much about my mother, or even about me and my mother, about my visceral defending of her—it’s about me and Tony. Coming to terms with how Tony could seduce and then walk away, with how he could flirt with and then cruelly denigrate my mother, meant coming to terms with how men behave, and with how sex is like tossing a pair of human animals into a boxing ring. Moreover, for me, the story is about how men have passed through my life and how I have looked to them in vain for guidance, for models. It’s about my fatherlessness, and about how I have never been able to fill that gap. And how it took me years and years to just stop trying.

The Watching

2009-04-02T10:46:00.001-07:00

Are you watching me? because this only works
If you are watching me, closely observing me,
Not only listening but also seeing my every gesture.

Fragments of the wind collect inside us,
Creating a vortex that tears down the throne of
Exalted light upon which we try to fix our attention.

So, we suppose, we each write our own story
For ourself, even though the prospect of stardom
Is what brings us to the TV and fuels our explosions.

What I am saying is that we feel the same,
Or similarly, or else, I am an alien from outer-space,
Looking at you through the flat screen.

Behind me, I have set up a camera
To film the camera on my computer filming
Me watching my own podcast on the internet.

Burning through everything is the light
Of the stars, the light of the speed-of-light,
As is careens insanely into our pupils.

A Promise

2009-04-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am unlearning the art of self-narration
Because my excessive self-consciousness destroys
Every effort of mine to love simply and straightforwardly.

I read myself into everything,
Perfectly solipsistic, I am the thing
Which shape-shifts and attacks itself with perfect hostility.

I am above all else a metaphor
For myself, forever slipping through
The gateways of perception to arrive in the moment.

For me, there is no escape from myself
As there is no way for a mother giving birth
To escape from being a mother giving birth besides just giving birth.

In this way, every moment pushes through
The aperture of me, flickering in and out of existence,
And abiding in a vast spectrum beyond my powers to conceive.

Perhaps it looks like a cone, with the big bang at
A single-pointed end, the rest extending out infinitely along three axes,
Which represent the dimensions of space, the whole cone afloat in timelessness.

Whatever my universe looks like, I am
Pledging to myself today to just let go and let be,
To trust language to take care of its own flow and evolution.

Today I bath in the baptismal waters
Of genuine abiding, seeking henceforth only the beauty
Of each precious moment as it tenses and releases, tenses and releases...

The Kingdom of God

2009-03-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

The Kingdom of God is a state of mind,
And if I can follow the anxiety in my chest
Closely enough, faithfully enough,
I might be able to tell you what I mean.

I am most myself when I have nothing to say,
This is the paradox of the writer, the internal
Contradiction inherent in how the Kingdom of God
Exists in the way in which we relate to one another.

Take Jesus, for example, the great mamzer
From Nazareth, who, seeing divine immanence
In the force of the mustard seed or in the power
Of Mary’s yeast, cried out, “Malkhuta delaha!”

Kingdom of God! My heartbeat slows
As I talk to you, beloved reader,
As I fold you into this present moment
With my web of convergences, of causal

Synchronicities: bless us, oh Lord, that our minds
May be one with the Truth, and with one another.
Please bless me that a mind like mine be freed...
Or to take another approach, that of dharma,

And its teachers, always pointing to the here-and-now,
Wherein, they say, there is only clarity and luminosity,
No problems, no chaos. I always wonder,
But what if in the moment my father is dying?

Or my lover is breaking my heart? Or I myself
Am breaking her heart, or dying? What then,
Oh wise men, what consolation is mine?
That the Kingdom of God is a state of mind.

The Gathering

2009-03-26T10:39:00.001-07:00

Oftentimes before I write I lie down and breath into the pores of my body. With intent concentration, I bring the energy of breath in through all the tiny holes in the skin of my toes, my calves, my thighs, my sides, my chest, my face, etc. Even my skull, I can bring the breath in through my skull, and feel my head in its all physicality, and not merely as my idea of my head. Medical science would scoff at my practice of bringing in air through my toes; nevertheless, I do it and it works. My breathing slows down, I synchronize with my heartbeat, and I begin to fall into a state of mind wherein all things are again possible. Only then do I allow my mind to explore its love of stories, only after the gathering. Perhaps on this day my mind thinks of a myth, one in which a girl—certainly a girl—of mixed heritage, perhaps the daughter of an Iranian man and his American wife, born in Queens, comes into our troubled world and sets her heart on saving each and every soul she encounters, one at a time. Using her superpower of imaginative empathy, she walks along the river park and looks into the so-called souls of every passerby. She hears their thoughts and feels their emotions, simply by observing their gait or noticing their posture or looking into their eyes. Once she has chosen her target, she follows him until the time is right, until the life experience in this chosen person has risen to its most intense peak, until all his troubled thought and suffering have come together, have accumulated, have converged on a point—only then does our young superhero make her entrance. Until that precise moment she lies in wait, breathing, watching, gathering her energies, perpetually preparing for her performance.

T.P.

2009-01-27T10:53:00.001-08:00

My girlfriend and I moved in together,
so now there are all the little things
Like how one places the toilet paper roll
on the toilet paper holder to discuss.
Or how exactly and to what degree
she is going to cuddle with me in bed.
How much of her weight will she
ever-so-slightly shift onto me?
And how much of my weight on her?

So the toilet paper was again rolling out
from underneath this morning,
And I can’t stand it that way,
how it spills all over the floor,
How it makes us look like barbarians:
t.p. must roll out from over the top!
So I talked to her about it this morning,
and I think everything went swimmingly.
We saw eye to eye on this crucial issue,
and certainly this bodes well.
I imagine all will continue to go
so smoothly when the baby arrives.

Numerology in Late November, 2008

2008-11-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

Today the federal government gave our ailing financial institutions another 800 billion dollars in loans and debt purchases. This figure is added to the original 700 billion dollar bailout from last month. This money, easy enough to print so long as green ink is available, will not be enough to fix the problem. Total defense spending in the year 2007 was 549 billion dollars. Specifically, war-related appropriations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year is approaching 200 billion dollars, while the current total from the original invasion up until now stands at 752 billion dollars. Last year national health care spending totaled 2.3 trillion dollars. This number is projected to grow to 3 trillion by the year 2011. (Meanwhile, the federal government’s budget for education this year is a modest 59 billion dollars.) These are big numbers. To what does one compare these numbers? The distance from the sun to the earth is 92 million miles. Millions, ha! Not nearly big enough. The universe itself is just under 14 billion years old. Still not big enough. (14 billion dollars is roughly 6% of what the government paid in interest on its loans in 2007.) The diameter of the universe is at least 93 billion light years, or 880 x 10^24 meters. Okay, that’s a pretty big number, but only if we measure in meters, and that’s like measuring these financial figures in pennies. Our market numbers have eclipsed those of our vast natural universe. This unsettles me. But what do I know? I’m sure our markets still have plenty of room to grow. 880,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000 meters worth! So, go ahead, Feds, print that money.

Lindsay & Obama

2008-11-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

She stands in the kitchen
With her left foot pirouetted,
Raised and touching the knee
Of her supporting leg,

As she talks about her paper
On the Seneca Falls Convention,
Focusing on the tensions
Between blacks and women

That caused a deep rift
Between the leaders of
The connected but distinct
Movements of liberation.

Her eyes alight at the voicing
Of his name — Obama —
Though her mother had been
More a Hillary supporter,

As the conversation moves
Inexorably into the realm of
The politics of race and gender,
Of history-in-the-making, etc.,

And even as she articulates
Her positions on the war,
Health care, and the economy,
I watch the birds circling

Over her shoulder in the sky
Outside the open window —
Why do they move as they do
In those graceful patterns?

Asked my view, I point to
His community organizing,
Stating, “Twelve is the ideal
Number for a body politic.”

Her enthusiasm is effervescent,
She is after all the Senior
Class President, having won a
Scrappy victory over her friend,

The thought occurs to her
That she might one day
Be President, as I think of
Fergus’s abdication.

She pushes me to accept
That progress is being made,
And eloquently professes her
Abiding Hope for Change.

She is my favorite student,
And when she urges me
To express my affiliations
And heartfelt politics,

My eyes wander again to
The freely circling birds,
And the words are stuck
In the back of my throat.

Self-Portrait in a Cup of Coffee

2008-11-04T09:48:00.001-08:00

The coffee mug is a coffee
Mug. Nothing doing otherwise
On this humdrum Monday,
No moods in the grey clouds.
What is this, porcelain?

The mugs who know too much
Shudder to open their mouths.
The red magician flashily says,
“Viola, I give you the real!”
Who knows his tricks?

I rise and refill the coffee mug,
Feel my caffeine level surging.
The scientist screams cortisol,
And adrenaline & dopamine!
Who is the hero here?

Today’s character development
Arced from lazy & despairing
To inspired & creative, ending
In who knows what blue insights.
Which colors color the days?

The heat is felt on the tongue,
As the fingers grip the handle.
Somewhere my story is being
Spun by undisciplined pink lips.
What is out there listening?

Grand Central Station

2008-10-28T12:56:00.001-07:00

When I remember my mindfulness,
I breathe up the energy of the earth
Like a farmer drawing water from a well,
Its texture is dark and warm and calm.

And I also breathe in the energy of
Grand Central Station as I walk
East along 43rd Street from Fifth Avenue,
Its texture is bold and strong and calm.

Earth, how seamlessly you sprawl upward,
Expanding your crossbeams of support
Into our human structures, how fluidly
You claim our bodies as your own.

In this way the rubble of Grand Central
Mirrors my own death, the massive fallen
Columns slowly soften, eventually decay,
Like the musculature around my spine.

The Poet

2008-10-20T12:27:00.001-07:00

Even the poet says too much when pointing
To the sky, as if the blue formlessness outside
My window, the expanse of readiness across which
Specks of white cloud may or may not pass,
Is to be necessarily emphasized in this moment.

The poet in his pants wanders the countryside
Collecting his epiphanies of swelling feeling
And gathering them together in a basket of
Skillfully ordered words upon parchment,
Returning at last to the city’s central market.

Standing idly and alone by the stone statue of
The warrior who in the past proudly marched
On his horse in battle and slashed the Indian
Enemy with bloodred sword under the same
Empty blue sky beneath which the poet writes.

Dreaming of his love of peace, his hatred of
War, and every sky between black and blue,
And wondering when truth will become
The savior it seems to be, in those flickering
Moments when the words line up and march on.

Altered

2008-10-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

Use simple words, first words,
The ones bathed in milk,
Use words as history has used them.

Let them sing of tenderness and longing
Like a cowboy’s slide guitar.

“I am altered,” you said,
As I rose above you,
As we pulled each other
Into the darkness of earth.

You rise up in me like a cry
From the depths of the river,
I hold you in my mind the way
Earth holds you, firm and true.

After Midnight

2008-10-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

Mindfulness is turning the light on
At three AM to hunt for mosquitos.

Your naked frame towering over me
Like a bloodthirsty Amazon woman.

The culprit smeared against the wall by
The deft strike of your hardened hand.

An adventure ideally set in a rainforest
Unfolds in the dark of our Brooklyn bed.

The landscapes of our mindfulness
Disclosing to us the essence of reality.

Outside the window space extends in
A vast expanse of countless mosquitos.

We turn the light out and endeavor
Again to find our much needed sleep.

There was no separation between your
Mind and my own as we drifted off.

The Tower of Learning

2008-09-30T08:52:00.001-07:00

The Tower of Learning is dark
And ominous, made of stone and shadow.
In its center, a spiral staircase leads
To rooms upstairs, locked and esoteric.
Masked sentries guard every door,
And birds of prey and wisdom perch
On the windowsills in the long silent hallways.
With a torch, I stalk the grounds,
As I traverse your body at night,
As I delve into your mind by day.
In the end, you are not so mysterious,
Not as much a bloody chamber enigma
As all that gothic lore would have me believe;
Rather, your essential structure is familiar,
And my ring of skeleton keys serves me well.
Still, my eyes do take their time adjusting
To the singularity of your configuration,
To the bends and folds of your cells.
So I blow on the fire in my hand,
And the room flashes brightly,
Brilliantly, and for an instant, I glimpse
The interior of the tower of you.
Instead of church bells in your belfry
I see your body, uncanny and naked,
Reclined on your side on the orchard floor,
Bathing in a bed of red apples.

Dayandnightpomes

2008-09-26T08:28:00.001-07:00

I. Poem for Morning

Sweet potential, romantic readiness.
The baby slept through the night.
What stretches out before you is unknown,
Let us bring all the gods into this dawn
And ask nothing of them. Let them be.
I will fold my blessing under your skin,
We will breathe our forms into this day.
What a motley promise is life!
Though I dreamt again of my own death,
I pledge to meet you here again at nightfall.
Yet, the promise of happiness is but a promise,
And never the thing itself — fingers of sunlight
And the play of shadow on our bedroom wall.

II. Poem for Noontime

We have made it halfway without harm.
The noonday sun is hidden in gloom.
For lunch I had a cheese quesadilla,
And I read the newspapers of doom.
Why does the business of daytime
Seem so paradoxically parenthetical?

III. Poem for Bedtime

Let us reflect upon the suffering of others,
Without which our happiness is not possible.
They buried our soldiers in Virginian earth,
But nobody saw, though the dignity of each man
And woman requires our moral attention.
I wanted to tell you something I remembered
About an intimation I had when we first met,
But I’ve forgotten now... Begin with your childhood
And tell me please the story of your life in detail...
Do we want to practice wakefulness in our dreams
Tonight or shall we merely sleep deeply and well?
Because even consciousness ends eventually...
Tomorrow let us transform the world into our vision!
And before we sleep let us wade in an ocean of kisses.

There is no teacher

2008-09-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

There is no teacher. There is no teacher
Anymore. Not in here. Not in this mind.
The situation is dire, dire is my teacher.
There is no student. There is no student
Chasing the teacher through the alleyways.
My condition is critical, critical is my teacher.
There is no ancient framework, no ancient
System in which I work to justify everything.
There is no teacher because there are no problems!
No problems! Do not introduce chaos,
Chaos is my teacher. Do not introduce disorder,
Disorder is my teacher. There is no teacher
Anymore. No chalkboard, no classroom, no rubric.
No Book of Law, no Law of Book, no Homework.
There is no teacher besides the dawn and the day
And the woman and the baby and their cries.
There is no teacher. There is no teacher
Anymore. I am hereby released from my
Studies so I return redoubled to my studies.
I grade myself harshly, I usually fail, but I no
Longer give teachers my blood and money.
For there is no teacher. There is no teacher
Anymore. Fear is the teacher; go into fear.

Serranidae

2008-09-12T08:47:00.001-07:00

“Don’t mesmerize yourself with words,” said my father, Mr. Radiant-Effulgent. I’m being ironic when I call him that. He worked in the Department of Justice and smoked Lucky Strikes. “I’ve been reading about emptiness-awareness-bliss,” I told him. “Damn those hyphens,” he said, “ever since your mother kept her maiden name, that’s been my feeling.” He stoked the fire with a stick. “Are we going fishing?” I asked. “In the morning,” he said, gazing up through the dark woods at the dark sky. “I’m afraid of big words,” I admitted. “You should be,” he said, “you should be petrified.” He poked at the fire, causing great red-orange sparks to leap about. “My English teacher, Mr. Polyphiloprogenitive, says that the sesquipedalians are dead.” My father pulled out his penknife and said, “This is how you whittle a stick.” Watching, I grew anxious, like an unevolved existentialist. “Am I stuck in a metaphor?” I asked him, “Are we both?” “What’d you say?” my father piped. I said: "What are we fishing for exactly?” He said: “For fish, my boy, for goddam sea bass.” We turned to stone and sat there for an eternity-moment.

Man & Woman

2008-09-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

“Spin around and let me look at you,” he said but what he meant was every woman is a Buddha. He thought she looked like Betty Draper from Mad Men and he saw Betty’s image superimposed over her own but what he said was, “You look wonderful.” She said, “Aren’t you sweet,” but what she thought was your tie is not straight. She straightening the knot of his tie. He guided her to the door of their apartment with his hand firmly on the small of her back and she said, “I’m so excited!” when what she was really feeling was a thousand points of light cascading through the limbs and cells of her body. He was feeling like he wanted to ravage her right then and there before they went out and she was feeling the same but they missed it and instead they would have tired and slightly drunken sex later after the party. Standing on the corner, they waited a few minutes for a taxi and he said, “You can never get one when you want one, right?” but what he had wanted to say was something like I would be happy in a Turkish prison with you you are so goddam beautiful and after all all women are Buddhas and you are the one in the center of the tanka painting of my heart. He felt a pang of cowardice for having not said at least something of the sort. He said, “You are so beautiful,” and she blushed and again felt a deep sexual attraction for him, her man. She thought about having sex with him, maybe in the taxi, or in the various places she had thought about having sex with him throughout the day. As he opened the door for her, she said exactly what she thought, “You look like Don Draper,” and he laughed because he had had the likewise Betty thought about her earlier and after all this was why he had married her because they lived in the moment so well together, they thought and communicated their thoughts so well together, at least most of the time. He looked into her eyes before she ducked into the taxi and he wondered what it was in there in her eyes that he worshiped and he thought I worship you I worship you I worship you and he said, “Get in there, you silly goose.”

The Two Remaining Mysteries

2008-09-10T11:13:00.001-07:00

There are two more things I need to know.
First, who killed Kennedy. Second,
In Chandler’s The Big Sleep, who pushed
The poor Owen Taylor and his car
Into the bay. Who are these murderers?
Once I know these facts I will be
Completely and utterly satisfied.
All my thinking-flow will abruptly cease.
Origins and particle accelerators be damned.

Ride of the Valkyries

2008-09-09T10:45:00.001-07:00

To feel sad when it rains seems cliché,
but such is my felt sense this morning.
I feel her willful silence beating inside,
like the dreadful space between thunder.

How many ways have I numbed myself
to this tragic parade of our lost love?
How many identity projects, work emails,
how many whiskey saviors served neat?

But what purpose lie in my playing the song,
Andrew Bird’s Sovay, over and over again?
The longer we hold on, the more we suffer,
and the more meaning our story holds.

Fergus taught me to turn from my brooding,
and open into the vast expanse of sky.
But this transcendence breaks down under
its own weight when the sky is full of tears.

Do real heartbreakers savor this sense,
this bittersweet cleaving of two hearts?
Am I one? Are you? I fall through the song,
deeper and harder, until this ache is pure.

Field of Perception

2008-08-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

I have the night free, do you, my love?
We might then walk together to the field
Where the chickens potter and the hens
Cry out their own awakenings.

For mystery's sake, I do not go there enough.

It is the place we happen upon only when
Contingencies overlap, it is the place that
Presents itself to us only when an event
Draws our attention to the field that is already
Open and waiting, so long as we see it,
It is the field that is itself an event.

And we can go there, so long as you’re free,
So long as you hear my gentle beckoning,
Soft as a breeze rolling down the hill.

The End of the Teachings

2008-08-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

The old man and his student sat in silence
For one thousand and one days.
A flame flickered in the fireplace,
And they gazed upon it loosely.
When the student drifted off to sleep,
The old man said, "Wake up and listen!
You are good. Now go. Go away from me,
and when you return, bring back stories.”

Reading Wittgenstein (His Works)

2008-08-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

for Desirée

You read Wittgenstein (his works), but can I assume that you have thoughts while you read his text, or am I to assume that you read Wittgenstein (his works) with such intent concentration that no thoughts of your so-called own arise while you read him (his works), that no primordial gap opens between his words from which your so-called own thoughts spontaneously arise, out of emptiness, or out of the emptiness of Wittgenstein’s text — every word, genius empty stuff! — and as I construe the phenomenon (your reading of Wittgenstein (his works)), that, namely, the latter, the pure reading, the reading sans editorial commentary, the empty clarity of deep listening, the perfect hollowness of perfect understanding, that would be the transcendental experience, yes? no? maybe so?; nevertheless, when I learn you read Wittgenstein (his works), I am impressed by that, by what?, by the possibility of this, of your, so-called pure reading, and/or by the possibility of your so-called independent thoughts arising as you read — it occurs to me suddenly that if we give up the proverbial ghost, if we absolutely let go of duality, then it’s all the same, in other words, all thoughts in all minds at all times... (I am not afraid of the possibility of nonsense, or truth in nonsense, or nonsense in truth!) — nevertheless, I am compelled (why?) to ask you what you so-called think of, say, his essay, The Inner and the Outer (which I like), I am curious about, in plain words, your interpretation (why?), why? one might ask, well, mostly because I trust your capacity for sincerity and truthfulness, and this dialogue (in which I have faith) gives us movement (which I desire, deeply, in the cells of my body, in the gears of my being) and so it happens, and so we read, and so I beg, without purpose or center or end.... Anyhow, have you read that one? (it reminded me mostly of Ken Wilber (his works)), the one that says, “If a lion could talk, we would not understand him.”

Religious Verses of the Mystic

2008-08-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

I. Emptiness
I love Emptiness the way I love God.
Emptiness — from which Form arises and dissolves —
I supplicate myself to All-Good Emptiness,
And ever abide in Her shimmering luminosity.

II. The Non-dual View
Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form,
These words are the perfection of wisdom.
In other words, God and His Creation are One,
Each moment is His spontaneous expression.

III. Wisdom & Compassion
To ascend the ladder of Goodness and Truth
Is Wisdom, to descend the ladder is Compassion.
To meet minds where each mind is, to begin
Each conversation with another's first thought.

IV. Eternal Recurrence (or Samsara)
Time is infinite, matter is finite, therefore,
The causally determined configurations of space
Will recur perpetually, cyclically; in other words,
“Great, that means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.”

V. Egolessness
Self or ego is the root of both evil and suffering.
As on a cross, I am nail-driven, as a lamb, burned,
For when I rest in Spirit or Emptiness, I am no longer,
When I transcend to formless mysticism, I is not.

VI. Transcendence
To transcend is to leap to the next concentric circle
Of spiritual evolution, and this transcendence includes
The previous circle or view; in other words, I need not
Abandon my love of God to embrace Spirit-in-action.

VII. Spirit
Henceforth, Emptiness and Form, or God and
His Creation, are called Spirit, or Spirit-in-action,
In my book of pennypomes and heartsongs,
In my verses that sing from this joyful tower.

Pennypome no. 17

2008-08-04T15:45:00.001-07:00

for my family

a gold Lincoln is the price for a poem,
for a story, five dollars, for a novel excerpt,
a tenspot, and for absolutely all the thoughts,
a bucket of sand sharks & starfish & seahorses.

.....
attn: readers
respect: send all donations to
293 Berry Street
Brooklyn, New York, 11211

On Beauty,

2008-07-25T20:02:00.001-07:00

or A Few of My Favorite Things,
or Error as Architecture

An oily snow mound in a parking lot. The frame of an old car in a junk heap. The way your lip curls up when you sleep revealing your upper teeth. The artificial green coloring of the frozen spinach that rubs off on my fingers. The eye of the crippled homeless man at the bottom of the escalator in Grand Central Station that rolls back. My judgments. The things she said when angry. The show that was stiffly acted and tastelessly directed. The thoughts I thought when lonely. The words I excised from this poem just now. My tastes. The way she named her experience friendship while I named mine love. The warts I burned off my toes in fifth grade. The way the wedding ended too early and nobody was ready to jump into the river. My desire. The things I turn from. The sudden movements of my mind. The things that turn towards me. The introduction of disorder into the system. The melody without shape or arc. My training. The ugly ass tie my friend wore the other night. The fatness of Americans. The atomic bomb. My discriminations. The proclivity for blood in human relations. The persistence of ignorance. The genocide. The difference between wise distinguishing and naked awareness. The nay-saying mind and the yes-saying spirit. The slave humming her song in a tone of utter despair.

All thoughts are God’s thoughts

2008-07-25T19:49:00.001-07:00

All thoughts are God’s thoughts.
Even the wrathful ones,
Even the wicked ones.

All thoughts in all minds at all times.
Even behind the empty eyes,
Even inside the TV heads.

All thoughts are God’s thoughts.
The end times are near,
Not everyone will be saved.

Transubstantiation

2008-07-25T13:15:00.001-07:00

The steak is rare and blood red.
Your suffering is raw and tearful.
What is felt is passed around like so many invisible handshakes.

Mother’s mood is in her milk.
Father’s desire is in his genes.
What becomes is in the seeds of the universal oak tree.

I eat the steak, I drink the milk,
Through my being all things are transubstantiated,
I take on the suffering, I embody the desire,
Through your being I am converted.

Freak City

2008-07-15T11:26:00.001-07:00

for Williamsburg

We are the people you sleep with
Moon scattered nights among the records
Obliterating boundaries in our worship
Our forms will live on forever until they pass.
Others look to us for limberness of limbs
For a sign of universal relaxation
In the way we wear our muscles and tattoos and shoes.

We are the people who get dragged home
This routine of expansion and contraction
Of sleeping until sleep is exhausted
Of proving that yes still works best.
There is a hidden basement downstairs
Where our angry hearts beat on strings singing
Don’t bond to the tides if the tides are not what you want.

We are the people who have invented UFOs
Telling our stories to keep you afraid at night
Our cross-currents of heartbreak and selfishness
Our riverside romances do not die easy.
Others wish to see if we float like witches
For a sign of the reality of damnation
Don’t look now if you want to go on believing as you do.

Sherpas

2008-07-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

When my life flashes before my eyes,
In that famed final moment of lucidity,
I am convinced that what I will see is not
My first kisses nor the birth of my firstborn,
But rather the hundreds of times I have given
Directions on the streets of New York

To wayward wandering fellow-travelers,
Who stand with their upsidedown maps
And their clueless, terror-stricken faces,
Suddenly staring at the holes in our reality,
At the flickering of the substantiality of space,
At the streetlights beckoning us uptown.

To get to the Public Library, one walks west
From Grand Central along Fifth Avenue,
To find the Carousel in the Park, one winds
Southeastwardly from Sheep Meadow,
And to find Brandy’s Piano Bar, one sings,
“On East Eighty-Fourth, between Second and Third!”

The sherpas have the mountaineering skills
But I have memorized the subway map.
The guides have strewn the land with signposts
But I possess the toy box prize secret decoder.
And when my mornings are labyrinths, my fear
Becomes my tool for unraveling spirit-in-action.

Mythologies

2008-07-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

These are the days of our exuberances,
Of our enlightened and neurotic qualities,
The blindness of Cupid.

These are the movements of our minds,
Of our prejudices and our self-confidences,
The cunning of Daedalus.

These are the dreams of our reality,
The fabric worn so thin as to become a hole,
The death of Zeus.

Portrait of the Universe as a Young Man

2008-07-09T11:59:00.001-07:00

It is the process of gestation,
An abstract phenomenon
That is hereby depicted in plain
Words, straightforwardly.

The adherence to the thoughts
As they arise, the stripping
Off of the layers and the muck,
The modernist mumblings,

The ego disguised as genius —
For only Tumult, Son of Thunder,
Knows well the whirling dervish
And dances well into the night.

It is the schoolboy become artist,
The transformation of the human
Into the cockroach or the sun
Or the sunset or the mulberry,

Into the whole luminous shebang,
Sanity still intact, if possible,
Raw heart extended and exploded,
Guts spread out upon the pavement.

It is, simply put, the process of
Becoming, this so-called work
We do on ourselves, constantly,
Tirelessly, our observing minds

In headlong effort to represent our
Inner landscapes of convergence,
Not to save one from the empty wheel,
— to point it out, to calmly cry out,

Look! there is no other, there is no
Black hole, there is no you-dream,
There are only our quotidian saviors,
Only coffee, and perpetual gestation.

Nearly Any Task

2008-07-03T11:52:00.001-07:00

for Cara Jane Francis

My work ethic, a purely habitual thing,
Wants me to write a poem this afternoon
And so sits me down at my desk to work
At which point I get a g-chat from a friend —
"PAUL!" she cries,
"I need to find spiders and flies I can eat!"
She asks me, if I'm not too busy, to catch
A spider or a fly for her and keep it alive.

Well, I'm also busy learning Bob Dylan's song
The Man in Me at the piano, and opening my shades
To let in the light and making coffee and reading
The poems of others and adhering to my
Strict discipline of extraordinary laziness, which,
A fellow writer told me, is what the poems require.

There is the story of Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi,
Who was instructed by his teacher, Marpa the Translator,
To build a house, and after Milarepa completed the house,
Marpa, in that baffling guru way, told
Milarepa to tear it down and build another,
Which, not without despair in his heart, Milarepa did
With single-pointed concentration and devotion.

The path is relentless. Listening closely to
The dictates of mind, to basic goodness,
Staying the course, for whatever unseen reason,
In whichever frightening direction,
Is easy enough when the task is arachnid-catching,
Is even easy enough when a lifetime of laziness is
The Big Idea, but proved more challenging
When my girlfriend asked me to build her a house
And my mind jumped to the moment when she'd
bid me tear it down.

Where Does It Come From?

2008-07-02T08:42:00.001-07:00

or Basic Goodness

I want to behave like the radio station
That’s coming in pitch-perfect, without distortion,
Without the fuzz and white noise of ignorance,
Without the screaming of the used car salesman,
“SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY —
Every car must go!”

I’d like to behave like the Mozart that woke me up
This morning, the minuet, the oomp-pah-pah, oomp-
Pah-pah, the dancing feet of dead aristocrats,
Well-tuned and in-tune and tuned-in to
The music of the motion of the swirling —
Every song must sing!

The impulse to extend one’s self in speech,
To write an email, to proffer the poem,
To pluckily strike up conversation in the deli
With the stranger who looked your way, briefly,
“That Fage yogurt is the bomb, right?” —
Every word must utter!

Where does it come from? The positive
Instinct, the right word, the all-glorious
Intunement with one’s world, the sense of clarity
That seems to stretch back to Central Station,
Where all broadcasts begin, where all waves are born —
Every spark must spark!

Drawer of Circles

2008-07-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

"The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end."
-Emerson, from Circles

Who we are dictates how we ought to live.
A series of concentric circles,
Heaven-bent on perfection, enfolding
Circle within greater circle upon further
Evolution of circle-culture and gene-helix.
And I learned something new today
About why my body shimmers with panic
Even when I'm not doing anything.

So then. We ought to live like circles
That roll and leap levels and tumble down hills,
That need help up mountains and that
Fall down and collapse in on themselves too.
We ought to live like the odd geometry we are,
Like the hand-shaped hands and heart-shaped
Loves and tender-colored days that we are,
We ought to live like the stories we wish to tell.

Who we are dictates how we ought to live.
The spontaneous expression is the field
Of experience — Delicately, sensitively,
Skillfully, with Euclidean precision, we trace
Our ever-widening circles with our own hands,
We meet the world, join arms, and folk dance.
But the rub, I ironically tell my student, is that
The human hand could never, not in a million lifetimes,
Draw a perfect circle, not even with a forceps pen.

When I say this, she picks up her pencil and tries,
Promising me that she can, that she can and she will.

The Battle of Jericho

2008-06-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

a novel
by Paul Charles Griffin

“On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the people, ‘Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent.'”

-Joshua, Chapter 6, Verses 15-17

PREFACE: The Argument

The world is approaching, in Hegelian fashion, a dualistic political reality of, on the one hand, absolute totalitarianism, and, on the other, utter anarchy. The future holds both systems, simultaneously. Pockets of anarchy will stand over and against world-totalitarianism. Organizations of free association upholding the freedom and dignity of the individual — in short, each man as his own king — will develop alongside the continual build-up of a labyrinthian world-system dictated by the wills of big business, big religion, and big government — in other words, the institution as ruler. In the following short, speculative, picaresque novel, I have attempted to depict this future and its inherent conflicts.

I began writing this novel in despair. The year was 2002 and the state of America was in decline. The Bush Administration, having quite possibly stolen the election of 2000, in a travesty of democracy, seemed to me to have materialized directly out of the mind of George Orwell. Over the years, this administration’s capacity for deceptive doublespeak (the Clean Air Act, the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, etc.) and its incapacity for sensible leadership (the Iraq War, the response to Hurricane Katrina, the non-existent policy on climate change, etc.) has only deepened my sadness. There is no denying that there is something rotten in America. Fully aware of the dangers of oversimplification, I have come to see our political system as essentially corrupted by the profit motive, by the greed for money, by late-stage corporate capitalism. We are not living in a true democracy, where the will of the people rules the land, not by any stretch of the imagination. We are living in a corpocracy, where soulless entities motivated only by profit dominate national policy. We are not living in the Happy Age of Universal Comfort; rather, we are living in the Dark Age of the Lord of Materialism. And things are getting worse.

At the same time, I would not choose to live anywhere else. Even as the government, big business, and fundamentalist religious thinking, in my opinion, pull our country in the wrong direction, namely, backward, there is still a joyful spirit deep within the people, a voice alive in our arts and culture, a steadfast, enlightened vision of the future that continues to uplift all things American. Even as our basic freedoms are more and more encroached upon, even as our reputation in the world continues to decline, this country is still a free country, where self-expression of all kinds liberates and purges us continually. We rise up and live another day, even as our national pride has been so mortally wounded, because we still believe in what America stands for, namely, the inalienable rights of man, the dignity of each human individual, and the unfettered pursuit of happiness. We remain loyal, dutiful citizens, even as it is clear that America has yet to fully realize its ambitious, philosophical aspirations. Despite our failures, the essential landscape of America is still one of vast hope and limitless possibility. We embody what Fitzgerald, in describing his hero Gatsby, so eloquently named, “ a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life... an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness.” This sensitivity, this gift, this readiness is everything I believe in. I see the people of this country — despite everything — progressing spiritually towards a new and beautiful paradigm.

