I say this partly because it really chafes my nucha to be so beyoked in terms of time.  There are some people whose gifts are very well suited to this task, and in fact their ability to write longer works is the difficluty for them.  I don’t begrudge others who have this talent, but when asked to write something like this, I kick, I scream, I try, and I fail, and hooray!  I’m an apple trying to squeeze myself into a raisin sized outfit.

Well, don’t that sound familiar to a Compulsive Eater, eh?

Anyway, I was pondering how in this play I have some writing that is “on the nose.”  In theater, subtext is a wonderful thing.  Lines in a play that offer mystery or out-and-out contradiction are fabulous.  The person who is talking about abstinence while noshing on a waffle.  The mother who is upbraiding her son for hitting a girl by slapping him around.  Astrov’s seduction of Yelena while talking about ecological devastation in a small Russian village.  FAAAAABulous!

But on-the-nose writing usually signifies a failure of imagination, or more likely it’s the idea that the writer wishes to convey but hasn’t yet gotten to the oblique or contradictory way to do so.  I was pondering though that on-the-nose writing as I’ve called it doesn’t always serve a playwright’s intentional failure function, but can actually be used in ways to further plot in a manner that is ingenuous and fresh.  It takes a certain mastery and restraint however.

I’ve only seen one production of Fornes’s play Abingdon Square, and I have to say when I saw it in 1987 at the American Place Theater, I felt such an ambivalence about it.  Because so much of the writing is x equals x.  Yet the play has haunted me since that time.  The images and the honesty, the innocence and the freshness, the true depiction of a child’s growth into being the full-fledged woman she is entitled to become.  Set in World War I Greenwich Village it also has a timeless quality to it.  The reasons I disliked the play turn out to also be the reasons that it haunts me so.

That got me thinking about Fornes’s delightful Enter THE NIGHT (yes, the words are all-capped).  There is a brilliant use of what would be considered not only bad writing, but ATROCIOUS writing in the play.  Jack shares this play that gleefully violates the theater commandment, “Thou shalt not write a play about the village of the kind and happy people!”  The function of the play within the play however, is to offer a moment of delicacy and tenderness to their uptight, hectic and hard lives.  Tessa the nurse deals with HIV patients day in day out.  Paula is handling a cancer diagnosis.  Jack himself may or may not be infected, and is a stage runner for The Ridiculous Theater.  In the Seattle production, I remember a brilliantly hilarious monologue where Jack gives a speech that just enumerates all the stuff he has to do backstage to help Charles and Everett with their performance.

Well.  Thinking about Enter THE NIGHT also got me thinking about her other play with the similar title What of the Night? which is a collection of 4 one-act plays that follow this  group of vagrants in 1930s L.A., as they try to eke out an existence, then disperse on their own paths.  Irene worked on this play way back in  1986 when I was a student in the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop.  Her process kindled in me a desire to imitate her, and actually my play Timberline was written in one of her workshops.  It’s my most favorite thing I’ve ever written.

I got to bypass so much of my intellect when I wrote that play.  I see that there is a certain central core to my soul that comes out in my writing, even in my difficult attempts to finding ways to fuse my intellect with the heart.  A worthy endeavor, to be sure.  But I’z gotz ta pay da billz, ya know?  I’d luvz to have a commoishal Pradauck.

In musing about Irene’s plays I pondered what conneected Abingdon Square, What of the Night?, Enter THE NIGHT and perhaps even her play about 2 English actresses who acquire a fragment of the first translation of Hedda Gabler (Summer in Gossensass), and realized in an electric frisson that that all of these plays depict tribal energies.  In What of the Night? it’s quite blatant, but in Abingdon Square, it’s quite subtle.  And it’s just part of the woodwork of Enter THE NIGHT, where these 3 characters have each other to get by, and are able through the course of the aciton of the play to be who they are, and to give the simple and necessary love they have for the other 2.

And I realize that this is also what attracts me to Charles Ludlam’s work too, though that was more about his operation than about his plays themselves.  I have to say that putting on one of his works creates a tribe out of the actors who come together however, having directed Camille myself.  And I’ve always wanted to direct all 3 of these Fornes works, as well as Mud and the amazingly beautiful and harsh The Conduct of Life.

I feel on some level John Patrick Shanley must be doing the same thing too, for I’m very much attracted to his work and have been since the first time I saw it.  That shamanic element of myself recognizes itself in only a smattering of writers.  For example, I don’t feel it in Kushner or Mamet, as brilliant as they are.  I wonder if it doesn’t have to do with the Catholic element, at least in Fornes and Shanley’s cases.  I feel it a little in Jon Robin Baitz and Richard Greenberg’s work, though not as strong.  It’s more a part of the loom, whereas with Fornes, Shanley, Ludlam and I would also venture Fassbinder, it IS the loom.  (Could Chekhov and Beckett also have that element, I wonder?)

I feel called to follow the thread into my tricksterish side, and I am seeking to write some new pieces that emerge from a shamanic primordium.  Irene had an interesting exercise for actors where she had them consider their liver in a meditative state.  I sat in on this and went through the exercise myself, and at the time, I had the oddest visualization:  As I considered my liver, I “saw” it hooked up to a formica countertop.  A plastic sort of feeding device was nourishing it, and it seemed quite happy and wet and deeply burgundy too.  Then I was to clear the image and let the first thing come to mind, and for some reason Dustin Hoffman’s face flashed across my consciousness for just a second to be replaced by a mammoth box of Rice Krispies.  I mean, I was floating next to a 3 story sized box of Snap! Crackle! and Pop! And Pop! started talking to me about how he was getting gypped by “the man.”

(She has lots of exercises that get a person into the silly zone, which I do admit I love.)

Padua Hills was a sort of month-long tribal excursion, and I wish I’d have been able to do it more than the one time.  Things have quite changed in these two plus decades though.  I see that I’ve been quietly delving deeper, and it can get quite difficult because I have some impatience to deal with.  Now seems to be a good time to start the limiting of the coffee intake, needless to say.

But I see that the stories that are coming through me need to be constantly bathed in that spirittual stream, and that is how they will become the gold that I know they are.  My Easing Godsoul Out (EGO) aspect will of course try and have a crack at things, but it’s the return of the Fetch and Godsoul to the page that will keep the piece on the track.

May the blessings emerge, and may Cerridwen guide me toward whichever plot on the Sacred Playwriting Mountain I’m to furrow and seed next.

Humphrey Talbott sat in A Clean Well-Lighted Place Books with his journal, pondering his various projects and sipping a cup of coffee, when he looked up and took it all in–

all the books that were on display in the clean, sun-drenched room,

the airy feelings that the proprietors effortless put out for the comfort and delight of their customers,

the collective sense of accomplishment in all those books and th eproducts to be appraised, held and evaluated with keen and loving attention,

and he felt a lot of feelings–

a bit of inspiration, to be sure–all these were creations out of nothing after all, so individual authors’ achievements deserved that recognition,

and not a little bit of feeling daunted, for how could whatever creations coming through the physical vehicle of this brain, these nerves and synapses connecting all the way down to these wiry tan hands compare with the works herein collected.

But mostly

he felt envy.

The beast which everyone else knew to be a green-eyed monster, the once-heavy, now HWP stand-in for a non-crucified Jesus at 47 experienced the state of comparing what he had against others and finding himself wanting as a southern belle not unlike Scarlett O’Hara.  He named the bitch Envy LaRougemort, Dee-Lightful Drag Queen Vampire with a Dixie-down drawl, she do declare!

She could outcunt Rush Limbaugh!

(Humphrey liked to use the c-word in his own style, and he fantasized redefining the word as follows:  “cunt: (pronunciation thereof), n. vul. 1. Vampire (onom., synec.) 2. vul. female, wnech. 3. vul. vagina.  v. vul. to bite, as if from a vampire.  “Count Dracula cunted his fangs into Lucy’s neck and inhaled the red elixir of her living body into his undead gullet.”)

Needless to say, most times he kept this redefinition to himself in his little witch cottage by the river.  It was indeed a most powerful notion to attempt to add to the mix of confusion over a sound with a lot of dismay and disinfomrative associations already toward what he considered a more appropriate use of the sound of that particular epithet.  Such a waste when it comes out of a drunk fellow cussing out his enabling wife and female relatives–come on, it so suits Dick Cheney does it not?

That face defines the word that rhymes with “bunt,” and don’t go too far from the letter b to figure out what the former V.P.’s true essence by sound is captured.

“Yet this would most likely remain a secret unto the grave, Ah do declare.” Oh, he could hear Envy’s gruff evil-cank drawl as it surveyed the room.

“Why I do surmise Humphrey James Talbott, that it’s nice that you’re here and all, enjyoing the lovely summer’s day in this dee-lightful bookstore in the town you dream of moving to someday; yes it is just the loveliest!  But honey, don’t ya think you ought to be looking for some real work?  Like maybe seeking temp jobs in that gloriously gritty and hideous vEmpire you do go on about?  As it crashes and burns to be sure, but still there is money to be made and Esq-cunts to satisfy with your fast typing hands and your yummy suicidal doe-in-the-headlights rage.  Don’t you think it’s time you just settled into it, got that rifle and the new gig, then went postal on some LLP that deserves it? Hm, sugar-sugar, honey-honey?  I mean, can you really compete with these illustrious writers?  I see your name in the history books as a rager not a writer.”

Envy LaRougemort could really come in and bring out the dreadful feelings of uselessness, as if the journal he held wasn’t made of college-ruled but toilet paper.  Envy had her ways, sometimes pretending to be an advocate (“why it’s all about who they know, really!”) and other times encouraging a foray into credit card usage (“you deserve that pumpkin spice candle”).  This mass murderer thing was new for her.  And pretty low.  His 401k was getting dismally low, and he was doing his best to keep fear at the door.  But it got harder with each passing day and Envy didn’t make it easier.

He had just had a dreadful conversation with his best friend Allen Tighner, who had gone through something similar with his own journey.  And the difficulties of that part of his friend’s journey were still so raw and vivid, that Humphrey’s issues just shut him down right away.  Humphrey felt awful that he had stepped toward this with his friend and felt a pang of regret, and not a little extra pain in his heart for having caused his long-time pal a two-fer punch.  It only made the writer’s block he was experiencing that much more difficult to endure.

And while Humphey would love nothing better than to join the ranks of writers who sent in a hard-hitting and entertaining query letter that started a bidding war that landed him a 6-figure contract, or to start a franchise that would knock it out of the park, he knew he’d be satisifed if he were considered the next Lance Drakeson or Kim Velasquez-Tierney.  A new writer in his late 40s who had left behind a corporate gig and went his own way.  He followed these role models’ epxeriences avidly, as they were both like him–”Friends of Terry.”  He had heard Lance and Kim share on the phone lines for Fulfillment Anorexics Anonmyous meetings, and found himself alternating between being inspired and depressed by them.

Yes, yes, of course he wanted to be famous, to have his work recognized. Yes of course he’d love to see his books and plays “filed under T” and attracting the readers he knew were out there to connect with.  Humphrey suspected there were intrepid actors out there who would fight passionately to get his plays onstage, literary managers and dramaturgs and artistic directors be damned!  But here he was, in Harvard Center, New York, sitting in a thoughtfully appointed bookstore along the Rijkskill in Washington County, Grandma Moses country, in a plush and comfy chair staring at a blank page in a spiral notebook blocked and dismally envious with Envy LaRougemort’s fierce, cold stalactite voice drilling its deathly notions his way.

But the clock was ticking, and Envy just bided her evil time.  Was it a set-up for failure that he didn’t believe that his 401k would survive to see his retirement days, that whatever was going on with the Mayan calendar and ancient prophecies would scotch the idea of a cushy elderhood easily?  Actually, if he didn’t take it when he did, it wouldn’t have mattered much.  He was headed for a suicide if he continued working in the necronomy’s legal-eagle bowels.  If nothing else, taking the 401k was forestalling his own demise by however long it lasted.

Almost a year exactly before it was gone gone GONE.  It was coming to the end of 10 months ago when he had given noticed at Windigo Windigo Mankiller LLP (not its real name) on Cockson Street in Albany.  He figured he had about 6 weeks of money left, with 2 months rent good and then…?  He’d have to do something else, though he was leaving it of course to the last minute.

He knew other things as well.  Humphrey was also a witch and felt on some level he’d be all right.  Something eventually would come through his pen, and it would be marvelous and magical.  Or something would manifest through his intentions and workings that would far exceed his wildest dreams.  It would arise from his heart and its wisdom, and it would truly be miraculous and effortless.

And yet was it turning out that way?  Was it not an effort to drive all the way up from his domicile in Doodleville, day after day, just trying to contrive some sort of text out of a parched imagination?  The torture he felt of showing up to characters and works that did not grab him, but which he felt compelled to write nonetheless.  And they stayed away in droves.

Who else was going to tell these stories if not him?

And he knew he had to try and write in a medium he didn’t find comfortable.  Screenplays, with their rigid 3-act structure.  But his idea for the Doin’ Damage Quartet was totally cinematic, and the first story, about a British-born attorney, now paralegal, who is in a dead-end vEmpire gig and married to a high-maintenance local t.v. producer, can’t go on anymore and he leaves his job when he discovers he’s a plant whisperer.  And with their help, he’s able to intervene to keep some pristine land being soiled by the hydrofrackers out to continue their sorcerer’s apprentice ways.   He had gotten through a second draft on that one, and was trying to write the next, a horror movie with the monster being the way we live our lives.  That one wasn’t going so well.

He wondered if he’d be able to sell the first script to the fellow who he had in mind as he wrote it, a British rock-star in his own right.  Caw, the former front man of Liv-P-D, and who had embarked on his own solo career, was someone Humphrye respected in his shamanic work.  They had met in the astral through the auspices of Tlatzolteotl and the Blue God.  The beautiful Aztec filth goddess and Dian-y-Glas had connected them both one day as they walked simultaneous labyrinths 2,000 miles apart.  Humphrey had rounded the 3rd circuit when he spied the recognizable personage leaning up against the wall, pondering some message.  Humphrey had interrupted the reverie.

Caw had screeched at him and flapped his skinny arms–”Who the fuck are you?  How’d you get in here? Oh.  You’re ghostly. Oh.  Huh.”  The sweet-smelling goddess stood nearby and radiated love their way as Humphrey stood bewildered to see an honest-to-god celebrity right there in front of him.  The goddess spoke:

“Caw, who is also known as Colin Andrew Wimberley, and Humphrey James Talbott also known as Ice Eagle, you two will one day work together on several projects.”

“Like hell, I’m working with numbnuts here!  I don’t care who you are!”

And Tlatzolteotl smiled at Caw and feces vomited forth from his gullet.  And Humphrey found his own voice.

“Oh, that’s attractive.  Shitbreather, I simply must have him now.  Caw that was too sexy for Coco Chanel herself.  She should only spew such cocoa.”  The Britpunk star wiped his soiled astral mouth with a plasmatic towel that appeared out of thin air for the express purpose, he nodded grudgingly at Ice Eagle Humphrey, and grimly smiled.

“As I was saying,” the filth goddess continued, “you two shall work together, for it has been preordained and you two contracted it pre-existence.  I intervene to put you both on notice for it is important that the work proceed.  Ice Eagle, you will know the appropriate time to begin the work.  Sorrow shall herald it, I’m afraid, but a floral brilliance will initiate you and your journey will commence.”

Humphrey stammered. “It’s — not–is it a rock musical, maybe?  Is it lyrics from your work or –”

“Never!  I only write my own material, and so it will have to be a novel or a screenplay for my acting side.  That’s all there is to it.”

Ice Eagle – Humphtrey Talbott always got a kick out of his magickal name — lookeda t Caw dubiouslyu.  But he shrugged his shoulders in whatever, and looked back at the goddess who had been joined by the Blue God.  The goddess had also turned into a gorgeously radiant male figure for some odd reason.

Dian-y-Glas said, “Yes love.  There will be much reward for this work.  And you will know it well.  But it won’t happen for awhile, and even when you commence, you shall have doubts.  Rest assured that Caw here will come to your aid when the time requires it.”

When the time requires it, eh?  Humphrey mused to himself in the bookstore, tiring of willing some movement of his hand on the overwatched page in front of him.  The script he had already started needed more work.  He was sure his protagonist was too much of a sketch.  To make the fellow more real and therefore a desired role, he had imagined Sandy Stierer in the role, because he was so damn likable.  That also kept him from being Dr. E. Vil-Parodyville.  Really, the world was full of misguided and well-meaning people who wanted to keep things as they are, as destructive and delusionally exclusionary as they were.  The same people with their heads narrowly blinkered to believe that their way of life really was non-negotiable.

Like his ex, Tommy Laidlaw for one, and who of course was the basis for the protagonist’s high-maintenance wife.  Which Humphrey decided to write for Caw’s wife Letty Dyer, who was an actress in her own right.

They had broken up just prior to when Humphrey had hit his own wall at WWM.  THeir breakup was part of the prophesied sorrow he had endured.  The first version of the script was a play, but then after a reading of it with local actors, he had decided it needed to be a screenplay, and that it also needed to be a quartet of scripts on top of it.  He had experienced a burgeoning of material over the winter, even as he overcame cold after cold after cold during the dreadful winter when they had received more snow than anyone could remember.

They still loved each other, he was convinced.  But he also felt it wasn’t a good match in terms of a union.  The two just didn’t have a strong enough relationship so that they could gay-marry.  Their values were just too different.  And he could start going down that path, with all the various things that had led up to last Lammas when Tommy had announced the relationship was done.  And Humphrey agreed.  And then after Tommy left, he called his best friend Allen, and said “We broke up,” and fell to a heap on the floor, heaving like he’d never ever heaved before.

But that was last August.  This was a year later, and September was just around the corner.  And all these thoughts and none of them in particular were swirling around Humphrey’s brain as he tore his eyes from his non-writing and looked out at the room, desperate for some inspiration.  This was such a lovely bookstore, and he had told the proprietor how much he preferred it to some of the other independents out there.  A Clean Well-Lighted Place was a great name for it too.  Leanne had been solicitous of Humphrey, noting that he had brought his journal, and that for the past week he had just sat there immobile for 2 hours each day in the hot sun.  While she felt a sort of concern for him, she was more than happy to help the various customers who came in and shot the breeze or who had a specific book they sought out.

Today, she was helping a mother with her two kids deciding on which of two books on insects they should buy, with one child insistent on the more expensive one while the other child was more interested in the slinkies.  The girl held the one book she liked up before her like a flash card of a blue butterfly dancing around, as the other girl set up a little staircase of books to play with the pink slinky in her palm.

It all seemed like some sort of– well, that’s silly, Humphrey thought to himself as he smiled quizzically and looked elsewhere.