But the road will not be pretty. To be sure, there will be conflict, suffering, loss of life. This much is clear. Already, over the past six years, the road has indeed been ugly and the sacrifices have indeed been great. Each day seems to bring more bafflingly bad news. When I began writing this novel, to write was a form of therapy. Every morning I sat down to express my frustration with the state of affairs, my deep disillusionment with our country, and — dammit! — my rage against civilization itself, which seemed to me at every turn to obstruct our ability to just be what we are — human and alive, all-good and joyful.

So I returned to this novel in the summer of 2008 because I had yet to exorcize the demon. Once a project is born in the mind of a writer, he is never free until it is finished. As I revisit this work, I notice that my motivations are clearer and redoubled. I wish to give the public a rough sketch — albeit an unreliable, fictionalized portrait, a product of my mad imagination — I wish to compose a creative study of this dualistic dialectic, a portrait of world-politics as inexorably evolving into both absolute totalitarianism and utter anarchy. What follows is the story of the conflict therein.

While the novel form no longer has the kind of influence over the collective consciousness it once had, I nevertheless offer this short, comic novel as a vision of what might come to pass, despite all our lofty rhetoric on the future of democracy and the freedom of peoples. Perhaps part of the responsibility of the artist is prophesy, if that be his talent and inclination. I myself don’t claim any such clairvoyance, rather, what follows is simply a sketch of my personal nightmare and an expression of my faith in our collective romantic readiness.

PART I: The Empire of Flatland

Chapter One
Citizen and Public Servant

Arthur Plank, a behemoth of a man, stared at the screen, trying to ignore how badly his eyeballs ached. Sitting in Pod #171 of the Empire’s Department of Reality, Plank was at the busiest intersection of information in the world. Thousands of state-of-the-art flat screens surrounded his pod which was positioned on a mechanical arm capable of moving swiftly up and down and side to side within the Opticon, a circular cavern of data with a mile-long radius. This mechanism allowed Plank to zoom down a level and observe the action in any alleyway of the Empire, or zoom up a level and keep an eye on the docks. The Opticon was an excellent machine, and though it made Plank feel powerful in a pleasurable way, it also really hurt his eyeballs. In fact, over twenty years of working in the Opticon had made Plank half-blind.

By uttering one of thousands of codes, Plank could observe any nook of the vast Empire. He could also call forth a report on the human movement within any given sector, and this single report among billions would appear before his sorry eyes on a computer screen that extended by robotic arm from the dark recesses of the outside circular walls. Ironically, much of this video was filmed by the citizens themselves, obsessed as they were with capturing their own lives on film. The Opticon merely had to intercept and organize this constant influx of self-surveillance. In the end, Plank could watch any Empirean man, woman or child, as unseen Opticon cameras too recorded nearly every moment of each citizen’s life. If not every moment, at least enough to give the citizens of the Empire the sense of invisible omniscience. Hence, people in the Empire were awfully paranoid, which didn’t mean they weren’t constantly being watched.

Plank had a reputation for watching people having sex. Not because he was a pervert, but because the last terrorist attack perpetrated on the homeland had been plotted exclusively during copulation between the evildoers. Institutionalized imagination was the Department of Reality’s creed, and the Opticon, this matrix of benevolent surveillance, was Plank’s workplace.

“Your shit’s not selling,” said Dan, zooming around in the pod next to Plank’s.

“What are you talking about?” asked Plank.

“You saw the numbers,” said Dan. “Don’t play dumb. Your shit’s not selling.”

It was true: Plank’s videos were not selling. Not only was the Department of Reality responsible for surveillance of the entire Empire, it was also expected to turn a profit. At the end of each shift, Plank put together his Best Of Surveillance Today highlight video. These digital Best Of videos were then sold to the public on the internet. Lately, Plank, who had years ago been crowned King Of Best Ofs at the office holiday party, hadn’t been selling anything.

“I’ll turn it around,” said Plank. “I’ll be back in the Top Ten by week’s end.”

Dan laughed derisively at Plank and zoomed down a level to watch a grocer he’d been following sit on his front stoop and play dominoes with his kids.

He called up: “Here’s a tip, Plank: Stop watching animals.”

Plank’s golden days of catching criminals planning their crimes while having wild criminal sex were long gone. Back in the day, Plank’s videos had sold very well. But now everybody in the Department was doing what he had pioneered. Criminals Having Hot Criminal Sex best-of videos sold consistently in the Top Ten. So, bereft of new ideas, Plank spent most of his time watching squirrels in the park. Those fuzzy little suckers were fascinating, and perhaps dangerous, thought Plank. He figured that terrorists had once used rats to disseminate poison gas in the subways, why not squirrels? So he kept close watch. Not that it mattered whether the squirrels were dangerous anyway. Ultimately, the Department of Reality was less concerned with protecting the public and more concerned with swindling the public through the sale of its best-of videos. This state of affairs had begun years ago when Bling Studios Inc had bought the Department of Reality from the Empire government in a conspicuous display of corpocracy. Business was business was economics was government. In the Empire — a flatland of pure objectivity — the bottom line was the bottom line.

A man named Maxwell Jamb was Plank’s boss. He roamed the Opticon with a limp and jabbed his employees in the kidneys with his cane to remind them of his great capacity for cruelty. Jamb was a bad trip of a man who worked sixty hours a week to feed his family and pay the mortgage on their seventy million dollar home uptown. Having risen to his current post of Director of Reality by having the previous Director of Reality poisoned, Jamb was feared.

As Plank tried to squeeze his huge rear-end into a chair in Jamb’s office, Jamb fired away:

“Plank, you don’t look good,” he said. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You’re taking your fucking Cocktail, right?”

“Yes sir, I take my Cocktail,” answered Plank, who, like every dutiful Empirean, took a complex concoction of pills in order to stay happy and productive. For sadness and depression were banned in the Empire. In fact, all inner states of consciousness simply were not recognized in the Empire. The view of the Empire was that only objective material reality was real, as the existence of any so-called consciousness had long ago been disproved by empirical science. There was no space for inner realities in the Empire’s arch-rational worldview. Things like the soul and the soul’s troubles simply were not considered real; only the brain and the brain’s chemistry. Moreover, negative emotions such as so-called sadness were bad for business. Clinical well-being of the citizenry had been mastered by science and technology. Any personal, inner reality such as sadness was considered invalid, as there simply was no inwardness or depth or consciousness in the Empire. The Empire was a flatland.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Plank, how many pills do they have you taking these days?” asked Jamb.

“I take forty-seven now.”

“Forty-seven! Holy shit! You’re a fucked-up factory, aren’t you, Plank? Forty-seven. Wow. Unbelievable. That’s a lot. What are they all for?”

Plank minded the asking, but his numbers were low, his videos weren’t selling, so he couldn’t afford the sentiment.

“Well, I take one for Anti-Obesity,” said Plank. “That’s helped.”

“I can see that,” ribbed Jamb.

“It’s helped some,” Plank continued. “Then, my Anti-Lost Love combination is up to thirteen pills. Or is it fourteen? I can’t remember. So many colors. Uh, let’s see, two months ago, I started in on this Anti-Paranoia pill. And there’s my Anti-Anxiety, Anti-Bad Art, Anti-Constipation — ”

“All right, Plank, that’s enough.”

“Okay.”

Jamb leaned back in his plush chair and tried to shake off this unusually intimate exchange with his employee. He needed to get down to business, and business was tough — business was business. Business came naturally to Jamb, who was built to tear through people like a hurricane tore through trailer parks.

“Business is business, right Plank?” he began.

“That’s right, sir,” agreed Plank. “Business is business.”

“Yes it is,” said Jamb. “That much we know for certain. Now Plank, you’ve always been a hard worker. A real original. But the facts are the facts, are the numbers. And your numbers are horrible. Your stock is not even in the top 50%, Plank? That’s low class.”

Here Jamb paused, allowing Plank a moment to respond. The name of every citizen of the Empire was traded on the PersonExchange. In this way, society constantly evaluated a person’s functional worth. Instead of ranking human beings by their net wealth, as was done in the past, this more advanced system also took into account a person’s potential to make money. How much society was willing to gamble on a person’s talent-set was an important part of the equation. Trading on the PersonExchange was lively because betting on a person’s potential was fun and kept things interesting through dark times. In the final analysis, every citizen of the Empire of Flatland could be reduced to numbers: to his physical coordinates according to the Opticon, to his financial potential according to the PersonExchange, even to his statistical well-being according to his brain’s ChemiScan.

Plank’s stock had plummeted ever since other surveillance video editors had caught onto his criminal sex gig. People weren’t trading in Arthur Plank the way they had five years ago when Plank was featured on the cover of the newspaper under the headline, “ARTHUR PLANK, LOCAL HERO: KEEPS US SAFE, SELLS US PORN.”

“I haven’t been hot in a while, sir,” said Plank matter-of-factly.

“No you haven’t,” said Jamb. “Now I have two choices here. First, I can spend company money and send you to an ProductivityRehabilitation center. Maybe the experts can make you productive again. But that’s company money we’re talking about. That’s important stuff. Can you be made productive again? I don’t know, Plank. Your light is fading. You’re looking dim. This happens. Now, my other choice is simply to let you go. Which is clearly the better option and so this is what I’ve decided to do. You’re a free man, Plank — you’re fired.”

Financial instability was not Plank’s idea of freedom, so he protested.

“Mr. Jamb, I’ve worked here for twenty-two years,” he began. “Twenty-two years of loyal service. You know that’s all I care about. Serving the Empire, protecting the Empire, selling things to the Empire. I have my priorities in order. There are some fellows in there who watch movies all day long. I’m not naming names, but the guy in charge of Sector 78, an important sector, I might add, he watches kung-fu movies all day. I haven’t seen him make an arrest or cut a good best-of edit in weeks. Not that I mean to compare myself with others. I don’t need to do that, I know I do good work.”

“What have you done since criminal sex?” countered Jamb. “Nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Plank argued insincerely.

“Look, Arthur,” said Jamb, “I just don’t have a single, solitary spot.”

“But that’s a lie!” cried Plank. “I know over 30 of the 270 Pods are currently unoccupied. You have plenty of spots.”

“I know,” said Jamb. “I just like that line. Truth is I don’t have a single, solitary spot for you, Arthur.”

“But what about my sponsorship!” he asked.

Every citizen in the Empire was required to secure corporate sponsorship or else face deportation. Fulfilling the responsibilities of citizen sponsorship involved wearing visible emblems and logos in public at all times — on hats, shirts, slickers and such — and inserting a word-of-mouth advertisement into one’s conversation at least twice daily. Citizen sponsorship began at age three, when the brain was most malleable and susceptible to branding . Hyping one’s corporation eventually became second nature.

“OptiVids will continue to sponsor you until you are able to secure a new sponsor,” said Jamb, adding, “or until two weeks is passed, whichever comes first.”

Plank was getting screwed. But he refused to prostrate himself before Jamb, even if the man was a murderer. Plank possessed the quiet pride of a humble public servant. A clerk’s pride, firm and steadfast. So he decided to deny the fact of Jamb’s power, to deny the firing.

“Two weeks! Fuck you, Mr. Jamb!” he spat out, rising to his feet. “You can’t fire me! I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Plank stormed out of the office, as fast as a fat man can storm, leaving Jamb to wonder if he had successfully accomplished the firing. He couldn’t be sure. Plank was a weird one, he thought to himself, he might back again tomorrow, just like he said he would. That would make things rather uncomfortable, wouldn’t it? If that happened, I might have to deport the poor bastard, Jamb reasoned. Or have him killed. Or melt his blubbery flesh down into candles. Something drastic. A sense of despair came over Jamb, so he quickly popped an Anti-Despair pill and everything was all better.

Chapter Two
Happy Juice, the WarNow!Network, and the ClearAirIndex

Walking home after being fired, Plank felt pain in his feet. What he thought about was alcohol, because having accidentally stumbled upon the illegal stuff as a young man, he had become a lover of alcohol, a genuine dipsomaniac, and so it was his fate to think about alcohol for much of his waking life. But of course the drinking of spirits had long ago been outlawed in the Empire for obvious reasons: drinking spirits gave rise to interiority. And officially, there was no interiority on the inside. So, because the very existence of an individual’s private inner self was denied categorically by the Empire, drinking was illegal. The smoking or inhaling or ingesting in any way of any drugs whatsoever not explicitly prescribed by one’s primary physician was against the law. This law was instituted for the good of the people, for only the doctors and the scientists and the lawmakers — only the experts — knew what was best.

Meanwhile, Plank dreamed about alcohol, and in his dreams, he drank the stuff. But of course, Plank kept such scandalous dreams to himself. For if he were to report such a dream — and by law all dreams were to be reported to CentralImaginationCommand each morning via the DreamReportHomeConsole — if Plank were to report such a dream, he would be deported. And no honest Empire citizen such as Plank wished for the anarchic outsider world beyond the Empire’s walls, where people starved and and suffered and died. That kind of poor, savage subsistence was commonly considered a living hell. As was the idea of drinking alcohol. Yet, and here was the rub, getting fired had been an emotional ordeal for Plank. It was deeply upsetting, so naturally, Plank desired the drink. And even in a strict totalitarian society such as that of the Empire, there was always underground moonshine to be found. Even in the Empire, the roots of rebellion stirred beneath the surface.

He called a buddy in Dipsomaniacs Anonymous, a support group for those unfortunate souls who had somehow discovered alcohol and developed an attachment to the wicked stuff.

“Ralph, I got fired today,” Plank said. “And I want a drink.”

“Don’t do it, man,” said Ralph. “You’ll throw your life away.”

“What life?”

“Don’t be a bitch. Go to a meeting.”

“I hate meetings.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Everyone hates meetings,” said Ralph. “Don’t you have any Anti-Dipso pills?”

“I already took two,” said Plank. “Still wanna drink.”

“Jesus. Take a Doozex.”

A Doozex was a pill that made one feel as if one were floating in the ether. It was prescribed for “passing undesirable moods, days or years.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Look man,” said Ralph, “Do you need me to come over?”

“No, no, that’s all right,” said Plank. “I’m just going to grab a bottle and —.”

“Don’t kid around, Arthur,” said Ralph. “It’s not funny. You’ve never taken your sobriety seriously enough. Today’s a good day to start. Just get through today. You don’t want to be deported.”

“Blah blah blah,” said Plank. “All right. I’m okay. Thanks for taking the call.”

“Well, call me if you need me,” said Ralph. “But I gotta run, I’m tied up here at work. Call Tommy.”

“Yeah, all right. I’ll let you go.”

“Take it easy. Go home and relax. Watch some TV.”

“I hate TV and you know that.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, whatever, call me back. I gotta go.”

“OK, Ralph. Thanks.”

Worthless phone call, thought Plank. Furious at the utter futility of DA, Plank now wanted to drink more than he had before the call. And he didn’t feel like calling Tommy, because Tommy had an evangelical bent to his program, and that turned him off.

And he really didn’t have any other friends.

And his family, his wife and son, were on the outside, and had been for twenty years. If they're even alive, thought Plank.

He made the phone call. To Happy Juice — to HJ — an underground alcohol dealer. In ten short minutes, he met the dealer in an alleyway, bought three bottles of whiskey, and walked home with the liquor stashed beneath his shirt. Feeling the warm, brown stuff near his skin, Plank grew giddy. He could almost taste the sweet stuff on his lips as he scurried home through the darkening night.

Plank’s uptown apartment was a luxurious, sprawling place overlooking the river, which had risen drastically in recent years due to global climate change and now engulfed much of Empire City, including three avenues on its east side. Nevertheless, human capitalist ingenuity had risen to the occasion. Underwater shopping was the current rage. On Deep Blue Avenue, sales of trendy flippers or gas masks kept business booming. And that’s what mattered. In the Empire, booming business mattered most.

When Plank arrived home, Ralph was there waiting for him. This annoyed Plank, because now he wouldn’t be able to drink his whiskey. Seeing Ralph’s face, Plank intensely hated his good friend, for keeping him sober and law-abiding. He quickly tried to hide his three bottles of whiskey in a dumpster, but Ralph saw him and laughed at him. Ralph hustled over to the dumpster and took the bottles from Plank. One by one, he broke each bottle over the dumpster’s edge.

Ralph, sensing Plank’s rage, handed Plank an Anti-Rage pill and said, “Come on. Let’s go to a meeting.”

“No,” said Plank flatly.

“Let’s watch some TV then.”

“Fine,” muttered Plank.

So they went to Plank’s apartment, slumped onto the couches, and watched some of the western frontier’s War Against Outsiders on the WarNow!Network.

The WarNow!Network anchor, a man named Carl Kromberg, sat in the War Room, reporting on the bloody violence out west. Plank and Ralph drank tall glasses of cranberry juice on ice and watched the screen in a manly silence. Even a straight man would have to admit that Kromberg was a pretty man. He wore a sharp blue suit and a red power tie. His jet black hair was super-slicked back. With unnerving eyes, he reported the latest news to the citizens of the Empire:

“The outsider loonies are after us. After nearly two weeks of a tenuous cease-fire, it’s a now a full-fledged rampage on the west coast. The outsiders have blown a hole in the Sector 13 Wall. Let’s take you there now, where our own Lindsay Blackmon is reporting live.”

Blackmon, visibly high on a legal cocktail of strong amphetamines, appeared frightened and frantic.

“The outsider rebels are surprisingly resurgent, Carl. I’m being told that a new terrorist group, Laws Not Walls, is responsible for the latest thrust. Regardless, there is no need to panic. The reaction of the Empire Armed Forces has been swift and awesome. We’ll take you now inside its GunSquad Headquarters.”

Inside the GunSquad Headquarters a host of kids appeared to be playing video games. And that’s what they thought they were doing. In actuality, the little tykes were manning mini remote control fighter planes that gunned down the hapless rebel outsiders.

“It’s wild in here, Carl. These kids can shoot!” Blackmon walked to a boy, an eight-year-old, fiercely concentrating on his game. “Look at this soldier at work. I feel safe with this young sharp-shooter picking off the enemy.”

Sounds of video game gunshots — pytzoom pytzoom — filled the room. The kids grunted as they killed. A gigantic scoreboard overhead announced who was winning and who was losing, motivating the competitive little bastards to no end. The Empire Armed Forces was good at what it did — kill people.

“Fucking outsiders,” said Ralph, trying to make a point.

“Yeah, fucking outsiders,” repeated Plank. But actually, Plank found himself in a compassionate mood. “Actually, sometimes, I feel bad for them.”

“Feel bad for them?,” mocked Ralph. “Why? They’re ungrateful punks. Total barbarians.”

“Sometimes I feel we should help them more,” said Plank. “Like back when that one island state went underwater, Ahiee or whatever, and we were just like, Whatever, screw it. That seemed wrong, no?”

Ralph, a run-of-the-mill militant patriot and self-proclaimed realist, was flummoxed.

“We feed them,” he began. “We give them water. We give them work. We support their every waking moment. We support their very lives, however subhuman those lives may be. And this is how they thank us — by blowing holes in the walls around our cities! Bullshit.”

Ralph’s reactionary patriotism irked Plank. Naturally, Plank was a patriot, too, he had his priorities in order. But there was a little voice in the corner of Plank’s mind that suggested a reordering of priorities, a reevaluation of values, even though he took a pill to correct that. Despite his Cocktail, Plank still heard the voice.

“I guess,” said Plank. The conversation was hurting his heart. Ralph, on the other hand, had an artificial heart. “But you’ve got to admit, Ralph, they’ve got it pretty tough.”

“I suppose,” admitted Ralph. “I wish we could do more. Really, I do. I wish their lives were better. But we’ve got our own shit to worry about. Personally, I put in fifty plus hours a week at the Incinerator just to keep this whole thing going. I’ve got my hands full.”

Plank wasn’t going to ask what Ralph meant by “this whole thing”. Instead, he went back to watching Kromberg interview an ex-hippie-punk about his rehabilitation into society, “One day, I just decided,” said the hippie, “So what if the Empire is out of control? At least we’re winning.”

Plank wondered when Ralph would get the hell out of his apartment and go home to his wife, so that he could call HJ and order more whiskey. He pondered his weakness for booze and why death by booze wasn’t more widely respected. He wondered why the Empire’s groundbreaking science and wonder-working pills had yet to fully eradicate his deep longing for whiskey. Then he fell asleep and dreamed sweet drunken dreams.

Plank awoke two hours later when Ralph jammed an oxygen mask onto his face.

Swatting at his friend, Plank cried, “Get the fuck off me!”

“Weather report, man,” explained Ralph. “CleanAirIndex of only 13%. They’re recommending masks for the next few days.”

This was common procedure in the overly industrialized society of the Empire. Fortunately, Plank was a relatively well-off man, but a lowly public servant, and wage-enslaved by the money-bags, to be sure; nevertheless, he was an Empirean, and thereby superrich by any global standard. Even when compared with other Empireans, Plank fared well; his income at the Department of Reality was, or had been, more than respectable. For example, he could afford oxygen, a privatized luxury. When the CleanAirIndex dropped, many Empireans simply suffered a few weeks of emphysema until things cleared up again; others less fortunate succumbed to lung cancer.

“You need a new machine, man,” said Ralph, his voice muffled by the mask over his mouth. “I sound like fucking Darth Vader in this thing.”

“You’re welcome for the oxygen,” said Plank.

Ralph’s meager income — again, all things being relative, meager only according to Empire standards; Ralph was superrich accord to a global standard — Ralph’s meager income did not allow for the purchase of surplus oxygen. His wife would have to line up at the local FreshAirDepot and hope for the best. But Ralph wasn’t worried about her for the time being because he and his wife were in the middle of a nasty fight.

“What are you going to do about work?” Ralph asked finally.

“I don’t know,” said Plank. “Maybe I’ll just go back. Show up tomorrow. See if Jamb says anything.”

“You’re in denial.”

“But I can’t think of anything else to do. I can’t find another job. And I can’t sit at home all day. I don’t trust myself.”

“Yeah, I don’t trust you either.”

“Thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

Plank reflected a moment, then said, “I guess I never learned to do anything with myself other than work.”

“Work makes free,” said Ralph.

“Not really, though.”

“Yeah, not really.”

Plank and Ralph sat together in the early morning and enjoyed their oxygen, even though it was a little stale.

Ralph added: “Did you know the Incinerator is reducing its trash-vaporization prices by up to 50% all month long?”

Plank rolled his eyes, “Shut up, Ralph.” And then, in perfect monotone: “Buy OptiVids: Because a slice of life is a ton of fun!”

Chapter Three
Memory Machines and Economic Logic

Plank fell asleep with his oxygen mask on and when he woke Ralph was gone. At first his heart leaped, as his liver shivered, but then he found a nasty note from Ralph on the coffee table.

Arthur,

Don’t even think about drinking. I called HJ myself this morning and told him not to sell you anything. I also stopped by Bailey’s Pub and told Roger not to serve you. This is serious. You could get deported. Now I know you could find another place to buy booze, but if you do I will kick the living shit out of you. Is that clear?

Your friend,
Ralph

Naturally this note only helped Plank continue to obsess about drinking — such was the dark irony of all forms of total abstinence — and about how his good friend had ruined everything, how he had screwed up his entire plan for the day, namely, to drink. He thought about how drinking would change the way he felt, which was miserable, about how it could lead him to a new and exciting sexual adventure, which he knew was unlikely, and about how it was the perfect solution to all of life’s spiritual woes, which he knew was only partly true.

Plank unhitched his oxygen mask from the huge base tank and attached it to a smaller, more portable tank. He walked to the window to survey the new day. The sky was thick with a milky purple pollution.

Looks like a bad day to be alive, thought Plank, but here I am: alive, conscious. Is that ash I see floating in the air? Yes, he admitted, it appears to be ash. God help us, he intoned, half-heartedly, for even though Plank didn’t believe in God, it was the State Religion, so he often found himself praying in this half-assed manner. Oh God, why is the sky full of ash? But Plank didn’t want to think about why, about what could possibly be the source of all that ash. Had the Empire razed another city? Was the Empire burning more rebels? Would the floating ash ever go away? Plank vigorously shook these thoughts from his mind and went to the kitchen to take his morning Cocktail, starting with the all-important Anti-Paranoia pill.

Within moments, he felt a little better, in an artificial, manipulated-by-chemicals way.

Plank sat on the couch, his mind empty. He folded and unfolded his hands, placing them instead on his thighs. He felt utterly cast out from the natural order of things. Usually after he took his morning Cocktail, he showered, ate breakfast, and commuted to work. But now, with this expanse of time opening up before him — an entire, unformed day of freedom — he was filled with a previously unknown dread. He simply didn’t know what to do with himself. When it came to workdays, serving the Empire in Pod #170 of the Opticon was all he knew.

So Plank took refuge in the only other thing he knew: his Sunday routine.

A few years back, he had purchased a fancy and expensive MadeleineMachine from an online catalogue. The MadeleineMachine was a module that transported a person into their past through the power of sense recollection. Furthermore, all MMs were linked to the Opticon, all the information and images retrieved by the MMs were sent to CentralCommand; thereby, the public use of MMs was yet another avenue through which the Empire collected, sorted and edited the private lives of its subjects. (Some private memories, if at all dangerous or distasteful to the Empire, were, of course, erased through mandatory neurological surgery.) The MM’s brochure had proclaimed, “A mere morsel of cake will transport you to your magical past!” and so Plank had promptly bought the machine thinking that it would transport him to a magical past. Soon afterward he was disappointed to learn that the MadeleineMachine was only able to transport Plank to his own past, to the actual history that was stored inside his mind and body, whether this past were magical or not. To Plank, this seemed like a rip-off. He had his entire Life on Video as it was (this was a special Opticon employee benefit). So Plank had tried to return his MM, arguing that he had been duped by a blatant case of false advertising. What Plank had been promised, he argued, was transportation to a “magical past,” and not a torturous reliving of the failures, defeats and other fiascoes that constituted his life. The customer service lady on the phone told Plank to “screw off” and welcomed him to try taking the company to court on charges of false advertising. She told Plank that that would be a good way to waste tons of money on his own public humiliation. Nevertheless, Plank argued on as the lady laughed at his Me-Versus-The-Man crusade. In the end, no refund was granted. And Plank was stuck with this ugly monstrosity of a memory machine that occupied half of his living room.

So, in what seemed the only prudent course of action, Plank cultivated the habit of escaping into his MM every Sunday morning.

On this — his first jobless Tuesday ever — Plank got naked, slapped his belly a few times, and crawled into his MM. He attached various chords and wires to all parts of his body including his most special organ. He checked the levels that monitored the available supplies of Plank’s particular memory-inducers: ocean water, breast milk, HardNuts cereal, the smell of burning tires, the Transmuters cartoon theme song, the smell of burning hair, cheese cake, fried egg sandwiches on wheat bread, the smell of fear, the flavor of Expressica coffee, stale subway air, the sound of cracking knuckles, and so on — particular sensations especially meaningful to Plank for one reason or another. The levels were all good, except for the smell of burning hair, which was low, but that was okay because Plank didn’t want to go back there. Not this morning at least.

The titles of various memories appeared on a flat screen in front of Plank. First Date with Helen, First Kiss with Helen (distinct from First Date), First Sex with Helen, First Good Sex with Helen (also distinct), Birth of Jack, Holding Fat Baby Jack, Stupid Fourth of July Parade, An Afternoon of the Terrible Twos, and so forth. Plank scrolled with the touch of a finger through hundred of not-so-spectacular memories. Finally, he stopped on Wrestling With the Moon. Plank himself had titled each memory, and he was certain that Wresting With the Moon was the single most poetic phrase he had ever conjured up. This fancy title had been inspired by the single most poetic moment of Plank’s life (and he was convinced his life wasn’t growing any more poetic with time).

Wrestling with the Moon: Plank is young and in love. And thin. And his soon-to-be wife, Helen, also thin, and beautiful and bosomy, is in love with Plank. They are at the beach house with Plank’s parents. After the folks go to bed, Helen and Plank steal away to the lifeguard stand with an illicit bottle of wine and listen to the waves crash. And make out. And wrestle with the moon. Metaphorically speaking.

What a night! What bliss! Plank was resigned to the fact that he would never again experience such happiness. Such pure, original bliss. Not fleeting moments of material desires satisfied, not ephemeral moments of conditional happiness — if A, then B — that were the hallmark of the Empire lifestyle. The problem, as Plank saw it, was that these so-called happy moments laid atop of years of accumulated tribulations. Time did not pass, it piled up. If only Plank had understood back then that everything accumulated, that all experience transcended and included previous experience. If only he had known that everything remained, he thought to himself, then maybe he wouldn’t have screwed up so severely. He wouldn’t have lost his family and ended up a lonely public servant. (And now, not even that!) He had concluded that the brain was capable of editing the past, and thereby fundamentally changing the past. Plank had been taught, by and large by advertisements on TV, that only the present mattered, that the present affects the past, and so so long as one possesses this remarkable power of a transfiguring memory, then there is abundant room for mistakes to be made! But Plank had misunderstood, or, as he saw it, he had been lied to. Because the past was the past was the past. Especially when he was sober. And no matter how hard he tried to rewrite his own past — convincing himself, for example, that it was all Helen’s fault — it never worked. Plank knew some people could lie to themselves about their pasts in this fashion (and Plank envied these people, and he took an Anti-Envy pill to correct that). But Plank’s own fate was to carry an honest memory.

Oh but that night he and Helen had wrestled with the moon! What a night! Plank had resigned himself to the fact that he would never again experience such pure happiness, that is, until he purchased his MadeleineMachine. He touched the Wrestling With the Moon selection on the screen and the MM churned its magic. A needle shot Plank in the rear-end with a tranquilizer. Pop music pumped into Plank’s ears, triggering the scene earlier that night at the beach house. He felt the presence of his family, the mood of bonding. Smells of that long-ago dinner wafted. The sounds of familiar, long dead voices echoed. Helen came into the reality-recreation through the unbelievably accurate reconstitution of her touch. In real life, Plank began unconsciously sobbing. He usually didn’t play this memory because it was too hard to return from. He and Helen made their way down the long, curving path through the dunes towards the beach. Hand in giddy hand. They climbed into the romantic shelter of the lifeguard stand. They nestled into one another. The taste of sweet, consoling wine on his lips, followed closely by kisses… Elephant tears poured from the corners of Plank’s eyes, as modern technology afforded him the opportunity to once again be with his wife, and to wrestle with that most melancholic moon of memory...

Maxwell Jamb sat in his office, banging his cane on the floor, trying to get to the bottom of his finances. It wasn’t easy being obscenely wealthy. There was a lot of money to look after. Lots of grandstanding donations to outsider charities to worry about. And lots of things to buy. Which involved making many decisions about taste, of which Jamb had none. He collected luxury canes and designer robots, but these were the extent of his consumer interests. His wife, on the other hand, had many expensive tastes, so in the end, the money got spent. This pleased Jamb because spending money was the most patriotic thing to do.

Jamb’s accountant was presently in Jamb’s office. Jamb took this opportunity to ask his accountant how much money he was worth, and his accountant had a hard time giving Jamb a straight answer. This concerned Jamb. So he tried to phrase the question differently, comparatively, asking, “Do I have more money than all of my employees combined?” His accountant laughed at this question as if to say, Of course you do, you idiot. Then Jamb asked, “Tell me which nations from history had a comparable amount of money.” So his accountant listed nations, and pairs of nations, and entire lists of nations from history that once had about the same net worth as Jamb currently had, adding that these historical wealths were often held in other currencies and in other markets altogether, such as bars of gold or stock in a corporate communist market, and therefore, in his accountant’s humble opinion, these historical wealths were not as indestructible as Jamb’s, because all of Jamb’s money was invested in the Holy Stock Market of the Empire, which by natural law could not crash. Jamb asked his accountant to explain the part about the “natural law,” after which his accountant launched into a speech on the Darwinian nature of the history of world markets and how the Empire’s was far and away the fittest. And always would be, forever more, amen. Jamb said, “But I thought Darwinism only applied to cells or genes or whatever,” after which his accountant laughed and said, “Despite your genius and great wealth, sir, you still have a lot to learn about how the world of economics works.” Then Jamb’s accountant gave himself a raise, demanded that Jamb stop wasting money on ludicrous robots, and peremptorily ended the meeting.

After his accountant exited his office, Jamb hit Enter on his keyboard, triggering one final tabulation of the most recent debits and credits made to his bank account. Something started flashing and beeping on his computer screen — not a good sign. Behind Jamb, something started flashing and beeping on the Opticon Motherboard. Also not a good sign. This is my life, Jamb thought, a slave to the flashing and beeping of computers.

The Motherboard announced that Pod #171 was empty. It flashed and beeped on and on and on, and Jamb didn’t know how to stop it. He stuck his fingers in his ears and reconsidered the Plank situation one last time. The rub was that, in an uncanny reversal, Jamb was actually afraid of Plank. Something about the man had always deeply irked him. Probably it was his obesity. A fear of being crushed. Jamb wanted to avoid a confrontation with Plank at all costs. In fact, he wished he could just give Plank his job back and forget about it. But business was business was business was government. It was a purely economic problem. Plank’s latest videos, excruciatingly boring montages of squirrels, or as Plank called them, bushy-tailed bioterrorists, scurrying around Central Park, were not selling, and the government’s shareholders were not happy. And by law, by the government’s own law, the Department of Reality’s primary objective was to create profit for its shareholders. After all, the Empire’s tacit motto was: “Above all things, profit!” Damn it, I’m not running a goddam charity organization here, Jamb thought to himself. If I’m not creating profit for my shareholders, then really, what’s the point? If we’re not bringing in the bling, and thereby imbuing the world at large with great trickling prosperity, then we may as well just dissolve the whole damn department. So ran Jamb’s logic. Moreover, Jamb’s wife had overspent last year — she had purchased a beautiful piece of beachfront property near the North Pole— and just to keep up with the new mortgage, as well as with Jamb’s other mortgages, his children’s education expenses, and his wife’s fashionable tastes, Jamb felt enormous pressure to produce unprecedented profit margins. Because profit margins that weren’t unprecedented hardly had the right to call themselves profit margins at all.

In the end, Jamb had no brain-space to worry about a guy like Plank. Securing his own peace of mind was his first responsibility, his inalienable right. Moreover, Jamb firmly believed that once he satisfied his own self-interest, the rest would take care of itself. That was just the way the world worked.

Firmly resolved again in his decision, Jamb walked to the window and looked outside. Was that ash? Yes, it was. Another nasty, ashy day in the Empire. Whatever. Jamb sucked in a lungful of fresh oxygen, pumped non-stop into his office. Delicious. He walked to the wall, bent down low, and placed his mouth directly on the vent. He inhaled a few times. Deeply. Taking the pure, privatized O2 straight to the head. Good stuff, he cried to himself, standing upright again, wobbly and weak-kneed, That is damn good stuff!

Stumbling out of the MadeleineMachine, Plank threw up and fell to the floor in his own mess. He rolled over in the muck and stared at the ceiling. He felt incredibly anxious, as if tiny bugs were eating at his innards, as if he desperately needed to be elsewhere, anywhere — back on the lifeguard stand, back in his Pod at work — anywhere but here: at home, viciously anxious, and lying on the floor in his own vomit.

Crossing his hands atop his naked stomach, Plank laid still on the ground. Stretched out and perfectly still. Nothing doing. And then something happened.

First, memories — the Wrestling with the Moon memory, then others — memory after memory after memory returned to Plank’s mind without the help of the MadeleineMachine machine.

Then Plank began to think. And not just functional thoughts about how to commute to work or how to start the microwave, but deeper thoughts with a foreign texture to them.

And he experienced his thoughts in a new way, not as merely a part of the whole system, not as a purely functional part of the Empire or the Opticon, but as truly his own, as truly inside of him and yet still completely real.

Suddenly, Plank felt enormous activity taking place within him. As if his body and mind had stored all of this information inside for years and years, only he hadn’t known about it, hadn’t known how to access it. He felt a shimmering sense of being alive as thoughts and feelings and memories course through him. And it felt good, all this stuff coming up! So he let it happen — as opposed to popping an EmergencyInteriorityCollapsor pill, as was prescribed by law is such an emergency — he just lay on the ground and let it all unfold.

Plank felt luminous and alive for the first time in his life. He closed his eyes, no longer anxious, but utterly blissed-out, and he watched it all unfold.

Within six minutes, the Empire Health Squad arrived on the scene. Four officers forcibly yanked Plank up off the ground, hand-cuffed and straight-jacketed him, and stuffed him into the back of a paddy wagon. With its sirens blaring, the van raced across the city towards the Institute for Rehabilitation.

PART II: The Anarchy of the Outside

Chapter One
The Fellowship, the Empire, and Infiltration Dreams

Sadness swarmed Jack Plank as the early morning sun shone through the window and lay across the cabin floor in fingers of light. Jack always felt terrible when he first woke up. Even with his girlfriend Heidi Newell sleeping beside him, Jack still felt miserable. For Jack, life outside the Empire was hell.

He rolled over and grabbed a package that he kept hidden under his mattress. The package had been delivered a few days ago by post. Despite the utter failure of most basic institutions on the outside, like the economy and the federal government, somehow outsiders had managed to organize the post. The mail was delivered through rain and snow, through sleet and societal collapse. It was the first thing outsiders attended to when they began forming the Fellowship, their half-assed excuse for a Congress, a decentralized, anarchic confederation of unions, syndicates and other local organizations of free association. Through this system of the Fellowship, outsiders organized the post first because people liked getting mail. It made them feel connected.

The Fellowship, a profound show of solidarity, was essentially a series of meetings across the ravaged land. Meetings were a powerful thing; the gathering of peoples was awesome. But Fellowship meetings were also quite boring, and most people had a low tolerance for boredom, making the rebuilding of a new and innovative form of society a slow and painstaking process. Moreover, meetings where people argued endlessly about the purpose and legitimacy of “the State” or how to, as the primitivists said, “live off the land,” or what the hell “a Fourier phalanx” was, were less powerful than meetings were people agreed upon a collective vision and then signed historically significant declarations, charters and constitutions. Fellowship meetings were less awesome than meetings where leaders managed to get some electricity, environmentally sound or not, to the people. Or working sewage systems. Or law enforcement. Or laws.

Jack ripped into his package. The return address was: The Empire, The Old White Palace, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 20529. For three years now, Jack had been secretly applying for Empire citizenship. Only his buddy Lomax knew about it; actually Heidi knew too, but only because she was clairvoyant, not because Jack had told her. The problem with Jack’s dream of citizenship was the Empire’s great prejudice against outsiders. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration was a very reluctant department. While once long ago the Empire had a reputation to live up to — the open land of opportunity thing — a rash of terrorist attacks, actually not that many, had made the Empire resentful and exclusive. Emperians didn’t trust foreigners any more, so they didn’t let them in. Only four percent of applicants were granted admission. It had been decided that the idea of a universal melting pot had proved overrated and highly problematic. History had taught the Empire that you can’t throw a bunch of vastly different people together and expect them all to get along swimmingly. Moreover, there really wasn’t enough money to go around anyway. So walls were built.

Jack spread out the contents of the package before him: the cover letter, Form ETA-9089, Form I-485, Instructions for Form I-485, Abstract of Instructions for Form I-485, Comprehensive List of Common Errors Made When Filling Out Form I-485, Brief Summary of Form I-485 Comprehensive List of Errors. The paperwork was extremely abstruse, and deliberately so.

With his elbows on the floor, and his hands holding his head by its temples, Jack tried to make sense of the cover letter.

“Congratulations Candidate 40,506.88! Step 216.b has been filed in your name by the Committee for Outsider Green Cards (COGC) in the process of reevaluation mode for permanent admittance (RMPA). Stage RMPA signifies that a candidate has fulfilled the necessary checks, both background and foreground. And middleground. You are 37/50ths on your way to Empire citizenship!

“Next complete the enclosed forms and return them to headquarters (HQ) within thirty days. If the ratio of your excellence to the related quality gap of your talent-personality set type in the Empire exceeds the necessary constant of 0.036, then your application will be forwarded to CHOMPA (Center Happenings on Male Prospective Applicants).

“Please do not try to contact CHOMPA directly. Such an attempt will result in immediate disqualification and your application will be shredded at a great speed…”

As Jack reread the letter, the words made less and less. He was growing anxious. The completion of step 216.b had seemed to promise more. He thought he was closer than 37/50ths. Thumbing through these new forms and questionnaires, Jack grew distracted and furious. He was going to need to meditate soon. What the hell was this CHOMPA business? He had never heard of it. Moreover, the questions on the lengthy psychological form were bizarre. For example, “1. Do you ever feel you are the only person on the planet?,” or “12. Do you ever sense yourself floating in the ether?” These queries required short answers of no less than 250 words each. This is ridiculous, thought Jack. The survey was haphazard and seemingly endless.

FORM I-485
Psychological Super-Probe C45

20. Give three adjectives, including one color, that best describe the Empire.
21. List these animals in order of your preference: Cow, Chicken, Tiger, Bunny, Cat, Sheep.
22. Do you like fast food? Detail your favorite dollar-menu meal.
23. Describe the influence jazz music has had on your soul. If none, pick another form of Empirean music, except country-western.
24. Describe the influence country-western music has had on your soul.
25. Describe your soul; include one color in said description.
26. Have you enjoyed any movies about characters engaging in any terrorist activities while residing in the Empire?
27. What is more important to you: money or other people’s money?

What a bunch of bullshit, Jack thought. What the hell was fast food? Jack was out of touch with civilization and this bothered him. As for the color of his soul, that was easy enough: blue. Dark, pain blue. And he had heard jazz music once; it had made him feel jittery and spontaneous, so he had that answer. What else? Empire adjectives? Omniscient, omnipotent, and omnivorous. Also, Jack liked cats.

Then Jack lost all motivation for the survey, as was the norm with him and paperwork. After all what did it matter? Jack had plans to infiltrate the Empire. He and Lomax had a connection to the Underground Subway, a group of kind souls dedicated to helping outsiders sneak into the Empire. Jack stood up, grabbed the papers, fetched a pack of matches from the cooking hole, and tiptoed out the front door. Outside in the dirt, he set fire to his dreams of legal Empire admittance. The time for acting above the law had arrived.

Back inside, Jack canoodled Heidi, trying to wake her up. He hated waking up people, seeing as sleep was infinitely preferable to waking life, but he was lonely so he did it anyway. They had to get on the road.

CHAPTER TWO
Starvation, Foot Rubs, and the Being-Pain

Word had it the Empire was going to drop rations over the weekend. A remarkably benevolent act for a ruthless Empire, actually, more a mere show of sympathy designed to make Emperians feel good about themselves. So Jack and Heidi camped out in an open field and waited. Waited for free food, or for at least simulacra of food. Fake dry wafers would be a real treat. It had taken Jack and Heidi five days on foot to reach this hillside. Their feet hurt. They had come by way of an OutsiderOutpost where news of the imminent ReliefRations had arrived just ahead of them. Starving people grew very excited at the prospect of fake bread. One emaciated fellow was promising everybody sugary dried cereal, which had been dropped eighteen months earlier to much elation. Another guy grumbled about the possibility of ProteinPacks, which he claimed tasted like rotten bananas. Heidi, with her uncanny knack for prediction, said everybody should expect DigestiPills, a new invention, tiny, yellow pills that supposedly contained enough sustenance for a week.

Jack’s feet hurt, but he wasn’t going to complain about it. He was happy enough to be finished walking. Happy enough to be lying under the sun in an open field with his girl. Happy enough, which was to say not very happy at all: Jack was a melancholic. He was dark foreboding itself, a star of apprehension. After all, he was living in the ruins of civilization, on the outside of the Empire. Fortunately, he had Heidi, who was blessed with a more sanguine constitution.

“Do you want me to rub your feet?” asked Heidi.

“Yes, please,” said Jack.

This was their routine. Heidi carefully unfastened Jack’s homemade sandals. Jack winced, but kept quiet, acted like a man. Heidi ran her fingers gently along the reddened grooves made by the thick straps. Jack had tied them too tight again; there were cuts, dried blood. Slowly Heidi massaged, until the sensitive skin toughened and she could knead the foot.

In Jack’s drawn-out, painful moans one could hear a hint of ecstasy, a satisfaction of a sexual nature. In fact, Jack almost enjoyed foot massages more than he enjoyed sex, a bizarre preference conditioned by his increasingly curbed expectations for the world. He held his breath, arched his back against the grass, then exhaled, first in brief gusts, then in a single extended release. The touch of Heidi’s hands enveloped his awareness: her touch was his everything. Jack forgot for a moment that he was tired and hungry, and waiting for Empire airplanes to drop synthetic food.

Heidi went about her task with devoted concentration. She derived her pleasure from pleasing Jack. She understood altruism’s dirty little secret: it felt good to help and please others. She always massaged Jack’s feet until he said enough. It was her clever and determined way of teaching Jack to understand when enough was enough. Because one of Jack’s built-in flaws was that he always craved more. More more more. With Heidi’s help, Jack was learning ever so slowly how to restrict his expectations for the world. Heidi often said, “Only when one desires nothing is one truly aligned with the heavens.” Nevertheless, Jack still had big dreams.

After twenty-five minutes, Jack said, “That’s good. Thanks, Babe.”

Both of his feet pulsed with the gentle, aching afterglow of a good, long massage.

Jack sat up and Heidi nested in next to him. They had arrived early. Of course they had — Heidi had them on a strict schedule. The best place to sit was squarely in the middle of the open field, where no ReliefRations would get caught on tree branches. As the morning drew on, gorgeous light cut through the hazy, polluted sky, and other outsiders began to fill the field.

Jack watched the others set up camp. He observed them closely, their dress, posture and manners, looking for signs of sophistication. One woman went topless, her voluptuous, tanned breasts hanging freely for all to see. A pair of lovers strutted around wearing outfits made from leafs, tree bark and wild ferns. One couple allowed their four children to run around naked.

“Stop judging,” said Heidi with her mind, which had curious powers of telepathy. Powers which needless to say tended to bother Jack, who had to work very hard to hide his rich inner life from Heidi’s oppressive clairvoyance.

“Stop reading my mind,” said Jack.

“Can’t help it.”

“Yeah, well, neither can I: I judge.”

They teased each other, and each tease was a serious joke. There should be a word for the way lovers tease each other, a word that means serious joke. A single, perspicuous word for the earnest critique between lovers that goes disguised as comedy.

Empire planes flew overhead emitting their pollution on the outsiders, who coughed and waited. Most of the flying objects were private jets and helicars, the most popular forms of transportation in the Empire. In the southern sky, a hotrod pilot made freewheeling loops and Möbius strips for hours.

No ReliefRations had yet arrived as evening approached. Even the Empire failed to stick to its schedule. An Empire that had successfully imposed its version of the world on the rest of the globe couldn’t manage to get its own planes to take off on time. But this was a plane on a charity mission. Empire planes launched to kill experienced no such delays.

“Do you want me to rub your feet?” Jack asked Heidi this time.

“Please,” said Heidi.

Jack did a pretty good rub himself. There was ample time on the outside to perfect one’s rub. His method was entirely different from that of Heidi’s. He poured his frustration into his rub. He went at Heidi’s foot as if he were angry with it. As if her foot had done him wrong. This made for a particularly vigorous and satisfying rub, though sometimes a wave of massive metaphysical fury accidentally seeped from Jack’s fingers into Heidi’s heel, after which Jack would feel embarrassed, apologize, and then continue rubbing violently. Heidi also moaned, like Jack, in a sexual way.

The sun set in pinks and purples and many colors in between, made all the more fantastic by the toxic chemicals saturating the air. People began to doze off, secure in the knowledge that yet another day had closed on a note of bitter disappointment. Proud to remember that they had never expected much from the Empire in the first place. Fuck the Empire, they said to themselves, eating blades of grass, then falling asleep on the hill, hoping for a dry night.

Jack, an insomniac, ran his fingers through Heidi’s hair as she fell asleep in his lap. How beautiful she is, Jack thought to himself. Her hair was the color of the earth, her skin an olive yellow. Her lips were full; her mouth opened like a flower. She had an adorable strip of peach fuzz that ran down beside her ears, almost a little too far down, spreading onto her cheeks a touch; Jack loved that most.

Bored out of his gourd, Jack picked a blade of grass and made a whistle out of it. He whistled a while. Then he chewed up his whistle grass and swallowed it. This upset his stomach. His chemicals were all out of whack. Perhaps it was something in the air. Something like carbon dioxide.

Then a serious pain seized Jack, right in the center of his chest, as it often did at this time of night. This pain was ineffable, which was the worst part. Jack’s other pains came in many different and terrible forms that he patiently and meticulously catalogued. For example, there was the Pain of Starvation, as well as the Pain of Poorly Performed Sexual Intercourse. Then there was the Pain of Devastating Despair and the Pain of Another Miserable Morning. Generally, this nameless pain appeared in the form of heartache, heartbrokenness, a tender and empty ache. And though he tried diligently to find the right name for this pain, in the end, this single ache eluded coinage. Its source was a mystery. It just felt like his heart was crying for the entire world and all its inhabitants. It felt like a thousand nameless natural shocks. So then, this pain was the Tenderness Pain or the Shock Pain — it was a Pain of Being — the Being-Pain. There’s a name for it.

As evening turned to night, the sky taking on a darker shade of black, Jack took up arms and performed his breathing exercises to pass the time. And time passed, as it is wont to do. Or at least time seemed to pass. Why did time seem to pass, Jack thought, when all it really did was pile up? And so Jack and a sleeping Heidi waited for the word to come true; they waited on the Empire to make good on its promise.

CHAPTER THREE
Key Chains, the Jericho March, and Stomach Guts

It was never a good idea to wait for the Empire to make good on its promise. While Heidi slept, Jack sat still, waiting, for five hours. Midnight arrived and angry people booed. Jack was agitated. Jack was hungry. And his being-pain was throbbing.

Suddenly the sky filled with tiny boxes attached to red, white and blue parachutes. The ReliefRations had arrived! People responded by going crazy. Everyone woke up, even Heidi, an unusually deep sleeper. The boxes with Empire logos floated gently downward while the people on the ground acted like savages trying to secure food for their loved ones. They trampled over one another. They threw pointy elbows. One fellow stepped on the back of a fallen woman. The struggle to survive brought out the worst in people.

Some boxes got stuck in the trees. Inspired by heroism, children scaled the enormous oaks, rescuing rations and throwing them down to their gaunt, open-armed parents. A kid fell and cracked his skull, but he was okay. Just a thin little crack. Nothing a good outsider couldn’t learn to suffer with a quiet pride.

It was like Christmas, only not as fun, and it had nothing to do with Jesus or fourth quarter earnings. Jack and Heidi huddled over their single box. Practicing anti-greed like good outsiders, they decided that one box would be enough for the two of them. The contents of the ReliefRation box were befuddling. The first thing they saw was a note written in enormous block letters, “THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS. SINCERELY, THE EMPIRE.” Entirely inappropriate. Next, there was a bumper sticker that read, “I BUY EMPIRE,” a declaration of consumer loyalty that obviously applied only to Emperians, who still earned and spent Empire dollars. There was a leaflet with information about a new television program called “AssimilationNation.” People on the outside didn’t watch much television due to a lack of TVs and a lack of electricity (not to mention a lack of good programming). But this show looked pretty hot to Jack. The leaflet explained how the show’s producers selected “less civilized” people from around the globe and invited them to participate in the “great, successful human experiment that is the Empire!” Non-Empire citizens would spend six weeks in the Empire “learning the rich culture and imbibing the rich, rich spirit.” Everything was videotaped, which was par for the course in the Empire, where people were obsessed with recording and then watching “reality.” The show’s first season, in which outsider tribesmen lived in the city for six weeks before losing their minds and turning murderous, had been a real hit. The leaflet announced that auditions for the second season of “AssimilationNation” would be taking place next month at a local OutsiderOutpost and that the show’s producers were looking for TV-ready outsiders, or in the words of the leaflet, “star-quality lost Empirians.”

Jack was interested because he considered life on the outside crap. What passed for fun was hanging out in abandoned strip malls pushing each other around in rickety shopping carts until someone got hurt. Or scavenging for hardened bits of French fries in the oil vats of a closed-down fast food joint until someone got sick. Or waiting in open fields for airplanes to drop boxes full of bullshit.

“Maybe I’ll try out,” Jack said.

Heidi looked at Jack as if he were very dumb.

“Why not?” Jack said.

“Why?” Heidi rebutted.

“Why not?” Jack answered.

“Because the show is bad,” said Heidi. “It exploits people for profit.” A solid moral argument.

“But it looks like such fun,” said Jack.

“And so because it’s fun, it’s okay?” said Heidi.

“Sometimes bad things are okay because they’re fun,” said Jack.

“Sometimes you’re okay because you’re fun,” joked Heidi.

Heidi shook her head at what she considered Jack’s confused personal morals. Jack shook his head at what he considered Heidi’s overly cautious conscience.

“I’m just saying it looks interesting,” said Jack, concealing the true root of his desire. Jack harbored big Empire-destruction dreams. More than anything he wished to infiltrate the Empire and blow shit up. But he never told Heidi about his plans, for fear that she would disagree, and maybe leave him. He knew that Heidi held a different, less hell-bent-on-destruction view. She believed in life on the outside, in her basic freedom to live as she pleased; while Jack saw continued starvation as more of a sticking point. Heidi also believed that through spiritual practice one could change things. She had organized the upcoming Jericho March, where outsiders would march around the Empire walls of the capital city for seven days, and thereby, so Heidi believed, bring the walls down. Jack thought it was more likely that pigs would fly; he had suggested dynamite. In short, Heidi always focused on the positive, saw things as workable; while Jack focused on the negative, saw things as blow-up-able.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Heidi.

They dug deeper into the box, through a slew of advertisements, bubble wrap and free key chains. Something rattled at the bottom. A canister of pills. The Empire had dropped DigestiPills after all, proving Heidi’s clairvoyance. A thick line of text across the top of the canister read, “DIGESTIPILLS ARE MAGIC!” To Jack, this seemed like a joke. Some pharmaceutical giant mocking the outsiders’ proclivity towards belief in the supernatural. Then there was an intimidating WARNING/DANGER label which read, “DIGESTIPILLS PROVIDE ENOUGH SUSTENANCE FOR SEVEN DAYS: DO NOT CONSUME MORE THAN ONE PILL IN SEVEN DAY’S TIME!”

Jack was not excited about the pills. What he longed for was actual Empire food and the joy of eating it. He remember previous ReliefRations, and longed for them. He wanted frosted oats in milk made sugary by the cereal’s excessive fructose. He wanted a dry cracker or a wafer. Or the pluot, a sweet fruit he’d only heard about, that was supposedly a hybrid of a plum and an apricot. Amazing! To Jack, the Empire simply had the most amazing food, and lots and lots and lots of it.

“DigestiPills,” said Jack glumly.

“I think it’s exciting!” said Heidi. “Digestipills are an amazing invention. These little pills in our hands could end world hunger. Can you imagine? An end to hunger across the globe!”

But Jack was in one of his moods where Heidi’s enthusiasm made him feel like strangling puppies. He rolled his eyes and thumbed through the “AssimilationNation” leaflet. The picture of the face-painted tribeswomen shopping for handbags at an upscale boutique made him laugh.

“Let’s eat!” Heidi said.

Following the instructions, Jack placed a single pill on his tongue and did not swallow. The pill dissolved instantly.

“That’s it?” asked Heidi.

“That’s the show,” said Jack.

“Hmm.”

They looked each other in the eye, gauging each other’s reaction.

“I’m fucking hungry,” said Jack.

“Me too,” said Heidi.

“Maybe it takes a little time.”

“I guess.”

“Stupid fucking pills.”

“My stomach kind of hurts.”

“Mine too.”

They waited to feel full.

“I wonder what would happen if someone took two pills at once,” said Heidi.

“Probably death would happen,” said Jack.

Then, directly behind Heidi, a man’s stomach exploded. Not his whole body, just his stomach. The eruption was so forceful that parts of the man’s stomach tore through his skin, leaving a big gaping hole where his belly had been. It was gross. He was crying and terrified and staring down at this hole in his body. But he was okay, still breathing, sort of. Though he probably wouldn’t make it much longer. Jack leaned over and picked bits of the man’s innards out of Heidi’s hair.

Another few stomachs exploded making the entire scene macabre. Some people weren’t designed to follow instructions; some people liked to do things their own way. Jack thought it rather cruel that the Empire had dropped such dangerous pills. He envisioned some government clerk deep in the belly of the beast watching this terrifying scene and laughing his ass off.
And indeed there was a clerk deep in the belly of the beast watching this terrifying scene and laughing his ass off.

Meanwhile, Heidi, always sympathetic, thought of all the poor mice whose stomachs must have exploded during the testing stages for the DigestiPill. The scientists in their clean white lab coats must have cleaned up hundreds of rat-gut splattered cages.

“Do you feel full yet?” Jack asked Heidi.

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

“Maybe we got placebos by mistake!” joked Heidi.

That was funny, disturbingly so. They laughed and then laughed some more. A few more bellies exploded because some dyed-in-the-wool idiots thought maybe they could stomach two pills. But the idea of having taken a placebo, and its accompanying threat of continued starvation, was a perfect riot to Jack and Heidi and so they laughed. Hard. Exhaustion and starvation made a person susceptible to bouts of lunacy. Under the midnight moon, Jack and Heidi laughed and laughed at the insanity of things.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Hook, Squirrel Meat, and Mamma’s Last Words

Jack’s best friend Lomax — a.k.a. the Hook — was a terrible womanizer but people still loved him because he was a fun guy. He wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, but he wasn’t a real cowboy. He didn’t actually herd cows or participate in rodeos because wild cows and bulls were mostly extinct. Lomax was a biracial, revolutionary, outsider fool. Also, he had only one hand — one hand and a hook.

His mother had died of cancer when he was a young boy, giving Lomax a deep and unspeakable sadness which nobody spoke about. Moreover, his father was missing. He was likely murdered, as many people living in anarchy were. But some people said he went to fight as a marine mercenary in the War against the Empire on another continent. Either way, he was probably dead. Jack’s father was missing too. Word had it he had abandoned Jack’s mother Helen twenty years ago when Jack was two years old. Another rumor said Jack’s father had successfully infiltrated the Empire; some said he had been captured and killed; others claimed that Jack’s father was alive and well. Jack’s Mom told Jack that his father was probably dead and that he was a jerk anyway, so who cares? That Jack should let the whole thing go. So, on the surface, Jack figured his father could go to hell, but deep down, part of the reason he wanted to sneak into the Empire was to find the man. Jack and Lomax both hated their fathers and this was a strong bond between them. Hate can really bring two people together.

Lomax had found a stray horse out in the farmlands. This made him a happy man because it validated his cowboy fantasy. Moreover, healthy horses were exceedingly rare. Lomax was always pulling these tricks — finding horses, securing water, sleeping with women — he was a very resourceful man. Proudly sitting atop his white stallion, Lomax strode up to Jack and Heidi, still loafing on the hillside, waiting to feel full.

“Where’d you find the horse?” Jack asked.

“Out in the farmlands,” said Lomax, “Near the mountain ridge.”

“What were you doing out that far?”

“L-I-V-I-N’.”

“Right,” said Jack.

“Hello, Miss Heidi,” said Lomax with a gentlemanly nod.

“Hello, Lomax,” said Heidi, “nice horse.”

“Why thank you,” said Lomax. “Look Jack, I just came from your Mom’s place. She’s sick. We gotta get over there.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know, but she was pale in the face,” said Lomax. “I couldn’t even talk to her. She was kneeling on the porch, praying like mad. Rhyming, soul-singing, speaking in tongues, the whole deal.”

“Does she have The Jesus out?” asked Jack.

“Yes, she has The Jesus out.”

This was serious. The Jesus was a relic from the Planks’ former life in the Empire, where Jack had been born. The Jesus was life-sized, a six-foot three-inch replica of the Son of God manufactured by a popular Empire toy company. Just after Jack was born, Helen had insisted on buying it and installing it in the corner of the master bedroom. Jack’s father Arthur, an atheist, had never been a fan of The Jesus. But Helen got her way because she was a woman — a woman of faith. And a woman of faith was mightier than an ocean storm. So the plastic Jesus, in all his splendor and munificence, was erected in the corner of the marital bedroom. Each morning Arthur awoke to a seemingly resurrected Jesus from whose arm he would grab his work slacks. When Helen erupted one morning, irately screaming that The Jesus was not a fucking coat rack, Arthur had had enough. That same night he abandoned the family. Two weeks later, Helen, broke and broken, took her baby boy and left the Empire for the outside.

“We better get going,” said Jack. He stood up and helped Heidi to her feet. He took the canister of DigestiPills and offered one to Lomax.

“Do they work?” Lomax asked.

Jack looked quizzically at Heidi.

“Not really,” said Heidi.

“Actually, I’ve sort of forgotten how hungry I am,” said Jack.

“Yeah, maybe,” said Heidi. “I can sort of sense that. But, if you think about it, there’s still the pain, you know, the hunger.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Jack. “Here Lomax — try one.”

Jack handed Lomax a little yellow DigestiPill, the Empire’s cure to world hunger, if only it worked. The Empire, Jack thought to himself, would be off both the moral and proverbial hook if only this damn pill worked.

“I don’t think it works,” declared Lomax after popping the pill in his mouth with his hook. “But it’s worth a shot.”

The three friends piled onto Lomax’s stallion and headed for the communal cabin on the river where Jack’s mother’s lived.

By the time they arrived, Jack’s mother had died. Johnston, a fellow cabin-dweller, sat by her beside, silently mourning. Jack sat down beside him, cursed the world, felt his heart break, and kept quiet.

Heidi kissed Helen on the top of her head and then went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. She knew Jack would want to be alone.

After a moment, Jack asked, “Was she in pain?”

“Yes,” said Johnston. “Yes, she was. I’m sorry, boy.”

Jack nodded his head. “Did she say anything?”

“Yes,” said Johnston, “she said, 'It’s no big deal.'”

“What’s no big deal?” asked Jack.

“I don’t know,” said Johnston. “Her dying, I suppose.”

Jack grew angry, not at Johnston, or at what his mother had said, but at death itself. Johnston, misinterpreting Jack’s anger, said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what she meant.”

“It’s okay,” said Jack. “Mamma used to say that all the time.”

“Hmm,” said Johnston, rising to his feet. “I’m gonna leave you alone. You need anything?”

“No,” said Jack. “Thank you.”

Johnston left Jack alone with the corpse of his mother. Jack looked at her face, wondered at her last thoughts. He felt utterly alone, and angry. At himself mostly. It’s no big deal. Fuck, Mamma, he thought, yes it is, isn’t it? Isn’t it all a Great Big Deal? Jack didn’t know. At that moment, Jack felt he didn’t know anything at all, beside the fact that death is, that death comes, and that —whatever the order of the universe — the fact remained that human life came and went like so many sun-ups and sun-downs. And perhaps it was no big deal, he thought. Perhaps Mamma was right.

Out back, Lomax and Jack dug a grave. They buried her right then and there. At the service, Heidi said a prayer and sang a song, an old folk tune. Jack couldn’t handle the ceremony. His bedrock love for his mother had been for Jack the only truth in a sea of half-truths, and now he had only the memory of her to love. He walked away before the song had finished.

Later, Jack and Lomax kept watch on the front porch. Rapists and thieves and murderers freely roamed the outside. This was the unfortunate downside of lawlessness. Lomax owned a rifle, but few bullets. Bullets were hard to come by. By his last count, he had seven bullets remaining. He liked to fantasize about how the last seven bullets would be used. He liked to fantasize about killing the Emperor of the Empire, even though such fantasizing was illegal and punishable by death.

They sat in silence, watching the shadows of the night flicker.

“I’m real sorry about your Mom,” said Lomax.

“Yeah,” said Lomax, chucking a pebble across the front lawn.

A long time passed. Jack turned stones over in his fingers.

“Look man,” said Lomax, “When are we going to do this? When do we infiltrate?”

Jack was happy enough to discuss the plans. He believed action was the only solution to suffering.

“We take Heidi to the Jericho March tomorrow,” he said, “and then we can leave from there the following morning. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” said Lomax. “So did you tell her yet?”

“No, but I’m sure she knows. She’s clairvoyant.”

“Right.”

Outside in the cold distance a wildcat dug the ground. A furry creature appeared from behind a tree. Lomax snapped to attention, his killer instinct serving him well. He smelled a meat breakfast. It was unusual to see animals on the outside; entire species were dropping like flies.

Lomax, even with only one hand, was a very good shot, but with his first bullet, he missed the furry creature by a truck’s length. The creature scurried across the front yard, hiding behind another tree. He fired again and nipped the creature in the butt. The creature whimpered; Lomax cursed. A man obsessed was a doomed thing.

Two more shots missed.

The despair of everything washed over Lomax as he thought about what a fool he’d been to waste four bullets on a failed hunt. What was he shooting at anyway? It looked like a groundhog. Could I even eat groundhog?, he thought. Probably not. Not unless I want to eat a marmot with rabies.

Jack stood up to take his leave and put his hand on Lomax’s shoulder.

“I’m going to bed,” he said.

“Good idea, man,” said Lomax. “Try and get some sleep.”

“I’m just gonna lie next to Heidi a while,” said Jack. “I’ll be back out to keep watch in a few hours.”

“Don’t worry about it, man,” said Lomax. “You get some sleep.”

Jack turned toward the front door. Lomax called out to him, “Hey, look on the bright side, Jack —at least the apocalypse didn’t arrive today.”

“You’re right,” Jack smiled. “No apocalypse today. That’s a good thing.”

The apocalypse never arrived, or else, arrived over and over again. It was hard to tell the difference. Jack went inside. Lomax stared off into the darkness for any sign of the groundhog, for any sign of edible life.