He could feel something was up, a budding need to take some actions that would hopefully expand his life.  What those actions were, he couldn’t say yet.  Harvard Center had something to do with it.  Books had something to offer.

He took a last swig of his coffee and made the decision to beg off for the day.  Muse, Fetch and Heart were all saying something in their absence, so he decided he’d get a move on.  He put the cap on his pen, inserted it into the rings fo the spiral binder and shut the notebook with pen marking the infernal place that hadn’t budged for 8 days now.  Till next time.  He stood up, stretched and took his empty paper coffee cup to Leanne, who would toss it in the trash can behind the cashier’s desk.  And he walked outside into the bright sunlight.

Anyway, I’m stoked.  I almost have a first draft of a First Act for the Barre script.  Woo hoo!  Full steam ahead.

For years, I struggled with “my family play.”  Most playwrights have one, where they take that soup of dramatic tension called “The Upbringing” and put it under the lens.  Some of the most famous plays of the Modern period (think O’Neill, Albee, Miller, Williams, Durang, M. Norman, etc.) explore the personal terrain of one’s familial background.

I am no different, but “my family play” came into focus when a certain event took place in my hometown:  The Columbine massacre of April 20, 1999.

I realized that there was another essential character in the proceedings, and that “my family play” was not really the way to look at it.  Instead, it is My Littleton Play, and it depicts aspects of my family’s existence rather pitilessly.  Yet compassionately as well, because I’m not saying I’m better than anyone else as pity sort of makes one think.  Instead it is about how caught up we all were. 

Today, I’m quite happy to report, my family’s members are all in different places, and while I can’t say we’re completely sane, we are much healthier individuals than who we pretended to be while there.  This is a play of you-and-I caught in the masks of pretense, of trying to be something we are not that so does not suit ourselves or anyone else for that matter.

I seek to make this play happen in October of 2011, all things going well.  However, that is a lot to assume.  I have been sensing, as I suspect many other people have, that we are about to enter into quite the most difficult period of humanity’s current iteration.

Today, in meditation, Persephone seemed a little downcast.  The Queen of the Underworld said she was preparing for an influx of above-grounds.  She intimated that she did hope I chose not to be among them, though she knew how tempting it might be to join the streams of the mortal coil off-shuffling dance crew.  I did have the sense that a goodly chunk of these soon-to-be departeds would emerge from 5 digit zipcodes with one or the other 50 states as part of their addresses.

Regardless of how and when, I put out the call.  And I shall assume the role of Max Bialystock of The Producers fame, and wear my producer hat and sell my nourishing balm to all ye who want it.

Who’s gonna join me?

Near the banks of a river, on a msity spring morning.  The river is set between the playing space and the audience.  JANDE PLAYFUL PUMA, a striking Native American fellow, stirs his hand in the water of the river and stares into it.  He stands, silently calls in the elements starting with north (stage right), then east (upstage), south (SL) and finally west, when he turns and faces us.  He studies the audience and enters into a mirthful trance. 

JANDE

I was in a sacred ceremony with some revered brothers.  We didn’t know whether THAT DAY would be a Y2K non-event or some miracle of miracles.  I think we mostly thought it would be the former and we discussed our presupposed disappointments furiously amongst ourselves.  For awhile of course, with all those tea party humble-bumbles, we were wondering if there would even be a yule 2012 to wake up to, if there would be people around.  That beginning of the Beaver Moon.  But we said “Hey, let’s just show up and trust something will happen.”  Because it usually does.  So we found our desired hilltop, and smudged out some sacred space and invited our directional friends and other allies.  Called upon Great Spirit to accoompany us on that the longest night of the year.  And we stripped, and sang, and danced.  And tranced by the gorgeous bonfire.  Longest most beautiful night ever.  The cold and the beautiful darkness, a blanket of black velvet.  And you know, I can’t claim to have noticed anything odd.  That’s the odd thing—how could I have not?  It was so luminous and colorful, and my vantage point was just a deliriously happy Adirondack place.  It didn’t occur to me that the rainbow that had settled over us was something harmonically real, and that the colors were serving a larger purpose.  To me it was just a place of power, one I’d even experienced before.  Kinda, in retrospect.  Derrick Two-Tongue Adder and I were both in what appeared to be the indigo stripe.  I saw Barry and Tonaka in the red stripe ande Jayson and terry were lit with the golden yellow.  Paul Bunny Paws in turquoise by himself, as was lonely Erick Lone Pine in the violet.  We all were smiling goofball smiles, and I don’t know if anyone else felt it—Derrick says he did—but I could sense we were being connected with many others.  Maybe everyone on the planet?  I felt there were people down in Saratoga even who I was going to be fitting in with soon.  I remember saying to Erick then that the colors were vibrating and I was full of manitou.  And he just smiled at me ruefully.  I think he knew what was happening, the only purple rayed one amongst us.  I did find it interesting there were no oranges or greens though.  Not everyone could be there that night, and I wonder where Roderick, Jeremy and Francis went.  Never saw them again.  We just kept on with our trancing and dancing until the sun came up, and I just assumed everyone else had done like I did and fallen back into the trance.  But when the sun did rise and awareness did return, Derrick and I were the only ones left in the camp.  And then it hit us.  The rainbow.  It like combed us into a resonant space.  Every thing around us vibrated and gave off such glorious manitou.  We called out to our brothers, but in our hearts we knew.  They were in other Earths then, just as we were in this one.  We both remembered this one moment where there was a slight flicker after the awareness of the rainbow had descended and it faded and we were into our own little worlds.  It was like a camera went off, and it took 2 or 3 hours to refocus our eyes.  I felt sad that Erick and Paul were by themselves in their different Adirondacks, but was glad that Barry and Tonaka and Jayson and Terry were together in theirs.  And because of that Saratoga thing, I knew there were other people around, so Derrick and I weren’t like Adam and Steve to remake Eden or anything.  In our mediumship, we were able to hail Erick and Paul, though it felt a little painful to be honest.  And we knew that our other brothers vibrated into healthy planets with a different vibe too.  Though we still felt afraid for them.  Heck, I was afraid for me.  And we made our way back to our Dakota and drove back to Glens Falls, where we found 3 whole other people at the Crandall Library.  Makes sense they’d gather there.  5 of us new natives in a planet now new to us, an Eden if we so chose to create it.

And so it was for me on that Yule 2012, The Great Psychic Combout.  There are worlds that were created that fateful Yuletide Day when all sorts of people vanished from 500 odd different personal realities.  Not that many worlds bifurcated that day in 2012, long foretold by the Mayans when people of like resonance would literally vibrate themselves into frequency-appropriate timelines.  There were 500 give or take worlds created with the 7 billion or so inhabitants vibrating on the one planet Earth that day.  Now some of those worlds instantly exploded into violent conflict.  And a good fifty or so blew themselves up with nukes within 2 years.  Other worlds like this one held some wisdom together and while there were only 12 million or souls even on this iteration of Earth,w e were a special 12 million.  We’ve been able to see into the other timelines and have even been able to maintain contact with a few sister Earths that more or less resonate with our  own Turtle Island Alpha Otter.  Yes, there are more than a few prison planets out there.  There’s one that’s just one giant Wal-Mart.  Can you imagine?  We call it the Fart-Fart Loading Dock.  The resonant factors in these will not cotton to us, not that we want them to.  There are some religio-fascist planets adhering to a post-rapture or post-ascension notion.  Depressing places really.  They got what they asked for, only to discover that their idea of heaven was really dull and uninspiring and as much as they are loath to admit it, not violent enough.  Our mediums have been able to discern that they really wanted to see the sinners punished again and again and again, and feel gypped.  Now, there were those who were present to that aspect of their desires and whoever was in charge of this Cosmic Resonance Board – I think it was Coyote Trickster myself – saw to it that they did go to a planet that resonated with them, and yes, they’ve been summarily blasted away due to their own instability and bloodthirstiness.  Them’s the breaks.  Violence in, violence out. Vivos et mortuous.  We here on Turtle Island Alpha Otter have been able to magnetize our joys into being.  Hence our delicious and sexy planet, where not only gaymarriage is celebrated, we’ve done away with all laws having to do with property and the like so that we can have unmediated relationships with ourselves, each other and the standing people, the stone people, the 4 leggeds, 6 leggeds, 8 leggeds, no leggeds, swimming and flying peoples too.  Just the other day, I made love to an alder tree.  Talk about Hard Wood.  My boyfriend Kim Sun has a willow girlfriend—well, there is no accounting for taste.   Some people!  So, I sit here on this side of the river which some of you call “Hudson.”  I speak into the conduit of time so that those with ears to hear will be able to listen.  I send a message from one friendly future if you could but choose it.  And some of you will, some of you must.  I’m sure that I’m liable to meet some of you in year 2020 – year 8 here.  I wait you all with bated breath, lovelies of lovelies.  But remember, you are the ones you have been waiting for.  The work must begin with your own attention to your joy.  And that needs to have started yesterday, I’m afraid.  So look, you’re already behind.  I’d suggest you get to it.

                              ______________________________

                              An Episodic One-Act

Richard Morell

217 4^th Street #1

Troy, NY 12180

(518) 441-2876
our_morale@yahoo.com

CAST OF CHARACTERS

LYNN                Mid-40s.  A good partner, non-artistic but mostly supportive of BARRE, but a tad fearful and controlling.

BARRE               Mid-40s.  Shut-down artist with a dayjob.  Constantly thinks of suicide.

DAVE                Mid-60s.  BARRE’S guide from another dimension.  An old guy in a fishing hat, not really talkative.

ANDRYNS             Neotribal fellow, early 20s.  Both cynical and naïve.  Earnestly hopeful.

CHANTAL-CORVA       A classic curmudgeon crone in her late 40s, early 50s.

VARIOUS OTHER FIGURES

The action takes place in the present, in and around LYNN & BARRE’S house, with forays into the woods.

NOTE ABOUT CASTING:  Gender isn’t all that relevant.  Whoever reads best for the parts, that’s what’s meant to be.

                              SCENE ONE:

SETTING AND AT RISE:          LYNN & BARRE’S backyard.  It is a vigorous spring day.  LYNN, mid-40s and quite practical and methodical, stands near the doorway to the house, while BARRE, late 40s, a blocked artist who subsists through the day-to-day (a shell), mopes up a ladder.

LYNN:  You are going to drive me crazy.

BARRE:  I told you that I—

LYNN:  I don’t want to hear any more of this!

BARRE:  But I—

LYNN:  No.  No!  It’s –this is not the time.

BARRE:  That’s not what you said this morning.

LYNN:  Well, I know.  But I didn’t know what was really going on then.

BARRE:  What was going on – what are you talking about?

LYNN:  You’re in avoidance.  I know how this goes.

BARRE:  Oh, really.

LYNN:  I know what you really need to be doing.  And you know, I’ve been blind.  I have been selfish.  I want to have you do the fix=it jobs, and the housekeeping…

BARRE:  So why are you getting in my face?  That’s what I’m doing right now, trying to fix the drain on the shed.

LYNN:  It’ll just have to wait.

BARRE:  Huh?  Not two hours ago you said it was an eyesore.  “The Levines keep grousin’ about when are you going to fix that monster up.”

LYNN:  I do not sound like that.  Doesn’t matter.  You’re not doing you job.

BARRE:  Well, who is it that’s stopping me, Lynn?

LYNN:  A ha!  You do have a resentment.

(Confused, BARRE peers at LYNN, questioning sanity)

You’re confused now?

BARRE:  I just want to climb up this ladder and reattach –

LYNN:  And run away from your journal!

BARRE (taken aback):  Oh!

LYNN:  Yes!  Oh.  You’ve been getting more and more difficult, harder to reach, you know.

BARRE:  Well, what the hell am I supposed to do?  There are all those things that need to get done, the tiling of the front hall, the swale between us and the Levines, this –

LYNN:  Like your short story collection?  And your stalled play projects?  What of those?  Barre, I’m sorry I’ve been so much of a nag.  All the things I ask are important for you own good.  Still, I’m keeping you from you, from your work.

BARRE:  What’s all this really about?  You want something from me. 

LYNN:  I want something for you, hon.  Not from you.  I’ve noticed you’ve not said anything about your writing for weeks.

BARRE:  You noticed, huh?

LYNN:  It’s come across in little gestures, little picky things.  Little annoyances and angers that have been popping up more frequently.  Like forgetting the birthday card.

BARRE:  That was just a senior moment.  And Thorn got over it fine.

LYNN:  And the bathroom installation?  What about that?  We discussed the colors, the style of vanity and everything.

BARRE:  I was getting what you wanted.  You said that you wanted a cream colored –

LYNN:  No, Kelly Levine wanted a cream colored vanity, for her own bathroom.  I thought I was explicit about the rose colored one.  How you could screw that up . . . Well, no matter.

BARRE:  Work’s been stressful.

LYNN:  Barre, something’s building in you.  The pressures, the quiet emotions – it’s hard to be around.  I don’t know what to say to you.  It hit me this morning during our tiff that I’m part of it.  And you’re using me to run away from your work.

BARRE:  That’s crazy. Selfish, Lynn.

LYNN:  So when was the last time you showed up to it?

BARRE:  Three days ago.

LYNN:  Ha!  You can do better than that.

BARRE:  I thought of it 3 days ago.

LYNN:  You’re thinking about “The Boy Near the Falls” all the time.  Don’t tell me you only thought about it 3 days ago.

BARRE:  What brought this on?  What was so different about today’s disagreement?

LYNN:  Felt phoned in.  Felt like you’ve given up.  Didn’t have any of the juice of some of our other ones from a few months ago.  You’ve been slowly – I’ve been worried, Barre.

BARRE:  This is all – You really –

LYNN:  The job’s grinding you down with all this work and no help.  The Neighborhood Association takes more and more of your time, and then there’s your sister with her incessant needs.  I pile it on too.

BARRE:  You need things done.  You’re always complaining that I don’t pull my weight, that I don’t –

LYNN:  That you don’t clean up after yourself.  Well, you don’t, it’s true, and I try to help.  Don’t mean to judge, though I guess I’ve done so.  Still, when you’ve got clutter outside, something’s clogging you up inside.  And I got it today.  It was a complete accident –

BARRE:  What accident?

LYNN:  I didn’t mean to open up one of your files – but why did you name it Lynnwood?

BARRE:  What?  Files?  Oh, Lynnwood, oh…

LYNN:  You want to check out.  You want to hurt yourself.  I can see it in your eyes.

BARRE:  Fuckin’ A!

LYNN:  What was that supposed to do to me, Barre?  Lynnwood.  Lynn would, what?

BARRE:  You shouldn’t have read it.  I shouldn’t have saved – well, …

LYNN:  You know I don’t go into your private directories.  You wanted to be found.

BARRE:  I don’t know how much more I can take.  I feel so out of place.  I shapeshift so well, I can fit in, but I get so caught up in the cuntnoise.  It’s not me.  I didn’t sign up for this.  When I went to G School – misguided youngster I was – I just – well, I wanted it so badly.  I’ve let myself be swindled into being a debt slave.  I just – it wears on me.  I’ve been at this vEmpire crap for so long.  I keep trying to kill this dream, kill this artist child that mewls and pesters and pulls at me.  It just . . . So I have this pressure.  And these responsibilities.  And the house and the Nabe . . . So. Something’s got to give.  I don’t write. Something’s got to give. Something’s got to give.  I don’t write.  I’m a zombie.  I don’t do my . . .

LYNN:  Your work.  Your joy.  Your sacred obligation.

BARRE:  Fine way to make me feel better.  No one wants to hear what I have to say. 

LYNN:  So you reject yourself before anyone else will.  Which takes its toll, too, and it keeps going and going.

BARRE:  I’d be better off dead.

LYNN:  No, Barre.  You kill yourself, people would never forgive you.  Are you beyond caring about that/

BARRE:  I’m getting there.  So. Is this.

[LYNN:  (unspoken, unvoiced, only in the pause: – “Is this?”)]

BARRE:  An intervention?

LYNN:  What do you mean?

BARRE:  I mean where someone comes in and escorts me to a happy place.

LYNN:  Do you want that?

BARRE (sputters):  p-p — k-k— ub – [gasp]

LYNN:  Barre! Don’t scare me like this!

BARRE:  Didn’t you think this through?

LYNN:  Think what through?

BARRE:  What the hell?  I’ve gotta get – GAAAAAH!

(BARRE runs off.)

LYNN:  Barre?  Barre, where are you going?

(LYNN follows BARRE off.)

Barre, talk to me!  What are you planning?  Barre?  Where – don’t run away from me!  Barre!  Barre!

(Sound of a car starting up and driving away.  LYNN returns, frantic, cellphone in hand.)

Hello, Jackie?  Barre’s acting weird now.  I think I really screwed this up.  You know what we spoke of earlier – right, you were right.  I thought I could – Barre just left.  Where to, I – thanks.  Please Jackie.  Please get to – I don’t’ to think that .  Barre could possibly – thanks, Jackie. 

(Clicks it shut.)

What in Jesus’ name have I done?

                              SCENE TWO:

AT RISE:                      On the beach by a lake, BARRE sits with his multiversic guide DAVE, who appears as an older guy dressed for a fishing trip.

BARRE:  I bet everyone knows but they don’t want to know.  Coworkers, neighbors.  Friends.  People in the congregation.  Desperation can be smelled, you know.  Sensed.  They sense it but not necessarily on me.  They don’t think it’s me, because I seem so calm.  They don’t know where it comes from, and they don’t want to know.  They can conveniently forget they sense this when I’m around.  Pretend.  I don’t have a violent streak, but do they really know?  I don’t think I’d go postal at the office, or pull a Virginia Tech at the Nabe Association.  I don’t know what’s going on with me.  Maybe I’m just fooling myself.

(DAVE casts a reel.  Sees where it leads, reels it back in.)

Oh, I hate that I don’t want to hurt someone else.  That I would rather hurt myself.  How screwed up is that?  I was all ready to chop . . . But I guess Lynn felt something.  Maybe something had changed.  Maybe I tipped my hand.  How did I save a file like that?  Lynnwood.  I called it Lynnwood.  Lynn would.  Heh. Lynn. Would. What?

(DAVE casts a reel.  Sees where it leads, reels it back in.)

Well, Lynn can’t help me with what’s going on.  It hurts to be me right now.  Artist as Job.  Like Mr. God’s devotion, I feel unwanted in this world, wanted for all the wrong reasons.  Job didn’t have to have a job.  Maybe I should start pronouncing that word the Biblical fashion.  Working a Job.  Take this Job and shove it.  Heh heh.  A g.d. Job’s got me.  By the short-hairs.  I feel so . . . Desperate.