CHAPTER FIVE
Compassion, Non-Violence, Solidarity, Egolessness and Other Bright Ideas

Heidi was a tremendous sleeper because she had serenity in her soul. She was such a deep sleeper that it took her a full hour to wake up. For this hour, she lived in a semi-conscious state, half-dream, half-real. Sometimes she confused her dreams for her real life. Jack surmised that it was this slow coming-to-consciousness in the mornings that helped give Heidi such a positive outlook. He liked to think that she confused the awful truths of existence with the marshmallowy fantasies of her dream world.

“I have shut-eye disease,” Heidi muttered sleepily, as Jack nuzzled her awake. It was only a joke, and not a real disease. Heidi had a terrible time opening her eyes first thing in the morning, trapped as she was between two modes of being.

“Aww,” said Jack, kissing her closed lids.

Heidi clung to Jack and drifted off into bizarro-world, while Jack stared at the ceiling and thought about death. What exactly, in the end, died? Her body, her soul? And what, if anything, lived on? Her consciousness, her thoughts? Her love? Was there any her at all?

Eventually Heidi opened her eyes and started saying silly things like “Gunga galoo,” which had no discernable meaning whatsoever, but sounded funny. Jack responded in the same language, “Googa boogla,” the language of love, the language of children. They continued with this nonsense for a few minutes, then started their morning routine.

Jack was a spiritual warrior. An earnest fellow. He diligently practiced his own private religion, a rational brand of spirituality complete with rigorous ascetic exercises and peculiar mystical rites. Once Heidi found Jack buck naked, arms outstretched, legs spread-eagle, tied face-down to a raft at eight places, and floating aimlessly down a toxic river. After the rescue, Jack claimed that this prostrated position had induced much insight. Using another arcane method, Jack often subjected himself to dangerous bouts of apnea while he slept, again, claiming insight as his reward. But simple silent meditation was the keystone to Jack’s practice. Yet, Jack was not a naturally skilled meditator. During his sits, he often fell asleep or entertained sexual fantasies or told himself stories. Indeed, Jack, a worldly, melancholic fellow of flawed human stock, was not particularly suited to the winning of spiritual truths. Nevertheless, this lack of natural ability did not deter Jack from his pursuit. His spirit craved nourishment and growth. And moreover, perhaps something did happen after death. Perhaps something came next. Perhaps all his earnestness was not in vain. Perhaps, he thought, Mamma was right and death is no big deal. And if it turned out that spiritual rewards in this life or the next life or the life beyond were a grand hoax perpetrated against the human race by an unfriendly universe (or an evil genius or a wrathful God), at least Jack could honestly claim that he had tried. I tried. Those would be his last words, he thought to himself. I sat here, upright and alert, and at least tried to figure it all out. Moreover, the insights Jack accrued along his odd and rigorous path were a boon. This was vital. For what mattered most was that Jack’s private religious practices, despite their occasional lapses in logic, panned out empirically. And they did indeed, Jack’s practices yielded daily gold.

So Jack sat cross-legged on the floor and meditated, while Heidi performed her angel hum. The angel hum was Heidi’s own creation, her own private religion. She hummed a single note, lightly and softly, in her angelic soprano, for twenty minutes or so. She claimed this practice, if performed with devoted discipline every morning, helped her stay in contact with the angels. Heidi looked cute doing her angel hum and the practice seemed to make her a calmer, more peaceful person, so Jack didn’t bother telling her that angels were not real.

After the spiritual stuff, Jack and Heidi put on their clothes, the same clothes from the day before and the day before that. Heidi wore a tattered white and flowered dress over a pair of trusty blue jeans. Jack dressed in black. Black boots, black jeans, and a thick black flannel. The blue man in black.

In the front room, Lomax grilled squirrel meat over an open fire. Beaming with pride, he whistled an old loopy melody. Johnston sat in the corner of the kitchen, trying not to worry about global warming. Jack and Heidi, spiritually centered up, joined the happy scene.

“Meat for breakfast, ladies and gentlemen,” shouted Lomax. “Meat!”

“You got a squirrel?” said Jack.

“That’s right, boss. In a single shot.”

“Isn’t that wonderful?” said Johnston.

“I don’t eat meat,” said Heidi.

“Can you eat squirrel?” said Jack. “I’ve never had squirrel.”

“Of course you can eat a squirrel,” said Lomax. “It’s a delicacy in some places.”

“Which places?” asked Heidi.

“For your information, Little Miss Vegetarian,” said Lomax, “squirrel is delicious.”

“You’re so full of crap, Lomax,” said Heidi.

“Come on now,” said Johnston. “We’re all going to eat — well, except Heidi — so let’s get along.”

“I don’t even feel hungry,” said Heidi cheerfully. “Maybe the DigestiPill is working.”

Only someone like Heidi could still believe that the DigestiPill might be working. The others were happy enough to feast on the blackened, chewy meat of a rodent.

It took over an hour to eat breakfast because the squirrel meat was very rubbery.

Outside, Lomax’s white stallion was gone. Somebody had stolen it, or else it had escaped. Lomax let fly a colorful string of expletives. Heidi was offended. The three travelers started out on foot.

“Let’s stay along the river,” said Lomax, “and I’ll see if I can’t scrounge us up a boat.”

They were headed to Heidi’s Jericho March. The famous Biblical story was Heidi’s inspiration. Joshua and the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho for seven days, and seven times on the seventh day, at which point, they gave out a trumpet-filled war-cry, and the walls of the city crumbled. This was the idea. Heidi believed that if she and her fellow outsiders marched around the walls of the Empire, the walls might crumble. She believed in her heart of hearts that such miracles were possible. Jack, on the other hand, thought straight dynamite might be the wiser option.

In Heidi’s mind, the whole of world history was bending into the Jericho March.

Meanwhile, at the March, Jack planned to rendezvous with an explosives expert.

Heidi had planned the March to coincide with a longstanding outsider’s tradition, the Drum Festival, a yearly festival on the banks of the river that had very little to do with drumming and more to do with spirituality. It was a celebration of spirit and of life, focusing on the four supreme virtues of compassion, solidarity, non-violence and egolessness. All natural human impulses, survival-of-the-fittest Darwinism notwithstanding. Heidi adored the Festival because her parents had taken her every year. On the other hand, Jack struggled with the Festival and found its celebrated virtues difficult to live by. Take non-violence for example. Sounded great in theory, he thought, but the idea took for granted humankind’s obsession with killing each other as well as the darkness in our very blood.

But this year’s festival was special, because of the March. This year the festival goers planned to use their spiritual powers to cause the walls of the Empire to tumble down. The idea was that if enough people visualized the walls crumbling, then the walls would crumble.

They walked southward on a thinly wooded path along the river. Birds chirped and Lomax whistled back. Jack felt the meat from breakfast sitting heavily in his stomach. He stopped by the side of the path and retched, but nothing came up. A dry heave. Heidi thought she saw a long row of dead squirrels just off the path, but she was only hallucinating from hunger and guilt. When she exclaimed, “Oh my God, dead squirrels!”, Jack assured her that the dead squirrels were merely a figment of her conscientious imagination.

The day began to elongate itself. They passed sections of the path that recalled earlier sections, giving them the unsettling sense that they had already been there. The sun inched ever so slowly towards the top of the sky. Another day to get through. They trudged on.

Danger lurked around every corner on the outside. A flaw in any utopian vision was the existence of people with criminal tendencies. Two hours into the hike, a man who’d been hiding in the branches of a tree fell from the air onto Heidi’s back and started screaming awful things about stealing her virginity (which she didn’t even have). He pinned her to the ground as Jack booted him squarely in the eye, sending him flying backwards. Lomax came over and stabbed the wild man in the gut with the butt of his rifle. Jack stood with his heel on the man’s throat and decided whether to spare him or not, or rather, whether to kill him or not. Jack was furious, but he had never actually killed a man and wasn’t sure he could do it even if he wanted to. Although, if he were ever curious about killing — and he was — then here was his golden opportunity. A wild, bearded, shirtless man, with rabid eyes and a hair lip. A forgotten man, as violent and uncivilized as nature herself. An expendable man if ever there were one.

“The gun,” said Jack, holding his hand out to Lomax.

“No more bullets, boss,” said Lomax.

“I thought you said you got that squirrel in one shot. That leaves one bullet.”

“I lied. It took me two shots.”

“Fuck, Lomax.”

“Give me a break, boss — I only got one hand!”

Heidi pleaded for the man’s life.

Jack was conflicted. Jack considered rapists to be the worst people. This man’s attack filled Jack with a murderous fury that made him feel alive. Made him feel something true and awful and powerful inside himself. Jack and his rage wanted to kill this man. This much was certain: a murderer dwelled within. From a very young age, Jack had felt this savage capacity, and it was a rotten feeling. Jack called this feeling of intimate and inexorable connection to humankind’s great historical chain of violence the Pain of the Cycle of Violent Rage. By sticking close to his religious mother, practicing his spiritual exercises, and loving Heidi doggedly, Jack had managed to keep his innate rage under wraps. And he hadn’t killed anyone yet.

But now this cesspool of a man was under his heel. He fantasized about how he would kill: he could see himself grinding the man’s throat with his boot. Maybe a couple of kicks to the face, just to bloody him up and make him ugly. Poke out his eyeballs. And surely a heel to the brain would end his life. Ah, the joys of Jack’s imagination.

The man grabbed Jack’s knee and pulled him to the ground in a surprising show of strength. They wrestled on the floor of the woods. Lomax leapt into the fray and pulled the man’s arms behind his back. Jack began socking him in the stomach as Heidi turned her head. Anger got the best of Jack as he punched and kicked away. It was a bloody showing. Finally the man lost consciousness and the fight subsided. The man was still breathing as evidenced by the rise and fall of his chest. Lomax fell to the ground and covered his face with his hook. Jack crawled to Heidi to save him from himself, and took her into his arms, and even though his arms were all bloody, Heidi didn’t mind, in fact, she didn’t even think of it because of the high drama of the situation.

It was an unfortunate incident, seeing as these three were on their way to a festival of non-violence. Lomax was the first to speak, “I hate that. I hate bad people.” Then, after a brief, therapeutic silence, they picked themselves up and continued on their way.

[More chapters to follow...]

Subway Reading

2008-06-18T08:03:00.001-07:00

A man, a suit, harried-looking but respectable enough, buttoned-up, daylong-worn, surreptitiously pulls from his hard black briefcase an article printed off the internet. The story, which made its ephemeral wave in the mediasphere, in the PublikConscienceConsciousness, was New York Magazine’s “The Affairs of Men”, published on May 18th, 2008, in the aftermath of the Spitzer so-called scandal, and that of his successor-extraordinaire, the blind adulterer David Paterson, and of the dual-familied Congressman Vito Fossella, etc., etc., etc. — in the goddam aftermath of the Circe-sleeping, Telegonus-spawning Odysseus — the story, a semi-confessional look at perpetual male infidelity, the spermatozoa imperative, the unruly, ever-swimming flagella. Someone, perhaps he himself, the subway reader, took pains to print out this story on paper, and, watching, I think, reason dictates action.

Egg Sandwich

2008-06-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

The newday, the hungrystomach. The deli man, a devout Muslim, born in Yemen, with a family back home, stands aloft, above the Doritos-eating rabble, taking orders and sandwichsmithing. A pair of cops idling about in the Gourmet Deli & Grocery, heckling the sandwichman.

—You’d vote for a woman? says the boy-in-blue. A woman as Commander in Chief?

The sandwichman says he did not say that. The conversation turns to the current Denier in Chief. The deliman incurs the policeman’s wrath.

—You don’t think he knew? says the deliman. About the 911 plot? Oh, he knew.

—What? fumes the cop, What are you saying?

—That he knew, the sandwichman incites, of course he knew.

—No way, man, the cop reiterates, he acted like a true leader.

—Reading goat books to kids!, laughs the sandwichman.

The sulphur-smelling anger of the cop, a man locked-down in his own chosen system of state-loyalty.

—Make me my goddam sandwich!

The deliman is an imp, knowingly bedeviling his customers. Another, a chubby Hispanic, the secretary of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, cornered on Bedford and South 1st, rattles her saber.

—How long’s a bagel and cream cheese take, huh?

—You wanted it toasted, yeah? says the sandwichman.

—You need a new toaster, she ripostes.

And the blind grandmother of ignorance speaks:

—I’ve got to get back to my job, she says, some of us have real jobs.

Sensing that dog shit, the deliman’s mind turns vicious.

—What? he asks, Ripping people off for their rent checks, that’s a real job?

—You wouldn’t know what to do with our commission checks, the secretary jabs.

The deliman, unperturbed, adamantine, proceeds to mock me for my staunch onion preference, whining in satire, I want my onion. But I say what is an egg sandwich without onions! Somewhere along the longpastline I got hooked. I see yellow and purple bulbs of Allium cepa in an ancient field...

Glancing at me, the two of us in cahoots, the sandwichman smears the cream cheese on the toasted everything, pushes it aside, lets it sit a minute before the final cut and wrap. Justice in the slowdown. The whole world over, justice in the slowdown.

The sunlight brightens

2008-05-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

The sunlight brightens the green
on the leaves of the tree,
and the writer’s mood is uplifted,
nearly imperceptibly, but enough
to remind him that language
is both his morass and his savior,
and that, simply by listening,
he can put one word after another,
or if he were feeling frisky, one word
behind another, and thereby arrive
at a point where something had arisen
by itself, of itself, and for itself,
ever self-arising, ever coming-into-being
of their own accord, the words upon words,
and then, at last, after a long wordless
morning, he can watch his cat duck at
the passing bird flying outside the window,
and see that all perception is skewed,
is total and individual and real,
and that green never was green at all
before he arrived on the scene.

Bonnie, Bonnie

2008-04-23T22:24:00.001-07:00

a play in Two Acts
by Paul Charles Griffin

“I made a pillow of my mother’s bones and remained in an undistracted state of tranquility, in clear and deep meditation, whereby I realized that it was indeed possible to save both my father and mother from the pain and miseries of existence.”
-Milarepa, from “Life and Hymns of Milarepa”

CHARACTERS
FATHER. A former high ranking Marine, fifty.
SON. A young man, teens.
CORPSE. The charred corpse of a suicidal soldier.
WANDERER. A former Marine, AWOL, wandering the countryside.
GOVERNMENT AGENT ONE.
GOVERNMENT AGENT TWO.

ACT I

Post socio-economic collapse America. East coast, perhaps New Jersey, or South Carolina. A totalitarian government rules the land, but its power is largely centered in the cities, as the ravaged countryside proves difficult to govern. The woods and beaches, the mountains and caves, are pure anarchy. Great plumes of smoke along the horizon, a crumbled city skyline, a passing vulture.

Morning, sunrise. The sound of gulls.

FATHER and SON sit meditating on a hillside. Before them, the scorched dead body of a soldier and a back pack. As the sun rises, the two sit perfectly still, absorbing the sun, for a few minutes. The tempo of the play is slow, mindful, patient. Pure Zen hilarity. Open spaces and pregnant silences predominate.

SON opens his eyes and peeks at FATHER, still absorbed in his meditation. SON returns to meditation, for about ten seconds or so. SON peeks again; same result; returns to meditation. FATHER peeks, sees SON is meditating, returns to meditation. SON peeks; same result. FATHER peeks; same result. They peek at the same time. Ha. They smile and bow to one another.

They adjust themselves, remain sitting.

FATHER (luxuriously). Ah, space.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. I feel miserable.
FATHER. Do you?
SON. Yes, I do.
FATHER. How miserable? — on the scale of one to seven?
SON. Six.
FATHER (disbelieving). Oh, come on.
SON (looking down at the scorched body). For God’s sake, the soldier burned himself alive yesterday right in front of us.
FATHER. Yes, that was tough... and so we learn to die.
SON. That’s all we ever do.

Pause.
FATHER looks hard at SON.

SON. Fine, four and a half.
FATHER (smiling, making the fist strong sign, a gesture of high morale shared between FATHER and SON, fingers of the right hand curled tightly into a fist, the fist up in the air to the right of the face, the right elbow at a right angle). That’s the spirit! What, bad dreams again?
SON. Yes, hellish nightmares.
FATHER. Ah yes, hellish nightmares. The one with the Great Meteor rushing toward the earth to annihilate us?
SON. No.
FATHER. The one with the Great Dragon eating the innards of seven thousand newborn babies?
SON. No.
FATHER. Hmm. The one with Great Men and Women gnawing on their own tongues in agony and cursing God and refusing to repent for what they have done?
SON. No, but I like that one.
FATHER. It’s a classic.
SON. A new one.
FATHER. Any nuclear bombs?
SON. No, but there was a cockroach.
FATHER. And?
SON. That’s all I remember.
FATHER. These dreams, too, shall pass, my son.
SON. So you say.
FATHER (reciting a fragment of the Heart Sutra). Om, gate gate.
SON (translating). Gone, gone.

Pause.

FATHER (enthusiastically). If the dream was terrifying, then it should have felt great to wake up.
SON. Yes, it did. For a second.
FATHER. Well, now, give it a minute.

Pause.

FATHER. Any better now?
SON. A touch.
FATHER (again making the fist strong sign). You see — the fluctuations of consciousness! Just keep breathing.
SON. If you insist.

A rustle in the leaves is heard. FATHER turns quickly towards the sound, the threat.

SON. What was that?

FATHER listens intently. The rustle is heard again.

SON (frightened). Dad?
FATHER. Shh.

FATHER and SON listen intently. The rustle is heard a third time. FATHER quickly rises to his feet, at attention. SON follows suit.

SON. They’re coming.
FATHER. No.
SON (hysterical). The agents!
FATHER. No!
SON. Then who?
FATHER (listening intently). Nobody.
SON. Then what?
FATHER. Nothing.
SON. Nothing’s coming?
FATHER (thinking of death). Precisely.
SON (listening). No, it’s not nothing.
FATHER. Maybe a squirrel then.

FATHER and SON listen and look around intently. They hear and see nothing more.

FATHER. Hmm.

Pause.

SON. What happens next?
FATHER. We stay on the path.
SON (in mock obedience). Yes, sir.

FATHER gives SON a punishing look.

FATHER (enthusiastically). We keep moving and we find the man who murdered your mother.
SON. But will we really?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. We didn’t yesterday.
FATHER. No, we didn’t.
SON. And you thought we would.
FATHER. Soon enough, we will.
SON (cynically). It's been soon enough for two years now.
FATHER. Yes, I know. Two long years — but a mere fragment of time in eternity.
SON. Things take time.
FATHER. Eons and eons.

Pause, in the nature of eons.

SON. Where?
FATHER. Where what?
SON. Where will we find him?
FATHER. Where ever he is.
SON. And what will we do with him when we find him?
FATHER. We’ll punish him.
SON. How?
FATHER. That depends.
SON. On what?
FATHER. On his level of repentance.
SON (sincerely). I want to tear his eyes out.
FATHER. Do you?
SON. Yes, very much so.
FATHER. Why?
SON. I’ve had dreams about it.
FATHER. About tearing his eyes out.
SON. Yes.
FATHER. Why do you want to tear his eyes out?
SON. To balance things out.
FATHER. We’ll do that then, if it comes to that.
SON. You’ll hold him down, will you?
FATHER. Yes, if it comes to that, I will hold him down for you.
SON. You’re the best, Pop.
FATHER. Okay, we’ll see.

Pause.

FATHER (evenly, then enthusiastically). For now, put all of that out of mind, and let’s do our singing practice.

FATHER and SON sit again. FATHER hums a note. SON hums the first verse of Loch Lomond, beautifully. FATHER joins for the chorus. They sing the words in harmony.

"O ye'll take the high road and I'll take the low road,
An' I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomon'."

Pause. FATHER is sad. FATHER sighs gently.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. What is “bonnie”?
FATHER. It’s a silly, Scottish word.
SON. But what does it mean?
FATHER. You already know what it means.
SON. No, I don’t.
FATHER. Look at the root.
SON. “Bon.”
FATHER. Yes.
SON. Good.
FATHER. Exactly.
SON. So bonnie means good?
FATHER. Look at the suffix.
SON. “Y” — Having the quality of the thing mentioned.
FATHER. Also spelled “ie”.
SON. The diminutive.
FATHER. Right.
SON. So bonnie means a slight degree of good, or the endearment or affection thereof.
FATHER. Close. Bonnie means attractive or beautiful.
SON. Why not good?
FATHER. Good, beautiful, true — at a point, they’re all the same.
SON. Oh.
FATHER (chuckling). Also because language is horrible and imprecise and the source of much confusion. If words were physical entities I would strangle them... with all due respect to the things.
SON. With all due respect.
FATHER. They’re all right.
SON. They’re bon.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. Did the Scottish have a lot of silly words?
FATHER. Yes, they did.
SON. What’s another one?
FATHER. Wee.
SON. Wee!
FATHER. Sea-maw.
SON. Sea-maw!
FATHER. Minny.
SON. Minny!

FATHER is sad.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. Tell me about Loch Lomond again.
FATHER. It’s a place.
SON. A beautiful place, right?
FATHER. Right.
SON. What else?
FATHER. Loch Lomond is a place that existed long ago and far away. A gorgeous, pure place of banks and glens and freshwater. An enlightened kingdom. And in fact, Loch Lomond still exists, only now it’s hidden away.
SON. And we’re always looking for it, right, Dad?
FATHER. Right.
SON. And, in a way, it exists right here and right now, right?

They look around at the rubble and the wasteland, and at the dead body before them.

FATHER (breathing in, out). Yes.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. Why do you always get sad after we sing Loch Lomond in the morning?
FATHER. Because the song is so beautiful.
SON. But shouldn’t that make you happy?
FATHER. Does it make you happy?
SON. Yes, the song makes me happy.
FATHER. That’s good.
SON. That’s bon!
FATHER. Right.

Pause.

SON. But why does the song make me happy and you sad?
FATHER. Because my dopamine levels are lower than yours.
SON. Oh, chemistry and whatnot.
FATHER. That’s one way of looking at it.
SON. Are there other ways?
FATHER. There is always more than one way of looking at something.
SON. I could look at you while sitting or I could look at you while standing on my head.
FATHER. Or you could look at me from outer space.
SON. Or I could look at you with my eyes closed.
FATHER (pointing to SON’S hands). Or with the eyeballs in your hands.
SON (making a joke, pointing to his own head). Or with the eyeballs in my mind!

They laugh.

SON. So what’s the other way?
FATHER. What other way?
SON. The other way to look at why you get sad when the song ends.
FATHER. The song is beautiful, and then it ends. The fleeting nature of beauty is sad.
SON. Oh... Is it the same with ugly things?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. Can we sing an ugly song and experiment?
FATHER. Of course. Always experiment.
SON. Always experiment!
FATHER. But later.
SON. Okay, later.
FATHER. Let’s do our exercises first.

They stand up and situate themselves, facing one another, five feet apart. They begin with Chinese splits.

FATHER. Get back on your heels... breathe...

They stand up and do twenty jumping jacks in perfect unison, taking turns calling out the count.

FATHER. Knuckle push-ups.
SON (shouting, with a mock toughness). KNUCKLE PUSH-UPS!

They do twenty knuckle push-ups facing each other, breathing only twice, five push-ups on each in-breath and five push-ups on each out-breath. They stand up.

FATHER (gung-ho). There are thieves and robbers along the path, son.
SON. And liars and murderers and government agents, too.
FATHER. Indeed. Defensive stance — ready, hut!

They both assume a defensive stance. Feet two shoulder widths apart, parallel to one another. Knees over the feet. Thighs parallel to the ground, horizontal. Back straight as a rod, vertical. Fists tucked up be- hind the chest. Shoulders relaxed. They breath deliberately, five seconds in, five seconds out.
As they hold this stance, SON speaks.

SON. My quads hurt.
FATHER. Go beyond the pain.
SON (mocking his FATHER). “Go beyond the pain.”

FATHER gives SON a stern look.

FATHER. Back straight.

SON straightens his stance.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Focus on your breathing.
SON. My nightmare is coming back to me.

SON stares down at the dead body of the soldier for a moment. While still in defensive stance, FATHER steals a nip from his hip flask.

FATHER. Any clues?
SON. I think so.
FATHER. Let’s hear it, every detail.
SON. There were two parts. (Indicating the dead body) In the first part, the soldier set himself on fire.
FATHER. Just like yesterday?

As SON recounts his dream, CORPSE rises and acts out the scene described.

SON. Not exactly. It was different from what we saw. In my dream, the soldier poured gasoline all over himself, just like he did yesterday. But then he poured it all over me. And then he poured it all over you. And he lit a big match and just held it out there in front of him.
FATHER. That’s tough.
SON. He held the match there throughout the entire dream.
FATHER. Nothing else happened?
SON. He made faces.
FATHER. Scary faces?
SON (sarcastically). No, funny faces.

SON makes a funny-looking scary face. FATHER laughs.

FATHER. But he didn’t set anybody on fire?
SON. No, he just threatened to.
FATHER. What do you think this dream means?
SON (laughing). That I’m going to fucking die.
FATHER (the following sung to the joyful “Olay” melody). “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die.”

Pause.

SON. Yeah, that doesn’t help.
FATHER (referring to SON’S stance). Drop lower.

SON drops lower. CORPSE resumes his position on the ground.

SON. That’s a disturbing song.
FATHER. I suppose so.
SON. I hate when you sing that song.
FATHER. Sorry.
SON. Do you feel sad now, after that ugly song?
FATHER. Somewhat.
SON. How sad? On the scale of one to seven?
FATHER. Now? Or right after the song was over?
SON. Right after the song was over.
FATHER. Four and a half.
SON. That’s pretty sad. So it does happen for you after both ugly and beautiful songs.
FATHER. Yes.
SON. I wouldn’t have expected that.

Pause. Both FATHER and SON are still in defensive stance.

FATHER. Okay, using your breathing, return to ready stance.

They breath together and resume a normal stance, arms at their side, feet a shoulder width apart. They shake their legs out.

FATHER. You said there was a clue?
SON. I think so.
FATHER (eagerly). What happened next?
SON. There was a sailor. With a peg leg, a patch over one eye, and that sailor’s voice. He said (in sailor’s voice), A barrel is buried down by the beach, beneath the willow tree. (In a normal voice) He continued, An old thirty gallon gasoline barrel, emptied out, and filled with bitter tobacco and strong whiskey. He said, I myself buried this barrel on the beach, six feet below the surface, beneath the willow tree, close to the hot sun and the salty water. Using this method, he said (in the sailor’s voice), I have brewed the strongest, finest whiskey known to man.
FATHER. What else?
SON. He said, And at the bottom of this barrel of whiskey is a cockroach, soaked in the good stuff.

SON works a bad taste out of his mouth.

FATHER. Okay.
SON. And then the sailor said (in sailor’s voice), Eat the cockroach.

Pause.

SON. He said it over and over again, Eat the cockroach, eat the cockroach, eat the cockroach.

SON is deeply disturbed.

FATHER. That’s good stuff, son. That’s a clue.
SON. Yeah?
FATHER. Of course — the cockroach lives forever.
SON. I’m going to have to eat a cockroach, aren’t I?
FATHER. Looks like it.

FATHER makes fist strong sign. SON returns the sign, but half-heartedly, at an angle. FATHER makes the sign again, in good form. SON returns the sign, in good form.

FATHER. Punches!

FATHER looks to SON and breathes, then they begin a series of fifty punches, tight fists, straight out in front of them, towards the audience.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Focus on your form, son.

A few more punches.

SON. Something else’s been bothering me.
FATHER. Besides the cockroach?
SON. Yes.
FATHER. What’s that?
SON (looking down again at the soldier at their feet). I can’t figure out why the soldier killed himself yesterday.
FATHER. He made the decision. He had abandoned his military post, they were after him.
SON. Just like they’re after you.
FATHER (still punching). Yes. And maybe they were too close.
SON. And he got scared?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. He fell into a deep despair, didn’t he?
FATHER. Yes, he succumbed to despair.
SON. How does one keep that from happening?
FATHER. With practice.
SON (still punching). Yeah, that doesn’t really explain it for me.

Pause.

FATHER (stopping punching). Do we need to talk about this?
SON (stopping punching). Yes.
FATHER. Okay, first, let’s think a minute.

FATHER stands silent for one minute, comically ruminating, stroking his chin, enthusiastically nodding his head, gesticulating with his pointer finger, in a word — thinking.

FATHER (grandly, moving peripatetically across the stage). Okay, I got it. A man goes to the movies. (An aside.) I mean, a man went to the movies, back before the wars, before the bombs, before the collapse. (Preachy.) Back when a man could still live in the city and enjoy its culture without sacrificing his basic freedoms to an oppressive totalitarian government. (Overdoing it, gesturing to his surroundings.) Back before signs of the end of the world, before poisoned waters and world annihilating weapons, before rampant materialism, moral bankruptcy and spiritual nihilism, spread out across the face of the earth —
SON (exasperated). Okay, Dad, okay.
FATHER (grandly again, pacing to and fro). Right. So. A man goes to the movies. You were young, but surely you remember how that worked. Our man sits near the back and eats his buttery popcorn and drinks his sugary cola. Soon he realizes he hates the movie he’s watching. He loathes every last bit of it. The main character, the supporting character, the main plot, the subplot. He despises the directing, the acting, the script, the cinematography, the soundtrack, the lighting, the editing, the sound effects, the special effects, the costumes, the key grip, yes, he even hates the gaffer!
SON. He hates the catering company.
FATHER. Precisely! So he decides to end his misery right then and there and walk out. He stands up, brushes the popcorn off his lap, steps over the other people enjoying the film — imbeciles! mindless automatons! every last one of them! he thinks to himself — and he exits the theater. Then, and only then, as he steps outdoors into the blinding daylight, the glorious noonday sun — it was a matinee — then, finally, at last, he experiences a shock of enlightenment. He looks around him, and lo and behold, he’s still in the movie! He’s standing on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan. What does he see? That the movie is his life. The same crappy main character and supporting character, the same blasted main plot and subplot. He despises the directing, the acting, the script, the cinematography, the soundtrack, the lighting, the editing, the sound effects, the special effects, the costumes, the key grip, yes, he even hates the gaffer!
SON. He hates the catering company.
FATHER (crying out). Yes! So what does he do?
SON (exasperated). I don’t know. He goes back into the movie.
FATHER (deadpan with the punchline). No — he kills himself.

FATHER chuckles.

SON. Yeah, that doesn’t help.
FATHER. No? Don’t you see the point?
SON. Even if he kills himself, he’ll end up back in the movie.
FATHER. Yes, in some movie or another.
SON. What movie?
FATHER. Hard to say.
SON. A Hollywood movie or an art-house movie?
FATHER. Some movie or another, some body or another.
SON. So it’s a metaphor for reincarnation?
FATHER. Yes, for metempsychosis — transmigration of the soul.
SON. You’re holding pretty firm to that view.
FATHER. Of course.
SON (skeptically). The soul?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. I thought we didn’t believe in the soul.
FATHER. If you desire more precision, then you could call that which transmigrates karmic formulations.
SON (skeptically). Karmic formulations?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. That’s ambiguous to me.
FATHER. Then call it the soul.
SON. But do I really have a soul?

FATHER hesitates a moment, then proceeds to put his SON in a choke hold. SON flails about.

SON. I see, I see!

FATHER releases his choke hold.

SON. There’s something there.

FATHER nods.

SON (feeling his neck). Jesus, I thought the whole idea was not to be afraid of death.
FATHER. It is. Everybody’s died thousands and thousands of times. It’s no big deal.
SON. I don’t see it that way.
FATHER. Give it time.

Pause.

SON. Then what happens?
FATHER. Eons.
SON. Eons?
FATHER. Eons and eons of heaven and earth.
SON. Are you sure?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. I thought the end was near.
FATHER. It is, relatively speaking, quite near. The urgency for spiritual development has never been greater.

Pause.

SON. Then what?
FATHER. At the end?
SON. Yes, at the end of everything.
FATHER. Then, as the poet says, “the orient and immortal air was ash.”
SON. That’s the rub.
FATHER. Indeed.
SON. It’s a white-out?
FATHER. Likely.
SON. Or complete darkness?
FATHER. In a way.
SON. Colors?
FATHER. Maybe a burst, or a series of bursts.
SON. Consciousness?
FATHER. No.
SON. You’re sure?
FATHER. Yes. Certainty grows with time. Keep meditating. You’ll be all right.

Pause.

SON. The orient and immortal air was ash.
FATHER. Mmm.

Pause.

SON. Why did we let the soldier kill himself?
FATHER. Because he was free to do as he saw fit. It was his choice.
SON. But didn’t we help?
FATHER. We watched.
SON. Isn’t that helping?
FATHER. In a way.

Pause.

FATHER. Bah! These thoughts — but ripples in the river! Let’s finish our punches.