(DAVE casts a reel.)

DAVE:  Had enough yet?

BARRE:  Yes.  For a long while. 

DAVE:  Killing yourself’s kind of extreme.

BARRE:  I don’t think I have any choices that aren’t extreme.  I certainly can’t go on this way.  I just . . . won’t.

DAVE:  No one says you have to.  Of course, no one says you have to keep on living either.

BARRE:  I’m at the jumping off point.

DAVE:  Yep.  Sounds like that at least.  Ope!

(He catches something.  Starts to reel the line in with a struggle.)

BARRE:  Looks like you caught something there.  Dave, I just don’t know anymore.  No one to turn to either.  And this late date.

(DAVE reels in… a boot.)

Oh, that’s disappointing.

DAVE:  Not at all.  Things that get fished out of the river are always treasures.

BARRE:  Charitable.

DAVE:  Mysteries.  This boot has a history.  What do you suppose that is, now?

BARRE:  It’s a Timberland.  One of those nice workboots, not too worn, not too new.  Probably some drunk electrical lineman or construction worker, passed out and a buddy decided to play a joke, throw it in the river.

DAVE:  Just because?  Huh.  Could be that the fellow didn’t mean to lose his boot.  Wind or a kid knocked it into the water and it floated away before he knew what happened.

BARRE:  This is all speculation.

DAVE:  Isn’t that what you do though?  When you sit at the desk and write?

BARRE:  Some.  With the triple crisis, I –

DAVE:  You know what you have to do.  Triple crisis or no.

BARRE:  I still can’t go on the way I’ve been going.  Maybe I should look into a medical procedure.

DAVE:  Heh!  Lobotomy’s just a living death.  You’ll be a goodfernuthin’ zombie you do that.

BARRE:  Maybe some people want to be a zombie.

DAVE:  Sure they do.  Ones who don’t know any better.  Barre, you’re a canary in this here coalmine called civilization.  It’s killing you, sure.  But – here’s the thing.  You can fly away.  You’re not in a cage.  You’re not a captive, there just to be monitored as a harbinger of potential doom.

BARRE:  I’ve already croaked and died.

DAVE:  Oh, come on, man!  Look I’m talking to across from the other side of things, aren’t I?  There’s more to the mystery of this time than you know.

(DAVE studies the boot.  Reaches into it. Frowns. Pulls out a little vial, a note inside it.)

Heh.  Well, don’t that beat all.

BARRE:  A message in a bottle.  This is freaksome strange, Spock.

DAVE:  I’ve seen weirder.  Why don’t you open this up and read it?

BARRE:  You fished it out.

DAVE:  I think it’s for you.

BARRE: You afraid of it?

DAVE:  Are you?  Well, I can throw it back—

BARRE:  Uh –

DAVE:  All right.

BARRE:  Oh, give it to me already.

(DAVE hands the vial to BARRE, who unfurls it.)

“Strength is knowing when to fall apart.”

DAVE:  Huh?  Say that again.

BARRE:  Strength is knowing when to fall apart.

DAVE:  Well, then.  Guess I ought to have tossed that into the drink.  Isn’t that the most useless thing -?

BARRE:  I think … ON some level, it’s just what I needed to hear.  I’m not supposed to be strong when I need to fall down and weep like a baby.  I want to just go into the woods and cry and cry ntil I’m all cried out.

DAVE:  So what’s stopping you?

BARRE:  What in my life encourages me to step towards sanity?  The same person in the madness looks like the craziest to everyone else.

DAVE:  Ain’t that the truth.  So you feel a need to stay insane then Barre?

BARRE:  I don’t know how to dive into the unknown.

DAVE:  Well, what the hell is killing yourself if not the ultimate dive into oblivion?  Son, if you only have extreme choices as you say, go towards the one that gives you the most life.

BARRE:  But I’m scared.

DAVE:  Think I give a damn?

BARRE:  Yeah, since when has that happened?  Sorry.

DAVE:  Mind your manners, now.  It’s about showing up.  This is one of those odd instances my friend, where you have to vanish the scene in order to show up to yourself.

BARRE:  Can I really just … walk away?

DAVE:  Take a longer view.  What do you really have?  Your house?  Owned by the bank.  They grace you with the illusion that you’re a properly propertied gentleman.  You get the privilege of paying the mortgage.  Your sick-care is paid for in part by the Job that would most contribute to your even having to partake of said sick-care.  Your reputation in the workaday world doesn’t go any further than the doors of the 6^th floor of the building that houses your workplace.  Except of course for the HR office on the 7^th floor, and there you might as well be anonymous for all the good it does.

BARRE:  There’s Lynn, who cares about me.

DAVE:  More than you know.  But even there, Barre, there’s no transparency.  You can’t break through another’s denial.  Lynn’s got the blanket up around the ears.  Can’t shove it off without killing your love.

BARRE:  Well, I’m mad at Lynn anyway.  Could have used an honest-to-God intervention.

DAVE:  Eh.  This has been as much about his/her awareness as it is yours.  Kiddo, it’s the oddest of times, except for what comes tomorrow.  You watch others from a distance whose circumstances are quite the contrast to yours, yet you fail to realize whether its Thailand or Iraq, Haiti or New Orleans, California or Manhattan that you’ve got the same need.  To end this madness.  Those places have folks are up against it.  Yours is too, if not as pointedly.  Your pain is as real, though.  Connected to theirs. In fact, it’s at root the same as theirs.  You, we are all one.

BARRE:  Oh, I have a cushy life.  “I have a lot to be grateful for.”

DAVE:  And you don’t value all the crap-chkes in the slightest.

BARRE:  No.  Gosh. Do I have what it takes to make the decision?  To really just walk away?

DAVE:  You’ve got to serve your best and brightest possible self, Barre.  I’ve known you all this time, and I’ve given you some guidance on major decisions –

BARRE:  Like marrying Lynn for example.  Don’t think I haven’t forgotten.

DAVE:  This is just a question of surrender.  That’s all.

(BARRE looks at the message.  Eats it.)

There you go! Digest that puppy.

BARRE:  A bit literal.  But that’s the kid in me.

DAVE:  Save your life, my friend.  Save that kid.  Wants that life force and will just drink it all in.

(DAVE grins broadly at BARRE, who shrugs his shoulders with a small smile, turns to leave.  DAVE puts the boot on his hand, and “kicks” BARRE’s behind with it.)

That’s it!  Kick start that fall into grace!

BARRE:  Old man!

(BARRE exits.)

DAVE:  That’s the way, sure is, sure is.

                              SCENE THREE

                              In their Kitchen.  LYNN sits at the table, BARRE stands apart, back to LYNN.

LYNN:  You have to go back.

BARRE:  No.

LYNN:  Listen to reason.

BARRE:  Reason?  Might as well jump off the building then.  There’s more to life than reason.

LYNN:  This is suicide too.

BARRE:  I’m not so sure.

LYNN:  Well, maybe I am.  Did you ever think of that?  Huh?  Did you ever think of me?

BARRE:  I can’t go back.  Stick a fork in me.

LYNN:  Stick a knife in you.

BARRE:  I wouldn’t fight you—this shitty world.

LYNN:  They say people shouldn’t make decisions when they’re depressed.

BARRE:  Try telling that to the nation, then.  Maybe we can stop the madness with a general strike.

LYNN:  This isn’t like you.

BARRE:  You don’t know what I’m like.

LYNN:  I certainly thought I did.  I should have you committed.

BARRE:  You don’t have the courage.  You were headed there before, but you didn’t plan it out.  I even perked up at the thought.  At last I’ll get some help.  At last someone sees what’s going on.  Quite boneheaded of you, to confront me without a plan.

LYNN:  I didn’t realize how far gone – and I was trying to help you!

BARRE:  Were you now?

LYNN:  I’m on your side, you know.

BARRE:  You’re on the side of the comfortable life.  The comfortable lie.

LYNN:  Oh, so I’m a liar, huh?  When have I lied to you?

BARRE:  Not to me, baby.  The Comfortable Lie is osmosis.  All this, this vapor, this toxic fume-age—it’s all a lie.  The Black Iron Prison.

LYNN:  All what?

BARRE:  Whatcha got?  Jobs, career, status.  Bank accounts.  Social Security.  Healthcare – or strike that! Sick-care.  Drugs.  Booze. Sugar. Air Conditioning.

LYNN:  I don’t –

BARRE:  Countries, gasoline, highways.  Jets. Jetsetting. Top 40.  The Oscars, Miss America, the Gap, Coca-fuckin’-cola, the Mormons, Vampires — oh, that’s redundant, sorry — Hollywood.  Television, cancer, cigarettes, fundamentalism, Glamour magazine, GQ, elections, the military—

LYNN:  It’s just a list.  Nothing you can do about any of it.

BARRE:  Yes, that’s right.  Let’s put it all up for bid, with the toxic debts, and may the lowest bidder collect all the booty, all the plastic, all the poor excuses for souls that we civilized folk have squandered.  Shall I keep going?  Or have I made myself clear.

LYNN:  You get something out of all this too.  Think you’re better than, better than –

BARRE:  Who?  Better? Than who?  You?  That’s certainly not true.  Better than this cuntnoise certainly.  Death to the necronomy, long live the necronomy.

LYNN:  You have to make allowances –

BARRE:  Yeah?  I’d rather die.  Don’t forget, I’m willing to back that up.

LYNN:  I can’t win.

BARRE:  That’s the point, that’s the problem.  I can’t win either.  It’s set up for lose-lose bigger-lose biggest.  Unless you walk away.  That’s the pathway.

LYNN:  What did I do to deserve this?  Can you tell me?

BARRE:  You keep doing that.  You keep making this about you, what you did, how you can control this.  You, you, you.  There’s no thought of anything but your fear, the big Fuck Everything and Retrench. 

LYNN:  Yes, I am afraid.  You’re scaring me.

BARRE:  That can’t be avoided.  It’s all coming apart at the seams anyway.  I’m sure I won’t have a job come May.  April even.

LYNN:  Well, can’t you at least wait that long?

BARRE:  Has to be now.  And I have to accept whatever you choose to do.

LYNN:  So, you’re just going to up and quit that job?  Where the boss loves you-

BARRE:  That’s totally not true.  Ange loves that I do all this work, that I lose myself in it and don’t piss anyone off, all the while seething and thinking how I’d love to make a DIY guillotine and chopping off my own head.

LYNN:  I don’t know what to say to any of this.

BARRE:  OK.  Here’s what you do.  You have good friends.  Shelly, Mavor, Tris.  You reach out tot them, get support.

LYNN:  Oh, you think I can talk to any of them, now?  Do you?

BARRE:  Well, there’s your brother and sister, I suppose.

LYNN:  They’ll come and hunt you down for leaving a great job.

BARRE:  Any way you look at it, hon, the job is GONE.  The question is about what you will want to do afterwards.  Honey, I’m at peace with this decision.

LYNN:  What about retirement – Social Security –

BARRE:  Bargaining now, are you?  Denial, then anger.  Good sign.

LYNN:  Don’t you be my therapist.  That’s just arrogance.

BARRE:  You’re right.  My apologies.  I’m just acknowledging the transition.

LYNN:  This is not like that.  You’re being willful.

BARRE:  50 years old’s a good time for willful.

LYNN:  The economy will crush us to pulp.

BARRE:  It’s going off the rails, if you haven’t noticed, Lynn.  You won’t listen to me –

LYNN:  I see no evidence of that.

BARRE:  We need to steel ourselves.  It’s not going to be comfortable after awhile.

LYNN:  So we’re going to be cave people again?  In skins and with clubs?

BARRE:  No.  That’s probably 100 years out.

LYNN:  You’re laughing at me.  Great.  You’re laughing at me.

BARRE:  Trying to ride the waves with you, Lynn.  Ease up!  Have some fun.

LYNN:  You’re causing my life to fall apart – our lives to fall part, and you tell me to have fun?  The living end, that’s what you are.

BARRE:  If this is how you do it, that’s fine too.  But do you see here?  How this is different than other fights we’ve had?

LYNN:  It’s not any different.

BARRE:  Sure about that?  OK.  Whatever.  You’re. In con.
Troll.

LYNN:  If I was in control, you’d be going back to work tomorrow.

BARRE:  OK, except for that, you’re in control.

LYNN:  Crazy.  This is crazy, you’re crazy.

BARRE:  Sure.  Whatever you say.

LYNN:  I didn’t want you to agree with me about that.

BARRE:  It’s hard to know crazy from sane.  This day and age, it’s not self-evident.

LYNN:  Of course you don’t think you’re crazy.  That’s how crazy you are.

BARRE:  A discord exists between the consensus trance and my views.  Whichever part you ally with, the other will appear totally nuts.  So, that’s where it is, Lynn.  I’ve made my choice.  I’m not going back.

LYNN:  This is a midlife crisis.

BARRE:  Accident of timing is all.  I know you can pretend until the chickens disappear. Then the geese, the ducks, even the pigeons.  But eventually once all the birds are gone, there’s nothing left but your own viewpoint.

LYNN:  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

BARRE:  Give it time.  I’ve got to give you time to adjust.  In the meantime, I’ve arranged to stay with Willow and SunBear.

LYNN:  Brother Sun and Sister Moony-toons?  Yeah, they’ll have you over.  Sure, stay as long as you like.

BARRE:  I’ve got to leave you with your feelings.  Can’t help you much there, but we will have a lot to talk about.

LYNN:  Barre?

(BARRE stands near LYNN.)

BARRE:  Yes?

(LYNN slaps him, hard.)

LYNN:  You fucker.  You’re fuckin’ me up!

(BARRE nods head, turns and leaves.)

So help me God.  So help me.  God!

                              “PHONE CALL BREAK”

                              IN DARKNESS.  Phone rings 4 times. 

BARRE’S VOICE (singing):  “It’s the End of the World as we Know It.
It’s the End of the World as we Know It.
It’s the End of the World as we Know It.
And I fee fine…”  Hope you do to as TSHTF!  It’s your doom.  Leave a message.

(BEEP, followed by silence.)

ANGE’S VOICE:  Um … Barre, it’s Ange, I – well, your greeting leaves me at a loss.  I – don’t know what to say.  And your email to me and C. J. caught us off guard.  We – we’re concerned about you.  We wish you’d reconsider.  But I fear you – well . . . Huh.  I guess we’ll have to make other arrangements.  Sure picked a fine time, asshole.

(CLICK.  Phone rings 4x.  Same routine.)

PRAY-PRAY’S VOICE:  Um . . . Whoa.  Do I have the right number?  Barre?  This here’s Pray-Pray, and I didn’t see you at the HOA last night.  Uh, this is pretty serious – if you – are you all right there?  Um . . . listen, we’ve heard some talk – did you really up and quit your job?  I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep you on as Social Chair.  Oh, well.  Better find somethin’ soon, bub . . . Or . . . well.

(CLICK.  Phone rings 4x.  Same routine.)

WOMAN’S VOICE:  Hello, Barre?  Lynn?  This is Vivian.  Where’s my son?  What’s all this I hear, you quit your job?  Lord almighty son, what are you thinking?  Did you win the lottery?  Land something better?  You sure better have, otherwise . . . Call your mother.  I’m worried.

(CLICK.  Phone rings 4x.  Same routine.)

MAN’S VOICE:  What an – interesting and provocative voicemail message.  I take it I’ve reached Barry Rinaldi – or is it Barré Rinaldi?  I’m Jake Frakes, assistant to Michael Traynor at Banden-Hopes Agency.  I’m calling regarding the strange script you sent us.  It’s . . . Well, it’s got some of us talking – and not all of it’s favorable, mind you.  It’s not so much for Mr. Traynor that I’ve been asked to call you, but because some of us have a few questions for you – informally, you know.  It seems you might be a kindred spirit?  We can be reached at 310-310-3100 extension 3131.  Again, please call,, Mr. or Ms. Rinaldi.  We should talk.  Seriously.  Goodbye.

                              SCENE FIVE

                              Outside a tent in the woods.  LYNN sits in a lawn chair while BARRE sets a nearby picnic table for a meal.

BARRE:  Yeah, I had a nice chat with some people.  They wished me luck.

LYNN:  So it didn’t pan out.

BARRE:  No, not in the least.  People are worried everywhere.  In comparison to some places, we don’t have it half bad up here in the Northeast.

LYNN:  Says someone living in a tent on someone else’s land.

BARRE:  There is that.

LYNN:  What sort of grub do you have for a civilized person, O Bear of the Woods?

BARRE:  Can you smell it?  Cooking on that fire?

LYNN:  It smells fine.  What is it?  Squirrel? Chipmunk? Vole?

BARRE:  Actually, elk.  No, I didn’t bag it myself.  Stop your out-buggin’ eyes.

LYNN (They are):  They’re not buggin’!  You don’t hunt.  Or do you now?

BARRE:  Actually, I’ve caught rabbits, a turkey buzzard, a porcupine—but I set her free.  To difficult to deal with for the return.  I could have once had an otter, but they’re just too sacred for me for some reason.  Bad karma.

LYNN:  Listen to you.  I’d think beggars can’t be choosers.

BARRE:  It may come to that.

LYNN:  So if you didn’t bag it, where’d the elk meat come from?

BARRE:  Fellow thought it was a moose.  Told me he was ecstatic, until he really looked at the animal and realized his mistake. 

LYNN:  I wouldn’t know the difference being citified, but a hunter?  Didn’t he know the difference?

BARRE:  I didn’t say anything, just commiserated with him.  Looked like Mr. Magoo.  Anyway, he sold it to me for a small sum.

LYNN:  Got anything left?

BARRE:  Oh, I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.  Things have changed.

LYNN:  Tell me about it. Barre, I can’t see how you can go on like this.  But you chucked us all and made the choice.  Oh, here we go.  I know what that wince means.

BARRE:  And I meant for you to see it.

LYNN:  Fine.  Anyway, I’ve met someone.

BARRE:  Well.  That’s a relief.

LYNN:  A relief? A RELIEF!?? What, did you never love me?

BARRE:  Of course, Lynn, I still do.  But I’m changing.  We’re separate now, at least for the time being.  So tell me about this person.

LYNN:  Chikembe is a stockbroker with Plowman Graves D.K.

BARRE:  D.K.?  What’s that.

LYNN:  “Inc.” in Tieganese, I guess.

BARRE:  Chikembe? African?

LYNN:  Mm.  We seem to be on the same wavelength.

BARRE:  I hope Chikembe makes you happy.  I think the steaks are about done.  And I’ve got some Mountain Mushrooms – don’t worry, not poisonous.  I’ve had good training.  And a salad of wild greens, with nuts and berries.  Also corn, grown over in a neighbor’s patch.  The Duncans, I’ll introduce you sometime.