They resume their punching exercise. Shouting out the numbers. They finish and stand in ready stance, feet a shoulder width apart, arms hanging loosely at their sides. They breathe in unison three times.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. What’s happens next?
FATHER. The idea is to allow that which is next to flow naturally, fluidly, without self-consciousness.
SON. You always say things like that.
FATHER. Like what?
SON (with a mock mysticism). “Allow that which is next to flow naturally.”
FATHER. Only that which is completely self-arising is good.
SON. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
FATHER. What about it?
SON (stammering). Well, you say those things, you use certain words, but the problem is I don’t really know what they mean. Like ‘self-arising’?
FATHER. That which arises without ego.
SON (unconvinced, almost sarcastically). Yeah... And you say, “Allow that which is next to flow naturally,” but then we pretty much do the same crap every day.
FATHER. Of course we do.
SON. Isn’t that, like, a contradiction? Or a paradox?
FATHER. Yes.

Pause.

SON. Yesterday, I wrote the schedule on my arm.

SON regards his arm on which is written the day’s schedule.

SON (reading). Wake.
FATHER. Check.
SON. Meditate.
FATHER. Check.
SON. Sing.
FATHER. Check.
SON. Exercise.
FATHER. Check.
SON. Tea.
FATHER (as if just then remembering). Ah yes, of course, tea is next. What else?
SON. Practice philosophy.
FATHER. Always.
SON. And avenge.
FATHER (with gravity). Avenge... hmm... maybe “Seek Justice” is better.
SON. You think?
FATHER (pondering). Yes, “Seek Justice” has a ring to it, doesn’t it?
SON (getting a pen out of the back pack and writing on his arm). Capital J?
FATHER (grandly, with irony, or even better, with a kind of double irony, a kind of way of saying the phrase with both humorous irony and genuine authenticity). Definitely — SEEK JUSTICE!

Pause.

SON (looking around). So, which way today?
FATHER (pulling a map out of the back pack, spreading it out on the ground, pointing). To the beach, of course. To the willow tree. To the cockroach! (Consulting the map) Let’s see… we know for certain that the sailor buried the barrel beneath a willow tree, down by the beach. (Looking forward, pointing). The beach must be off in this direction. (Sniffing). Yes, the sands are this way. I believe I smell the sea. You?

SON sniffs.

SON. I don’t know.
FATHER (sniffing). Definitely this way. To the barrel.

Pause.

FATHER. Anything else on the list on your arm there?
SON. Dance.
FATHER. Yes, dance!
SON. And sleep.
FATHER. What about take it easy?
SON. Not on the list.
FATHER. Perhaps we should add take it easy to the list.
SON. You think?
FATHER. Taking it easy is important.
SON. How does one “take it easy”?
FATHER. It’s not my specialty. Your mother was good at it. She taught me... (Briefly reminiscent)... It’s very difficult. We’ll try later. First, tea. Go fetch some kindling.

SON scurries off to gather kindling. He makes a circle around the campsite in search of twigs. FATHER steals a nip from his hip flask, coughs a terrible cough, then straightens out the circle of stones in which the fire will be made.

SON (returning with kindling). Dad, do you think they’ll find us here today?
FATHER. Who?
SON. The robbers and thieves.
FATHER. The liars and murderers?
SON. Yes.

FATHER smells the air, considers.

FATHER. No. I don’t think so.
SON (fearfully). How about the agents?

FATHER smells the air again, considers.

FATHER. No.
SON. How do you know?
FATHER. Because I smelled the air.
SON. That’s not a very scientific method.
FATHER. No, it’s based on intuition.
SON. How reliable is intuition?
FATHER (again with his signature enthusiasm). Quite reliable. It’s like when you remember your dreams and they lead us to the next clue. We must remain in touch with our unconscious selves. Try it. Smell the air.

SON quickly smells the air.

FATHER. Smell again. Smell longer. Smell harder.

SON smells longer and harder.

FATHER. Now put your ear on the ground and listen to the earth.

SON puts his ear on the ground and listens to the earth.

FATHER. Now gaze off into the horizon.

SON half-heartedly gazes off into the horizon.

FATHER. Gaze more intently.

SON gazes more intently.

FATHER. Gaze harder.

SON gazes harder.

FATHER. Now gaze more loosely. Let go of your gaze. Let the gaze itself... just... gaze...

SON lets the gaze itself gaze.

Pause.

FATHER. Well, do you think they’ll find us here today?

SON shrugs his shoulders.

FATHER. We’ll work on that. Let’s start the fire.

SON piles the kindling in the middle of the circle of rocks, then tries to start the fire by striking two sticks together. He fails. FATHER kneels down.

FATHER. Like this. It’s all in the wrists.

FATHER starts the fire by striking two sticks together, then puts it out.

FATHER. You try.

SON tries again, fails, tries again, fails, tries again, succeeds.

FATHER. Yes!

From a small back pack, FATHER pulls out a pot and a bag of loose tea leaves. FATHER hands the pot to SON.

FATHER. Go fetch some water from the stream.
SON (hesitating). Do you think the water is too polluted today?
FATHER. Did we drink the water, after boiling it, yesterday?
SON. Yes.
FATHER. Did we wake up alive and well today?
SON (unconvinced). Alive, yes.
FATHER. Well?

Pause.

SON. But you told me that just because something happens once, or even over and over and over again, such as the sun rising each morning, this doesn’t mean that we can expect the same event to happen again?
FATHER. True.

Pause.

FATHER (exasperated). Do you want some tea or not?
SON. I want tea.
FATHER. Me too. I want tea very badly.
SON. Me too.

Pause.

FATHER. I love tea.
SON (giving a fist strong sign). Me too.
FATHER. Go fetch some water.

FATHER returns the fist strong sign. SON runs to the stream to fetch water.
FATHER takes a nip of whiskey, coughs his ugly, dying cough. SON returns with the water and hangs it over the fire. They look at each other, absolutely nothing to say. They watch the water boil.

FATHER. Oup, here it comes.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. Do you think the soldier could join us for tea?
FATHER (looking at the soldier, making a joke). He doesn’t look well, son.
SON. Yes, he’s dead.
FATHER. Quite dead.

Pause.

SON. But if we prop him up just so, perhaps he’d like that.
FATHER (considering, then enthusiastically). Yes, you’re right! I think he’d like that.

SON goes about sitting CORPSE up. He fumbles with the arms, they fall down, he gathers them up again. He meticulously positions the head, hands and neck just right. Stands back, admires his work. The body again crumbles to the ground. SON puts CORPSE back together in the sitting position, as FATHER puts the tea leaves into the pot and sets the pot on the ground.

SON. There we go.
FATHER. Let it steep.

Pause.

FATHER (seriously, cheerfully, to CORPSE). Morning, soldier.
FATHER (in soldier’s voice). Morning, sir.

FATHER and SON nod at one another.

SON (to CORPSE). How are you feeling?
SON (in soldier’s voice). Can’t complain.

A loud explosion is heard.

SON. What was that?
FATHER. What did it sound like?
SON. It sounded like an MGK missile... (tentatively guessing at the number) ... a #25.
FATHER. Yes, or the 27.
SON. Yes.
FATHER. And how far off?
SON (pointing backward). Across the river back that way. Say 10 miles.
FATHER. 15 to 20.
SON. Right.
FATHER. Relax into it.

From the back pack, FATHER fetches two gas masks. FATHER and SON put on masks.

FATHER (cheerfully). Tea’s ready!

FATHER passes the pot to SON, who drinks by laboriously pushing his mask up and sipping from the pot. SON passes pot back to FATHER, who drinks in the same manner and then passes the pot back. SON drinks and passes pot to CORPSE, pours some through his mouth. So on and so forth.

SON. Good tea, today.
FATHER. When it comes to tea, nobody beats Earl Grey.
SON (rapping). All the others just pale and run out of the way.

They drink tea, look around. SON raps.

SON. When it comes to tea, nobody beats Earl Grey. / All the others just pale and run out of the way. / So at the end of time, when the world’s a’boil / I’ll be sipping on the tea made with orange rind oil! / Ye-ah, uh-huh. Ye-ah, uh-huh.

FATHER. Nice.
SON. Thanks.

Pause.

SON. I’m hungry.
FATHER. I’m speechless.

Pause.

FATHER (with his signature enthusiasm). Time to practice philosophy!
SON (ho-humly). Okay.
FATHER. Why do we practice philosophy?
SON. To prepare for death.
FATHER. Do we ever tire of practicing philosophy?
SON. Yes.

FATHER gives SON a hard look.

SON. Yes!

FATHER gives SON a harder look.

SON. In principal, no; in reality, yes, fuck yes.
FATHER. Fair enough. Let’s do the cathartic technique today.
SON. Okay.
FATHER. Okay... go.

SON stands, inhales and exhales deliberately, in preparation for something. Then he grandly acts out his own death, in a ridiculously over-the-top manner, taking his last breath and falling to the ground in a spasm. In the process, he takes his gas mask off. FATHER, also relieving himself of his gas mask (in a gesture blending reality and fiction), kneels beside SON and gently closes SON’S eyes with his hands. FATHER is sad, or play-acting sad.

FATHER. Not bad. Funny. But you need more realism. Always more realism. Realism is a tyrant because everything is real. Try it again.

SON stands, repeats his bombastic death scene, only slightly more subdued, with minor improvements in terms of added realism, but still essentially melodramatic. FATHER again kneels beside SON and gently closes SON’S eyes with his hands. FATHER is sad, or play-acting sad.

FATHER. Mmmm... not bad, but too... too Shakespearian. And you’re still not getting fully behind it. You have to believe this is the real deal. What you just did — Would you really want to die that way?
SON. No.
FATHER. So let’s see it again.

SON stands, breathes, considers, takes a moment. Then he performs a subtle and tender rendition of his own death. At the last moment, he looks FATHER in the eye and mutters, “I... love...”, only then to pass away to the other side. A very affecting performance. FATHER again kneels beside SON and gently closes SON’S eyes with his hands. FATHER is sad, genuinely saddened by the performance. He looks longingly at his play-dead SON.

FATHER (quickly gathering himself). Much better! Did you feel the difference?
SON (coming to). Yes.
FATHER (excitedly). Good. Remember what that felt like. Wow, that was a breakthrough!
SON. Yes.
FATHER. I think that’s enough philosophy practice for the day.

Long, philosophical pause. They stand still, breathing conspicuously.

SON. Maybe we should just take it easy now?
FATHER. Sure, good idea. Would you like to take it easy? Okay, we could try that. Let’s see, okay... like I said, I don’t really know how it works... it’s quite tricky... okay, so, let’s just sit here, all right?... and, well — using no technique at all — just... relax...

They sit and take it easy for ten seconds or so.

SON. Am I doing it right?

FATHER looks at SON.

FATHER. I don’t know — sure. Yeah, that looks like taking it easy.

Pause.

FATHER. How about me?
SON. Yeah, that’s not half bad.

Brief pause. FATHER grows anxious to move, looks up at the sky.

FATHER. Whoa, look at that sun! We best get on the road. Find that fucking willow tree!
SON (quickly, relieved). Okay.
FATHER. We’ll take it easy later.
SON. Okay.
FATHER. That taking it easy shit is hard.
SON. Yeah, it feels weird.
FATHER. Best to keep moving forward. Let’s go.

In a flurry of action, they pack up the pot and tea, reorder the rocks, do some quick stretches. SON fetches a hammer from the back pack. He begins knocking out the teeth of CORPSE and putting them in his pocket. He knocks at the jaw in a disturbing manner.

FATHER. Whoa! What the fuck are you doing?
SON. I’m knocking his teeth out.
FATHER. Why on earth?
SON. So I can save them.
FATHER. Why?
SON. Because I liked the solider.
FATHER. Yeah, he was a good sort.
SON. And he was our friend.
FATHER. A good and trusted friend.
SON. And I miss him.
FATHER. Do you?
SON. Yes.

SON begins knocking CORPSE’S teeth out again.

FATHER. But what on earth do you want with his teeth?
SON. To remember him by.

SON knocks more teeth out. FATHER puts his hand on SON’S shoulder.

FATHER. Son, I realize this is a sensitive subject, but I don’t think you should keep those teeth.
SON (pausing, holding the hammer in the air, upset). Why not?
FATHER. Well, frankly, it’s morbid.
SON (petulantly). So what? Everything we do is morbid.
FATHER. It’s just not a good habit — saving dead people’s teeth. That’s all I’m saying.

FATHER holds out his hand, asking for the teeth.

SON. No!
FATHER. Just let go.
SON. No!

Enter WANDERER.
FATHER and SON quickly drop into their fighting stances, fists raised, facing WANDERER.

FATHER. Who goes there?
WANDERER. I come in peace.

FATHER looks to his SON.

FATHER. Where are you from?
THEIF. I am a Westerner.
FATHER. We are Easterners.

Pause.

FATHER. I have met many fine Westerners.
WANDERER (laughing). All Westerners are liars.
FATHER (To SON, in a whisper). The liar’s paradox! If it’s true, it’s false; if it’s false, it’s true.
SON. Should I sniff the air?

FATHER nods yes. SON sniffs the air, shrugs his shoulders. FATHER sniffs the air, then attacks WANDERER. In a single swift kung fu-like move, FATHER puts WANDERER on his back, holds him in a death choke.

WANDERER (begging). Don’t kill me!
FATHER. You’re from the government!
SON. Kill him!
WANDERER. I’m on the run! I used to be in government, but now I’m on the run.
FATHER. Liar!
WANDERER. I know who you are, sir. I know that you too are on the run.
FATHER (tightening his choke hold). How would you know something like that?
WANDERER. Everybody knows about you, sir. You were famous, you were tortured.
FATHER. What are you talking about?
WANDERER. You rewrote the codes, then kept them a secret. You still have the codes.

This is the right answer. FATHER is upset, distrustful.

SON. What codes?
WANDERER. The weapons codes.
SON. What’s he talking about, Dad?
FATHER. Nothing. (To WANDERER) You keep quiet.
WANDERER. Only your father knows the release codes to the worst self-destruct weapons on the planet. In case of infiltration of the military by the enemy, only your father —

FATHER punches WANDERER across the face. WANDERER absorbs the blows.

WANDERER (to SON). Your father is a hero. He’s very well trained, a highly enlightened person. Do you know that? He’s written a treatise on scientific ethics. They say he knows things, about life and death. Tricks, magic, freaky stuff. He was a legend in the Marines. Shot at fifty times. They say he never dies. Your father! Did you have any idea?

FATHER punches WANDERER again.

FATHER. Quiet! — or I’ll kill you right now.
WANDERER. Yes, sir.
SON. Dad, why are they after you?
FATHER. Because I have information, son. Information that would help the State kill people, and this is what the State wants to do. This is what States in their very nature do best — kill people, reduce numbers, manage populations. The individual, by definition, does not exist to the State; only the State exists to the State. The State by nature is stupid, selfish, and unfathomably ruthless. It wants me because I turned my back on it, it wants me because I was cunning and disloyal. I fooled it into allowing me to safeguard certain information, and then I betrayed it, I stole away with the knowledge, because I disagreed with the State and its intentions. To the State, I am the cruelest, vilest, most manipulative beast on the face of the earth. This is why they are after me.

Pause. The new information sinks in.

FATHER (to WANDERER). How long have you been on the run?
WANDERER. Two years.
FATHER. Where are you headed?
WANDERER. Nowhere.
SON. I’m scared.
FATHER. Don’t be.
SON. I’m scared that the agents will find you and kill you.
FATHER. That won’t happen.
SON. Will they catch you?
FATHER. No.
SON. Will they kill you?
FATHER. Never.
SON. How do you know?
FATHER. I just know.
WANDERER. Sir, let me help you.
FATHER. How could you possibly help us?
WANDERER. I know this terrain. Where are you headed?

FATHER stares hard at WANDERER. SON sniffs the air around WANDERER again.

FATHER. The beach.

FATHER looks WANDERER in the eye, WANDERER returns the hard look.

WANDERER. I can lead you to the beach, sir.

FATHER stares hard. They have a prolonged stare-off.

FATHER. Two years?
WANDERER. Yes, sir. When I left, the state had begun killing civilians in the city. They’re drastically reducing numbers, randomly gassing innocents. Indiscriminately. Water is low. Help me, please.
FATHER. We live in the slime and the muck of the dark ages.
SON. The slime and the muck, indeed.

Pause.

WANDERER. Please, please help me.
FATHER. Where is the beach?
WANDERER (proudly, pointing in the direction FATHER and SON had been walking). This way.
FATHER. What do you say, son?
SON (looking squarely at WANDERER). I don’t know about this guy, but let’s give him a chance.
FATHER (releasing his death grip). You will lead us to the beach. That is all.

FATHER helps WANDERER up. They shake hands.

WANDERER. Thank you. I cannot thank you enough for your kindness. My name is —
FATHER. Quiet! Let’s go. No time to waste.

They begin their trek together, walking very slowly across the stage. WANDERER, then FATHER, then SON. They move very, very slowly. They reach the end of the stage, turn around, walk towards the back of the stage. They walk slowly in an extended silence.

WANDERER (calling back behind him). Know any good jokes?
SON. Of course. We love jokes.
FATHER. Only the jokes matter now.
WANDERER. Let’s hear one.
SON. Which category would you prefer: wife jokes, bestiality jokes, or Zen jokes?
WANDERER. Zen.
SON. Interesting. We find this is not a popular category. Too foreign for most. We find most people ask for the bestiality jokes.
WANDERER. I already know all the cow fucking jokes.
FATHER. Oh, but they’re the best ones.
SON. Okay, so, the Emperor asks the master Gudo, What happens to a man of enlightenment after death? Gudo replies, How should I know? The Emperor says, Why? Because you are a master. And Gudo says, Yes, sir, but not a dead one!

FATHER and SON chuckle.

WANDERER. I don’t get it.
FATHER. Yeah, it takes a while.

Pause.

SON. Are we there yet?
WANDERER. Where?
SON. To the beach.
WANDERER. Almost.

Walking. Trekking. FATHER takes a nip of whiskey, coughs.

FATHER (gazing up). Look at that sun!
SON. The great noonday sun.

Walking. Trekking.

WANDERER (excitedly, pointing across the stage). There it is!

They increase their pace to a funny looking slow walk; it looks as though they are moving fast, but they are not.

SON. Beautiful.
WANDERER. Curvy.
FATHER. Let’s get digging.

They drop to their knees and dig furiously into the earth with their hands. Dirt flies everywhere.

FATHER. Deeper! Deeper!
SON. Where is it?
FATHER. Deeper! Six feet! Ten feet! Dig!
SON. My hands hurt.
FATHER. Dig, my boy! Dig, dig!

They dig for a while, taking turns taking breaks, getting into a small dirt throwing fight , all the while digging deeper and deeper. Time passes, like it always does. The sun sets.

WANDERER (exasperated). God damn it!
SON. Ah ha!
FATHER. What?
SON. Here!
WANDERER. What? Where?
SON. I found it!

By this point, they’ve dug a hole roughly the size of a grave. SON hauls a thirty gallon barrel from out of the hole, wipes sweat from his brow. FATHER and WANDERER gaze at the treasure in awe.

WANDERER. Breathtaking.
FATHER. Open it up.

SON pries the barrel open, looks inside, smells the stuff.

SON. It’s full of whiskey!
WANDERER. Praise God!
FATHER. Praise whiskey!

SON takes a drink from the barrel, coughs, spits up what he had tried to drink.

SON. It’s strong, Pop.
WANDERER. Let me try.

WANDERER drinks from the barrel, coughs, spits up what he tried to drink.

FATHER. Here.

WANDERER passes barrel to FATHER, who take a long, deep drink. Wipes his mouth.

FATHER. That’s the most fucked-up whiskey I have ever tasted. Absolutely delicious.

WANDERER takes another drink.

WANDERER (with a cough). Really makes you feel like you’ve lived fully.

FATHER takes his flask out of his pocket, dips it into the barrel, takes another drink.

FATHER. Ahhh. I... feel... better. Mmm, sweet nectar! (Licks his lips.) I believe there’s a hint of tabasco in there. You taste that?

FATHER hands flask to SON, who drinks.

SON. Mmm, yes. Fully-aged red pepper. Really gets the qi flowing.

SON begins to float and dance and move about the stage.

FATHER (drinking). This is some good shit.
WANDERER (drinking). It’s doing funny things to my eyes.
FATHER (drinking). Let’s camp here for the night.

WANDERER, FATHER and SON settle to the ground. FATHER passes flask to SON, who drinks and passes it back.

SON (gazing upward). Beautiful stars tonight.

WANDERER and FATHER lie back, look up.

FATHER. Can’t tell where the fireflies end and the stars begin.
WANDERER. A lovely sky.
SON. Bonnie.

Pause.

FATHER (sitting up). Let’s have a show, eh? What do you say, son?
SON. A dance?
FATHER. A dance.
WANDERER. A dance?
FATHER. Yes, my son is working on a new dance piece. He’s an artist. Are you up to it, son?
SON. Of course.
WANDERER. A dance piece? Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, girly?
FATHER. We believe the masculine and feminine are energies —
SON. Everything is energy.
FATHER. Yes, the masculine and feminine are energies which any human body, male or female, can chose to or happen to embody at any given time.
SON. I love dance.
WANDERER. Do you?
FATHER (enthusiastically, taking a swig) Showtime!

SON stands and assumes his dancer persona. Good breath-control, form, grace, etc. FATHER settles more comfortably into his seat on the ground, drinks his whiskey. WANDERER looks on. SON nods to FATHER, signaling his readiness. FATHER clears his throat.

FATHER (grandly, like a showman). Ladies, well, gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure this evening, a highly acclaimed new dance performance by, well, (proudly) by my son. The piece, of which we will see only a fragment, as it is a work-in-progress, is entitled, “Nothingness.”

SON begins his dance routine. WANDERER and FATHER watch.

WANDERER. I don’t get it.
FATHER. Get what?
WANDERER. What he’s doing?
FATHER. He’s doing what he’s doing. What’s to get?
WANDERER. I mean, what’s it about?
FATHER. Nothing.
WANDERER. Nothing?
FATHER. Nothingness.
WANDERER. Nothingness?
FATHER. Yes, nothing, nothingness, emptiness — clear open space.
WANDERER (drinking). Hmm.

Pause. SON dances on. FATHER takes a deep drink.

WANDERER. Easy there, fellow. You’ll kill yourself.

FATHER drinks.

WANDERER. Where’s his mother?

FATHER is upset by the question. He takes a deep drink. He pulls a handful of teeth from his pocket.

FATHER (indicating the teeth). Here.
WANDERER. Are those teeth?
FATHER. Yes.
WANDERER. Wow, nice teeth. Precious commodity these days.
FATHER. They’re not for sale.
FATHER caresses the teeth.

They drink.

SON drops into an imaginary well, falls down through imaginary infinite space.

FATHER. I love this part. He’s free-falling down a well. You see that?

SON finishes his dance. FATHER and WANDERER clap.

FATHER. Beautiful, son. Really, it’s looking wonderful. Love that well part.
WANDERER. Yeah, it was real curvy.
SON. I’m thirsty.
FATHER. Have a drink.

FATHER hands SON the flask. SON drinks, coughs.

SON. That shit is strong!
WANDERER. Yeah, I’m tripping.
FATHER. I’ve lost myself.
SON (Goes to barrel, looks inside). How will we ever drink this much?
FATHER. No worries.
WANDERER. Give it time.
SON. I can’t wait.

SON sticks his hand down into the barrel, pulls up the cockroach.

SON. I’ve got it!

SON shows cockroach to FATHER, who stands.

FATHER. Well, son, now is the time. Let's say a prayer. (Praying) Forgive my boy for eating sentient life. Okay.

SON eats the cockroach.

SON. Tastes like chicken.

SON goes into a vision fit. WANDERER and FATHER watch.

SON. Ma? Is that you? Ma? ... You look translucent ... What’s that? Dad and I were just having a drink ... Oh, he’s okay... No, he’s not drinking too much... It’s just that we found this great whiskey — what’s that? Yes, the sailor showed me ... the seven seas... and omphalos, okay ... you’re where? ... in the charnel grounds?... not for long ... how long, Ma? ... then where do you go, Ma? ... Ma, then what happens!? ... is there a white-out? ... No? ... are there bonnie banks? ... Ma? ... Did I eat it? ... Of course I ate it... okay, Ma... Ma, I always pay attention! ... Give me a break! ... Okay, will do, Ma ... Ma? ...

SON falls to the ground, writhes around a bit. FATHER comforts him.

FATHER. Son? Son?
SON (coming to). I’m tired, Pop.
FATHER. It’s been a long night.
SON. Yeah.
FATHER. It’s late.
SON (looking longingly at the hole). I was thinking maybe I’d sleep down in the hole.
FATHER. Why?
SON. Good practice.
FATHER (smiling). The best. Go for it.
SON. Goodnight, then, Pop.

FATHER and SON embrace.

FATHER. Goodnight, son. I love you.
SON. I love you, too, Pop.
FATHER. Sweet dreams.
SON. Not likely.
WANDERER. Goodnight, kid.
SON (to WANDERER). Goodnight.

SON climbs into the hole and goes to sleep.
FATHER and WANDERER sit a moment, drinking.

WANDERER. You know, there’s another barrel of this stuff buried in the mountains.
FATHER (drunkenly). I don’t believe you, you bastard.
WANDERER. Suit yourself.
FATHER. You’re a fucking thief, aren’t you?
WANDERER. No. I’m not.
FATHER. Don’t kid me. I know exactly who you are.

FATHER sniffs at WANDERER, takes one last swig from his flask, then begins to nod off. He tries hard to stay awake, to stay alert, but he has had too much to drink. He drops off into sleep.

WANDERER rises, checks to be sure FATHER is asleep, then steels the teeth from his pocket. He drops into the hole and checks SON’S pockets, stealing the SOLDIER’S teeth as well. He jiggles the teeth a moment, for the audience.

FATHER revives from his sleep. WANDERER quickly takes out a gun and shoots FATHER in the chest as he struggles to his feet. FATHER falls to the ground. THIEF then begins to bury the boy alive, kicking dirt into the grave. A moment passes.

FATHER wakes from his brief sojourn to the other side — he was wearing a bullet proof vest — and observes the scene. He rises and, with kung-fu awesomeness, strikes WANDERER from behind in the head. FATHER quickly subdues his foe, taking him to the ground. As WANDERER struggles to main tain consciousness, FATHER speaks to him.

FATHER. You’ll be all right, fellow. I’m not even going to kill you. That’s my son’s job. He’s got it out for you. He’ll get you. When the end comes, my man, all I can say is follow the white light. Stay on the path and follow the light.

FATHER takes the teeth back from WANDERER. WANDERER gets up and runs off stage.

FATHER fills his flask and a canteen from the book bag with whiskey. He drinks. He takes a hearty sniff of the air and looks around, gauging the next move. He wakes SON up and helps him out of the hole, brushing dirt off him. SON is in a dreamlike trance.

FATHER. This way, son.
SON. Is this the way to the charnel grounds?
FATHER. Yes, son. We’re on our way.

FATHER pulls the mother’s teeth out of his pocket, hands them to SON.

FATHER. Here you are.

SON takes the teeth and puts them in his pocket. They walk on.

SON. Do you see her, Dad?
FATHER. No. Do you?

SON (looking intently ahead, pointing). Yes, I do. I see her now. She’s right there, Dad. She’s right there, in the meadow.
FATHER. Yes, she’s with us, isn’t she, son? She’s still with us, isn’t she?

They trek onward in the night. FATHER drinks from his flask, passes it to SON, who drinks. And so on as they trek.

CURTAIN

ACT II

The following morning.

FATHER and SON asleep amidst an apocalyptic charnel grounds. A graveyard covered with tombstones, human bones, half or whole skeletons, putrefying corpses, detached limbs and popped-out eyeballs. Comically horrifying. A fire burns in a metal pit toward the back of the stage. Perhaps a mangy dog wanders the scene. Vultures, crows and ravens, or the sound thereof. The stuff of nightmares.

FATHER and SON sit beside MOTHER’S gravestone. The epitaph reads,

“Here lies our Mother, A Loving and Compassionate Christian Woman, Though Moody at Times”

Morning, sunrise.

FATHER sits up.

FATHER (holding his head, terribly hung over). Good God, fuck me.

FATHER flops back down.

FATHER (sits up, grandly). I’ll never drink again!

FATHER reaches for his flask, makes to empty it out, then changes his mind, takes a nip, coughs his ugly cough.

FATHER. Better.

FATHER tries to crawl towards SON, fails.

FATHER. You alive?
SON. I think so. You?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. How can you tell?
FATHER. Images. I’m receiving images.
SON. Of the phenomenal world?
FATHER. I believe so.
SON. Of our particular space-time continuum?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. The same one from yesterday?
FATHER. From what I recall, yes. You?
SON. I never know for sure, but I assume so.
FATHER. How else could one go on?
SON. If I knew I had awoken in an alternate universe —
FATHER. Or in the thirteenth dimension of string theory—
SON. Then I could not go on.
FATHER. Nor I. So, for the sake of onward-going, one assumes it’s the same.
SON. One does.
FATHER. A lovely space-time continuum, ours.
SON. Relatively speaking.
FATHER. Of course, always relatively speaking.
SON. How would one speak absolutely anymore?
FATHER. I don’t know. I suppose one could say “God”.
SON (testing it out). “God.”
FATHER. Yes, like that.
SON. Oh God.
FATHER. Bravo!
SON (with emotion). Oh dear God!
FATHER. You have a knack for that. Go on!
SON. Save us, God! Save us!
FATHER (with his signature enthusiasm). Yes!

Pause. They look up expectantly. God does not save them.

SON. Maybe later.
FATHER. Doubtful.
SON. One can hope.
FATHER. Though it’s not advisable.

Pause.

SON. Dad, do you ever sometimes, even for a flash, for a brief flicker of consciousness, as you would say, still believe in God?
FATHER (breathing in, out). No.

They sigh. Pause.

FATHER. You know, your mother believed in God.
SON. She did?
FATHER. Yes, every Tuesday.

Chuckles.

SON. So, how miserable do you feel today, on the scale of one to seven?
FATHER (clutching his head). I’m afraid my current state renders our scale completely meaningless.
SON. Should we make a new scale then?
FATHER. Let’s.
SON. Say from negative seven to positive seven?
FATHER. Including zero?
SON. No. No, yes.
FATHER. That may work.
SON. The added negative values would provide a way to express the increasing misery of our situation, while still maintaining the integrity of the previous range.
FATHER. So I could register, say, a negative three this morning, a new low, to be sure, yet simultaneously allowing for still lower states.
SON. Precisely.
FATHER. Brilliant. So then, today, right now, negative three.
SON. Me, negative four.
FATHER. Oh come on. I drank more.
SON. I ate a whiskey-soaked cockroach that gave me visions of dead people.
FATHER. True — but I’m old!
SON. Touché.

FATHER gives son a hard look.

SON. Fine, negative two and half.
FATHER. Very well, then, the new scale is established.
SON. The new scale is genius.
FATHER. If you don’t say so yourself.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON (sniffing). Do you smell something terrible?

FATHER sniffs.

FATHER. Oh God, yes, what is that?
SON. I don’t know.
FATHER (sniffing). Oh God, that’s terrible.

FATHER crawls backstage toward the metal pit in which a fire burns. He looks in.

FATHER. Here we are.
SON (crawling toward the pit). What is it?
FATHER. Son, that’s the smell of burning human flesh.
SON (holding his nose). Gives me a headache.
FATHER (looking into the pit). Come here and take a good look.

SON struggles to peer in, watches a moment, then falls over and vomits.

SON. Ugg.

FATHER kneels beside SON.

FATHER. You see, this fire isn’t even hot enough. The bones will not burn, only the flesh. Cremation furnaces burn at temperatures ranging from 1600 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s what you really want. That’s what I want.
SON (wiping himself clean). A hot fire in the end.
FATHER. Yes. Cremation in a very hot fire. If the fire is not hot enough, the bones will not burn. In that case, what I want you to do, son — and this is my final wish — I want you to file my bones down. Will you do that for me? However long it takes, I want you to file my bones, every last one of them, down to nothing.
SON. To nothingness.
FATHER. To dust. And then sprinkle the dust over your mother’s grave. That’s very important. I don’t want interment in the earth like your mother, God bless her Christian heart. That’s too slow for me. All these bodies gradually decaying, their karma floating through the air. No, sir, not for me. When I’m done, I want no aspect of my body still configured, I want no aspect of my soul still hanging around. Understand? I want out. Om, gate, gate.
SON. Gone, gone. Yes, sir.
FATHER. You’ll file me down then?
SON. Yes, Pop.
FATHER. Even the teeth?
SON (pausing to think, skeptically). Do I have to?
FATHER. It is my final wish.
SON (reluctantly). If you insist, then yes, of course.

Pause.

SON. Can we talk about something else?
FATHER. Like what?
SON. I don’t know. Baseball.
FATHER. The Yankee’s Mariano Rivera was perhaps the best closing pitcher in the history of baseball.
SON. I agree.

Pause.

FATHER. How about you? Have you decided? I mean, I don’t mean to be morbid, but I’d like to know your wishes.
SON. I’d like to be cryogenically frozen.
FATHER. Fair enough, though I don’t recommend it. You know, you’re quite the clinger. Just like your mother.
SON. I’m young yet. I still cling to life, and proudly. We’re different like that. You’re old.
FATHER. That I am.
SON. And, to be frank, you kind of have a death wish.
FATHER. I do not!
SON. No? Not a touch of the old Thanatos, you know, ever since Mom —
FATHER (offended). Don’t be ridiculous.
SON. I’m just saying.
FATHER. Not fearing death and desiring death are two different things.
SON. Jury’s still out on you.
FATHER (exasperated). Death! Everybody’s hung up on death! It’s silly!