LYNN:  Great.  How do you keep this elk meat? 

BARRE:  Oh, we all help each other out up here.  There’s a place for you if you want. Always. But I understand.

LYNN:  Sounds like a cult.

BARRE:  Oh, Lynn…  You shouldn’t speak about cult into you realize what cults you yourself are part of.  We all go our own way, but we recognize we can’t go it alone.  Not survivalists or Revelations Ravers.  Or a commune.  The mere sprouting of a community, that’s what’s happening here.  Personalities coming together, and working it out.  Rough edges, quirks, you know.

LYNN:  You are not the same person.  Who am I talking to?

BARRE:  I have you to thank.  I’m grateful at your botched intervention.  Saved me from jumping off the workplace building.

LYNN:  And opened up the path for a living death.

BARRE:  This is transitional.  Just the advance guard of folks who want another way.  Still, to your place now.  A stockbroker!  Mostly good, I’d say.  But …

LYNN:  Don’t.  My friends are already telling me to run the other way.  Afraid for pitchforks and torches.  Even Chikembe has said as much.  Gallows humor, I guess.

BARRE:  Gallows?  Hmm.  Why gallows exactly?

LYNN:  I don’t know.  The steaks smell . . . different.

BARRE:  It is a different aroma, isn’t it?  And sorry, elk’s gamey.  Critters who live in the bosom of God usually are.

LYNN:  They almost done?

BARRE:  A few more minutes. So.

LYNN:  So.

(They contemplate the silence.)

I don’t understand how people snap like this.

BARRE:  Snap, huh.  Hmm.

LYNN:  Yes, snap.  What’s behind it?  Because you can’t get anyone to take your work seriously?  Though maybe you don’t either since I never saw you try and put it up yourself.  Though I guess that would be –

BARRE:  My ambitions have had to change, Lynn.  I don’t claim to know when it started.  Except that I came to realize I bought into a scam.  The Lucky Artist MegaSweepstakes Con Game.™  All I ever had to show for it was a diploma and tens of thousand dollars of debt-servitude.

LYNN:  I thought your therapy addressed that.

BARRE:  It did.  I have.  And I walked away from it finally.  When I had the strength.

LYNN:  That why you ditched the cell? So you could duck the calls?

BARRE:  No, not particularly.  Aside from you and Mom, and a couple of other folks, I don’t want to hear from most people.

LYNN:  Because now I’m the one getting those calls if you must know.

BARRE:  And what do you tell them?

LYNN:  What am I supposed to say?  I mutter something, whatever I feel like.

BARRE:  Good.

LYNN:  Well, I’m glad you’re satisfied.

BARRE:  Isn’t it a glorious day?

LYNN:  Clouds threatening rain?  Glorious indeed.

BARRE:  Smell the ozone.

LYNN:  Barre, you’re breaking my heart.  You’ve descended into destitution.  How could you let this happen?  This – this is no life.

BARRE:  Lynnza, I can’t express it to you.  We’re trying to speak across a chasm of perspective.  I know where you are – was there for a really long time, just another inmate-guard in the Black Iron Prison.  And I just couldn’t continue.  I can’t talk to you in your sleep anymore.

LYNN:  I will not indulge you with your Matrix speak.  Admit it, Barre. Matrix!

BARRE:  Factors, Lynn. Just factors.  Little dots.  Get connected by people like me.  I seek it out.  I look insane to people like you, yes.  You want to keep things just so.  But the whole ball of twine’s unraveling, and you and your African stockbroker and me and everyone else is going to be thrown this way and that –

LYNN:  I’m so glad you avoid the Revelations Ranters, Jeremiah.

BARRE:  Touché.  I’m no Jeremiah, nor a Cassandra.  Just a lowly grasshopper in between the fragile butterfly and the dung beetle.

LYNN:  Insects, now!  Insects, Barre?

BARRE:  Language, Lynn. Poetry, the ineffable.  We don’t even know one one-hundredth of our power.  And it’s time we reconnect with it.  You put it off.  Makes sense, I suppose. For the moment.  Until it doesn’t.

LYNN:  You should know the County Sheriff’s going to come a callin’ for you.

BARRE:  Whatever.

LYNN:  I’m talking jail, and you say “whatever?”  Jail doesn’t scare you?

BARRE:  3 Hots and a Cot?  I hear jail has some of the nicest people.

LYNN:  You never watched Oz I can tell.

BARRE:  Oh, there are the crazies, of course.  You figure out who they are quick enough.  But I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve met who got through it with some wisdom to spare.  Sure, it’s not great — your time’s not your own, lousy living conditions and all.  But there are worse things.  Like being a stockbroker.  Or, my god, dating one!

LYNN:  Ha. Ha. Ha.

BARRE:  So, County Sheriff may come for tea.  He’s got a place.  I’ll fix her up some grub same as you.

LYNN:  I will never get this . . . person here, as long as I live.

BARRE:  Think the steaks are ready.

LYNN:  Fine. Let’s see what this elk business is all about.

BARRE:  Yep.  Eating elk.  Next best thing to joining the Elks.

LYNN:  I care not to pursue where that might lead.

                              SCENE SIX:

                              IN DARKNESS, an image of a Galaxy appears to hover on the back wall

STAR GODDESS (voiceover):  Burbling up from the bottomless depths, I send messages.  Constantly birthing, constantly creating.  Yes, I destroy too.  Sometimes I don’t care about how valuable an individual or even an entire species is to a system.  I’m the great force, underlying all creation, all destruction.  I am God, as surely as I created the universe at the beginning, and I am in all things, of all things.  All things are of me, in me.  All things are me.  Much change occurs on the third planet from a start called “the Sun” by many on that orb.  The easy joy of the planet herself – she can give generously, she takes away as is her desire, her need.  An abundance exists for those with wisdom enough to behold it.  Heaven is not a place in the future, after the death has taken hold.  It is no vapor dream for beyond one’s mortal coil.  It is the life fully embraced and lived to its fullest.

                              Lights rise.  ANDRYNS, a young man dressed part Target, part neo-indigenous, stands on a platform with CORVA-CRONE, an older strangely dressed woman.  She plays a drum, while he strums a guitar.  2 screen stage left and right.  The Duo play their instruments and sing:

ANDRYNS/CORVA-CRONE

THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE

The man coulda known what hit him,
back in those early fateful days
at the beginning of the millennium
before sparks started up the blaze.

And the woman working in cubicle
Keeping nosed locked into screen
who ignored the tremors, the prickle
who got lost in betwixt, between

See the waves do crash
See the first that bash
See the banksters flee
The glee MZB
as they shoot their guns
at their chosen ones
that means you and I
would get cast aside.

Children of stressed out boomers
gave good witness to all the flaws
of the culture of abscessed tumors
locked in strangely iron laws

They did choose to put their energies
into joy, play and nature’s grace
and deprived the vEmpire their surges
quickened thuggerment’s death race.

Yes, they tried to force
plans with no remorse
inculcating fear
into those so dear,
backfire biggest time
red-handed their crimes
did incinerate
the most reprobate.

(As they sing this song, once or twice, we see over on the screen, a title card “LYNN & CHIKEMBE, A HOME MOVIE” appears. What follows is the screenplay of the film.

IN A PARK

LYNN & CHIKEMBE, a handsome, well-dressed professional African fellow, walk down a tree-lined lane.  Romantic.

THEY pass out of frame, and the camera pans down the walk where a fire can be seen in the near distance.

AT AN OUTDOOR MALL

They eat ice cream as they window shop.  The camera abruptly stops filming right when TWO PICKET SIGNS come into view – “Down with MALLCO MANAGEMENT” and “FAIR PAY, FAIR PLAY, FAIR SAY!”

IN A NEW HOUSE

They move in.  MOVERS take in all sorts of objects and boxes from their various lives into the house.  Lynn waves hello and takes in a lamp. 

Two Movers move in a couch.  Chikembe guides them, but one of the movers loses his handling.  The couch slides toward the camera, which loses the image and careens wildly elsewhere.

Footage of grass up close.  Then of grass getting a distance.  Then we see a ruined neighborhood, just for a quick moment: boarded up buildings and ruins.  Armed SECURITY OFFICERS with submachine-guns.

CHIKEMBE’s smiling face.  A little wild, perhaps angry.

ON AN AIRFIELD

Lynn and Chikembe stand and wave, outside a small jet with a smiling captain.  They board.

The plane takes off as missiles shoot up behind the plane.

(On the stage right screen, the following series of images plays, rendered as if they were scenes from a storybook Passion of Christ.)

BARRE warms hands over a barrel near a HOMELESS COUPLE.

GENERIC WHITE PROFESSIONAL points at spot as BARRE holds a mop.

TWO COPS with flashlights, BARRE inside a Cutaway Pipe.

SUBURBAN TATTOO PEOPLE OF WAL-MART point in unison behind BARREE who proudly struts away from them.

BARRE sitting peacefully under a tree, a medicine wheel set up around the scene.

BARRE staring wide-eyed at a bear on hind legs.

BARRE and the BEAR snuggled together by the tree.

BARRE and a tribe of Neotribals, post national folk.  Home at last.

                              SCENE SEVEN:

                              A clearing in a forest.  BARRE helps ANDRYNS with a straw bale wall.

ANDRYNS:  I don’t think they’re thinking it through though.

BARRE:  No, they’re not.  The towers do suck, granted.  But we need them still.

ANDRYNS:  They do hurt the wilderness, it’s true.  You can see the radiation’s effects.  Heck sometimes I think I can even see the radiation itself!  But we can’t act rashly because—

BARRE:  I know, Andryns, I know.  I’m with you.

ANDRYNS:  Are you?

BARRE:  I have to listen to both sides and give impartial impressions.  People have begun to trust me, against better judgment.

ANDRYNS:  I know that’s true.  People trusting you.  And the better judgment too. 

BARRE:  The crow clan has strong feelings. They can’t be dismissed.  Feelings have power, and need to work with the whole system.  But we must allow for all voices.

ANDRYNS:  Sometimes I wish you’d just banish them.

BARRE:  Like I have that sort of power! Ha!  Wouldn’t want it anyways.  We need all sorts of people, and you need to look at how you handle conflict, young fellow.  You’re not the boss of anyone, and neither am I.

ANDRYNS:  Yes, boss.

BARRE:  Hey!

(LYNN sneaks into the scene, a bit bedraggled, delirious with terror.  Sees the two Neotribals and cowers in shrubbery out of their sight.  BARRE cocks his head thoughtfully.)

ANDRYNS:  Whose house is going here?

BARRE:  Dora and Trapper, I think.

ANDRYNS:  Dora and Trapper.  Ah, the old geezers.

BARRE:  Old geezers?  They’re both 35!  What does that make me?

ANDRYNS:  Ancient regime. 

BARRE:  Hmph.  So, how is the training with Chantal-Corva going?

ANDRYNS:  I don’t know how all this is going to work.  This ESP thing. I think – Oh.  Are you – ? Huh. 

(ANDRYNS frowns, BARRE grins)

I didn’t know I could do that. 

(ANDRYNS turns and looks at the shrubbery.  BARRE nods the head.)

Should I?

(BARRE shakes head, “no.”  Walks near to the shrubbery.)

BARRE:  Lynn?  I know you’re there.  I’ve been waiting for you. 

(LYNN sobs from shrubbery.)

                              SCENE EIGHT:

                              A little bit later.  CHANTAL-CORVA, a bitter, salty crone, late 40s/early 50s, puts together a decoction from various pouches on her person.  BARRE holds LYNN close.  They sit on battered lawn furniture.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  This one’s been through a lot.

BARRE:  Lynn, my Lynn… Shh…

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Throw him/her back, I say.

BARRE:  Chantal-Corva, mind your own business.  You don’t know what this one is capable of.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  One of the discredited ones.  Can smell it.  Anyone can tell.

BARRE:  #1 guided the path, Chan.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Oh, you think you’re that – Oh.  Well, I guess you – Er …

BARRE:  Some of us have to walk the distended path, Chan.  Lynn believed things ought to be easy street, just like everyone else.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Yeah, look where that got us.

BARRE:  We are still open to folks.  We’re no closed shop yet.  Heck, we took you and your nest in, don’t forget.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  And it’s the bane of the Corvus tribe’s existence.

BARRE:  Well, it’s for as long as we all agree upon it.  Schism is built into the system we’ve created.  Some of you may stay, others will go, and some of us may even go with those who choose to move on.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Change is the Goddess.

BARRE:  Sure. You bet.

(She brings the decoction over to LYNN and BARRE.)

Smells splendid.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  It will gag the throat.  Needs to go down quick.

BARRE:  Leave it here.  I’ll see it gets consumed.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Hope you know what you’re doing.

(CHANTAL-CORVA exits.)

BARRE:  I’m sure I do.  Lynn, oh Lynn. How I’ve missed you.

(BARRE rocks LYNN, who clutches onto her/him in his/her delirium.)

(Lights go black.  Lights rise and LYNN and BARRE spoon.)

                              SCENE NINE:

                              Same as before, only morning.  LYNN and BARRE sit up.  The decoction has been drunk, and the cup lays on its side on the ground.

BARRE:  Ready to take in food?

(LYNN nods.  BARRE goes off, returns with a plate of beans and bread which LYNN devours.)

Well, Crow Clan hits another bullseye.

LYNN:  I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you.

BARRE:  You can do both if you like.

LYNN:  I bet you made all this happen.

BARRE:  Just added my energy into the puppy pile.  The energy was there, but it needed to be directed by some adults.  Though I can hardly take all the credit, for there were many mages involved in this working.

LYNN:  What makes you think you’re so adult?

BARRE:  I’m still here ain’t I?

LYNN:  Not saying much.

BARRE:  I would disagree with that.  You’re a miracle though.

LYNN:  I just got by through my wits and luck.

BARRE:  Those Tiger Beaters almost did you in though.

LYNN:  If it weren’t for that pipe falling, I’d be – Hey!  How did you know – ?

BARRE:  Same way I know about the mysterious light that guided you and Chikembe out of the Deutsche Bank-Novartis Southgate Mall debacle.  I sent it to you.

LYNN:  That was – Chikembe said –

BARRE:  That it was an odd phosphorus effect.  Yes, well I had to use what was available.  That’s how these things work, you know.

LYNN:  What are you saying?  Bare, don’t scare me.

BARRE:  Just that there’s more beauty to this heaven than it has seemed.  Leaving the vampire life behind was the best thing I ever did.  And the scariest.  But it had to happen so that I could find who I really am.  And lead others to their own gifts.  When they’re open to them.  I wonder when or if you will come around.

LYNN:  Oh, there is NO way I’m staying here!

BARRE:  Great.  Tell me your plans then.  You made it here, and then – where to?  Paris?  Phuket?  Or maybe the clear waters off Madagascar.

LYNN:  Don’t you make fun of me.

BARRE:  Lynn, at some point you’re gong to have to move past the attachment to the way things were.  That’s all done, all gone.  All behind us.

LYNN:  Don’t you tell me what to do.  It’s going to come back.  You’ll be the fool then.

BARRE:  The dollar is done.  The currency system is bust.  The geopolitical –

LYNN:  That’s you!  Always the naysayer.

BARRE:  Want more?

LYNN:  All you have is beans?

BARRE:  You need to eat light for now.  When was the last time you had a meal?  No response, eh?  Well.  You should have a goodly amount of water too.  Get your strength.  For wherever you plan on going next.  For now, we give you shelter.

LYNN:  I’ll take some more beans then.  Broth?

BARRE:  We’ve got some stock simmering even as we speak.  And a little bit of apple juice, though not much.  And not right away.

LYNN:  It’s not like I have the flu.

BARRE:  We don’t want you to get sick.  Besides we watch our portions carefully.  Not because we’re food poor, but because it’s better for us to do so.

LYNN:  Where are you going?

BARRE:  You need to spend a little time alone with your thoughts, dear.  Well, at least I need you to.  Word to the wise, watch and observe the doings here.  Don’t be quick to judge.  There’s lots like high school, but it’s the other stuff you need to ponder.  There’s more going on here than meets the eye.

LYNN:  I told you not to tell me what to do!

BARRE:  Oh, Lynn.

(Leaves.)

LYNN:  Thinks s/he’s the boss of me!

                              SCENE TEN:

                              A fire pit. LYNN sits with CHANTAL-CORVA who tends the fire.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  So, Barre and you were a couple.

LYNN:  That’s the rumor.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  He says he brought you here.

LYNN:  He’s full of it.

(CHANTAL-CORVA scowls, strikes LYNN with her walking stick.)

Ow!  What’d you do that for?

CHANTAL-CORVA:  We do not speak ill of our elders here.  And Barre is powerful.  I believe him, that he protected you.  Why, for Goddess sake, is beyond me.

LYNN:  Fine.  Be that way.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  You are still attached to the Path of Trials and Vampirism. 

LYNN:  Oh, please.  Stop with the mystico-primitive crapola already.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Listen, hon.  It’s a hard journey from where we were.  In our Crow Clan, we long ago took the road of the homeless warrior.  We waited for the days when all of it would fall apart, which was as inevitable as the sun coming up from our estimation.  The sooner you understand that not only is that Path of Destruction not coming back but that it’s a good thing, the better off you will be.  Though I don’t see any hope of such possibility entering into being.

LYNN:  The experts have assured us that –

CHANTAL-CORVA(derisively laughing):  Experts!  Did you say “experts?”  Bwahaha!  No such thing!  Well-paid yes men, charlatans each one and dreaming they can coddle us sleeping giants while some enterprising prisoners get their mass inoculations ready to pacify the rest of us or push us into early graves.  Your so called experts—guards in the distribution camp.

LYNN:  Great.  I get to sit at the fire with a loony conspiracy theorist.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Go ahead, friend.  Go to that place.  Barre won’t rip away your denial because he loves you.  But I have no such reticence.  If you are going to remain here for any length of time, you will need to learn our ground rules.  That is why I’m here.  To instruct you whether you like it or not.

LYNN:  Fine.  I’m not asking for special treatment.  I don’t intend on staying.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  I look forward to your departure.  In any case, the #1 rule is life on life’s terms.  Which means you toughen up, whether you like it or not.

(ANDRYNS and SHIMMER-FIRE, an older gent (played perhaps by the same actor playing DAVE) enter carrying two buckets of potatoes apiece.)

Thank you Shimmer-Fire and Andryns.

LYNN:  That’s a lot of potatoes. 

ANDRYNS:  Eight more of these are coming.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Yes, these beauties are but the first.

(SHIMMER-FIRE hands LYNN a peeler.)

SHIMMER-FIRE:  For you, m’dear.

LYNN:  Oh, this is the last straw!