Pause.

SON. Boy, that really smells awful.
FATHER. Like burning souls.
SON. Like burning flesh.
FATHER. Same difference.
SON. I can’t stand it!
FATHER (inhaling deeply). It’s good practice.

Pause.

FATHER (looking up at the sky). It’s late. Perhaps we should get right to our exercises.
SON. Sweat it out?
FATHER (making a weak fist strong sign). Yes.

FATHER and SON attempt to stand, fail. Attempt again, teeter, but manage to assume the Chinese split position. They both are in great pain, and making shoddy splits, but are trying to hide the truth from each other. The splits come undone, and they both fall to the ground, exhausted, hung-over, beaten.

FATHER. Let’s move our exercises to the afternoon.
SON. Or to tomorrow.
FATHER. There’s always tomorrow.
SON. No, there’s not.
FATHER. You’re right.
SON. Only today.
FATHER. And sometimes not even that.
SON. Sometimes only yesterday.
FATHER. Yesterday was nice.
SON. The party was fun.
FATHER. That was fine whiskey.
SON. Strong stuff.
FATHER. Transcendently strong.
SON. I can still taste that cockroach, though.
FATHER (feeling his head). And damn that whiskey now!
SON (working a bad taste from his mouth). Damn that cockroach!

Pause.

SON. I’m hungry.
FATHER. I’m speechless.

Pause.

FATHER (gazing up). Nice day out.
SON. Cloudy, but nice.
FATHER. Overcast, but altogether well-suited to my mood.
SON. That’s all one can ask for.
FATHER. That — and sun.
SON. Though not today.
FATHER. No, just clouds.
SON. A sky full of gloom.

Pause.

FATHER (enthusiastically). Perhaps we should sing!
SON. I think we could manage that.
FATHER. We won’t even have to move.
SON. That’s true.
FATHER. And we ought to do something.
SON. Why?
FATHER. Get the qi moving.
SON. But why?
FATHER. Just because, no why.
SON. ‘No why’?
FATHER. No why.
SON. Okay, how about “Sally Gardens”?
FATHER. Perfect.

FATHER hums a note. SON sings the first verse, beautifully, even more expressively than the previous morning.

"Down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet.
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree."

FATHER joins in for the second and final verse.

"In a field down by the river, my love and I did stand
And on my leaning shoulder, she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy , as the grass grows on the weirs,
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears."

FATHER is sad. FATHER raises his chin and they sing the last line again, “But I was young and foolish, and am now full of tears.” FATHER sighs gently. SON is sad.

FATHER (wiping away a tear). Good God, that’s a sad song.
SON. I feel worse now.
FATHER. Me too, dropped a point.
SON. Just plain miserable.
FATHER. Yes, me too.
SON. Let’s never sing that song again.
FATHER. Agreed.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. What’s “sally”?
FATHER. An anglicization of a silly, Irish word.
SON. But what does it mean?
FATHER. In this case, it means a willow tree.
SON. Oh.

SON looks at FATHER expectantly, silently pleading to hear more about the history of the song.

FATHER. Far away in old times, a sally garden was a willow grove on the edge of the village. The withes of the trees were harvested for making baskets and thatch cottage roofs. This grove was also a kind of lovers lane, a place where lovers met, a paradise.

Pause.

SON. Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. I feel it now.
FATHER. What’s that?
SON. Sadness after song.
FATHER. That’s good.
SON. Why?
FATHER. Means your growing.
SON. But it hurts, bad.
FATHER. That’s good. Pain is the path to liberation. Go beyond the pain.
SON. Right.

They share a nip from the flask.

FATHER. Can you see what it is you’re sad about?
SON. Well...

SON begins to cry, and weeps throughout the following scene.

FATHER (comforting SON). It’s okay, son. What is it?
SON (weeping). I don’t know.
FATHER. That’s okay.
SON. It’s everything.
FATHER. Let it out.
SON. It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad sometimes.
FATHER. I know it does. It’s okay.
SON (pulling the teeth out of his pocket). And I miss Mom.
FATHER. I know you do. I do too. It’s all right.
SON. And I feel weak. And I feel that you think I’m weak.
FATHER (grabs his boy by the shoulders). No son, you’re strong. You’re stronger than I am.
SON. That’s not true.
FATHER. Yes, it is.
SON (weeping still). And you’re dying on me, Pop. I know it! Even though you’re strong, you’re dying. That awful cough of yours!

SON cries. FATHER is silent.

SON. And I’ll be all alone — and I’m scared.
FATHER. I’m not going anywhere, son. It’s all-good.
SON. And I just don’t get it.
FATHER. Get what, son?
SON (with a sweeping motion). The whole thing. Life! Death! What happens at the end. The fucking point of everything!
FATHER. That’s all right, son.
SON (with great existential anger). But I don’t fucking get it!
FATHER. That’s all right, my boy. Sometimes there’s nothing to get.

SON weeps.

FATHER (consoling SON). Sometimes there’s just this.

FATHER consoles SON. SON finishes his cry, sniffles, rubs his eyes. FATHER coughs his cough. The sun comes out from behind the clouds.

FATHER. Here comes the sun.

SON looks up.

SON. Bonnie.

Pause.

FATHER. Well.
SON (sniffling). Well.
FATHER. We’d better practice.
SON. Okay.
FATHER. The sinking method?
SON. All right.

SON and FATHER lie on their backs. The following part is performed patiently, like a meditation, as if FATHER is guiding the entire audience through a meditation.

FATHER. Close your eyes and breathe in the air from beneath you... Feel it come in through all the pores of your body... Feel it come in through your feet, your legs, your lower back, your shoulders, bring the air up from beneath you... Breathe up the energy of the earth... let your awareness be completely identified with the earth below... don’t come up into your head, don’t come up into your body... let your body be open space... relax and let go... and now begin sinking... sink down one foot into the earth below you... sink down another foot... and another foot, three feet now below the surface... sink even lower... six feet... sink... drop down into the infinite space of the earth below you... ten feet... one hundred feet... one thousand feet... it should be dark now... one hundred thousand feet... the dark center of the earth... sink... sink... sink... allow your awareness to drop into fundamental, primal space... there are a million ways to experience space...

Pause.

FATHER. Keep dropping... release, let go, and open... eventually we arrive to a place where there is no boundary, no center... release, let go, and open... fall back into that open, unfabricated space... fall back into the primordial freshness —

SON (sitting up abruptly). Dad?
FATHER. Yes, son?
SON. What is that?
FATHER. What’s what, son?
SON (sitting up). Well, sometimes when we’re doing the sinking technique, you say things like that — “the primordial freshness” — and honestly, I don’t really know what the hell you’re talking about.
FATHER (sitting up). Hmm. Well, you know what “primordial” is, yes?
SON. Existing at the beginning of time.
FATHER. And you know what “freshness” means, yes?
SON. In this case, I believe the meaning is pure energy.
FATHER. Okay then.
SON. But what’s “primordial freshness”?
FATHER. Put it together.
SON. Pure energy existing at the beginning of time.
FATHER. Yes.
SON (unconvinced). Hmm.

SON lies back down. FATHER lies back down.

FATHER. Forget the words... go beyond the names... just feel... just drop... let go of yourself entirely... drop down into the darkness of the earth... into the warm, comforting, infinite space of the earth below... into its primordial freshness...

A faint, far-off rustle in the leaves is heard.

FATHER sits up, looks over at SON.

FATHER. Did you hear that?

FATHER sniffs the air, suddenly realizes the threat is near — the government agents are approaching — but knows instantly that he will do nothing about it, that he will let it come. That his time has come. FATHER then falls into a coughing fit, bringing SON out of his meditation.

SON (placing his hand on FATHER’S back). Dad, you okay?
FATHER. I’m fine.
SON. Should I fetch some water?
FATHER. Yes, do that. I’ll start a fire.
SON. No, just sit there. I’ll start the fire when I get back.
FATHER. I’ve got it.

SON rises to fetch the water, hears the faint, far-off rustle in the wood.

SON. Did you hear that?
FATHER (lying). No.
SON. You didn’t hear that? Shh, listen.

They listen in silence. No sound is heard.
FATHER. Nothing.
SON. I swear I heard something.
FATHER. Perhaps a squirrel.
SON. It didn’t sound like a squirrel. Heavier. Human feet.
FATHER. Hmm.
SON (listening, still hearing nothing more). Okay, I’ll look for water.

SON gets the pot from the backpack, then goes to fetch water. Unfortunately, there is no stream nearby. He looks around, but to no avail. FATHER starts a fire, relaxes besides it, coughs.

SON. I couldn’t find any water.
FATHER. That’s tough.

SON sighs a long sigh. FATHER gives SON a look as if to say, Don’t sigh such a long sigh.

FATHER. You want to munch on the tea leaves?
SON. Sure.

FATHER hands the bag of tea leaves to SON, who puts a handful in his mouth.

SON. You want some?
FATHER. No, I’m good.
SON (munching, his energies returning). When we were doing the sinking method, I remembered my dream.
FATHER. Good. Any clues?
SON. Yes.
FATHER. Let’s hear it. Every detail.
SON. The cockroach came back. And he laughed at me. He laughed and laughed and laughed, and then I figured out why.
FATHER. Why?
SON. Because we blew it! Because that guy from yesterday, the wanderer, he was the man who murdered Mom. And we let him get away! Goddam how could we not have known! The cockroach was laughing at me for letting him get away. Damn it! If I had that son of bitch here right now, I’d tear his fucking eyes out!
FATHER. No worries. He can’t be far. Be patient.
SON. The cockroach was a real asshole, laughing and laughing, and then blabbing on and on about how radiation kills cells and how cells are most sensitive when they are dividing. He explained how radiation is used to kill cancer cells because cancer cells divide more often than do normal cells, so with the right dose of radiation, you can kill off the cancer cells while only killing some of the most rapidly dividing normal cells like the bone marrow cells of our immune system. The cockroach said he was worried about his molting cycle, when his cells would divide. And he said my cells are dividing all the time. Then his voice morphed into Mom’s voice. For a while she talked about her cells too, and their dividing. Then she told me she was looking for a place with freshwater. She said she was thirsty and tired and frightened. And she gesticulated a lot, in a wild and crazy manner. She didn’t look good, Pop.
FATHER. Well, she is dead.
SON. Yeah, but even for a dead person. She was real frazzled.
FATHER. She’ll be okay. She’s tough.
SON. Yeah, I guess.
FATHER. I mean, at this point, what’s the worst that could happen to her?
SON. Eternal damnation.
FATHER. Hogwash!
SON. Okay then, life as a cockroach over and over and over again.
FATHER. Don’t disrespect your mother, son.
SON. I’m just saying I’m worried about the fate of her soul.
FATHER. Don’t be. She’s just in a state of limbo right now. She’s a hungry ghost.
SON. Hungry for what?
FATHER. Retribution.
SON. I’ll give it to her.
FATHER. I know you will, son.
SON. I will.
FATHER. I know you will. So then, the clues?
SON. Right. She pointed. She kept pointing. For a while, I couldn’t tell what the hell she was pointing at. You know how there’s no perspective in a dream. There’s no peripheral vision at all. It’s just what’s in front of you. There’s nothing off to the side. And there are no secondary thoughts, just first thoughts. There’s no voice-over in your head. It’s just the dream. Just the images. The strange, coded images presented directly. Nothing else.
FATHER. Entirely fluid.
SON. Yes. So she kept pointing to someplace. And every time I tried to look in the direction in which she pointed — even though I had no body and no consciousness, nothing with which to look in that direction — I lost it. I lost the whole point of why I was even trying to look off in that direction in the first place. Ultimately, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t control what came next. The dream flitted about of its own accord. In the final analysis, there was an aspect of the thing, of the whole dream, that I simply could not control. So I stopped trying. I completely let it go. Or at least that’s what I dreamt I did. Then, all of a sudden, as soon as I stopped trying so damn hard to see what she was pointing to, I saw it: her grave. She was pointing to her own grave.

SON looks fondly on his mother’s gravestone, by which they’ve been sitting all morning.

FATHER. Why?
SON. That’s the weird part. She wants me to dig up her bones. I think she wants me to sleep on them, use ‘em as a pillow. That was the feeling I got.
FATHER. Creepy.
SON. Right? They she drifted off, and the meadow came back into view.
FATHER. Hmm.
SON. I want to find that meadow.
FATHER. I know you do, son.
SON. That’s the best dream of them all.
FATHER (indicating MOTHER’S grave). But first — to the grave robbing.
SON. It’s not grave robbing.
FATHER. No?
SON. Not if she asked us to dig her up.
FATHER. Not sure that’d hold up in court.
SON. What court?

They rise and begin digging up MOTHER’S grave.

FATHER. I feel like Jerry Cruncher.
SON. Who?
FATHER. Jerry Cruncher, A Tale of Two Cities.
SON. Never read it.
FATHER. Great story.

They dig on.

FATHER (out of breath). You know, son, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this digging today.
SON. Take a break.
FATHER. Perhaps we could take it easy for a minute together.
SON. Take it easy? Are you sure?
FATHER. Yes, I think I’m ready for another go at that.
SON. Okay, let’s do it.

SON puts down his shovel. FATHER and SON sit down.

FATHER. Okay — using no technique at all — just, well — take it easy.

They take it easy.
SON (in a takin’ it easy pose). How’s it look?
FATHER. Good, real good. And me?
SON. Loosen up. Relax your shoulders a bit.
FATHER. Right. (Loosens his shoulders.) Better?
SON. Better.

Pause.
FATHER (inspired, with his signature enthusiasm). Yes! I think I’ve got it.
SON (looks). Yeah, that looks good.
FATHER. Seriously, I’m feeling it. I’m really feeling it! I’m taking it easy.
SON. That’s great, Pop.

FATHER lets drop a single tear. Having attained this realization about taking it easy, FATHER reaches a climax of emotionality during the following exchange.

SON. What’s wrong?
FATHER. It’s nothing. It’s just —
SON. What, Pop? What is it?
FATHER. It’s just, I can’t explain it really, it’s just, well — I get it.
SON. Get what?
FATHER. What she was trying to show me.
SON. Who?
FATHER. Your mother.
SON. About taking it easy?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. What do you mean?
FATHER. How to take it easy.
SON. How?
FATHER (regaining his composure). I don’t know how to explain it. It's like a constant meditation, a constant prayer. But instead of thinking about it, instead of using technique, you just, well, all you have to do is — just let it all flow through.

Pause.

SON. Yeah, that doesn’t really explain it for me.
FATHER. Sorry, son. That’s the best I can do.

FATHER takes it easy a moment, SON grows anxious to dig.

SON. You ready to dig?
FATHER. Not really.
SON. Come on.
FATHER. You go ahead.

FATHER sits perfectly still, in a state.

SON. What’s up with you?
FATHER. Nothing. Nothing at all.

The rustle in the woods, this time louder, closer.

SON (started). Pop, did you hear that?
FATHER. Yes.
SON. Well, come on. Let’s go!
FATHER. No, no, it’s okay. Let’s stay here.
SON (upset). Come on, Pop! Get up! They’re coming!
FATHER. Just let it come.
SON. No! Come on, Pop!

The rustle turns into the clear sound of footsteps. SON tries to pull FATHER to his feet.

SON. Get up, Pop. They’re coming. I can smell it. It’s the agents. Come on.
FATHER. I know it, son. You’re right. It is the agents. Very good. But they can’t hurt me. It’s okay.
SON. What are you talking about, they can’t hurt you? Come on!
FATHER. The agents can’t hurt me.
SON. Of course they can.
FATHER. No, they can’t. It’s all right, son.
SON. No, it’s not! Come on!
FATHER. Everything’s going to be okay.

SON fights with FATHER trying to get him to his feet. FATHER is passive, utterly resigned. SON’S attack devolves into crying. SON falls atop FATHER. FATHER is dying.

SON (realizing that his FATHER is dying). No, Pop. Don’t go.
FATHER. It’s okay, son. The soul lives on.
SON (crying, very angry, in a fit). No! You're wrong! This is it — this is your one life and then that’s it!
FATHER. No, the soul returns. Leaving the body is no big deal.
SON. No! How can you say that? We don’t know anything for certain!
FATHER. Sure we do, son. Sure we do.
SON. No we don’t!
FATHER. We can know everything. That’s the beauty of the thing.
SON. No we can’t! Come on, Pop. Don’t do this. Get up!
FATHER. I feel so light. Utterly free of desire.
SON. Stop, Pop. Stop!
FATHER. Lighter and lighter, son. Be ever lighter and lighter.
SON. No!
FATHER. I love you, son.
SON. Pop, No! (Sings) Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die.
FATHER. Ha! That brings me back. Okay, let’s have a drink, yes?

FATHER takes the flask from his pocket, drinks, passes flask to SON, who drinks.

FATHER. Tell me a joke.
SON. What category: wife, Zen, or bestiality?
FATHER. Bestiality.
SON. Of course. Two farmers, a father and a son, stand on top of the hill overlooking their herd of cows. The son gets an idea, and says to his father, “Dad, let’s walk down there and fuck one of those cows.” The father turns to his son and says, “No, son. Let’s run down there and fuck all of them.”

SON laughs. FATHER goes into a laughing fit.

Enter WANDERER. SON springs to his feet.

SON. There he is!

SON attacks WANDERER, and with kung-fu awesomeness, quickly brings WANDERER to the ground.

WANDERER. Don’t hurt me! I come with important information.
SON. You killed my mother!
WANDERER. No I didn’t!
SON. Yes you did!
WANDERER. But I was ordered to.
SON. You confess then!
WANDERER. It was not my choice.
SON. But still, you were her executioner.
WANDERER (taking his time, shamefully). Yes.
SON. Dad, hold him down! (To WANDERER) I’m going to tear your eyes out!

FATHER holds WANDERER down.

WANDERER. Wait! I have to tell you something!
SON. What?
WANDERER. The agents — they’re coming. I passed them on my way. I only came to warn you.
SON. Liar!

SON sniffs the air. FATHER sniffs the air. They regard one another and nod their heads.

SON (to FATHER). I have to tear his eyes out.
FATHER. Why?
SON. Because — because he killed Mom!
WANDERER. I’m sorry. It was an order. I was only obeying orders. They were after your father. They were trying to hurt him. I’m sorry!
SON (raising his hand above the WANDERER’S face). I have to do it!
FATHER. You see how even vengeance is desire, son, how seeking justice is samsara.
SON. But I have to!

SON looks one last time at his FATHER, for approval. FATHER, reluctantly, nods yes. SON tears the WANDERER’S eyes out and holds them aloft, proudly and grotesquely.

SON. Agg! Finally!

WANDERER screams in agony. FATHER looks down in shame.

SON staggers the stage, mad with blood and vengeance.

WANDERER. They’re coming! Run, sir, they’re coming.

The rustle in the woods is heard, closer and closer, louder and louder. SON, in his blood-madness, is oblivious to the sound. FATHER perks his ears up and simply awaits his end.

WANDERER. Run, sir! They’ll kill you!
FATHER. They can’t hurt me.

Enter GOVERNMENT AGENT ONE and GOVERNMENT AGENT TWO.
SON shoves the eyeballs in his pocket and drops into his fighting stance.
FATHER stands upright, alert and calm.
Both AGENTS draw their guns and point them at FATHER.

AGENT (ONE). Put your hands where I can see them.

FATHER raises his hands into the air.

FATHER. We are unarmed.
AGENT. Who are you?
FATHER (indicating SON). I am the boy’s father.
AGENT. This is no joke, sir. Identify yourself.
FATHER (proudly). I am an Eagle Scout.

AGENT shoots at FATHER’S feet. FATHER does not budge.

AGENT. What is your name?
FATHER. What is your name?
AGENT. Agent #9, CIA.
FATHER. What do you want, Agent #9?
AGENT. I want to know: Are you or are you not Mr. Alfred Jones?
FATHER. I am the wind.

AGENT shoots at SON; the bullet grazes his arm. SON falls to ground, bleeds. FATHER makes to tend to SON.

AGENT. Don’t move, Mr. Jones. Or I’ll fire.
FATHER. Don’t shoot the boy.
AGENT. I’ll shoot whomever I want. (flashing his Agent’s badge). Mr. Jones, Agent Alfred Jones, you are hereby under arrest by order of the United States government.
FATHER. Are you all right, son?
SON (dabbing his arm, smiling). Yes. Feels good.
AGENT (angry). Did you hear me?
FATHER. Yes, I heard you. What are the charges?

AGENT ONE signals to AGENT TWO, who opens a notebook and begins to read the list.

AGENT TWO. Treason.
AGENT. Four counts.
AGENT TWO. Withholding of top-secret information.
AGENT. Twelve counts.
AGENT TWO. Public maligning of the State.
AGENT. Four hundred and seventeen counts.
AGENT TWO. Practice of the dark arts.
AGENT. Fourteen counts.
AGENT TWO. Communing with spirits.
AGENT. Thirteen counts.
AGENT TWO. Disbelieving in God.
AGENT. One count.
AGENT TWO. Corrupting the youth.
AGENT. One count.
AGENT TWO. That’s it.
SON. Jesus Christ, Dad!
FATHER. I meant to tell you about some of that, son.
AGENT. Mr. Jones, on your stomach. Now. No games.

FATHER kneels, slowly lowers himself onto his stomach. AGENT TWO removes a set of handcuffs from his belt.

AGENT. Now, Mr. Jones, we’re going to approach you. If you so much as breath, we’ll shoot the boy in the head.
FATHER. Don’t hurt the boy.

AGENTS approach FATHER and SON, handcuff both of them, sit them up, bounds their legs.
A bomb explodes in the distance.

SON. A TPZ 700!
FATHER. Very good.

AGENT cracks FATHER across the face with his gun.

AGENT. Quiet!
FATHER. It’s coming, isn’t it, Agent #9?
AGENT. Not if I can help it.
SON. What’s coming, Dad?
FATHER. Don’t worry, son. You’ll be all right. (To AGENT) We’d better put our gas masks on.
AGENT. Quiet! I’m trying to think here!
AGENT TWO. He’s very good at that.
AGENT. Shut up!

AGENT signals to AGENT TWO for the gas masks. AGENT TWO fetches two masks for him and AGENT ONE from his bag. FATHER then signals to his own bag. AGENT TWO fetches the two masks from the bag and hands them to FATHER and SON, who put the masks on. WANDERER looks on forlornly and maskless, coughing and holding his hand over his mouth.

AGENT. Damn it, Jones, let’s get to the point. We need the codes, and we need the codes immediately.

Sound of airplanes, another bomb.

FATHER. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to help you.

AGENT nods to AGENT TWO who cracks FATHER across the face with his gun.

AGENT. I don’t think you understand. The enemy has acquired nuclear technology. They have infiltrated our military and have hijacked three planes that are now, as we speak, airborne. These planes are en route to their targets, one of which is only mere miles from here, and if we don’t get the codes from you, we will soon see our civilization bombed into oblivion. You yourself, and your son here, will die. Do you understand, Mr. Jones?
FATHER. It all sounds very serious, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.
AGENT. Then you force us to use enhanced interrogation techniques on you, Mr. Jones. Johnson, bring me the balls.

AGENT TWO fetches two absurdly large medicine balls from his bag.

AGENT. Put him into position; his son, too.

AGENT TWO stretches out the legs of FATHER and SON, exposing their crotches. He fixes their legs to the ground by inserting metal clamps over their ankles and into the earth.

WANDERER (from his pathetic position on the ground). What’s going on?
AGENT. Shut up! (Looking at WANDERER) Jesus, what happened to you?
WANDERER. The boy tore my eyes out.

Sound of approaching planes.

AGENT (to AGENT TWO). Hurry!
FATHER. Do you know what happens when a nuclear bomb drops? Do you know what the effects are? Have you ever studied the science? If you’re close to the hypocenter, you can be vaporized immediately. The temperatures will reach 500 million degrees Fahrenheit, at ground zero. Outward from the hypocenter, most casualties are caused by burns from the heat. Fires will spawn everywhere. Then there’s the radiation to worry about —
AGENT. Shut up! I’m trying to think here. (To AGENT TWO) Hit him with the ball in the balls!

AGENT TWO strikes FATHER in the crotch with the medicine ball. FATHER is stoic and non-responsive.

AGENT. The codes, Mr. Jones! The codes! The self-destruct defensive codes! There is no time!
FATHER. In reality, time is the four dimension.
AGENT. Strike the boy!

AGENT TWO strikes SON in the crotch with the medicine ball.

SON. Jesus!

SON bites his own words, swallows the pain.

FATHER. As deaths go, vaporization is not so bad.
AGENT. Strike!

AGENT TWO strikes. Sound of airplanes, bombs, imminent doom.

FATHER. A man could do worse.
AGENT. Strike!

This third strike does visibly cause FATHER immense pain in his genital area.

FATHER. It won’t be long now, son. Ten seconds. Relax into it.
AGENT (madly, loosing his cool, his focus). The codes! You fuck! They’re going to kill us!
FATHER (to SON). On the count of three, break free and roll into the grave. One, two, three.

SON breaks free of his bonds and rolls into the grave. FATHER rolls in on top of him. In the commotion, their masks fall off. Then the nuclear blast goes off, represented on stage perhaps by a great white flash, a booming sound, and the swirling of dust. When the dust settles, literally, the AGENTS and the WANDERER have been completely vaporized. Only three small piles of ash remain where they had been standing. Meanwhile, in the grave, FATHER lies atop SON, his back is on fire, and he has momentarily lost consciousness. SON, alive and well, pushes FATHER off him, and pats down the fire on FATHER’S back. The SON acts deftly, with great courage and purpose and clarity.

SON. Dad? Dad, are you alive?
FATHER (coming to). Images, I’m still receiving images.
SON (relieved). Oh, thank God!
FATHER. Everything is God.
SON. Oh, thank God, thank everything! — you’re still alive!

FATHER coughs his terrible cough.

SON (greatly distressed). No!
FATHER. It’s no big deal, son. It’s just my time.
SON. No! Don’t let go!
FATHER. Put your mask back on.
SON. No! I’ll go with you.
FATHER (sternly, authoritatively). Put your mask on.

SON puts his mask back on.

FATHER. It’s all right, my boy. I’ve known this moment for a long, long time.
SON. No! (Sings, more slowly, interrupted by tears, only makes it through half the ditty) Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die.
FATHER. Sorry, son. Not this time.
SON. Would you like to hear a joke?
FATHER. No thanks.
SON. I've got a new one. If there is no God, how come every time I look up into the clear blue sky, I see an old man with a long white beard laughing at me?

FATHER laughs, long and hard, a blissful laughing fit, he laughs himself to death.

SON. Don’t go, Pop.

FATHER (still laughing and coughing and perhaps crying; one could hardly discriminate the laugh from the cry, or the cough from the laugh). Keep practicing, son. I love you.
SON. Dad!

FATHER dies. SON closes his FATHER’S eyes with his hand then lays his head on his FATHER’S chest. SON does not cry. FATHER’S spirit rises out of his body. SON watches it, talks to it. The audience sees nothing but their own projections.

SON. Pop? Where will you go now?

The spirit, unfortunately, due to the natural laws of physics, cannot answer in straight, grammatical English. What he says comes out garbled, unheard.

SON (growing frustrated). What? What’s that? What are you saying? It’s all garbled. Speak more clearly. I can’t understand you.

Pause.

SON. Okay, I’ll be quiet. I’ll listen. But damn it, Pop, tell me what happens to you now.

SON watches the spirit rise higher and higher, higher and higher. Then SON rises, goes to the barrel and starts a fire. He drags the body of his FATHER over to the barrel, measures the heat of the fire with his hands, decides it is not yet hot enough. He then resumes digging up his mother’s bones, which he pulls out of the ground and with which he makes a small pile, a pillow. He stands now and objectively observes the scene. He breathes in, out, looks up, looks down, breathes in, out. A cockroach runs across his feet.

SON. What happens now, Pop? Tell me what happens next.

SON listens intently, closes his eyes, and listens.

CURTAIN

Ponderosa

2007-12-13T09:55:00.001-08:00

My boy was running down the road without a look back at me as I crept up in my car. That impressed me. Fourteen years old, confused as hell. The wind picked up his hair. Thanksgiving day was bending into the afternoon, threatening to break.

I opened the passenger door as I dragged up next to him.

—Hop in, I said.

He looked at me, his eyebrows hunched.

When he climbed in, I knew I ought to bring him home to his mother. But I wanted him. I wanted to spend the holiday with my oldest boy. Conflicted, I tossed him the option.

—You want tofu or turkey?

—Turkey, he said.

We made a right off Eagle Road, headed to town.

—We’ll go to the Ponderosa, I said.

He nodded.

Landsing Pike dipped down through farmlands in silence. I was glad to be out of Lower Plymouth, a poor neighborhood, the place Ellen and I had decided to settle down in fifteen years ago. The prices were right and the realtor convinced us that Lower Plymouth would be Plymouth proper in three years, five on the outside. He was wrong, or lying. But it was a good lie, and we wanted to believe it. In Lower Plymouth, cookie-cutter houses stacked close together and only the liquor store stayed open late. High school hoodlums claimed the town’s only shopping center, where a 7-11, a Wendy’s, a hardware store, a Payless Shoes, a Dollar Store, and a closed-down Chinese food joint orbited the liquor store. Families in Lower Plymouth lived on government food stamps, handouts from relatives, and hard work. Despite Reaganomics, nothing had trickled down. Everyone in Lower Plymouth worked in the service industry. I had done short order at The Shrimp’s Tail before quitting a year ago. Ellen was still at the supermarket, across the railroad tracks in Gwenydd. But only about a mile east of Lower Plymouth sat Red Apple Farms. When El started eating only vegetables and going to church, she used to drive to the Red Apple on Saturday mornings and buy a barrel of tomatoes, corn, squash, green beans, and broccoli. God and greens went to her head. On Saturday nights, she concocted vegetables into patties or loaves for the dinner table. I couldn’t eat the stuff. El said abstaining from meat was healthier, holier. But I never felt better eating zucchini instead of chicken. I just felt hungrier. So I drank an extra drink, the whiskey filling my stomach.

Pete was staring at a fly that had landed on his arm. An odd kid, touched, up in his head.

The Farm was open. Happy, veggie-carrying customers, giddy with Thanksgiving, paddled back to their mini-vans. As we passed the Farm, I drove fast over the bump in the road that made the car jump, giving you that funny, leap-and-drop feeling in your gut. Pete held his stomach and chuckled.

—I’m sure the Ponderosa’ll have a nice spread, I said.

—I’m hungry, said Pete.

—It’ll have meat. That’s for sure.

—That’s good.

The farmland dead-ended into Groving Road. I made a left. Into the nicer part of town, Plymouth proper. The country club was full of doctors and lawyers staving off family dinner with a drink and a round. We drove another couple of miles in silence until we hit the downtown area, right on the edge of the City of Brotherly Love. Cobblestone streets and brick-laid sidewalks. Fine shopping: Banana Republic, Nine West, the Gap. Stores for eyeglasses, picture framing, flowers. Antiques, wedding dresses, kitchen wares, everything. The Shrimp’s Tail was down on Wycle Street. The sun spangled off the storefronts, off the sidewalks, off a woman’s blond hair. The day had a chance yet. My spirits lifted as we crept along the cobblestone, looking for a parking spot.

That morning I had awoken to a fight with my girlfriend, Lucinda, who I’d been with for six months. Lucinda walked out on me, left me in hotel room 7B in the Pleasantville Lodge at the Jersey shore, snagged a few twenties from my wallet on her way. I laid in bed a while listening to the bay waves lapping, and slowly mustered up the determination not to see my Thanksgiving become a complete disaster. I showered and shaved and drove over the Delaware River to surprise my family, see the kids. My wife kicked me off the property with a sanctimoniousness that repulsed me. But fortune had delivered me and now my oldest and I were together. On our way to a feast. Things were looking up. I felt the day and its possibilities opening up before me, like a set of automatic doors.

—There’s a spot, Pete said, pointing to a spot on the corner beneath a waving American flag.

—Good eye, I said, cozying the tire up to the curb.

I was happy. I wanted to smoke a joint, to get my appetite up, but I figured I’d wait a bit. Didn’t seem quite right, what with Pete there. But as Pete got out of the car I transferred a jay from the center console to my wallet, stepped out of the car. I could see Pete fingering the penknife in his pocket.

—I see you carry the knife I gave you, huh, kiddo?

—What are you talking about?

—The knife in your pocket, I said.

He shoved his hands deeper in his pocket and said:

—I don’t have a knife in my pocket.

—Suit yourself.

My stomach growled. The excitement of the morning dropped into my gut, riled up my hunger. A nervous energy took hold. I pulled a toothpick out of my pocket and stuck it in my mouth, grabbed a free local paper off a rack by the door, out of habit, just to have something to read on hand. But once we were inside — the smell of good cooking wafting about, the sounds of other families bouncing from the corners — I was ready to celebrate good and proper. This was Thanksgiving after all. My favorite holiday. We took a booth in the far corner. A king’s spot, I told Pete. No response.