                              SCENE ELEVEN:

                              A clearing a little before nigthtfall. LYNN, BARRE, ANDRYNS and CHANTAL-CORVA sit in fire-light.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Don’t forget to breathe.  Meeting a guide can be a surprising experience.

ANDRYNS:  When I first started this, I thought I was a fool.  For them this comes naturally.

BARRE:  This sort of thing has been a bone of contention between Lynn and me.  Lynn thinks I’m crazy.

LYNN:  Thinks?

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Shh!  I demand quiet.

BARRE:  Chantal, remember our agreement.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Just who is leading this working?

ANDRYNS:  There’s no one way to do this.  Maybe for you, but we –

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Well, if this is going to be anarchic chatter based, then I’ll just go off on my own. 

(CHANTAL-CORVA exits.  BARRE and ANDRYNS let their eyes lose focus while LYNN sits there uncomfortable in the ensuing silence.  Fidgets.  Sounds of the forest at night.)

LYNN:  This is going to drive me crazy.

BARRE:  Lynn, pick out a sound.  Any sound and stay with it.

(LYNN scowls and starts to listen.  Is about to speak when there is a loud pecking of a woodpecker.  LYNN looks around.  ANDRYNS and BARRE remain unfocused.  LYNN eventually spots a woodpecker somewhere over the audience.  Sits thoughtfully and watches.  It makes more drilling sounds. The lights dim on BARRE and ANDRYNS, highlighting LYNN.)

LYNN:  It’s like a jackhammer.  Gee.  How original, Lynn.  Cute little birdie though.  Looks only a little bit like the cartoon.  Woody.  Guess he’s a certain kind.  Or maybe it’s a female.  Woodeen.  Ha-ha-heh-HA-ha!  Ha-ha-heh-HA-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaah! Hmm.  The trees smell fragrant.  But I’m still pissed off.  Barre, bane of my existence.  Says I was protected.  Big laugh that.  Almost died three or four times.  Protected, sheesh!  It is quiet here.  Peaceful.  Give me the hustle-bustle of New York or Los Angeles or even Buffalo!  A city.  Huh.  Well, given how complicated it all seems today, maybe not. Huh.  Woodpecker what do you think?

(DAVE, or rather, “HUSTON,” sidles in, wearing a different fishing hat and whistling “Sentimental Journey.”  He holds two fishing reels)

Um, I …

DAVE/HUSTON

Hey there, kiddo.  Whaddayasay?

LYNN:  I – whoa.  Um. Are you uh, Dave then?

HUSTON:  Call me Huston there, Lynn.  Pard’ner!

LYNN:  You’re like the guide Barre said –

HUSTON:  Different fellow, cool cat.  I’m Huston.

LYNN:  I had a great-uncle named Huston.  You’re not him are you?

HUSTON:  If we had some kind of relationship, you’d know.  Don’t you think?

LYNN:  I’ve heard stories.  You’re contrary like Uncle Huston was.

HUSTON:  Hey, what you choose to do is all right; just I don’t want you to categorize me.  Later, you do what you want.  Just get to know me first.

LYNN:  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Andrys’s guide turns out to be Henry David Thoreau.

HUSTON:  Oh, a famous guy huh?  Nope.  Not me.  It’s more likely you’d get an everyday mystic like myself.  One if you saw walk past you on the street, you’d just think I was another old geezer.  Consider yourself blessed.

LYNN:  I didn’t think it mattered if someone was famous.

HUSTON:  Oh, it doesn’t.  But it can interfere with direct connection.  Same as if I was a distant relation.  For now, I’m just Huston.  I like to sit by a lake and fish.

(HUSTON hands LYNN a fishing reel.  HUSTON casts the reel as LYNN “takes in the lake.”)

Beautiful day for fishing, don’t you think?

(LYNN casts the reel, sits and contemplates this quiet experience.)

This is how the messages come.  In the calm.  Just relax, Lynn.

(LYNN nods head.  A light streams down from above for 20-30 seconds.  Then the stage dims but doesn’t completely go black.  Fractals appear, along with nautilus shells, and other Mandelbrot/golden mean images.  Lights return to normal, and BARRE, LYNN and ANDRYNS are back in their positions.  BARRE and ANDRYNS are awake and aware, while LYNN wakens from trance.)

BARRE:  Andryns, I think we’ve had success.

ANDRYNS:  Can’t wait to hear all about it – if you want to say anything that is.  But you don’t have to.

                              SCENE TWELVE:

                              CHANTAL-CORVA, BARRE, LYNN and ANDRYNS sit in a circle, making a thatched roof.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  I’m not sure there’s anything I’d like to salvage.  Except for parts of course.

ANDRYNS:  Business there, though.  Always being able to retool and reconfigure is a skill and a passion.

BARRE:  There’s absolutely nothing you’ll miss, O mighty Crone?

CHANTAL-CORVA:  I do miss supermarkets.  Kind of.  Only the convenience, but it wasn’t something that could exist forever, was it?  Give me a pony and a unicorn, already!

LYNN:  Oh, that’s so unfair!

ANDRYNS:  I don’t miss them so much.  Though strawberries and pineapples in January – I did kind of like that.  Also some music that we don’t have access to anymore.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  But we can make our own music.  Create our own sound.  And we can create a natural supermarket like our way-back ancestors did once several hundred generations ago.

ANDRYNS:  Who knows what we’ll make happen here.  How will it be different in Colorado or Florida in twenty years.

BARRE:  It’ll be closer to our own region.  I will miss some of the cosmopolitan aspects.  The lights on Broadway, the glitz of Rodeo Drive.  But they don’t have to go away, at least completely.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Bite your tongue, Elder Barre.  If we want the good life, the really good life, it ALL has to change.

BARRE:  No argument from me.  I’m saying what I’ll miss, not that I’ll be disconsolate.

LYNN:  I don’t know if I can have this conversation.  I liked it the way it was.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Oh, really?  I could never have guessed.

BARRE:  Crony’s cynicism aside, Lynn, you got a lot of what’s now passed into the history books, and without so much as a how-do-you-do.

ANDRYNS:  If there will even be history books.  How will history classes work these days?

LYNN:  I did get a lot.  I liked democracy.  And Hollywood movies, as well as indies.  And Broadway too, and the Olympics.  College.  Cruises.  There were lots of things I liked.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Pah!  Democracy.  That was such a lie.  Dumb-ocracy more like it, liberty for the greed-heads.

LYNN:  I liked modern architecture.  Frank Lloyd Wright.  Interior design.

ANDRYNS:  We can still have interior design in our yurts!  Heck, we can make patterns in this roof we’re making now!

CHANTAL-CORVA:  If you look carefully, you’ll see one I’m doing.

LYNN:  Yurts!  That’s not who I am.  It made my heart sad to see homes I thought were beautiful just rot over time.  Surprised how fast all those McMansions fell into disrepair, but that’s not what I speak of.

ANDRYNS:  Those prefab crab-boxes falling apart’s no surprise.  Ticky-tacky construction and rushed together development.  Stoopid.  It’s hard to watch things you like go away, though.  Die.  Never to come back.  Saturday morning kids programs.  Power tools.  Poof!

LYNN:  And that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?  Goodbye to highways and gated communities, sure.  Digital clocks blinking.  Cellphones.

BARRE:  You’re describing a heaven there, Lynnie.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Amen!

LYNN:  Well, I don’t call this heaven.  I see how things are changing.  And I’m adjusting myself to it, but I don’t have to like it.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Just so long as you don’t make it difficult for the rest of us, sweetheart.  Wehrever the trances may take you, it is helping.  I can see that, and that person makes him/herself more inviting to the emergent situation.

BARRE:  Chantal-Corva, Lynn knows, s/he knows.

LYNN:  Yes, yes, yes.  But this Lynn is also still here, and as far as I can tell I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.  So “Greta Garbo, and Monroe.  Dietrich and DiMaggio.  Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean. On the cover of movie screen.”

(CHANTAL-CORVA sticks out her tongue, and cackles quietly to herself.)

BARRE:  Grow up!  Lynn, you have a place here.  You will set it yourself.  You are needed.

ANDRYNS:  Hey, I saw a shooting star.

LYNN:  Me too.  Was that – ?

BARRE:  A sign.

(CHANTAL-CORVA scowls.)

                              SCENE THIRTEEN:

                              Late morning in the forest.  LYNN sits at an easel painting.  ANDRYNS enters, carrying a bag of miscellaneous hardware, sees LYNN, stops and watches for a moment.  Nods, satisfied, curious.  Goes off.  CHANTAL-CORVA enters, sees LYNN at the easel, oblivious to others’ presence.  LYNN happens to look up, sees CHANTAL-CORVA.  Frostiness.  CHANTAL-CORVA breaks the moment, searching for . . .

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Truffles. . . . I know you’re lurking.

LYNN:  They’re in a different field, you know.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  I know what I know.

LYNN:  That could be a song.  You’re just curious about what I’m making here.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Wall tiles, perhaps?

LYNN:  Look at it, if you dare.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Dare!  Hah!  I have better things to do.

LYNN:  Suit yourself.

(BARRE enters, wearing a carpentry belt.  Strides over to LYNN, looks at the painting.)

BARRE:  Goodness!

LYNN:  Oh!  Barre, you startled me.

BARRE:  I’m sorry, Lynn.  That’s quite – is this something you remember?

LYNN:  I don’t know.  More the way I imagine it, if the radio reports are correct.

BARRE:  The level of detail.  Those eyes, those looks of pain.

LYNN
(resigned)

Yes.

BARRE:  What brought this on?

LYNN:  It’s been coming.  I didn’t want to face the reality, and it’s still overwhelming.  Who can see whether our little arrangement here in the mountains will survive?  Yet this is the first time I’ve really been able to feel a part of a community.  As disgruntled as we all are, as prickly and obstreperous, myself included.  Yet we’re still a part of, aren’t we?

(CHANTAL-CORVA’s about to say–)

Over some people’s loud objections.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Just saying! For the record.

LYNN:  And then that news report – news being really “olds.”  4 months ago.  Wow.

BARRE:  News now travels at an early 19^th century pace.

LYNN:  Guess this ain’t the stone age, but it’s no technotopia either.  Not that that was ever possible.  Regrettably.

BARRE:  Life on life’s terms.  Our species.  Gets to grow up for what it’s worth.

(SHIMMER FIRE and an excited ANDRYNS enter carrying lumber.  ANDRYNS points SHIMMER FIRE to LYNN’s work)

ANDRYNS:  See?  What’d I tell you?

SHIMMER FIRE:  That’s – is that the fall of New York then?

BARRE:  I thought it was Washington.

LYNN:  Actually, it’s no specific city.  Washington, New York.  Paris, even if you notice a couple of details here and there.  As well as out of the way places like Provo and Rochester. 

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Minnesota or New York?

SHIMMER FIRE:  Vermont! 

LYNN:  Whichever one you want.  It’s the larger field.  Look over here.

BARRE:  Marilyn Monroe? 

ANDRYNS:  Who dat?  Just kidding.  He was that goth guy right?

SHIMMER FIRE:  Somehow I don’t think he’s funning us.

(CHANTAL-CORVA strikes her own head, shakes it, snorts.)

ANDRYNS:  That Princess Di?

LYNN:  Yes.  And that’s Bill Wilson, founder of AA.  Here is Ernest Hemingway, and of course Oprah.  And Pope John Paul the First, the unknown saint.

BARRE:  What is this then, Lynn?

LYNN:  The Fall of Our Culture.  All blown up, all melting away.  All going wildly into a darkest night.

(Now curious, CHANTAL-CORVA strides over and looks at LYNN’s work.  Shock.  After a moment she starts crying, then wailing.)

Oh, my.

SHIMMER FIRE:  Well, this is most unexpected.  Honey, are you all right?

BARRE:  Lynn, it’s like Tchelitchew.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Exactly.  Who’s Tchelitchew?

BARRE:  Hold on.  I’ll get my old MOMA book.  I saved it for some weird reason unbeknownst to me.

(Exits.)

LYNN:  I see what you’re saying, Barre.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  This is a masterwork.  Why you?  No matter.  It’s not up to me to judge.  This is Goddess’ will.

LYNN:  I’m positive you’re right about that.  I certainly wouldn’t do this unless I was driven.

(BARRE enters with a battered MOMA catalogue.  Pages to the index and then forward.  Finds the page.)

BARRE:  There.  See?

ANDRYNS:  Whoa, trippy!

SHIMMER FIRE:  Makes me think of some bad trips I went on in the Haight.  Back in the day.

ANDRYNS:  How 2008!

BARRE:  More like 1938.

ANDRYNS:  That one baby’s shrieking.  And the little girl – is she climbing a tree?

CHANTAL-CORVA:  Looks like she’s falling into an abyss.

LYNN:  Adjust your eyes a little.  Take it all in.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  That’s a face!

(ANDRYNS and SHIMMER FIRE gasp.)

LYNN:  You know, if I just –

(LYNN makes a few brush strokes and CHANTAL-CORVA falls to her knees.)

ANDRYNS:  Oh . . . Gawd!

BARRE:  Well well well.  Looks like you’ve come a long way, Lynn.

LYNN:  All the good it does me.

CHANTAL-CORVA:  You are much wiser than you ever knew.

LYNN:  OK, now give me some space, everyone.

BARRE:  Lynn’s not used to people turning on a dime.  Not even him/herself.

(CHANTAL-CORVA starts to exit toward the direction where ANDYRNS and SHIMMER FIRE entered.)

CHANTAL-CORVA (declamatory):  Come all ye Corvus clan, and Orsus Clan.  All ye clans, hark!  We have a Master Work emerging here.  Come one, come all.  See The Fall of the West!

(Exits)

LYNN:  I think –

BARRE:  Yes?

LYNN:  I’m done being sad.

(BARRE nods.  Lights dim as the image of “Cache-Cache” by Pavel Tchelitchew appears on the two screens from the interlude.)

                              END OF PLAY

CAST OF CHARACTERS

PEPPER                        A Fairy, appearing as an Asian girl of 8 or 9.  Inquisitive and insensitive.

DJAHNNEY                      A Fairy, appearing as a strapping blue fellow in a peacock dress.  Stoic, observant.  Older than he looks.

The action takes place in front of an abandoned factory on a sunny June day, toward late afternoon.

SETTING AND AT RISE:          Outside the brick and stone ruins of a factory, long-since defunct.  Two fairies, PEPPER and DJAHNNEY wander in the field outside of it.  There are all sorts of flowers and grasses about.  It’s a full sun day.

PEPPER

Why do you suppose?

DJAHNNEY

Oh, it’s a long story.

PEPPER

Well, time is not important to us, is it?

DJAHNNEY

What’s your point?  Oh, all right.  They built parts of metal ships here.

PEPPER

I heard of those.

DJAHNNEY

For a time. Before that they made parts for regular boats.  Then there were several wars, which required the metal boat parts.  Then there was nothing.

PEPPER

It’s been nothing ever since?

DJAHNNEY

Pretty much.  So it’s been to their advantage.

PEPPER

The witches.  I like the witches.

DJAHNNEY

That’s why we’re here Pepper.  They’re not really witches though.

PEPPER

But they’re so like witches, Djahnney!  Oh, is that them?

DJAHNNEY

Pepper …

PEPPER

What?  Oh, already.

DJAHNNEY

Send out your feelers!

PEPPER

I just like you to tell me.  OH, all right.  Oh.  Well, it’s not them.  Those people – what was that?

DJAHNNEY

So many people dress alike these days.  And some taste just dreadful.

PEPPER

Smoke and some metallic, tinny airy taste.

DJAHNNEY

I think they were addicted to some drug.  Something called Myth or Math, I think?

PEPPER

Math, as the name of a drug?  After Math the mage?

DJAHNNEY

No.  I don’t think that’s it.  Moth, maybe?  I don’t know.  It was an acrid taste though. 

PEPPER

If only people knew.  I heard things used to be pretty swanky here.

DJAHNNEY

Well, one person’s swank’s another’s poverty.  Faery poverty for sure.  It didn’t add much to the realm, this swank of which has been speculated.

PEPPER

The pictures hanging on the walls in there show these ugly people.  You can tell that their child-selves were stomped like grapes.

DJAHNNEY

They were called “suits,” Pep.  They didn’t suit the world as it lay, but they tried to force it to suit themselves.  And people who didn’t like the suits would go to tribunals and file suits against the suits, but the suits on the walls, in their suites, always sweated it out and swatted the suit-filers swiftly and with sweet reckless abandon.  Eventually they would be put in their place, but that was with the Great Unravelings began.

PEPPER

Those most magical times, the Great Unravelings.  The Great Revealings for the witches.  And these people.

DJAHNNEY

This place was a ruin well before.  The suits decided that there was a better place for their being suited, off in the So-far-East-it-could-be-West lands.  It just stopped one day, and the nature spirits took it over.  The Unravelings took the other suits out in that hard-home-village arrangement they called “Armstrong Terrace.”  And some wannabes tried to keep the suit warehouse going.  But it didn’t – hey, did I feel a change in the energy?

PEPPER

Yes!  Oh! Should we start?

DJAHNNEY

Not a bad plan.

(They go about making preparations for a ritual.  DJAHNNEY picks up a twig, and flicks it.  Becomes a bouquet of sunflowers.  He sets it on a ledge by the ruined wall.)

PEPPER

I’d have thought you’d go for something showy.  Snapdragons, maybe.

DJAHNNEY

It’s a day for simpler pleasures.

(PEPPER starts to pick up flat stones and turns them into saucers, concave ones into teacups.  She sets about waving her wand. Waterfalls appear out of the brickwork.  DJAHNNE pulls out a portion of the ruined wall and flames start to emerge out of it.

PEPPER

Cauldron time?

DJAHNNEY

Indeed.

(They move center, point their wands.  DJAHNNEY points his up, while PEPPER points hers down.  They stand about 3 feet apart, facing out, start to dance in a weaving step motion, and a cauldron emerges in the circle therefrom formed.)

PEPPER

The directions all ready and accounted for!

DJAHNNEY

On our side of the equation.  It’s up to the two-leggeds now.

PEPPER

Amusing creatures these two-leggeds.

DJAHNNEY

Can’t live with ‘em –

DJAHNNEY & PEPPER

Cant’ live without ‘em.

PEPPER

At least the ones who are coming here we can tolerate.

DJAHNNEY

They’re the best on offer.  We takes what we can gets.

PEPPER

The new guy seems … well –

DJAHNNEY

Yes, he’s one to watch for signs.  The madness might live dormant in that one.

PEPPER

Hey, I feel something.

DJAHNNEY

Priscilla.

PEPPER
(doubtful)

Oh.  That woman there?  She the grandmother?