—Thanksgiving’s my favorite holiday, I filled in the silence.

—Yeah, Pete asked, why’s that?

—Because it hasn’t been co-opted by the corporations. It’s still pure. A concise, clear message: be thankful. Be thankful for all you’ve got. Look at us. We’ve got a nice booth at a nice restaurant. We’ve got a salad bar full of home-cooking just waiting for us. And we’ve got each other, we’ve got family.

—It’s not home-cooking, Pete said.

—Sure it it, I countered.

—It’s a restaurant, Pop, by definition, it’s not home-cooking.

—But it tastes like home-cooking, right? That’s what counts.

Pete picked up the menu and looked at the drink options. I was ready for a beer. My watch said 2:45. Almost happy hour. Hell, it was a holiday, a festive meal with my boy. My day had already seen two fights. I decided on beer.

—You going to get the salad bar? I asked.

—Yeah, I guess, he said. They got turkey up there?

—Sure, they got turkey, I said.

—Yeah, okay, he said glumly.

A family across the restaurant erupted in laughter. We both looked over. The place was decked in gobble gear. Orange and brown streamers, plastic turkeys, paper pilgrims and feathered Indians hanging from the ceiling. The customers looked Lower Plymouth — noisy families in old jeans and ratty t-shirts —doing it up in downtown Plymouth for the holiday. I watched the hips of the waitress saunter towards us in rhythm with the music playing on the jukebox. Young gal, not much older than Hannah, nametag said Linda. Along with her uniform black slacks and apron, she wore a tiny t-shirt, untucked so as to reveal her belly button with the slightest lift of the arms. Voice was full of attitude, her tone telling us she didn’t belong at the Ponderosa.

—Can I get you two fellows something to drink?

—What kind of beers do you have? I asked.

She bent toward me, turned the menu in my hand over to the back page.

—There’s the list.

—I’ll have a Coke, said Pete.

—How about a Yuengling? I said.

—Okay, she wrote down our orders. And to eat? We have a Thanksgiving Day Turkey Special.

—Isn’t there turkey on the salad bar? I asked.

—Sure, there is. But the special comes with stuffing, cranberries and our special gravy.

—Mmm. How much is it?

—$10.99.

—And the salad bar?

—$7.99. All you can eat.

—That’s a pretty good deal.

—Which one?

Pete looked at me:

—I kinda want the Thanksgiving Day Special.

A few slabs of turkey and their so-called special gravy sounded like a rip-off at $10.99. And I was short on cash. But what was I going to do? Break my boy’s cranberry-loving heart?

—I’ll just take the salad bar, I told the waitress. So long as there’s turkey, I’m happy. But you get what you want, Pete.

Pete frowned at my order.

—No, check that, I said. I’ll take the Turkey Special. It’s good, yeah?

—Oh it’s good, she said and she winked at me. You two’ll love it.

What a darling this girl was, to wink like that, to catch and uplift the mood just like that. A wink and a promise.

—Yeah, two Turkey Specials for me and my boy, I said.

The waitress placed her hand on my shoulder. What a flirt this one was, with her big, boisterous bangs, her long, dangly earrings. With a little squeeze, she said she’d be right back with our drinks and that we could help ourselves to the salad-only portion of the salad bar. Using the small plates, she clarified. Sticking her pen behind her ear, she folded her black notebook back into her apron’s pouch, spun around and danced toward the kitchen. Pete and I made our way to the salad bar.

—All right, I said, let’s eat some greens.

I piled up a plateful of iceberg lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, peppers, beets and croutons. Linda brought my beer and lingered while Pete fixed his plate. She stuck her pen in the corner of her mouth and watched me as I took my first slug.

—Just father and son today? she asked.

—That’s right, I said.

Linda pulled her right leg up and scratched her ankle, as to draw my attention to her slender, runner’s legs. I changed my mind about her age: she was a community college girl. Probably taking courses in modern psychology or the role of women in literature. A smart girl. Curse my man’s mind all you will, but in that moment, I thought of having pretty Linds right there bent over that Ponderosa booth. Her two hands splayed out across the squeaking, green vinyl. The taste of salt, the smell of turkey, on her neck. She chewed on her pen a moment and I looked at her and then she moved aside to let Pete slide back into his seat.

—I’ll be back in a minute with your dinners.

Pete took a bite of his salad: mixed greens, mandarin oranges, walnuts, cottage cheese. He chewed methodically, contemplatively. I searched for an agreeable subject of conversation. I wanted to get into it with my boy. But all I could think of to talk about were the salad dressings: I had chosen the creamy Italian. Or the Eagles, who were adrift in a dismal season, having mustered up only 11 points in their most recent contest against the Lions. Or the revisionist history of Thanksgiving, a subject I knew Pete and I could riff on. But can you really talk about the unconscionable slaughter of the Indians without ruining your appetite? Who wants to think about smallpox blankets on a holiday?

—I read that book you told me about, he said.

—Oh, really? I said. Which one?

—Rabbit, Run, he said.

I felt the fool for having recommended a book about an unfaithful husband. When I had read the novel, I had related deeply. To the running, to the feeling of foot on pavement, to the exhilaration of freedom and the burden of responsibility. I gave it to Pete so that we might talk about these things, but now I couldn’t fathom where to begin.

—Did you like it? I asked.

—I liked it all right, he said.

—I really liked that first scene, I said, when Rabbit plays basketball with those young kids.

Pete drew Coke through the straw.

—You know, I said, Rabbit’s trying to recapture the glory of his youth. You can feel it in that first scene. And maybe that’s what the whole book is about.

—I just thought Rabbit was a bastard, Pete said.

He looked at me, his final judgement hanging in the air, transferring to me.

—Maybe that’s the point, I offered.

Pete coughed and then delivered a little speech that I imagine he’d been working on:

—The problem with the novel is its portrayal of women. We have Janice, the sloppy, dumb, alcoholic wife, who can’t hold onto Rabbit and then accidentally drowns her newborn baby. And he have Ruth, the fat crosstown whore and mistress who allows herself to be impregnated by an irresponsible adulterer.

Hell, I was no literature professor. I had just enjoyed the book. My boy, on the other hand, was bright and insightful. A bookish fellow. The trick with Pete was he made you feel like he had figured out things on a deeper level, but of course he hadn’t. He didn’t understand that book any better than I did. He was working with the model of such a life; I was living it.

—What about Eccle’s wife? I said.

—She’s only in the book to have her ass slapped.

Naive boy, thinking he’s so smart. His problem is he lives in his head. When he discovers his body, that’ll be his awakening. His reckoning. Everything’s clear in theory, impossible in practice. He’ll learn. Until then, he’ll come off as a know-it-all punk. My boy, angry, intelligent, but deadly. Bringing his self to bear at the dinner table, taking on his old Dad. I liked that.

Linda sashayed over with our turkey dinners. My mouth salivated. The Yuegling made me feel limber, giddy. The clean break of the morning, the invigorating fight with El, the flirtation with the waitress. I took a slug of beer and it warmed my innards, bubbled up to my brain. Our deluxe meals sat before us. Despite everything, I was with my boy and I felt frisky. Life is in the friskiness.

After a few bites of turkey, I realized that I hadn’t called El to tell her that Pete was with me. That seemed only right. She would worry. I excused myself and walked to the back of the restaurant where the bathrooms and the phone booth and the kitchen were. Put a quarter in the slot and dialed Eagle Road. Linda walked through the swinging saloon doors from the kitchen laden with two more Turkey Day Specials.

—Who are you calling? she asked coyly.

—The boy’s mother, I said, over the ringing on the other end of the line.

—Hmm-mm, Linda strutted on.

These young ones are the friskiest. Once they get older they carry too much past. History saturating every pore of their bodies. The young ones will still walk into unknown worlds with you without looking back.

—Hi Ellen, I said, it’s me.

—Is Pete with you? she asked right off.

—Yes, he is. He’s right here. We’re having dinner together.

—Why didn’t you call sooner? she asked.

—I didn’t get a chance until now.

—You bring him right back here after you two are done eating.

—I thought we might go to the park.

—You bring him right back, Michael, she threatened. Or I’ll call the police.

She hung up. And the click of the line brought back all the reasons I had left her. El had changed. God and greens had gone to her head. I wasn’t any fool for a pie in the sky. Too much magic in that kind of thinking. God’s a metaphor for the father. There’s a slice of heaven for all of us right here on earth if only we’re courageous enough to look for it. That was my way of thinking. El and I used to get high and listen to The Animals in her parents’ basement. Isn’t that heaven enough? How much better can a soul feel? When the record ended, her father yelled down the stairs that it was bedtime. Heaven came and went with the tides like that. Nothing’s always the same. The river flows and we swim along. But at some point, El got religion and started eating only vegetables, feeding a holiness she needed inside. And I just couldn’t get with it. The more I resisted, the more she hardened up. She stopped partying on Saturday nights and started going to church on Sunday mornings. “For the kids.” Said they’d need religion and order in life and if I wasn’t going to give it to them, then she would. Now look at her. She just said she’d call the police, a word she’d pronounce only with distain in the seventies. Back when we didn’t believe in authority, when we believed in ourselves.

I pulled a joint out of my wallet and pushed the exit door open to the outside. The day was brilliant. I sparked the joint, leaning halfway out the door. That first drag was dynamite. Quick stuff, it coursed through my limbs and lit up my head. Linda sauntered back toward the kitchen and stopped in front of the swinging doors. She was holding a tray full of dirty dishes.

—You going to leave your kid there to eat his dinner alone? she asked.

—Bring him a milkshake, I said.

She set the tray down, shook her head at me and asked:

—You gonna bogart that thing?

I beckoned her with a sideways head nod. She raised her hands above her head and clapped three times. Her shirt hiked up, her navel peeked out. As she walked toward me at the end of the little hallway, she smoothed down her apron. I imagined those thin, runner’s legs wrapped around my head. She and I could’ve walked out that door right then. There was nothing stopping us.

I handed her the joint and she sucked down a hit and then giggled and said something about how naughty she was to get stoned on a busy day at the restaurant.

—It’s a holiday, I reassured her, enjoy yourself.

She handed the wet joint back and teased:

—You’re naughty, and then she scurried back into the kitchen where a bell was ringing.

Dinner was delicious. I ordered a second beer when I got back, thinking Linda might comp me one. I felt lucky, which is the same as happy. My boy had chosen me to have Thanksgiving with. Linda was in the pocket. The stuffing was hot and moist and full of raisins and brown sugar. The morning had punished me, but now the good karma was flowing.

—So, I asked Pete, how have things been at home?

Pete leered at me, his eyebrows scrunched into his cheeks.

—Fine, he said. The stingy bastard.

—How’s school? I fished.

—Fine.

—What are you reading in class?

—Thoreau.

—Do you like him?

—Yeah, he measured. I like him very much.

—What is it you like about him?

—I like how he writes about self-reliance. Personal conscience and communing with nature. I like his attention to detail: the list of the vegetables he plants in his garden, the meticulous financial records, the reflections. The whole idea of spending time alone in nature appeals to me.

—Yeah, I dig Thoreau’s view, too. I like his philosophy of taking care of yourself. Because that’s really the most important thing in life: to just take care of yourself. From that, the rest follows.

Pete put down his fork and took a swig of Coke. Then he wiped his mouth with his napkin. I changed the subject.

—I called your mother, I said, let her know you were with me. I told her that maybe after dinner, we’d go to the park. Or check into a hotel and watch some football. What’d you say?

He shrugged his shoulders.

We finished our meals in silence. Linda dropped the check. She wrote, I’m off in ten minutes, on the back. I looked at my watch: 3:50. Pete slurped the last of his soda through the straw. He stood up.

—I gotta go to the bathroom, he said.

As he stared at me, I caught a glimpse of Linda’s ass over his shoulder.

He turned and made his way to the back of the restaurant. While I wanted to hang out with him, I figured I ought to get him home. Yes, I could dump him home quick, then come right back for Linda. That seemed fair enough. Linda, seeing Pete was gone, ambled over.

—Fifteen minutes? I said. That’s just enough time for me to run my boy back to his mother. You can wait an extra minute?

—Ten minutes, she said, sticking her pen in her hair, Tops.

I smiled and looked at my watch again.

—Ten minutes, I said. I handed her the cash for the bill, tipped her as well as I could, having to save money now for what might come.

—I gotta go close out my register, she said.

With that giddy, nervous energy that had been with me throughout the meal, I rapped my fingers on the table. I listened to the music. They were playing a new Madonna song. I lost myself a moment in the melody.

I looked toward the back of restaurant and wondered what was taking Pete so long. I looked at my watch: 3:57. I’d never make it back by 4:05. Was I going to miss my chance here because my kid was dropping base in a public restaurant? No. She was probably kidding. She’d wait. I stood and crossed the restaurant. In the bathroom, I called Pete’s name. No response. I checked the stalls: he wasn’t there. Fuck, I thought, where’d the little bastard go? Back in the hallway with the phone, I noticed the back door was open. I stepped outside and shouted Pete’s name. No response. What the fuck? I walked through the restaurant, checking back at our table, empty and cleared, and went out the front door. A scan of the horizon in all directions revealed nothing. I hustled to the car: empty. My heart beat on, hoofs in the dirt. The little bastard must be on foot towards home, I figured, I’ll catch up with him on Landsing Pike. So I got in behind the wheel of the car, started the engine, and backed out of the spot. The car plunked awkwardly backward, sunk into the driver’s side. What the fuck? I got out. Sticking out of the back tire was the penknife. The front tire, too, slashed.

I lost my breath and gripped my chest. I collapsed against the side of the car, caught myself, staggered through the door, and slumped into the seat. I turned the car off. I put my head on the wheel. I wept. Everything pushed through me. Everything rotten. Up in the sky, above the car, the flag wrested with the wind.

A moment later, Linda tapped on my window. I looked up, gathered myself, and motioned for her to come around to the passenger side door.

The Scribbler

2007-12-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

Jacob stepped to the urinal and lifted his tunic. His fellow monk Johannes stood beside him. A separator between them preserved their privacy. Jacob exhaled with a deep sense of pleasure. Ten straight hours spent transcripting, without rest, without sustenance, with only water to drink, had given him a tremendous pent-up urge to urinate.

“Oh yeah,” he moaned.

“A good one?” Johannes laughed.

“The best,” said Jacob.

Johannes zipped up. Without looking over to Jacob, he said, “I’ve heard about what you’ve been doing.”

“I don’t know what your talking about,” said Jacob.

“Look,” Johannes said, “Don’t make me spell this out. I’ve heard about it and I think it’s wrong.”

Jacob folded up his tunic and turned to face his friend. For a moment they locked eyes.

“Just stop,” said Johannes. “For your own sake.”

“It’s my life,” said Jacob.

“Yeah, I know it is,” said Johannes. “And you can stand on your head to prove your freedom, but you’re still standing on your head because of your need to prove your freedom.”

“Blah blah blah,” said Jacob. He’d heard that hackneyed argument a thousand times over during his years of theological studies.

Johannes shook his head and crossed in front of Jacob to the sink. He washed his hands in silence, enjoying the feeling of the warm water on his cold fingers. He thought to himself, the study is particularly chilly today. He shivered at the thought of returning to his carrel.

Jacob picked up the hand towel and handed it to Johannes.

“Thank you,” said Johannes, adding, “very kind of you.”

Jacob bowed in a show of respect. Before exiting, Johannes gave Jacob one last meaningful stare, as if to say: Stop, for the love of the Word, for the love of the Brotherhood, please stop. Jacob stepped to the still flowing water in the sink and placed his hands under its warmth.

Back at his desk, Jacob found his confidence flagging. He worked in the I.I.W. — It Is Written — wing of the Brotherhood. Their slogan was: We uphold the Noble Paradox — It Is Written, So We Must Write It. His official title was Senior Transcriptor. Jacob knew that to toil in the I.I.W. was a blessing and a noble calling. He understood intuitively that his Book had been discovered because his personality was well suited to this kind of pious work. His constitution had been designed to uphold the Order’s one thousand and twenty five precepts, including no entertainment, no games, no large beds, etc. His sole task in life was to transcript the text of his life. After all, his Book had been discovered — and its very physical existence was a miracle. (Chances were, the revisionists argued now, these Books had been written by the great prophet Jeremiah Johnson in 2041, but that was besides the point.) His Book existed. His life was leather-bound. The story of his time on earth had been foretold, forewritten, and fated, as were the lives of all human beings, if not in actual ink, then in metaphysical ink. The difference was a flesh-and-blood, paper-and-binding copy of Jacob’s Book had been discovered. So when he turned two years old, his intensive training began. In short, he was instructed in the art of transcription: how to trace over with his own human hand the predestined text of his life as it was written in his Book. Now a fully ordained monk in the Brotherhood of the Word, Jacob spent his every waking moment transcripting. And with each stroke of his pen, he felt closer to God.

Over the years, Jacob proved himself an exceptionally skilled transcriptor, the keenest and most rigorous in his class. He pioneered the time-loop method, a wickedly clever device in which a transcriptor could trace a page or two ahead of real-time, so that he might earn himself a brief respite. He was also quick to catch up in time, if necessary. So, after returning from the mandatory bathroom break, he was the first to write out the scene that had transpired in the bathroom with Johannes. Word for word, gesture for gesture, vital detail for vital detail, the drama of that conversation had been long-ago recorded in the Book, and then transcripted by Jacob. Within minutes of resuming his work, Jacob had brought his text back to the usual refrain: I am writing I am writing I am writing...

Of course, there was cause for the occasional hilarious variation: I am writing now or I am writing this now or I am writing I am writing I am writing with my favorite quill. The monks knew how to have a good time. I am writing all blessed day long. Jacob was the first to write that line. How heartily the other monks had laughed at the insertion of the word blessed into the already comical variation all day long. The other monks considered Jacob a humorist, a natural, a master transcriptor.

When he started cheating, rumors of his corruption spread fast. The other monks were genuinely worried about him, about his emotion well-being, and of course, about his salvation.

“What is he doing?” they asked each other.

“Does he think he’s being funny?”

“Does he want to go to hell? Cause if he does, that’s the way to go. He can write himself right into the seventh ring.”

The other monks were befuddled and their worried whispers filled the corridors of the monastery. Once, during lunch in the great hall, they shared a laugh over Jacob’s transgressions after someone made the wisecrack, “Does he think he’s the Word?”

Meanwhile, Jacob persisted in his private subversions. First, his hands shaking, he experimented with handwriting. With ten years of transcripting his text behind him, Jacob knew the exact flow of the original. He knew the i’s were dotted ever so slightly off-left of center. The l’s dipped just below the line. And the j’s were slanted, twelve degrees right of the vertical. One afternoon, with no warning, no sign, no revelation whatsoever, Jacob simply started correcting these minor imperfections in the handwriting of the original. For the first time ever, his transcriptions, his tracings, did not precisely overlay the original. In his heart’s core, he felt the thrill of the sinner.

Then one day he scribbled in the margin. He said to himself, I am the scribbler. He recorded this thought in his text. I am the scribbler. Looking at the very words in the text proper — I am the scribbler — Jacob thought to himself, It has been recorded that I would be the scribbler. Now I am become the scribbler. I am merely writing the text of my life, transcripting my every thought and action. I am scribbling I am scribbling I am scribbling.
This was what he wrote in the margin:
Look here! I am the scribbler. I am scribbling.
A rush of originality filled his chest and his heart beat madly. He quickly returned to the text proper, but then, an hour later, he again ventured to the margins, this time, writing, What a beautiful day! Outside my window, the birds make wondrous music. He didn’t know why he did it (and of course he recorded his transgression in the text proper), but he did do it. He’d written in the margins, twice now. That much was clear. He’d written in the margins of his Book, and the action baffled him. What does it even mean to write in the margins of the text of one’s life? Am I commenting on the text itself, merely making a few harmless observations? Or have I deviously and devastatingly departed from the path? The movement of the birds outside my window was gorgeous, stirring, aesthetically pleasing, and I felt I had to record this beauty. Pay witness, precisely as my vocation pays witness to the noble paradox. There is such beauty in the world, he said to himself, and then he continued on with the usual: I am writing I am writing I am writing in my study...

“Yes,” said the Order’s severe and chaste Mahamonk, later that evening, as they sat in his office, “yes, of course, Jacob, there is tremendous joy and beauty in this world, but this is not our calling, is it, to record this beauty?”

“No, sir,” answered Jacob.

“You must return to your given task,” said the Mahamonk. “You must continue to purify. Return to your transcriptions, without further wandering. As I see it, your situation is critical.”

Jacob briefly thought of a reading from his days in the seminary. The class was called “In the Margins: The Temptations of Interpretation.” The piece had been written by a master monk of the 22th century. It began, “The text is the text is the text is the text is the text is the text. There is no margin. Do not be fooled by the illusion of the margin. Open space is found only within the words themselves. Do not look elsewhere for your liberation. Be free within the infinity of that which is written.” Suddenly the entire essay came back to Jacob now. Only this time, his mind registered disagreement, discord. Cognitive dissonance. The texture of this thought was new to Jacob. He blushed.

“Do not fear,” said the Mahamonk. “This too shall pass.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacob, almost mindlessly.

“Focus,” said the master, “Be intent.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacob.

“You are excused,” said the Mahamonk, “but be warned: the waters in which you swim are deep and full of dangerous creatures of ambiguous origins. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, my Maha.”

“Very well, then,” said the master, “Return to your work. May the Word be with you.”

“And also with you, my Maha,” said Jacob, with a hint of half-heartedness. Sensing the fissure in his student’s resolve, his master frowned. They bowed to one another in a show of mutual respect, and Jacob left the room. The Mahamonk cast out a desperate prayer — Bring him back, back to the path and back to the Word. All praise and glory be to the Word, Amen — then he pulled from his desk his own Book. He himself had not transcripted in ten years, but suddenly was called to do so. He dipped his quill in the holy ink and began. The first words he wrote were: Sorrow is a lonely bird...

“They say he is raving mad,” said one monk to another in the great hall. He lifted a spoon of porridge to his lips. “They say he began doodling. Can you believe it? Jacob, a doodler?”

“So unfortunate,” said another.

“A sad case,” chimed in another.

“But a fool or a king?” said the first monk. “Which do you think he is? From which sin does he suffer: ignorance or pride?”

The other monks shook their heads side to side or shrugged their shoulders, and returned to their gruel.

Jacob had been excommunicated from the Order of the Brotherhood of the Word that morning. The Mahamonk had no choice; Jacob had turned his Book into a travesty. With doodles in the side margins, great sweeps of poetry running along the bottoms of the pages, bold X’s and strikeouts scattered throughout, the Book itself was the proof of Jacob’s fall from grace.

“I heard he drew a picture of a naked woman over what was supposed to be the text of his morning meditations,” said one monk incredulously.

Nobody believed that salacious claim, but the rumors were enough to spoil their appetites. Their finest contemporary, their master, had fallen. He’d become a heretic.

“I heard” said another, “that he told the Mahamonk that he considered himself a poet.”

“Yes,” said another, “I heard that too. He claimed to be taken by inspiration.”

Finally, Johannes, the most reticent of the Order, and forever second in class to Jacob’s first, entered the fray. “Jacob told me it was a matter of perception. It was his eyes, he said. Not his mind, nor his heart.”

“What do you mean?” asked a young novice.

“He claimed to see a different text than the one the Mahamonk saw when he looked it over,” explained Johannes. “You see, Jacob said that his transgressions were all foretold, forewritten in the text. He said that he was merely playing out his part, that all along he was transcripting honestly. He said when he first drew a great X through an entire page of text, he only did this because the X was already there, in other words, It Was Written.”

“So He Must Write It,” echoed the young monk.

“Exactly,” said Johannes. “Jacob confessed to me that his eyes hurt. That they ached horribly. That he could hardly make out his text any longer. He told me that the whole exercise of transcripting was pandemonium every time he opened his Book in the morning. But he swore to me that his transgressions were forewritten. He told me he felt like Judas and that in his heart he was very sad, but that, at the same time, he’d never felt such a thrill, such exhilaration.”

The other monks briefly conferred with one another, murmuring excitedly. Then they looked back to Johannes and the young one asked, “What do you think, Johannes?”

Johannes exhaled deeply and set down his wooden spoon.

“I think he’s a liar,” he said gravely. “Perhaps he lost his eyesight, but the doctors said his vision was fine. I think he went mad. Mostly I believe we have the Mahamonk to thank for his wisdom and prudence in this matter. All praise and glory to the Word!”

“All praise and glory to the Word!” said the others.

They finished their meal in an uneasy silence, each of them guessing at the heart of Johannes and at the mind of Jacob.

Jacob wandered the desert outside the monastery for three years. He suffered from hallucinations, starvation, demons, disease, loneliness, and despair. He suffered the unutterable humiliations of the vagrant. Through it all, he transcripted. That which he saw in his Book, he traced over with his human hand. As he understood it, all of his life, even his transgressions, his wanderings, his excommunication, had been written. Every detail was in his Book and his vocation was to transcript every word. As well as every scribble in the margin, every doodle, every great X, and every poetic utterance. Whatever he saw in his Book, he transcripted. He feared that his vision was slowly leaving him, but he transcripted on. He feared that his mind was failing him, but he transcripted on. He feared that his body was dying, but onward, ever onward, he honored his calling.

On some days, Jacob could not be sure if what he saw was an illusion, a pale and sorry figment of his imagination, or the text proper, but he learned to forge ahead regardless. This lack of clarity caused him the most subtle and excruciating pains. Out loud, to the heavens, he wished that this same trial never be suffered again by another soul, that he, Jacob, right here and now, would undergo and purge this brand of suffering for all humankind. Ultimately, he could not afford to worry about possible discrepancies between what was written and what wasn’t, what was real and what was imagined. What was important was that he continued to transcript as best he saw fit. So he continued to run his hand along the page and trace the outlines of whatever his ailing senses presented to him as the world.

He grew a ghastly beard. He communed with the scavenging birds. He ate weeds and seeds and the occasional offering from a passing faithful who recognized his habiliment as that of the Order.

Three years passed in this manner, Jacob holding on tenuously to his sanity, to his vocation, to his dignity, and to his inspiration.

“I am inspired,” he recalled he had told his former Mahamonk. “I have come to depend upon my inspiration. It follows me daily and I obey it. I write what I see in my Book, and nothing more, my Maha. You must believe me.”

That was the case that he had made for himself, but the Mahamonk had not believed him. The Maha believed Jacob had fallen from the grace of the Word, that he had been possessed by demons.

“You are lying, Jacob,” he had said during that final meeting. “You are no better than the common street poet, proclaiming his inspiration to the ignorant masses. You have abandoned your calling, your Order, your Word and your Book. You are a disgrace to the Brotherhood, and you are hereby banished. Speak no more to me with your forked tongue. Leave immediately and sing your cursed poems to the other fools of the desert, for they will be your neighbors now.”

On some days, Jacob would find himself returning to the familiar refrain of I am writing I am writing I am writing or I am writing all blessed day long and he would long for the company of his fellow monks. At the same time, he would curse the simplicity of their lives, their cowardly escapism and false purity. I am the only one truly in and of this world, and thereby the world beyond, he said to himself, in self-justification, in self-consolation, and perhaps also in truth, for Jacob had become the true ascetic, the genuine seeker. Oh how they take even their porridge and warm water for granted, he cried to himself. What a tower of mortal pleasures they live in! Nevertheless, despite his moral indignation, at times, Jacob longed for the simple comforts of his former life.

On the fourth anniversary of his exile, having set up camp at the far end of the desert, three thousand miles from the monastery, Jacob ceremoniously threw his Book into the river. He wept as he watched it float away on the gentle current. He fell to the ground and repented. With this act, he let go of his past, of his desire, of his self — and he was profoundly transformed. Nevertheless, he still identified himself as a transcriptor at heart, and he still felt it was his calling to uphold the noble paradox: It Is Written, So We Must Write It. So he sat crosslegged by the river and opened a journal. Blank pages stared back at him, taunted him. But slowly, with trained concentration, his eyes, ever so slowly, began to make out words written on the pages, and so he passed his hands over the words that he saw take form before him, however ghostly they may have first appeared. He gave real ink to what had already been inked by the invisible hand of the Word. Such was his conviction as he wrote. Three more years passed in this way, Jacob filling book after book after book with witness, testimony, scripture and poetry.

“How come he no longer writes?” one of Jacob’s students asked another.

“He writes with his body,” said the older student.

“What does that even mean?” said the younger student.

“It means exactly what it says,” said the older, “it means he writes with his body. The world is the text and the body is the pen. You’ve read Book Twenty-Seven of the Works of the Glorious Body, yes?”

“Yes,” said the younger, “I think so.”

“Well, read it again.”

The two young monks continued their transcriptions. Jacob had eleven students now. That was enough, more than enough. He was eighty-seven years old, and he spent most of his days tracing forms in the air with his fingers. Beautiful, vanishing forms. He also sat in his study and conducted interviews with his disciples, a few of whom had fled the Brotherhood of the Word on the far side of the desert. One student of Jacob’s had been exiled exactly as Jacob himself had been exiled as a young man. This young novice John often barraged old Jacob with questions about the subtle distinctions between the world, the body, and the text. Naturally, John would become Jacob’s successor. And so Jacob’s nearly every thought concerned the proper training of this single, most promising student.

“I have fear,” said John. “Great fear.”

“About what?” asked Jacob.

“I don’t know exactly,” said John. “Mostly about the steadiness of my hand as I transcript.”

“Fear not,” said Jacob. “The Word shall keep your hand steady.”

“But sometimes,” the novice continued, “sometimes it shakes and I mistranscript a letter.”

A cry escaped Jacob. His outburst was pathetic, but brief, and he accepted that his old heart was so tired that perhaps he must allow himself a few tears.

“It’s all right, my boy,” said Jacob. “Your hand may shake.”

“But what then?” said John. “What happens when I can no longer hold steady to the form of the letters? What then?”

Jacob paused, and listened to the sounds of the birds outside his window.

“’What then?’?” Jacob echoed the young man’s question.

“Yes,” said John, “what then? What happens when I slip from the form of the letters?”

“Then you learn,” said Jacob, “that there are no letters, there are no words, there is no text, there is no body, and there is no world.”

“But what does that even mean?” said John.

“Indeed, what does that even mean?” said Jacob. He knocked his cane on the hardwood floor of his study, and the sound traveled to the ears of his assistant sitting outside the door, who promptly brought in a pitcher of water and filled their glasses.

“Will that be all, sir?” asked the assistant.

“Yes,” answered Jacob, with a modest bow. “That will be all.”

To Be Consoled

2007-10-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

a novel in voices

by Paul Charles Griffin

“There is no leaf of the forest, or lowly blade of grass, but has its ministry.”
-Ellen G. White, from The Desire of Ages: The Conflict of the Ages Illustrated in The Life of Christ

PART ONE
November, 1990
Lower Plymouth, Pennsylvania

SUNDAY

Maggie

The world was peaceful from the top of the evergreen. The wind was blowing from the south, from the schoolyard at the end of the street. The wind was blowing through the leaves of the other trees. The wind blows wherever it pleases. Jesus said that. Soon the leaves would change their colors. Maybe then Mommy would come home, I thought. That morning she had thrown plates against the kitchen wall, taken a busted plate into her room and locked the door. Uncle Don came over and broke down the door and took her away. There was blood on her arms. We were in the hospital for a couple of hours and Uncle Don yelled at us. Wagged his finger at us and told us it was all our fault.

The fiesta style plates were clean, fresh out of the dishwasher. Now they were shattered. Four of them in total. Through the wind, I could still hear the sound of each one hitting the wall.

I wondered what was for dinner. Sissy was not a good cook, but she’d have to make something. Maybe she’d put one of those Stouffer’s vegetable lasagnas in the oven. That wasn’t hard. I figured that was what she’d do. Sometimes I got a cold spot in my lasagna, but if it was warm throughout, it was okay. I wasn’t hungry, though, so I didn’t care.

Uncle Don said mom had gone away for a couple of days, maybe forever. And that it was our fault. That we had to behave, to be nice to mom so this wouldn’t happen again.

—Look what you’ve done to her, he said.

I figured Mommy would come back before the leaves changed because she loves when the leaves change. She taught me why the leaves change colors: because autumn arrives. She wouldn’t miss it. I wondered if the leaves changed where ever Mommy was. I thought so because nature is everywhere.

I could see the end of the block from atop the tree. The neighborhood boys were playing basketball. The ball clanged against the rickety backboard. This sound was jarring, like the sound of a plate shattering against a wall. Beyond the court, beyond the dead end, there was the schoolyard. The big red brick wall of the schoolhouse. The flags whipped around in the sky above the building. There was a strong wind.

—Maggie, come down from there.

It was Sissy, standing at the bottom of the tree. Sissy is beautiful. The bones in her face were made right. I will never be as beautiful as her. She has large breasts, like Mommy, and even though Sissy tells me that I too will have breasts one day, I know they won’t be as large as hers.

—Come down now, she said. It’s almost dinnertime. We’re having lasagna.

What is the word for knowing something before it happens? I asked my teacher in school last year, last spring. But that was so long ago that I forgot. I don’t like to forget things, it makes me nervous. For example, they told me where Mommy was, but I couldn’t remember the name of the place. It was a kind of Center. A place where Mommy can rest, Aunt Rita said.

—Maggie, are you listening to me? Sissy said. Come down from there.

—No, I said.

—Yes, she said.

Sissy flipped her hair back over her shoulder. She did this when she was nervous, she made this gesture to show off her beauty.

I was staring into space, trying to see the wind, but I could only see the wind in the wind-blown leaves.

—Maggie, are you all right?

Everybody was asking me this. Is there a word for everybody asking you the same question over and over again?

—Yeah, I said, I’m fine.

Sissy was standing at the base of the evergreen tree that stood on the corner of our property. Behind the tree was the sign that named our street, Eagle Road. I was at the top of the tree, like a bird. Once Daddy had come back when the leaves turned red and orange. He pulled up in a new-smelling car and drove us to the Ponderosa for dinner. Mommy didn’t come. But Daddy stood there at the door of his car, and he seemed proud. Red leaves blew around behind his head. We piled in the back of the car and as we drove down the road, Daddy played rock music from the stereo and we all sang out loud with the windows open and the fresh air pouring in. I sang too, even though I didn’t know the words. The chorus was easy: Forever young, oh, forever young. I poked my head out the window. I stuck my hand out the window, too, and let the wind catch it. I moved my hand up and down over the mailboxes and street signs as we passed them, tracing the forms, pretending that I had a wing.

—Mom’s going to come home soon, you know that, right, Maggie?

I looked down squarely at Sissy. She should have emptied the dishwasher, even if it was Simon’s chore for the day.

—When? I asked. When is mom coming home?

—Probably tomorrow morning, she said. Maybe before you even wake up.

I woke up before the sun came up, so I didn’t believe Sissy. I could tell she wanted to be telling the truth, but she wasn’t, because she really didn’t know when mom was coming home. I wanted to believe Sissy, but I couldn’t.

Angry, I turned away from her and started rubbing my arm against the bark of the tree. My skin got red and crumbled off. It hurt and felt good at the same time.

—You’re lying, I said.

I rubbed my arm against the tree real hard, staring off into the green wind. Bits of bark broke off the tree and stuck into my skin. I liked that.

—Maggie, come down now! screamed Sissy.

—No! I screamed back.

She was angry, too, and she began to climb the tree. As she got closer to me, my heart sped up. She was climbing quickly, gripping each branch so that her knuckles went white and then pulling herself up with great huffs. For an instant, I wondered if her anger was the same as my anger, if it existed between us, or if her anger was her own anger, and was inside her body somewhere, or if the anger was entirely separate from both of us.

—Get away from me! I screamed. I don’t have to come down if I don’t want to!

I rubbed my arm harder and blood started oozing out of my skin. That felt good, that was what I wanted. If Sissy got too close, I could wipe my blood on her to scare her off. My blood mixed with bits of bark. I was crying, though I hardly realized it. A gust of wind blew in from the south, from the dead end. I could see it coming because it swirled up the leaves lying in the street. I could see the great gust of wind coming at me and when it hit the tree, I held on tight. Sissy didn’t see the wind coming and when it hit us, her foot slipped, and she screamed a curse word.

—Fuck! she said.

I stopped rubbing my arm, and felt my arm tingle with pain. To escape from Sissy, I began climbing higher, but the truck of the evergreen grew thinner and thinner as I climbed higher, so I couldn’t really go much further. As Sissy got closer to me, my heart raced faster and faster. I was so afraid of her touching me that I had a hard time breathing. My breaths were short and choppy and frightened. I felt really claustrophobic. I couldn’t go any higher, but Sissy kept coming at me. When she reached my part of the tree, she grabbed my foot and pulled. I yelled at her to stop because I felt for an instant that I might fall out of the tree.

—Get away from me! I screamed. I’m going to fall.

She yanked at my foot and I was scared shitless. I thought we might fall. So I whipped my foot free, and with all my force, I kicked Sissy in the eye. Hard.

—Fuck! screamed Sissy, holding her eye.

I put my foot back on the branch and watched Sissy feel her pain.

—Damn it, Maggie, she said. Come down for dinner!

—No, I said.

Then she left. In defeat, she shook her head at me, and with one hand holding her eye, she carefully descended the tree. Pete and Simon showed up at the bottom of the tree and started yelling at us. The were all yelling at each other so loud that I couldn’t hear the wind anymore.
I just wanted to be alone.

I looked down at my brothers and sister and felt far away from them. I felt different, that’s all. Not that I didn’t like them, just that I was different. And different from Sissy in particular, who was so beautiful and girly and perfect. She backed down out of the tree, holding her right eye, yelling mean things at me, calling me a “brat” and a “freak”. But I didn’t care what she said. Even if her eye bruised, she would always be more beautiful than me. That was hard to understand. Why was Sissy so beautiful and perfect? Alone again at the top of the tree, my mind started racing. Two more things I didn’t understand were why Pete wasn’t wearing his glasses anymore and why Simon hadn’t emptied the dishwasher like he was told. Why was Pete staring at me like that? What was wrong with Simon? Why had mom thrown dishes against the wall? No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t figure these things out.

It began to rain and Aunt Rita came out of the house and said dinner was ready. I would have to come down from the tree and eat dinner. I wanted to be alone, but I wasn’t allowed to be. Again, for just a moment, I looked out across the schoolyard, and then up into the sky where I could see dark clouds approaching, and I knew it was going to rain hard all week.

Peter

I could see Maggie in the tree just fine. I used my willpower focus on her. Come down from the tree, Maggie, I thought. Come down from the tree, Maggie. Come down from the tree. Down tree. Down tree. Downtry. Downtry.

She climbed down and joined the family for dinner.

Sissy had set the dining room table for supper. She used the cloth napkins and lit two candles. I don’t know who she was fooling. mom was gone and nobody was happy. Aunt Rita was pretending along with Sissy that everything was fine, commenting on how delicious the lasagna tasted, how scrumptious the buttered rolls. Sissy, the oldest, always had to have things perfect. Good looks, good grades, good prospects. When the country is ready for a woman president, it’ll be Hannah “Sissy” Lord swearing in on the Capital steps.

Maggie didn’t eat anything. I saw her stuffing green beans down her shirt, as if anybody cared if she ate her supper that night. Simon was eating with his fingers.

—Peter, please put your book down, said Sissy.

—Why? I asked.

—Because it’s Sunday supper and we’re going to talk, she said.

I laid my book, John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, still open to the page I was reading, to the side of my plate. Not mom. Not mom. Not mom. Ntmum. Ntmum. I concentrated on steering the conversation away from the topic of our missing mother. When mom came back from Simon’s baseball game, she freaked out. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, reading my novel, focusing my energies. Trying to figure out why exactly I so hated this Rabbit Angstrom character. Of course I knew why. The bastard ran. I didn’t understand him. That’s why I hated him so much. Confusion, repulsion, disgust. These emotions were purged by my reading. “Purged” is a good word. mom walked by me and into the kitchen without saying anything. I heard her pull open the door to the dishwasher. She shrieked. I sat upright, my ears pricked. An avalanche of silverware fell to the floor. I ran to the kitchen door and stood there, a few paces from my mother.

Ours is small kitchen. A round wooden table sits before the window and takes up most of the space. Out through the back of the kitchen is the laundry room and the door to the backyard. The wallpaper is yellow and a ceramic rooster sits on the table next to the lazy susan. mom stood at the sink, straight ahead from where I watched. The dishwasher was to her left. Sissy, Simon and Maggie appeared beside me at the doorway just as mom threw the first dish against the wall, causing the clock to fall down, nicking her arm. I covered Maggie’s eyes with my hands.

—Have you finished your homework, Simon? asked Sissy as we picked at our lasagnas.

—Yeah, said Simon, lying.

—Did you have a lot of homework? persisted Sissy.

—Like a million tons, said Simon. And I got every answer right.

Simon had recently discovered sarcasm and I didn’t like it. I wondered if he’d ever talk straight again. If not, I’d hit him. Hard across the chin.

—Why don’t you wear your glasses anymore? Maggie piped up, addressing me.

But what could I tell her? She wouldn’t understand. Nobody understands anything.

—Don’t worry about it, I said.

See see see, I silently intoned, staring at my little sister.

—Can you see all right? she asked.

—Sure, I can see fine, I said.

—How many fingers am I holding up? she asked.

—Three, I said.

Everybody chuckled.

—Well, I don’t get it, said Maggie. I think it’s stupid.

Aunt Rita looked at me.

—Your mom tells me you think your eyes will improve naturally, she said. Is that it?

I rolled my eyes at her and thought, Nothing will help me from seeing your ugly face.

—I said, Don’t worry about, I said.

I picked up my book. On page 85, Rabbit makes love with Ruth, his crosstown mistress. Her nipples are sunken brown buds, her bush a froth of tinted metal. It excited me to read this passage. I felt throbbings throughout my body. When I turned my attention to the story tucked within these pages, my anger abated, my family ceased to exist.

Then, in the present tense, when I look up from my book, the world rushes back into me. It is my presence that creates the world. The candles flickering with hopelessness. Aunt Rita, dumb and helpless, watching over this flock of her sister’s. The store-bought lasagna, ever cold in the middle. Simon, whose feeble mind has never stood still for a single minute, bless his heart, is looking out the window, his plate clean, his desire that dinnertime be over evident in his upward-titled chin, his longing, outward gaze. Dropped again from the sublime world of words into this physical existence of ours, I lick my chops like a beast, looking around at these strange fellow creatures, my family. Maggie’s feet are restless, almost running beneath the table. Sissy sits upright, ever mindful of her posture. The slab of butter, carelessly stabbed at on all sides. The sun is setting out the front bay windows, just over the hedge, out beyond the schoolyard, and the long day is ending.

—When’s mom coming back? asked Maggie.

—Soon, said Aunt Rita. Probably tomorrow morning.

She knew nothing. We all know nothing. The food in our bellies was our consolation.

—What’s the name of the place, again? Where mom is? asked Maggie.

—Redwood Center, said Sissy, certainty lending her confidence.

The name was somehow soothing.

We ate our dinners in silence until Simon asked to be excused and Sissy let him go. It was my night to do the dishes. Such a quotidian task. Names to contemplate: plate, sponge, Brillo pad, Palmolive. Drying rack and elbow grease. I dedicated myself to the job. I scrubbed the five plates — we were using our breakfast plates — and placed each one carefully on the drying rack. The excess water dripped off the plates and onto the towel beneath the rack. The few remaining rolls I put back into a plastic grocery store bag, closed the bag up with a twisty tie. I took the dish cloth and wiped down the counter and the table and the sink. Squeezed the dirty water out of the rag and draped it over the spigot. Stood back and admired the quiet glisten of a clean kitchen. Order, perfection.

Down the hall of our rancher, I got under my covers and opened my book again. A light seemed to beam out from the book as soon as I cracked it. But I did not pick up from where I had left off. I unwittingly returned to page 82. I was ashamed at this failure to exercise my will. But the pull back to the earlier page was like the undertow in the ocean on a stormy day. Stronger than I. What else is stronger than I? Nothing. I come into the present again and, without a forethought, I send out a prayer to a God I don’t believe in that I will encounter nothing else stronger than I. No other such insoluble problems. Please Lord, send me no unworkable situations. I even ask him to heal my eyes, and then am ashamed for having done so. I will heal mine own eyes. Mine eyes. Mine eyes. Have seen the glory but also the extinguished flame. Read about it in a book that moved me to read all night without sleep. Is that not then truth? To read all night without sleep and be moved in the heart. How else am I to discern truth from un-truth besides this inward fluttering? So, my prayer escaped now, no bringing it back, I return to my senses. And beneath the sheets, my hand begins to bring blood to my most precious member.

Galled, he shoves up through her and in addition sets his hand under her jaw and shoves her face so his fingers slip into her mouth and her slippery throat strains.

The fucking bastard. Fucking shithead Rabbit Angstrom. Why does he “shove” her face? My father told me he loved this book. The problem with books is authors are ghosts.

I imagine shoving up through someone. I try to imagine widehipped Ruth, but the face is more like Janie’s from school. There is a frantic passion to my stroking. Quickly now, the sock.
Shame, power, fatigue, vigor. My senses again grow keen. Self-control returns I look around, breathing in close, silently. The corners where the walls met the ceiling sharpen. The walls themselves pulse. My bed, a refuge. I am alone. With perfect concentration, I return to my book. The words flow to my mind like so many soldiers lined up and marching in a parade. There is no time but the time in the story. Fifty pages later I can’t take that no-good bastard Rabbit any longer. Yet, I am drawn to his story like a space ship to a black hole. I fear my own obliteration therein, but fearlessly, I read on. Another five pages.

My lights off, I perform my focus exercises. Work on my night vision. Place my eyes on an object across the room — the dark lamp on my desk. Notice its particulars: the long, black arm, the Philips bulb, the twisting switch on top. Intone: see see see. See. But this slogan morphs into mom mom mom. I allow this, accept this. Come home, mom. Come home, mom. C’mhmom. C’mhmom c’mhmom c’mhmom c’mhmom... Quieter now, a self-whispering, a sleeping... c’mhmum c’mhmum c’mhm’m’c’mhm’m...

Maggie

The lasagna was cold in the middle. Gross. My stomach hurt. When I put the lasagna in there, it hurt more. Maybe lasagna and Now and Laters and Skittles don’t go good together, I thought, so I didn’t have another bit. When Aunt Rita looked away, I stuffed green beans down my shirt so it looked like I had eaten something. I hate when people bother me about my eating. So what if I eat a lot of candy? Stacy and I like to eat enough candy so our minds go Sugar Loopy.

—Peter, please put your book down, said Sissy.

—Why? he said.

—Because it’s supper and we’re going to talk, she said.

I wanted to know where Mommy was because I had forgotten where she was but I was afraid to bring it up. In my pocket, I found a few leftover Skittles.

When Stacy and I went to the WaWa in town in the afternoon before Mommy threw the plates, we didn’t have any money. Never any money, honey, Stacy says, and we laugh. There’s never any money, honey, she says, and she pats me on the back kinda hard. Her Pa is a trucker and is gone for days at a time and when he comes home all he does is sleep on the couch in front of the TV and watch re-runs of crime shows. Sometimes he leaves change in a bowl by the front door, but we looked today and there wasn’t any. We went to the store anyway.

We had a plan to put the candy down the front of our pants and just walk out the front door.

—I take stuff all the time, Stacy said.

—Really? I said.

—Sure, I do, she said. Because there’s never any money, honey.

We walked down the sidewalk, skipping over the cracks. We held hands.

—What does it feel like? I asked.

—What does what feel like? she said.

—What does stealing feel like?

—Taking candy isn’t really stealing, silly, she said, pausing. It’s gotta be, like, more than five dollars worth to be stealing.

—Oh, I said.

—What does it feel like taking stuff? I asked.

—It’s exciting, she said, and she let go of my hand and ran up ahead. There were dandelions in the lawn of library we were passing through. Stacy ran and kicked one and the white tufts floated up into the air.

Acne-faced Alex was behind the counter at the WaWa. The candy aisle was close to the front and when we got close to the candy, I got scared. The stuff the preacher said at church about the wrath of God flooded my head. Even though I often didn’t quite understand what he was saying, I could tell by the way he swung his arms that he was serious and that I would be in trouble if I broke the rules. Stacy didn’t go to church, ever. She giggled as she went down the aisle stuffing Fun Dip, Pock Rocks and Pixy Stix down her pants. But I couldn’t do it. She egged me on with her eyes, but I just couldn’t do it. The crinkle of the wrappers down her pants made me anxious. And when the cash registered beeped as other people’s items slid across the machine I got really nervous. As we walked out the doors, I felt Alex’s hand on my shoulder, but when I turned around he wasn’t touching me. If fact, he wasn’t anywhere near me, he wasn’t even paying attention to us. Didn’t he think pale, freckled girls like us ever stole anything?

We ran to the park and laughed. In the field, we collapsed and Stacy started pulling out her booty. The sun was hot and the air was cool and even though I hadn’t stolen anything, I felt exhilarated and sinful and alive in my heart.

—That looks like more than five dollars worth, I said.

—Whatever, said Stacy, unwrapping a Now and Later.

We lay back and ate our candy and felt the sugar go to our heads. It was Sugar Loopy time and we sang songs and stomped our feat and steamrolled each other in the grasses.

That was in the afternoon, before mom threw the dishes.

—Eat your dinner, said Sissy to me, all bossy.

But I didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t hungry at all because of I ate all that candy with Stacy and because my stomach felt funny about mom being gone. So I just pulled my leftover Skittles out of my pocket and ate them one by one, slyly so that Sissy and Aunt Rita wouldn’t see me. I think Simon saw me, but he didn’t say anything because he didn’t care. The sweet, candy-red in my mouth cheered me up, but only a little and not for very long.

MONDAY

Simon

The world is too loud.
To me, it’s like the music on the car stereo when the windows are down and my sister is yapping and the guitarist is shredding his guitar and the drummer is crashing his snare and the singer is screaming his rock. That’s what the world sounds like to me all the time. TOO LOUD in my head. I can’t control the sounds. I can’t keep them from coming in and I can’t turn them down.

Even at dinner with mom gone and everybody quiet and scared the room is screaming.

Even the silence screams.

What I like most is riding my bike. I rode my bike all day today and I forgot I was supposed to empty the dishwasher. I forget things all the time. I rode my bike behind the school and through the woods. Looking for the man in the woods the enemy the man with the evil in him. The man who my brother said hurt mom. I do not know what the man in the woods looks like, but I am looking for him, and when I find him
I will hurt him.

When I ride my bike the air blows by my ears so loud that it quiets down the world.

I don’t have to go to school tomorrow because mom is gone.

She threw plates against the wall and Uncle Don took her away so now I don’t have to go to school. That makes me happy because I hate school.

Today on my bike when I sensed the helicopter I chased down the sound. What I most love in all the world is heavy metal music and chasing down helicopters. I followed the helicopter through the woods to the river and the whole time I wasn’t even looking where I was going. I was just riding straight through the woods with my ears on the copter in the sky and suddenly I went crash into the creak. Got my clothes all wet and bent the handlebar on my bike. Came home all soaked that’s when mom threw the dishes.

I’m hungry

and this lasagna is cold in the middle, but I don’t care I’m soooooo hungry.

Mom is gone everyone’s mad at me. I can’t do anything right. I can never remember the things I am supposed to remember like math or chores.

Even during dinner when people are quiet I can hear their hearts beating loud and I can feel them feeling things loud. I can hear Sissy’s heartbeat louder than the rest. She is often has the loudest heartbeat and I feel bad for her and want to hug her but if I try and do something like that in the middle of dinner Sissy will just tell me to sit down. I can hear Aunt Rita chewing her lasagna. Everything is so loud it’s deafening.

Tony

I’m gonna be straight-up honest here, I always had a thing for Miss S. Not to be crude, but she was in fact a first-class MILF. A Mother I’d Like to Fuck, for those of you unfamiliar with the expression. Yes, Miss S was the neighborhood’s number one MILF before her friend Karen moved in, then they were tied for the neighborhood’s number one MILF. Ms. S because she was so damn voluptuous, you know, with her gigantic knockers and her ass shaped like a watermelon, and Karen, well, because she was young and blond and sexy in that bad Catholic school girl way. Six kids between the two of them and still, Good Lord, you wanted to screw them both. At the same time, if possible. Maybe that’s rude of me to say, but that’s the way I think. I’m constantly full of sexual fantasies. As far as I know, that’s the way all men think.

I used to mow Ms. S’s lawn. You know she had left her husband a while back, and I could see she had a tough time with those kids, financially and emotionally and whatnot. I mean, I saw her foodstamps lying around the kitchen counter once, and I also heard her yell at her kids, especially that younger one, Simon, more than a few times. Without a man around, I knew she had a hard time keeping food on the table and keeping the four of them in line. So I offered to help out and I got to mowing her lawn about once a week. It’s not like it was big deal, my brothers and me, The Giovanno Brothers Co., we mow laws all over town, so we have all the best mowers. When I told them I wanted to mow Ms. S’s lawn, they gave me the eye, like, You know she can’t pay for that, and I said I wanted to do it as a service, a kind of friendly neighborly service. And they said, Yeah right, you just wanna mow Ms. S. And they laughed, and I laughed too. But it’s one of those things, one of those truth on both sides of the coin things. Because, honest to God, on the one hand, I just wanted to do something nice for Ms. S. She was such a good person, you could tell by the way she looked at you. She was the kind of person who looked you in the eye and wasn’t afraid to look away, not at all, not for any reason whatsoever, and yet when some people give you that kind of stare-look, you feel this aggression, like the person is trying to laser you down with their eyes or something, you feel kind of annihilated by their stare, if you know what I mean; but Ms. S, her eye contact was completely different, there was this warmth and openness in it. I know that sounds strange, but believe me, I’ve done some shit in my life, especially in my relationships with women, and when people try to look at me like that, with that intense stare, sometimes I give way, I look away first, because, honest to God, what the hell are they looking for in my eyes in the first place. Most people, when they stare you in the eye, it feels like some sort of test, like, I’m going to stare you down and I’m going to look into your soul and I’m going to see whether or not you are a good person. That kind of aggressive morality test stare, I don’t like. But when Ms. S looked at me, with her special brand of kind intensity, I just felt all right. I’d even venture to say I felt love, in a general way, but honestly, I’m not sure I know what that word means.

So what I’m saying is I really liked Ms. S, and I liked being around her. She made me feel good, just standing around drinking lemonade and shooting the shit. She was always good for a talk, even if she was distracted by the kids, busy cooking them dinner or whatever, and even if she had to slip in some Jesus crap at some point, usually toward the end of our little chats, I didn’t mind, I still loved talking with her. In fact, hearing Ms. S talk about Jesus a few times even got me thinking about that old martyr again, about how he was a swell guy, maybe not the Sole Redeemer of All Humanity or whatever, but a good guy nonetheless, a fellow worth spending a couple of minutes thinking about now and again. Talking with Ms. S and thinking about old J.C. while walking home actually made me feel good. And for all of these reasons — that Ms. S clearly needed a man to help out once in a while, that she was a real good person, and that I just liked talking and being with her — all of these reasons made me want to mow her lawn.

But, I’m gonna be completely honest here, at the same time, I wanted to screw her. God, did I want to screw her. I’d get about twenty steps away from her house, pushing my mower down the street back home, and after a fleeting thought about old Mr. Died On The Cross, I’d be back to the rampant sexual fantasizing that occupies so much of my waking life. I know women like to joke about men thinking about sex all the time, but I am firmly of the opinion that if a woman, say Ms. S for example, got into a man’s mind, say my own hopelessly dirty one, for just a day, just one measly day, they’d be shocked shitless how much we really do think about sex almost non-stop. I read something like every three or four seconds, on average, and I wouldn’t doubt that for an instant. Yes, I wanted to lay that big-breasted, cheerleader-like, Jesus-loving mama like you wouldn’t believe. For me, Ms. S was your classic MILF, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I suppose that’s the flip side of the coin.

But the question is: Could I have wanted to mow Ms. S’s lawn for free purely out of the kindness of my heart, purely because she was a good person in need of a neighbor’s friendly helping hand? Could I just have been being a good Samaritan, as Ms. S always called me? Is that even possible? Or, deep down, in the final analysis, in truth, did I just want to bang her? Who the hell knows. It’s easy to say, Oh, a little of both. Okay sure, but can the truth really be so easy, so ambiguous and guilt-free? I’m not so sure. My hunch is that the latter reason, my raging sexual desire for the woman, is the dominant cause of my supposedly charitable behavior. I’m just trying to be honest. I’d like to believe that I mowed her lawn just because I was a nice guy. I’d like to believe that, believe me, I would, but I’m gonna be honest here, I can’t, I just can’t.

TUESDAY

Hannah

The compost bucket reminded me of mom. In the corner of the kitchen counter, mom kept a green Tupperwear container into which she put refuse: the outer layer of an onion, an orange rind, leftover salad. Then she would take the bucket out to the back yard, behind the raspberry bushes and under the pine tree, and she would dump the refuse into the compost, a small circular space enclosed by a wire fence. I was cooking scrambled eggs for breakfast. Aunt Rita was buttering toast. A fly buzzed around the compost container. Mom hadn’t come home in 35 hours. She hadn’t even called.

I was trying to remain outwardly calm, but my hands were shaking.

—Simon, I said, I want you to take the bucket out to the compost after breakfast.

He was eating Honey Nut Cheerios, reading the comics. He didn’t hear me, or didn’t listen.

—Simon, I said, lifting the wooden spoon to my ear, Did you hear me?

—What? he said, looking up.

—I said I want you to take the bucket out to the compost after breakfast.

—Okay, he said. He stuck his spoon into his bowl and pulled up a spoonful of milk and honeyed oats. The food in his mouth, he smacked his lips.

—Stop smacking your lips, I said.

He didn’t hear me, or didn’t listen. Or, as I understand his condition—Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—from my readings in my Psychology textbook, he hears everything, in fact, he hears all too much, and his mind can’t properly filter the information.

With my wooden spoon, I swatted at the fly. It lifted off a piece of lettuce, hovered a moment, then landed again in the Tupperwear container. Seeing that bucket, I kept thinking about mom. The eggs came out too dry because I hadn’t been paying attention. My mind was all over the place. I hadn’t slept well. I’d been up most of the night, again, waiting for mom to come home or call. My body felt tired and weak and achy. I swatted at the fly—three times I swatted—but it wouldn’t go away. I felt like crying, but I had to hold it together.

—Who wants eggs? I said, turning around with the hot frying pan in my oven-mitted hand. I’m sorry, but it looks like they came out a little dry this morning.

As I served Maggie a heap of eggs, I wanted to yell at her for disappearing yesterday. I hold grudges. But at the same time I was afraid to speak, because I was afraid Maggie would ask about mom. And I didn’t want anybody to talk about her. I felt like if anyone mentioned mom, I would break down. She would be home soon, I was sure of it. Because she had to see me off to the Homecoming Dance with Jason tomorrow night. She would be home by then. It was that simple.

Aunt Rita got out five small plates that we never used and put the toast on them and put the plates on the kitchen table. I was afraid Aunt Rita was going to talk about mom. How she didn’t call. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t called yet. Uncle Don called late last night and talked with Aunt Rita for fifteen minutes. But when Aunt Rita got off the phone and came into the den where we were watching TV, all she said was, “Your Mom’s all right and she’ll be home very soon.” We looked at each other in silence. Simon asked, “When?” and Aunt Rita said, “Soon.” But we didn’t believe her, at least I didn’t. We turned our attention back to the TV, which was playing an advertisement for L’Oreal.

I served Simon and Aunt Rita. Peter declined the eggs, said he just wanted cereal. As I put the pan back on the stove, I saw Maggie open her mouth. Please Lord, no.

—Can I go over to Stacy’s after school today? she asked.

Aunt Rita and I looked at each other. On the one hand, I wanted to let Stacy go, so she could be happy. But on the other hand, I was still angry with her for disappearing and I felt she had to be punished.

—Sure, you can, sweetie, said Aunt Rita.

Since when was Aunt Rita in charge? Where was she all the nights I had spent babysitting?

—Be home in time for dinner, I said, 6:30.

My hands still trembling, I scraped the remains of the eggs—the part that sticks to the pan and peels off in one piece, like a layer of skin—into the compost bucket. I let out a spurt of tears, but no one saw. I kept scraping even when all the eggs were already scraped out.

Then I had the horrible thought again, the thought that had been haunting me, the thought that had been keeping me from sleeping: What if Mommy had died? Because that’s what it felt like. Like she had died. Like she had killed herself. Like we had lost her and no one was telling us the truth. She hadn’t even been gone two days and yet that’s what it felt like. Like she was dead and gone. This thought led to the next horrible thought: What if she hadn’t died, but what if she came back and kept throwing plates against the wall? Would that be better than her not coming back at all? Ever? This was my horrible thought; it had nested in and stuck with me. It returned that day at the most unpredictable times: when I was scraping eggs, when I was taking my math test, when I was standing at my locker with Jason. And again at the end of the day when the final bell rang, the thought devoured me. What if Mommy had died, or what if what had happened to her was even worse. The thought had its own life. It led to other tormenting thoughts: What if Mommy had lost her mind? That happened to people. I’d read about it for my Psychology class. Mommy could have lost her mind. Why not? That happened. People died, and people lost their minds. Both were possible. In bed the night before I had looked up “nervous breakdown” in my Psychology textbook. Because that’s what I’d heard Aunt Rita say on the phone to Uncle Don. That Mommy had “suffered a nervous breakdown.” But my textbook said that this was not an actual medical term. Nevertheless, there was a section in the book devoted to it. Its possible causes included:

chronic and unresolved grief
unemployment
academic problems
career burnout
social stress
sexual identity
post-war trauma
chronic insomnia and other sleep disorders
serious or chronic illness of a family member
divorce
death of a family member
pregnancy
a traumatic, violent, or near-death experience
deception by a loved one

—Sissy, said Peter, can you please stop scraping that pan?

I turned on the hot water and poured soap into the pan and put the pan in the sink under the water. I watched the pan fill with sudsy water then turned the faucet off.

—Sit down and eat something, Hannah, said Aunt Rita.

—I’m not hungry, I said.

—You have to eat something, she said.

So I sat down and took a bite from the corner of a piece of toast. Aunt Rita had put too much butter on it. The center of the toast was soggy and gross and fattening. Even though it wasn’t really butter—it was Country Crock margarine—I still didn’t want to eat it. I nibbled at the edges and prayed silently to Jesus to steady myself.

Dear Jesus, I pray to You in all Your glory. In Your all-powerful, all-loving grace and truth, I beg You to keep my mom well. I don’t want her to die. And I don’t want her to go crazy. I want mom to come home and be well, and when she does, we will all be good to her. We will do our chores and do as we are told and do our Bible studies. I will help Simon and Maggie with their studies because I know they struggle. I will read to them from the Book of John because this is Mommy’s favorite book and in this book Your story is told. In Jesus’s name I pray, Amen.

—Can I have a dollar? said Simon.

—What do you need a dollar for? I snapped.

—I just need it, he said.

—That’s not a good enough answer, I said.

I never know what to say, I thought.

—I want it so I can get something sweet, he said.

—What are you talking about? interjected Peter. Just shut up.

—At lunch, said Simon. I want something sweet at lunchtime.

—Don’t you get a dessert with your meal card? I asked. You should get a dessert with you card.

Simon shoved a spoonful of Cheerios into his mouth and said:

—But the dessert I get with the meal is stupid. Like pineapples or something.

—Don’t talk with your mouth full, I said.

—Get the pudding? said Peter.

—I don’t like pudding, said Simon.

—What do you want for Christ’s sake? asked Peter.

—Peter! scolded Aunt Rita. Watch your mouth.

—I want a Kit-Kat.

—Oh, shut up, Simon, said Peter. You don’t need a frickin’ Kit-Kat.

I stood up and began clearing the table. I could smell a piece of cantaloup rotting in the compost bucket. My chest was tight and I realized if I didn’t hurry I’d miss the bus. I stacked the dishes in the sink and told Aunt Rita I didn’t have time to wash them, that I would wash them later. With a sponge, I wiped down the counter, scooping up the crumbs under the toaster, sopping up a pool of spilled eggs.

I spoke the words in my head: For God so loved the world.

I knew Jason would be standing at the curb when my bus arrived. His bus always arrived earlier than mine so he waited for me outside and then we went to our lockers together. He took me to my locker first because he was a gentleman. I wondered if he was the kind of man my grandmother told me to look for: the man with the biggest mind who thinks the least.

From across the front yard came the sound of the middle school bell. The five minute warning bell.

—Simon, Maggie, did you hear that? I said. Get going.

Aunt Rita stood up and hustled Simon and Maggie along. As Simon was tying his shoes, I saw her take a Fruit Roll-up out of the cupboard and put it into Simon’s backpack. Maggie went la la la out the door as if her head were in the clouds and life was but a song. Pete sat at the table reading his book, eating his cereal; the rest of the action he blocked out. I don’t know how he did it, how he shut out the world and concentrated on his reading. It seemed unfair, almost inhuman. I gave both Maggie and Simon notes explaining why they had missed school the day before: absence due to illness. What else did the school need to know of our private affairs? At the door, I tried to comb Maggie’s hair because she always left it in tangles as if she didn’t even care. But she pushed me away and ran out the door and down the driveway, singing her la la la’s.

—Simon, I screamed, tie your shoes!

I heard the bus for the high school coming down the road.

—Peter, I screamed, the bus is coming!

He was standing right behind me, ready to go.

—I know, he said, it comes every day at 6:34.

Peter can be a real jerk sometimes. He stepped past me. Aunt Rita handed me my backpack and a banana and an apple and said:

—Honey, you’ve got to eat something.

I grabbed my things and kissed Aunt Rita goodbye and ran to the corner, where Peter was standing with one foot in the bus and one foot on the ground, holding the driver for me. For me: a total mess, an absolute disaster. My cheeks flushed red as I boarded the bus and thanked Sam for waiting. I sat down in the second seat and pulled out my math homework. I had thirty trigonometry problems to finish in only eighteen minutes.

I looked out the window and thought of the compost bucket, still full in the corner of the kitchen.