DJAHNNEY

Mmm… I don’t get the feeling she’s related.  Wonder how she’s connected.

PEPPER

Grandmother. Hm.  She’s got a lot of manna, Djahnney.

DJAHNNEY

That she does.  She must be an elder from a distant land.  And I sense a lot of our kind on their way.

PEPPER

Is that?  No, that.  That can’t be him!  No, I – no!

DJAHNNEY

Oh, why?

PEPPER

The new guy!

DJAHNNEY

Gotta be.  Banshee Baboozka!

PEPPER

I sure hope that strong old lady’s got the power.

DJAHNNEY

That’s not the problem I can see.

(He starts flicking his left wrist.)

PEPPER

Hey! You beat me to it!

DJAHNNEY

The Grand Court has to know that Firebutt is escort to this … whoever he is.

PEPPER

I wanted to do it!  You get all the fun!

DJAHNNEY

There’s no rush.  Oh look.  An army of Salamanders has arrived.

PEPPER

Bet they already knew.  That’s good.  At least we’ll and they’ll be safe.

DJAHNNEY

Hm.  I bet she knows, this old crone.  Lots of power!

PEPPER

Guess we’re in for some feast tonight from the looks of it!

DJAHNNEY

I wonder . . . Maybe that new guy is the reason for it.

PETER

Firebutt likes to attach himself.  I know.

DJAHNNEY

Yes, that’s likely  Hm.  Well, this will be mighty interesting.

PEPPER

Djahnney?

DJAHNNEY

Hmm?

PEPPER

Doesn’t he look familiar?  As he gets to be more in focus.

DJAHNNEY

Yes, now that you mention – I’ve seen, I think – I bet –

(He runs into the ruin.)

PEPPER

Priscilla and Norbert, Birch-tree and Starglow.  And I see angels!  Goodness, all this finery.  I’m going to collapse from the beauty!

(DJAHNNEY returns.)

DJAHNNEY

Just as I thought!  He looks like one of those suits in the pictures!

PEPPER

Ew!

DJAHNNEY

The one in the center of it all.  The new guy’s related!

PEPPER

They’re not going to perform a human sacrifice are they?

DJAHNNEY

None of us would be here if that were so, Pepper.  You know the geas!  No, this is some sort of retrieval I think.  We’re going to have a lot to do.  Come on, it’s time to find us a lilypad and rest a bit.

PEPPER

They’ll be calling us in soon enough!

vEmpire’s Last Grasp by Richard Morell

CAST OF CHARACTERS

MARY LEE CALDWELL            Early 50s, bankruptcy attorney with a strong spiritual side. Mother of LISA-ANNE and JUSTIN.

LISA-ANNE CALDWELL           20, serious and thoughtful.  A bit timid and sheltered.

JUSTIN CALDWELL              16.  Smart kid with a sense of the pulse of the current cultural moment.

RICHARD MERLIN               Mid-40s, African-American, self-described gay “doomer.”  Spiritual, but bitter.

WENDY EVERETT                22, deceased.  Quirky black sheep of her family.

GEORGIA EVERETT              20, sharp-tongued but deferential with authority.  Though that’s changing.

LAURA EVERETT                Mid-50s, mother of GEORGIA and WENDY.  Deepest denial, flies off the handle when challenged.

TYRONE JEFFRIES              16, truculent, stubborn.  Hates to be told what to do. Homophobic.

SCOTT “MAC” McCRORY          16, peaceable, but not very bright.

MANNY GUTIERREZ              16, gay, wears bright colors.  A lightning rod in more ways than one.

OGUN                         The Orixa of the Ironworker. Serious, practical.

WAKIB KAME                   A Mayan Goddess.

MELEK TAUS                   The Blue God, Peacock Angel.

The action takes place present day in New Carthage, in various locations, but mostly in the kitchens of the Caldwells and the Everetts.  (Double casting allowed, where possible.)

SETTING:                     The Caldwells’ kitchen.  Counters and cabinets.  A refrigerator are essentials.

AT RISE:                     LISA-ANNE, 20, distraught, sits at the kitchen table with a semi-touched bowl of oatmeal in front of her.  MARY LEE CALDWELL, her mother, early 50s, stands by a counter holding a coffee cup.

MARY LEE

I want an answer, Lisa Anne Caldwell!

LISA-ANNE

I have to think about it.

MARY LEE

The university’s letter—

LISA-ANNE

And what do you want me to do about it?  This is so sudden!

MARY LEE

We can’t afford this.

LISA-ANNE

I don’t want to go part-time.

MARY LEE

Maybe it would just be temporary.

LISA-ANNE

Don’t count on it.

MARY LEE

I don’t blame you for being angry.  I’m beside myself.

LISA-ANNE

What a world, what a world.

(JUSTIN, 16, enterprising and surprising, bounds in.  He’s dressed more for shop class than for regular schoolwork, in a denim uniform.)

JUSTIN

Good morning, Mom and Sis.  Uh oh.  What’s going on? Pow-wow?

MARY LEE

Justin, it’s none of your business.

LISA-ANNE

What difference does it make?  He already knows.

JUSTIN

About the tuition hike at the university?  Heck, it’s the talk of the school, especially amongst all those smarty-pants who want to go there to partay!  Hey, sis you thought this might happen.

LISA-ANNE

Not so soon, and not so extreme.  There’s no way I’m going to be able to finish on time.

MARY LEE

We’re not taking out any loans.

LISA-ANNE

Don’t worry about that.  I ain’t touchin’ the toxic assets.

MARY LEE

I have to think of Richard and Ken.  I don’t like how Richard uses the C word to describe the company servicing his debt.  That word is demeaning to women, I don’t care if he does want to redefine it.  And don’t you go saying it.

JUSTIN

Mom, get with the decade.  This is the era of The Vagina Monologues!

LISA-ANNE

I like Richard’s use of “cunt” to denote vampire.

JUSTIN

“It’s the sound of Rush’s fangs going into the flesh.”

(JUSTIN mimcs a vampire “cunting” his victim’s neck.)

MARY LEE

Yeah, yeah.  I hate that.  But it does conjure an image, I’ll grant you that.

LISA-ANNE

There’s no way I’m going to consider that.  All I have to do is look at Wendy Everett.  The pain Georgia’s going through.

MARY LEE

Pain?  What pain is that?

LISA-ANNE

You don’t know.  Oh. Uh…

JUSTIN

What?  What about the girl who couldn’t fly right?

LISA-ANNE

She committed suicide.  The wake’s the day after tomorrow.

MARY LEE

No!  Wendy?

(She spills her coffee.)

Oh, dad blast it!

JUSTIN

Georgia’s sister.  Wow.

MARY-LEE

Laura, poor Laura.  And Georgia and Barry. 

JUSTIN

Drugs?

LISA-ANNE

Her suicide note mentioned her student loans.  100 K.  The family—well, you know Mr. E. didn’t really take kindly to Wendy.

MARY LEE

I stayed out of that whole thing.  Laura would bring up how ungrateful and disrespectful the oldest was, I’d keep my mouth shut and just nod my head.  I learned my lesson.  Still.  To lose a child. . .

LISA-ANNE

Georgia’s torn up about it.  And they didn’t get along well.  Of course, Mom and Dad were always holding her up as the example and rubbed Wendy’s nose in kid sister’s achievements.  It all seems so futile.

JUSTIN

That’s because it is.

MARY LEE

Justin, don’t help.

JUSTIN

Just sayin’, we all gotta change is all.

LISA-ANNE

You know, he has one bright idea, my jerkwad dorkasaurus brother.

JUSTIN

Yeah, love you too, Sis.

LISA-ANNE

He’s getting a skill.

JUSTIN

I think of it as diversifying.  Plumbing and machine maintenance now—might add in welding and metalwork later.

MARY-LEE

You can’t compare yourself—

LISA-ANNE

Mom, stop it.  That’s not – the situation is changing.

(KNOCK on the door.  RICHARD MERLIN, mid-40s, suburban gay African-American man who’s been through some living, enters.)

RICHARD

Morning, Caldwells.  What are you kids still doing here?

JUSTIN

Good morning, Mr. Merlin.  Today’s my late day.

MARY-LEE

What can we do for you, Richard?

RICHARD

Ken, Rachel and I have been working diligently on the garden as you know.  We wanted to take the time to offer you some of our bounty if you would like it.

MARY-LEE

That’s mighty generous of you.  I can’t understand how you can get veggies in February!

RICHARD

It’s cold frame gardening, Mary-Lee.  Nothing too sci-fi about it, though I know a fellow up north who heats his soil.  Can’t imagine that will continue forever though.

LISA-ANNE

That’s quite a load of greens there, Mr. Merlin.

RICHARD

Yeah, yeah.  It all goes to waste if we don’t share.  I see I interrupted something.

MARY LEE

We have some family –

LISA-ANNE

Mr. Merlin, I’d like to ask you something.

RICHARD

Um… What is it?

LISA-ANNE

You know the University just – well, it’s like they raised tuition 50%.

RICHARD

Wow.  I’m sorry, Lisa-Anne.  Are you—

MARY LEE

Lisa-Anne—

LISA-ANNE

Oh, people are going to know anyway, Mother.  When they see I’m not carrying books or talking about tests, they’ll figure out that I’m taking a break, at least. 

RICHARD

So you’re not going to continue?  Well, well, my loan rants convinced you not to go down that road?  I’m good for something at least!

LISA-ANNE

Justin thinks it’s a good thing that –

JUSTIN

Hey, don’t go putting words in my mouth!  I just said I’ve been expecting something like this to happen.  Everything’s getting more expensive everywhere, why not college?

RICHARD

Me too, alas.  Another drip of the Chinese water torture that the vEmpire unleashes on all of us.  Oh, I coined a new word by the way.  How about “necronomy?”  Like it, Justin?

MARY LEE

What is this, Richard?  Necronomy?  vEmpire?  Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than make new words up?

RICHARD

Oh, those just come naturally.  I don’t have to do anything.  Well, Lisa-Anne, Goddess closes a door and she opens another one.

LISA-ANNE

Uh huh, uh huh.

JUSTIN

Hey, Richard.  Hear about Georgia’s sister?

LISA-ANNE

Justin, don’t be mean.

JUSTIN

What?  I’m just asking if he’s heard is all?

RICHARD

Heard what?

MARY LEE

I don’t know if you knew Wendy.  She took her own life.

RICHARD

Oh.

LISA-ANNE

The wake’s Thursday.  She mentioned in her note that at least the family was off-the-hook for her student debt.

RICHARD

Goddam cunts!

MARY LEE

Let’s not get you started here.

RICHARD

You know me.  I’ve thought of that too, I have to admit.  In my weaker moments.  Naively walked into an obligation and here I am fifteen years later and it just got below the original principal amount that I had gotten back in 1995.  Some days, I just sing death’s praises at my veal fattening pen™.  Though it’s improving.

MARY LEE

What’s improving?

RICHARD

Way things are going, both Ken and I wonder if we’ll have jobs come the spring.

JUSTIN

Doesn’t Ken work for the State?

RICHARD

States cut back all the time, you know.  Five years ago, Ken would not have believed the possibility.  Today…

MARY LEE

Oh, what is this world coming to?

LISA-ANNE

I just have the feeling all this needs to happen.  For some weird reason.

JUSTIN

Me too. 2012.  TEOTWAWKI—the End of the World As We Know It. 

RICHARD

More like the end of this perspective.  The planet at least will keep on its merry path.  But whither humanity?  Who medicated all these people, and when did they stop their meds?

MARY LEE

Oh, Richard.

LISA-ANNE

There have been times at the U when I’ve felt unsafe.  Some people just seem to be off the deep end.

JUSTIN

Mr. Merlin, does Rachel have class in the morning?

RICHARD

Oh, she’s already at school.  She’s only a junior, but she’s thinking about life after high school.  Actually she’s wondering if she shouldn’t have done like you, Justin, and gone Voc Ed instead of going the college track.  I don’t know what to tell her.

LISA-ANNE

I was just saying the same thing.

MARY LEE

Now Lisa-Anne, we don’t have to go to the extremes here.  College still provides the best way through hard times.

RICHARD

Mary-Lee, college is no guarantee you’ll get anything reasonable.  Heck, it’s Harvard MBAs and snooty Ivy-Leaguers who got us into this morass.  Lots of those guys in Finance and da gubmint went to my alma mater as you know.

LISA-ANNE

Ironically I wanted to become an advocate for the disadvantaged.  Maybe I’ll be one of them.

MARY LEE

Don’t talk like that!  Lisa-Anne, things will pick up.  They have to, or, or—

RICHARD

Or what?  There’ll be riots in the streets?  People are too much like cows if you haven’t noticed.  Or they’re hopped up on some sort of speed that … It’s madness.  Lisa-Anne there’s no reason you can’t do that on your own.  In fact, I think you’re going to have to because what would be taught wouldn’t work today anyway.  Things are changing and accelerating well beyond the printing of textbooks.  Last month’s are already outdated!  And then you have the middlemen out there who are making their little careers and lining their diamond-studded coffins with other people’s blood, sweat and tears who will try to worm you out of your own understanding of things and force you off to get certified, and then once you do and see through the curtain to the man pulling the switches like Dorothy and Toto, they’ll ask “Who you going to believe?  Your lying eyes or we-da-Expoitz?”  That’s the time to run the other way.  Been that way for awhile now, and I’m quite frankly disgusted.  Yeah, well, just one other thing and I’ll slash-snark for now and head to my Dilbert Hell Cubicle Farm.  All that expertise and sophist. -ication. crap is all a racket to keep us distracted and afraid and therefore easier to control and, if need be, eliminate.  The truth is we are already enough–wise enough and talented enough to take care of things, but we’ve bought these lies that we can’t pursue what’s right because—“well, you’ve got to go to graduate school for that”.  Where you get to sit in a room with a professor—that’s if you’re lucky enough to get the real thing instead of a T.A. who’s got to go flip burgers or tend bar or strip at the club later.  And then you’ll listen to their tap-dance and their obfuscation and get your certification that you understand the theory and the applications and the methodology, along with a healthy dose of disgust and all that wonderful debt to play in.  But you know something?  You probably won’t get to work with the people you’re thinking of, and to make the valuable mistakes you need to make along the way and to find the wonders of your own self either.  We’ve severed ourselves from our own intuitions and awareness and we walk around like medicated sheep.

MARY LEE

Speak for yourself.  I’m not a sheeple.

RICHARD

Did I say you were?  Well, on that note.  Come on over any time.  Abundance is all around us if we but open our eyes to it.  Obatalá be blessed.

(RICHARD exits.)

LISA-ANNE

Well, that was a bit rude of him wasn’t it?

JUSTIN

Actually, I think he caught on real well.

MARY LEE

Just what is that supposed to  mean?

LISA-ANNE

I wasn’t saying he was wrong.  Just rude.

MARY LEE

You both think I’m a sheeple!

JUSTIN

Baa baa!

LISA-ANNE

Justin!

MARY LEE

I knew it.  I just knew it.  My own home!

JUSTIN

Hey, Mom.  Love ya lots, and sorry and all.  But you hold on to things.  You do and you know it.

MARY LEE

Just shut up and let the adults handle it.

LISA-ANNE

You’re hopeless.

MARY LEE

Tell him that.  Not me.

(LISA-ANNE and JUSTIN look at each other. LISA-ANNE shrugs her shoulders.  JUSTIN shakes his head.)

Both of you.  Well this is a fine how-do-you-do!  Didn’t expect to have the veil ripped from my eyes.

LISA-ANNE

Guess I’ll head over to the Everetts, see how Georgia is doing.  I’ll keep you posted.

MARY LEE

Lisa-Anne Caldwell!

LISA-ANNE

Mom, just let it go.  You’re going to have to anyway, else you’ll get dragged.

(LISA-ANNE kiss her goodbye, exits.)

MARY-LEE

I can’t believe you kids.  All we’ve done for you.

JUSTIN

Yeah, yeah.   Heaped all this debt on us and the next 6 generations that we won’t ever be able to pay back.  You know, I’m one of the gentler ones.  Azazel St. Paul thinks we should line every one up over 35 and shoot you all.

MARY LEE

Who the hell is Azazel St. Paul?

JUSTIN

Lead singer of Azazel and the Jehovah Lovers.

MARY LEE

What is that a metal band?

JUSTIN

They’re like Christo-Satanic Death Punk Goth.  With an occasion soupcon of Brit-style bubble gum.

MARY LEE

Christo-Satanic?  You blow my mind sometimes.

JUSTIN

Their philosophy is that Jehovah and Satan are the same being.  But they’re also mad at the Bankster-Gangster-Thugs in Suits.  Title of one of their songs you know.

MARY LEE

You’re enlightening me.  So, Justin do you feel I should be shot too, then?

JUSTIN

Actually, I’m scared for you.  “Let the adults handle it?”  Heh.  The rest of us need to pry your iron hands off the controls and give you a time out, or at least help you drive the craft onto some far-off place where you can do the least damage.  Richard gets it.  He hates his job, and that’s the best thing can be said for it.

MARY-LEE

Don’t you talk to me about Richard.  Freak.  How does Ken put up with him?  You have to go to school!

JUSTIN

Yep. That I do.  Really though.  You’re selecting what you want to see. Lisa-Anne, me—and Wendy Everett, who took the easy way out—we all see a different landscape than you.  It’s a lot harder to be young these days than it was 20 years ago.  Have a good day, Mom.

MARY-LEE

Be careful.  I worry.

JUSTIN

Smart mother, you are.  You’ll go far.

MARY-LEE

Oh hush.

(He exits.)

What are we doing?

                             SCENE TWO

                             Summerlands, or wherever people go after they die.  WENDY EVERETT skips onstage.  A free spirit, 22 forever now.

WENDY

Hey hey hey!  I’m Dead Wendy Everett.  I took the easy way out I suppose you could say, only . . . I don’t think it really was all that easy.  But unlike a lot of living folk, I could see long ahead where all this was going. At least I could save myself the misery.  I know George and Mom and Dad are suffering.  They’re quite angry with me!  Months from now, they’ll read my long letter to them and they’ll understand.  I really wasn’t strong enough for this ride, and better to get out early rather than to be a drag later.

I’m no pioneer, but that’s what it’s going to take for the rest of you to get through this pass.  Difficult times as they happy motoring way of life vanishes all around you, in dribs and drabs and sudden jerks and jolts along the way.  I saw this cartoon when I was a child—Allegro non troppo.  It was an Italian film and there was a story about a cat who is starving and cold and she gets into this building and her fantasies become real, and she feels joy.  But then reality intervenes and one by one all the images go poof! She comes back to her horror existence until at the end of the film, she too disappears like the living ghost she was throughout.  Always to us in the audience at least.  We’re like that kitty, see.  All our existence is built on something we knew couldn’t last, and like a man on death row, we’re being offered our last meals before we do the dead man walk.

I just was ahead of the game. That’s all.

Millions of souls will join me soon enough, alas.  The way things are set up, it will become a couple billion before too long.  There’s no reason to be depressed about it though!  “Grey skies are gonna worsen!  Put on a happy face!”  Many of these souls were curious about our existence and they wanted to experience meat reality at least once, and they knew this time would be most troublesome and terribly exciting.  It was too rich for my blood, though.  Seen my past lives—the only one where I was famous was in Song Dynasty China.  I was a minor poet and bureaucrat in the Emperor’s chambers.  Famous in that life time, lost to obscurity thereafter. 

WENDY (CONT’D)

I’ve seen future-to-you lives too.  We all return to the jungle.  Don’t worry, that’s not as bad as it sounds to you softened up backyard barbecue addicts.  “Mixed grill anyone?” We lose much in the process, though this loss opens up the way for a different way of being that’s much more hospitable and honest.  More open, more flexible.  These descendants are communicating with you, guiding you to better actions.  If you but open your eyes and ears.

Their wisdom could save your lives.  If you want your lives saved.  Maybe you’re like me?  Hi!

I wasn’t strong enough.  Your loss?  Possibly.  The students and those people who have huge quote-unquote education debt – yeah, education in quotes because it’s really more just extra prison time where we need to study and look busy – these people are going to revolt soon.  Ironically, in your overlords’ short-sightedness, the society you live, move and have artificial being in has put so much investment in a powder-keg that they’re trying to control, that they and to some extent you think will pay some great dividends… some day, and the time has gone poof! Right before their eyes.  The bills came due like two weeks ago.  The pressure makes the contents explode.

So I’ve exploded.  Whoopee!  At least I did so in a contained way.  Thousands like me are here in the Summerlands readying for our next lives.  Unfortunately some get to go right back into the earth as babies.  Can you imagine what it’s going to be like for the children of the Octuplet Moms now?  One of them is one of us, I know.  Poor little girl.

I look forward to my future life.  I’ll just be a part of a nomad tribe, wandering around in FUSA.  That’s “Former United States of America.”  Food will again be plentiful.  Circumstances will change when we just up and decide to leave it.

Some of you are doing that now.  It pisses off the Powers That Be.  But whether they admit it or not, they’ve played this game to their ultimate checkmate.  Man plans and God laughs.  She’s laughing hysterically right now as Mother Earth tells us not so gently that the party’s now OVER.  She’ll send lots of us to our beds without supper, the greedy and the devoured alike.

Get ready folks.  It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

                             SCENE THREE

                             A workshop in a Vocational Education plumbing school.  JUSTIN works at assembling a sink with TYRONE JEFFRIES, a charismatic African-American teen, and SCOTTY “MAC” MCCRORY, a friendly but aimless sidekick.

MAC

Why do they give us all this easy stuff to do?

TYRONE

Why are you complaining?  It makes us look good.

JUSTIN

There must be a reason for it.  Probably to know our jobs backwards and forwards.

MAC

Seems a waste of time.  Why can’t we get on with it?

JUSTIN

It is maddening.

TYRONE

Hey guys, I asked Kendra Thurston out to the movies!

MAC/JUSTIN

Oh, come on!  No way!  Who do you think you are?

TYRONE

She said yes.

MAC

Dang, some guys.  You’ve got balls, Tyrone.

JUSTIN

What are you going to go see?

TYRONE

She wants to go that 3^rd version of Rosemary’s Baby.

MAC

Oh, she likes to be scared and clutch at a guy’s rippling bicep, eh? 

TYRONE

“Rippling bicep?”  What kind of talk is that?

MAC

Back cover of one of my Mom’s romance novels. 

JUSTIN

“Where Ladyhawke finds herself swept off her feet by Antonio, who rides in on a fierce stallion and carries her off to bliss.”

TYRONE

Sounds queer to me.  Hey, what’s this nut and washer?

MAC

Say what?

TYRONE

These ones here right next to me.  We done left something out!

JUSTIN

Great.  Just great.

MAC

We have to start over? Oh, man!!!

TYRONE

Houston, we have a problem.

JUSTIN

It’s my faut.  I tried to rush us through it.

MAC

Eh, it’s all our fault.  We all wanted to just be done with it.

TYRONE

Speak for yourselves, boys.  I like doing this work.  In fact, I like it so much, I myself left these puppies out.

JUSTIN

Huh?

MAC

Why in hell you do that?

TYRONE

So we can take our sweet time on sinks.  Before we move on.  To toilets.

JUSTIN

Good point.  Say, did you hear about Wendy Everett?

MAC

My brother kind of liked her.  What about her?

JUSTIN

She checked out, man.

TYRONE

Lotta that going on.

MAC

Pills?

TYRONE

GSW to head?

JUSTIN

You know, I didn’t ask.

TYRONE

I did hear some chick killed herself by driving into a bank through the side wall, like 90 miles per hour.

MAC

What’s going on?  Why are people acting so crazy?

TYRONE

Always been this way, the way I see it.  Just a lot more nuts out there in the open I guess.

JUSTIN

This can’t last.

MAC

What can’t last?

JUSTIN

All of it.  Take this country for example.  America, greatest country on earth, right?  Yet Tyrone here is as like to be put in jail as to get a job.  And what about the crazy drunks in the churches?

TYRONE

Some of them’s good people.

JUSTIN

In the pews, maybe.  Not the ones at the pulpits, taking advantage of people’s fears, blaming their problems on others.  Immigrants, environmentalists, gays.  What about their own sorry-ass choices?  And that’s another thing.  We bitch about politicians, but don’t we have the numbskulls we deserve?  Don’t we on some deep level think we’re all just scumbags and then act like Mormons, pretending to be good when all we want to do is control your asses?  We’re all fucking psychopaths, I think sometimes.

MAC

You sound like a traitor.

JUSTIN

All I’m saying is we call ourselves United.  That’s a lie.  Tyrone, you going to give a pat on the back to Manny Guiterrez and say he’s your bud?

TYRONE

No-account faggot?  What are you crazy?

JUSTIN

Mac, Tyrone just proves my point right there.  If we were United states you wouldn’t think twice about it.  We’re so divided and conquered, our divisions have sub-sub-subdivisions.  Army of One indeed.  All of us sheep.  Ready for god knows what kind of slaughter, less we wake up and see what’s really going on.  Emperor’s got no fucking clothes, man.

MAC

You off your meds?

JUSTIN

And do you have a prescription too?  Is your Kool-Aid prescribed by a doctor?

TYRONE

Let’s get back to finishing this sink.  I can’t believe I’m hearing a conversation like this.

(They work on disassembly in silence.)

MAC

Man, you got some nerve.

JUSTIN

Manny Guiterrez, Mac.

TYRONE

Maybe I don’t want to be in the same country as those people.

JUSTIN

Tyrone, there are people who don’t want to be in the same country with you.  And me too, and Mac.

TYRONE

Well, in our case, that queer shouldn’t be a factor.

JUSTIN

And with that he crosses over to the dark side.

TYRONE

Godwin’s Law, Justin.

JUSTIN

Don’t have to go there.  Pol Pot?  Robert Mugabe?  Glenn Beck? 

TYRONE

Since when did you become a cocksucker lover?

JUSTIN

Dude, I’ve always been friends with gays.  You just haven’t—

TYRONE

Yeah, yeah.  You’re gonna burn in hell with your faggot brethren.

MAC

Tyrone, you don’t really mean that.

TYRONE

Sure do.  It’s what my church believes.

JUSTIN

Hey, I got a bible question for you.

TYRONE

You know I didn’t ask for this.

JUSTIN

It’s actually about a word, a Hebrew word, Tyrone.  Do you know the Hebrew word for adversary?  Or for Defense or Offense, like the Tigers or the Pistons?

TYRONE

Those are gonna be different words, man.  I know adversary is Satan, though.

JUSTIN

So, you don’t think the offense is the adversary of the defense?  Or that right now, you and I are being adversarial.  How does that work exactly?

TYRONE

So what’s your point?

JUSTIN

Just that you need an adversary.  You need to be an adversary.  Ergo, in Hebrew …

TYRONE

You. Are. Crazy.

JUSTIN

You need satans, you make yourself a satan in the process. 

TYRONE

I am not Satan.  It is not satanic to hate sin.

JUSTIN

You make yourself into an adversary against whatever the adversary-slash-satan in you wants to satanize, and in the process, you satanize yourself.  You live by splitting things in two, well…

MAC

This is getting too deep for me.

TYRONE

You know, I don’t even want to do this anymore.  I can’t take your judgments.

(JUSTIN laughs.)

Laugh if you want, demon sinner.  I’m on the righteous path.

JUSTIN

I’m just a mirror, dude.  I’m another you.

TYRONE

Motherfucker!  Motherfucker!

(MR. ALVAREZ, the shop teacher, barrels onstage toward them. The BOYS get quiet when they see him.)

MR. ALVAREZ

So, guys.  You should be done with this sink by now.  But I hear some cussing and some arguing going on.  Don’t tell me it’s over who gets to use what wrench now.  Tyrone?

TYRONE

Yes, sir?

MR. ALVAREZ

I’m thinking you especially need to calm down.  And Mr. Caldwell, I don’t see why you have to goad this Roman Candle here.  I heard your words, guys, and for what it’s worth Caldwell, you make a few interesting points.  I want you all to look up the words diabolic and symbolic in the dictionary and get back to me tomorrow.

TYRONE

Diabolic means “of the devil.”

MR. ALVAREZ

Oh, I think you’ll be surprised, Mr. Barber.  Carry on.  In quietude, please.

(HE exits. The BOYS silently return to work on the sink.)

TYRONE

Huh.  I found where they go.

MAC

Good job, Tyrone.

TYRONE

See what you’ve done?  Now we have homework.

JUSTIN

Two g.d. words in the dictionary?  What, isn’t there one in Mr. Bristol’s classroom?

TYRONE

Yeah, yeah.

MAC

Hey, you guys know why Helen Keller can’t have any kids?

JUSTIN

Why?

MAC

She’s dead.

(THEY laugh for a moment.  MAC smiles broadly, but TYRONE and JUSTIN eye each other warily.

                             SCENE FOUR

                             IN THE EVERETT LIVING ROOM.  LISA-ANNE and GEORGIA EVERETT, a fulsome lass of 20, with lots of curly brown hair, sit and have coffee.  GEORGIA has been crying, but seems to be in a more thoughtful moment.

GEORGIA

It’s no secret we didn’t get along.  Wendy was a bit neurotic.  Diagnosed bipolar her junior year of high school.  Still she was smart, determined to surpass my reputation at Algonquin High. 

LISA-ANNE

I got along with her all right, but didn’t realize she had all that.

GEORGIA

Don’t you too, though?  How’s your family taking the rate increase?

LISA-ANNE

I may not be able to continue.  Why did they have to do it mid-year?  Did they think we’d knuckle under and say, “OK, Daddy?  Hurt me more!”

(LAURA EVERETT, a tall, stately and handsome woman, enters.  She’s barely holding it together.  She carries in a tray of cookies.)

LAURA

Please tell Mary-Lee for me thank you for the lovely flowers.

LISA-ANNE

It’s the least we could do, Mrs. Everett.

LAURA

Did I hear that you doubt you’ll continue at the University?

LISA-ANNE

Signs seem to point to not now.

GEORGIA

She’s determined not to get any loans.

LAURA

I didn’t know she suffered so.  I’m afraid Barry and I took too hard a line with her.

GEORGIA

You can’t blame yourself, Mom.

LISA-ANNE

We all live in it, this atmosphere of debts.  Look there for what ails us.  We assume too much about things like the Market will solve it.  My next door neighbor says we trust too much in experts, but they don’t know what they’re doing either.

LAURA

I can’t take hearing about politics right now, Lisa-Anne.

GEORGIA

Oh, mom, that’s not political, per se.  Wendy’s suicide was an act of martyrdom, pure and simple.  She saw herself like a poster girl for Les Miserables, or one of those Buddhist monks who set himself on fire.  We can’t avoid the politics of her death, especially since she sent copies of her note to that activist group.

LAURA

I’m going to check on that caterer.  She hasn’t gotten back to me.

(She exits precipitously.)

LISA-ANNE

She’s really trying hard not to see it, isn’t she?

GEORGIA

Mom really things it’s her fault.  Dad . . . Well, he’s in the banking industry.  I hate that she got those activists involved.  They think they’re going to save our generation, then save the world.

LISA-ANNE

Activists?  What are you talking about?

GEORGIA

Well, I don’t know what was going through her sick little mind, but she sent her suicide note to these people out on the West Coast who have made it their business to publicize the predatory practices of student lenders.  That they prey on the unsuspecting and the ignorant.  They take your dreams for a better life through college and sell you their loans, and once you sign on the bottom line, you’re in for a world of hurt. 

LISA-ANNE

Well, Mom and Richard & Ken all said the same thing to me, but maybe not so bluntly.

GEORGIA

I’m sure Richard was blunt, Lisa-Anne.  Anyway, Wendy got in touch with them once she. . . Well, she came to believe that college was a waste of time. 

LISA-ANNE

But she was so gung ho about it last I talked to her!  When did this idea come to her?

GEORGIA

Oh, you know Wendy.  For all we know it could have been a mean caprice.

LISA-ANNE

You don’t really think that though, that she’d kill herself on a whim?

GEORGIA

Oh, I don’t know!  I don’t know what to think.  But these activists are already touting her letter, saying that even bank executives’ daughters are suffering. 

LISA-ANNE

Wow.  That’s …

GEORGIA

Crazy.  Yeah.

LISA-ANNE
(respectful silence)

GEORGIA

We always used to fight.  As kids, then as teenagers.

LISA-ANNE

“Keep it fresh!  Keep it fresh!”

GEORGIA

I may have to hurt you for that.  Came to loathe that phrase.  Life is a box of produce.

LISA-ANNE

Remember that time she introduced us to that Born Again?

GEORGIA

Dennis?  He came out of the closet, you know.

LISA-ANNE

Good for him!

GEORGIA

Parents cut him off, but that’s not a big loss in my estimation.

LISA-ANNE

Bible College and everything!

GEORGIA

They wanted him to, but that summer he met this lawyer from the City at a local business fair.  One thing led to another and …

LISA-ANNE

Poor guy.  A lawyer? Really?  I suppose it could be worse.

GEORGIA

Heh, sure.  Remember the week after she met Dennis, she made friends with Grisly Grossman?

LISA-ANNE

Goth Girl of the Boston Goth Girls, donchaknow!

GEORGIA

“Black, you know. It’s the new goldenrod.”

LISA-ANNE

Wendy did gravitate toward the characters all right.

GEORGIA

That she did.  Oh, all things said and done, I guess I loved her.  I probably will miss her.  At least the loan obligation ends at her death.  Dad can rest assured.

LISA-ANNE

Well, no bitterness there.

GEORGIA

I’m sure that asshole colleagues of dear old dad are trying to make suicide less palatable for the kids.  Heartless, these vampires.  I suppose in some twisted way, Wendy thinks she got the last laugh.

LISA-ANNE

I don’t know what to say.

GEORGIA

I know.  Imagine what it’s like for me.  Dad’s skipping the funeral.

LISA-ANNE

Cold.

GEORGIA

I think he’s feeling confused.  Won’t talk about it.  At least he’s not going golfing like Cadwalader and Sterling want him to.  What brand of crack are his bosses smoking?  Had to draw the line somewhere.

LISA-ANNE

Hm.  Wendy had their number.  I guess dead old dad’s too, huh?

GEORGIA

Wendy held us all in the balance.  We were found wanting.

                             SCENE IVE

                             THE SUMMERLANDS, WORLD OF DEATH—YEA! WENDY EVERETT sits with the ghosts, we the audience.  She chats conversationally with all’s’yall.

WENDY

You know, that’s really not fair.  I didn’t judge them.  Much.  But I felt like I was found somewhere and brought in from the cold, you know?  Ever felt that way?  I’m sure that had I lived in the 19^th century, I’d have been made a scullery maid or something.  Never felt like I was a true Everett.  Now that I’m with you all, here in the world of death (gosh it’s a lot like a theater audience – Weird), I see things much differently.  Heh.  Goodbye to remotes clicking!  Other things are much more mystical than I supposed.  I was always that way.  When I was little, I really could see dead people.  Like yourselves.  I could see spirits, but it was hectored and beaten out of me.  Dad, Mom and Georgia just don’t know that I’m still here with them.  They’re in for a lot of pain.  You can see it coming, can’t you?  It’s too bad in some ways I killed myself.  I really could help them by flailing and failing in front of them.  Going through my suffering and learning how to survive, even under the cloud of the cunting student default.  The homeless will teach them.  But in this lifetime, I had a bit of past karma to work out.  A balancing out of lifetimes.  Well, I was one of the original Thugs in India in my previous life.  I’m excited about my next life though!  I’ll be born into a loving family in what is now considered Maine, but in the future it’ll just be home.  There will be no Maine, no United in Name Only States of Fauxmerica. Yes, I see things so differently here.  Many levels of seeing.  Poor nationalists, refusing to accept that America, France, Brazil, Russia, Belgium just plain no longer exist except as words on disconnected maps.  San Marino, Liechtenstein—well, maybe they’re all right.  Even Switzerland as an entity – pffft!  Gone.  I sure don’t envy your livers!  You’re undergoing a great shift right now, out of a destructive lifestyle and into a time of darkness that you defy at your peril.  Bless your hearts.  Darkness has comfort in it, but you have to embrace it.  Our bodies need the dark, not just the skin at night, but the skin itself as a cover, holding the organs inside the cavity, the muscles and the bones out of view.  Do you really want to see someone’s heart beating?  I don’t.  Oh, on second thought it would be a kick for five minutes, then I’d be all like, “grody” and all.  Oh, cool, earthy darkness that complements the light.  Heck, the light needs to shine on something.  My goodness, all that can be perceived is such a tiny speck of all that is.  The mother universe is … well, oceanic doesn’t even describe her.  And then all the other things I didn’t see before – the brownies, the little brown people, the gnomes.  I hope I can help old Barry, Laura and Georgia.  Even Georgia’s friend Lisa-Anne.  She’s been handed a real opportunity to expand.  Maybe she’ll be the one to help my family.  No, it’ll be the other one, the boy. Friend.  Yes.  These pesky Everetts need something all right!

                             SCENE SIX

                             IN THE CALDWELL KITCHEN.  MARY-LEE speaks on her cell, sitting at the kitchen table, peeling carrots.

MARY LEE

Look, I’m tired of going through this.  My daughter would still – but there has to be something . . . This is really unfair . . . Listen, I’m sorry to be – Don’t you raise your voice at –

(JUSTIN enters, mopey.)

Hello? Hello?

(She closes her cell.)

What is this world coming to?

JUSTIN

Something the matter?

MARY LEE

I’ve been trying to deal with the university financial people.  They won’t budge.  There’s got to be a way for Lisa-Anne.

(JUSTIN shrugs his shoulders.)

So what’s up with you?

JUSTIN

I’ve gotta get new friends.

MARY LEE

Hallelujah!  I’ve been telling you that for years!

JUSTIN

Oh!  That’s the last thing a teenage guy wants to hear, his mom agreeing with him!  Tyrone’s usually been a great fellow.  Then he joined that godforsaken church…

MARY LEE

That kid is more of a bully than you have made him out to be, though his sister Oshun is a delightful sort.

JUSTIN

He’s going to disown his family once he gets his own place.

MARY LEE

He’ll learn one of these days.  Something else bothering you?

JUSTIN

I don’t think I can talk to you about it.

MARY LEE

You might be surprised.  Try me.

JUSTIN

I don’t know …

MARY LEE

Come on!  Out with it.

JUSTIN

I think.  You should. Liquidate your 401(k).

MARY LEE

What?  Why?!?

JUSTIN

I think you’re going to lose it otherwise and that money could come in handy, because we don’t know why.  Because I also think it’s a symbolic act.  You’ll be placing a put on this crappy system, this vampire society and help it to crash like it should.

MARY LEE
(Alarmed)

So, what are you saying?  You’re not … Thinking of going out like Wendy?

JUSTIN

No—Oh, God, no!  Richard got me to thinking, and . . . Then Mr. Alvarez gave me this goofball assignment to look up “diabolic” and “symbolic” in the dictionary.  You know, it’s interesting because the dictionary gives the one definition of diabolic as about the devil, you know?  But the word symbolic is something different, and the roots said it comes from the Greek for “to throw together.” 

MARY LEE

… Okay …

JUSTIN

Well, I was thinking huh.  Dia-bolic, Sym-bolic.  Symbolic implies unity, and what does Diabolic imply?  So I looked up other words beginning with d-i-a, and it means “apart.”  So, symbolic throws it together, and diabolic throws things apart.  See?

MARY LEE

Wow.  That’s … wild.

JUSTIN

Yeah.  Well, I was thinking Mr. A was trying to tell me something because I got into this big fight with Tyrone in class today.  His asinine judgments.  But … well, I’m kind of pissed off at everyone over 40 right now.

MARY LEE

Oh, honey… You have every right to be.  There are a lot of criminals out there.  Somehow they’re the ones who run things, squandering any hopeful possibilities that may have emerged when I was young and idealistic.

JUSTIN

Criminals like Mr. Everett?

MARY LEE

….
I was gong to say that was a bit unfair, but then again how would I know?  He is a banker.  They’re the ones who got us into the mess.  Or I should say led the way.  But, you know who am I to judge?  I’m guilty too.

JUSTIN

Oh, yeah.  And you caused Hitler.

MARY LEE

What?

JUSTIN

And that Great Depression thing?  Yeah, your fault.  And also the Macarena.  What were you thinking there, Mary Lee Caldwell?

MARY LEE

Well, let me say in my defense that I only want for there to be peace in the world.  Okay, maybe I’m being ridiculous.  All I’m acknowledging is that I made a contribution.  And part of that was in passing on some bad behaviors to you and Lisa-Anne.

JUSTIN

You know, I think the school raising its fees could be the best thing that could happen to her.  Richard thinks so.

MARY LEE

Don’t talk to me about Richard!  Why he doesn’t just join these crazies in the street with their cardboard signs saying “The End is Near” I don’t know.

JUSTIN

Oh, Mom.  He doesn’t have to.  You actually agree with him, you know.

MARY LEE

Now you’re being facetious.

JUSTIN

You say the same things he does, but he says it with an edge, and from both a wider view and a detailed eye at the same time.

MARY LEE

When did you start to listen to the crackpot?

JUSTIN

He seems like a decent guy.  But then Tyrone gets all Biblical about gays.  “THE gays,” he says.  I just started talking to him one day out of curiosity.  He told me that my going to Voc. Ed would save my life, and that I was pretty damn smart to see through all the college scams going on.  Called me brave and far-seeing.  So how could I not?

MARY LEE

I still think you’re throwing it all away.  You’re a bright boy.

JUSTIN

Throwing what away?  There’s nothing to throw.  I don’t think any of this can or should be saved.  We’ll have to pick through the ruins and keep what’s valuable.  You talk about squandering your ideals and accomplishments.  Our generation gets to live with your choices, you know.  And unless as Richard suggests, there’s some jubilee forgiveness of all debt coming – which would be smart, effective and go a long way to establish goodwill, which means with those criminals you noticed running things it ain’t gonna happen – we also get to fight not only you, but each other and Richard’s generation for the scraps.  That is if we don’t do something radical and necessary like secede from the state and the country. 

MARY LEE

Whoa, hold on there boy!  Slow down. Secede?  What, are you some Chuck Norris wannabe?

JUSTIN

People from all politics can approach secession, Mom.

MARY LEE

I only hear about it in backwaters like Texas and Alabama.

JUSTIN

Vermont. 

MARY LEE

Those people are considered crazy in Vermont. 

JUSTIN

Maybe in Burlington and Montpelier.  But there’s more to the state than just the corporate towns.

MARY LEE

Corporate towns? Burlington???

JUSTIN

Oh, come on!  Like the downtown isn’t a zombie trap!  Even if it is a nice walkable zone.  And they’re popping up in Oregon, Hawaii, even Connecticut has one. 

MARY LEE

Justin…  How did you go from the playful kid to talking about secession?  Help me out here.

JUSTIN

Well, there’s more to me than meets the eye.  I’m finding that out about myself too, as I go along.

MARY LEE

I always knew that, but you’re going a mile a minute.

JUSTIN

More like hundreds of miles a second, but I won’t quibble.

MARY LEE

Oh, don’t go all indigo now.  I don’t like what you’re saying.  But I look at the banks “too big to fail.”  So why not break them up?  And I know why, it’s because the thuggerment won’t let them go.

JUSTIN

Thuggerment?  And you say you don’t listen to Richard.

MARY LEE

He didn’t come up with that one, just so you know.  That was Laura Everett’s doing if you must know. 

JUSTIN

Must have heard it from Wendy, I bet.  May she rest in peace.  Well, they’ll have to let go, or get dragged.

MARY LEE

Ain’t that the truth.  And so, you think America’s too big to fail too, huh?

JUSTIN
(snorting)

I think a lot of people think that, but I live as if the U.S.A. has an F in front of it. For Former.  Even my teachers call it a paper tiger now.

MARY LEE
(not sincerely)

This is the greatest country on earth.

JUSTIN

Too bad the idea of countries themselves is in the crapper, swirling around the bowl.

MARY LEE

How’d you get to be so dark?

JUSTIN

Mom, all I can do is say what I see, what I feel.  I see how unprepared I am.  I don’t know – maybe that’s a good thing?  I’m 17, maybe I’m not supposed to be.  Maybe I’m supposed to learn as I go and pass it on.

MARY LEE

Now you’re talking like a survivalist.  That Richard!

JUSTIN

Don’t blame Richard, Mom.

MARY LEE

I do.  Filling your head with –

JUSTIN

Mom, no.  I find things out on my own then I take them to him.  We talk.  He’s the only one I know who gets it.  I read things on the web.  Books find me, they find me!  He’s just a sounding board.  Always reminding me about what I have now.

MARY LEE

Well, you better remember.  I’ve slaved away enough you know.

JUSTIN

As a labor litigation lawyer, I know.  I remember all the nights we had to eat a meager supper, but we’ve always had a nice home.  I’m grateful.

MARY LEE

And I’ve still got the mortgage.  Even in this scary economy.

JUSTIN

Should we change the subject?

MARY LEE

Maybe we ought to.  The wake is Thursday, by the way.  By the way, Mr. Everett won’t be in attendance.

JUSTIN

Wow – that’s – his own daughter.

MARY LEE

I can appreciate his position, Justin.  It is rotten though.  Whole thing, rotten.

JUSTIN

Why didn’t she just become an activist?  A movement is brewing, you know.

MARY LEE

Some people just aren’t strong enough.

JUSTIN

Some people are stronger than they think.  Stronger than they know.

MARY LEE

Well, I – Hmm.  I thought Wendy did have more spunk.  What happened to her?  Is life today so bad?

JUSTIN

That’s a tough one.

(Cell phone rings.  JUSTIN picks up.)

Yep.  Hey, Mac.  Great, what’d he do now?  What?  That skeezoid!  The fuh… So what do you want me to do about it?

(IN THE PHONE: “I DON’T KNOW.” JUSTIN holds the phone away from his ear.)

Easy Mac.  Don’t shout.  Where are you?  Great…  Do you want me there/  OK.  Keep me posted.  Yeah, sucks to be sure.

(Hangs up.)

Tyrone assaulted someone.

MARY LEE

You’ve gotta get better friends.  Anyone you know?

JUSTIN

This big queen on campus.

MARY LEE

You shouldn’t use words like that.

JUSTIN

Mom, Manny calls himself the Big Queen of Stanton High.  Why not?

MARY LEE

Tyrone put his homophobia into action, eh?

JUSTIN

Got on his case about it today.  Suppose he was reacting to me, trying to make a statement.

MARY LEE

How is this Manny?

JUSTIN

Mac said he’s in the hospital.  Didn’t know the details.  Tyrone let him have it outside a Stewart’s.  There are probably quite a few witnesses.

(sits in the chair, deflated. Sighs.)

MARY LEE

Dumb and a bigot.

JUSTIN

The two usually go hand in hand.

                             SCENE SEVEN:

                             HOSPITAL ROOM.  A beaten up MANNY GUTIERREZ lays in bed.  Unconscious.  THE ASTRAL MANNY stands downstage talking with WAKIB CIMI, a Mayan deity.

ASTRAL MANNY

So what?  I’m gonna die?

WAKIB CIMI

No.  You undergo initiation.

ASTRAL MANNY

Initiation? Into what?

WAKIB CIMI

You are becoming a shaman.  You will survive this and bring certain power and information to your world.

ASTRAL MANNY

Power and information huh?  Well, I certainly would like to see that.

WAKIB CIMI

The fellow who beat you is still out-of-control.

(LIGHTS DIM, the following delivered over microphone)

DEMON (O.S.)

Righteousness.  I know God’s will.  That was what Jehovah wanted.

TYRONE (O.S.)

His blood be upon him.

DEMON (O.S.)

Yessssssssss!  Yessssssssssssss!

(LIGHTS up to full.)

WAKIB CIMI

He has a common belief-disease.

ASTRAL MANNY

That was …

WAKIB CIMI

A disease.

(He touches MANNY’s third-eye point.  MANNY shudders and moans.)

ASTRAL MANNY

I don’t feel so good.

WAKIB CIMI

You don’t feel anything now, my friend.  Except in your soul.  Which got the brunt of that.

ASTRAL MANNY

All that viciousness.  All that hate.  And . . . Something else…

WAKIB CIMI

A fatigue brews underneath, a desire to jettison the demons.  See?  They suck the energy, seek more.  Seek victims.  The fellow Tyrone saw you as one.  An offering to this disease.

ASTRAL MANNY

I saw the disease as a demon.

WAKIB CIMI

Look closer.  Hear closer.

(LIGHTS dim.  The voices repeat the same dialogue as before, but switch.)

TYRONE (O.S.)

Righteousness.  I know God’s will.  That was what Jehovah wanted.

DEMON (O.S.)

His blood be upon him.

TYRONE (O.S.)

Yessssssssss!  Yessssssssssssss!

(LIGHTS up to full)

ASTRAL MANNY

Guy’s split-screen batshit crazy.  Maybe I want to be dead.

WAKIB CIMI

Not your time yet.  We go visit Xibalba now.

ASTRAL MANNY

Who’s Xibalba?

WAKIB CIMI

She is also a place.  Source of all that is.  Goddess Mother of all things.

(BLACK LIGHT suffuses the stage.  Body parts appear to fly this way and that.)

ASTRAL MANNY

What’s happening to me?

WAKIB CIMI

Relax into your dismemberment.  You be recreated in brokenness, new parts and arts talking and creating with each other.  New configuration.

ASTRAL MANNY

I – don’t –

WAKIB CIMI

Surrender into it.  Easier that way.

(In bed, MANNY sighs deeply, volubly.  Black Light eases into regular darkness after a bit of this corporate apart-flying.  A spot flicks on MANNY’s face in the bed.  He gasps himself into consciousness.)

                             SCENE EIGHT

                             THE EVERETTS’ HOME, LIVING ROOM.  GEORGIA and LAURA perch on chairs, in their tasteful black.

GEORGIA

Well, that was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

LAURA

What did you expect?  Clowns and balloons?

GEORGIA

A little less judgment maybe.  They didn’t have to express it all, did they?  Lisa-Anne back me up on this.

LISA-ANNE

I was so shocked that first woman – I didn’t know what to say.

GEORGIA

You mean Mrs. Whiteface.

LAURA

Tessa Whiteface is a mean-spirited old biddy.

LISA-ANNE

Maybe I should go.

GEORGIA

No.  Mom, none of us understood the alien child.  She always described herself as from some planet Maldek or something.  One time she was talking with that strange friend she had in high school, you know?  Lizardine, who drove a school bus? 

LAURA

How could I forget Lizardine? The embarrassment!

GEORGIA

It’s just common decency to at least give comfort to the grieving.  Yeah, Wendy and I kept each other arm’s length, just to say hello and all.  But she was my sister, and she outlined her reasons for her action, and I for one think we should see what she was experiencing.

LAURA

How can we not address it?  Particularly since she went so blazingly public about it?  News cameras—the humiliation!

GEORGIA

She was suffering, Mom.  We added to it.

LAURA

Don’t pin this all on us.

LISA-ANNE

Mrs. Everett, I’m sure I even added to Wendy’s self-torment.  I bragged that I wasn’t taking loans –

(WENDY enters.  Of course no one sees her.)

LAURA

Oh, the loans, the loans, the loans!  What a crock!  She knew what she was doing, disobeying our wishes.  We knew – (cutoff thought: “what’s best for her”

GEORGIA

Yeah, Wendy.  Why can’t you be Georgia-Twin #1?  We don’t like you being Wendy and all, and maybe you could just become a knock-off of your younger sis, because we got it right with her.  So because you’re not Georgia-Twin #1, we’re not going to fund your further education.  Tough noogies.

LAURA

That’s unfair!

GEORGIA

You’re right!  We were unfair.  Totally unfair, and the vampires stepped in and sucked her life dry.

WENDY

Payback’s such a bitch, isn’t it?

LAURA

I will not discuss this further.

GEORGIA

Suits me fine.  Lisa-Anne, do you think I could stay at your house for a couple of days?

LAURA

You’re just – why, you can’t –

GEORGIA

Mom, I’m the smart one about emotions, OK.  Like with that funeral protest in front of Dad’s bank?

LAURA

What is it with people who don’t get how business is done?

WENDY

You see what I had to live with?  I really could have checked out a LOT earlier than I did.

LAURA

Fine. Go.  It’s probably better.

(LIGHTS DOWN on all but a pinspot on WENDY.)

WENDY

It’s really a shame.  Being in this vortex to wherever, I can see a lot more than meets the eye.  Mom and Dad each have a big hole in them.  They each know about it, each knows the other has it too.  Each tries desperately to find the stuff that will fill it up, or evade knowing the lip of this abyss in the center of their beings.  Sometimes they forget it’s there, but it haunts them at the edges as it chafes at their spirits.  To them, all this is airy-fairy, hippy-dippy stuff.  You know, like that other stuff: Blood and flesh and muscle.  OK, that’s unfair, but still, people with no patience for the artistic and mystical only want .01% of all existence, and they think that should be enough.  It’s tough to raise parents these days.  And as far as my eternal soul is concerned?  Am I going to hell in an Williams Sonoma handbasket?  Of a sort—I get to be born back into this world again.  Turns out this suicide was part of a soul contract.  I’m somehow here to rescue these pathetic excuses for two-legged organisms.  My central point of this agreement was to take this final act and publicly force out a whole bunch of skeletons ready for burial.  And begin the Everett family initiation.  One Barry and Laura thought they could put off forever, but oh my—I guess I forced their hand.  Dad chose a line of work particularly vulnerable to pitchforks and torches.  He’s got some hard times ahead, and they don’t show me whether he makes it or not.  Same with Mom, but she at least has some hidden reserves.  Always knew they were there, but she violently represses it.  That will be her best friend.  Georgia to her credit, at least wants to face it.  And good ol’ Lisa-Anne has a more balanced head on her shoulders. The Caldwells are so much more solid.  A kinder bunch of souls.  Mom and Dad came in like gangbusters, but they’ve steered toward a waterfall full-throttle.  Choice is theirs—get to the shore for a bit and reconsider or … But they’re so used to their despair.  I wonder if they’ll survive getting rid of it.

                             SCENE NINE

                             The Caldwell kitchen.  RICHARD sits as LISA-ANNE washes dishes and puts the cups and plates in the dishwasher.

RICHARD

It’s necessary for us human beings to tell stories.  We need them to help us have a context, as well as to impart information.  We’ve been telling ourselves some destructive stories for millennia.  Time we told new ones.

LISA-ANNE

Mr. Merlin, I feel lost. What’s my new story?

RICHARD

Do you really think I can tell you that?  Your brother, now.  He’s telling a new and different story.  Turned his back on the ones being told now.  Admirable, it is.

LISA-ANNE

He doesn’t even watch TV anymore.  Rebel.

RICHARD

TV could be telling new stories, but for now, it’s controlled by necrotic necromancers who clutch so tightly to the old.  Lisa-Anne, I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better.  I suspect as this way of life convulses in its death throes, it will get ugly indeed.  Poor Georgia Everett – her family’s on a death trip.  Oya’s coming to sweep the old order away.  So much dead branches.  Her sister saw the writing on the wall. 

LISA-ANNE

There’s more to Wendy’s story than that.

RICHARD

Yeah, and where is she then?  Ain’t here no more!  She made a choice.  Who knows?  Maybe in the other worlds it was the right one?  Mysteries abound.

LISA-ANNE

You’re a trip, Mr. Merlin.  How do you do it?  Live in both worlds at once?

RICHARD

The new stories haven’t taken root.  We need to work inside this old frame and nurture the new seedlings sprouting up. Like you, for example!

LISA-ANNE

Me?  I feel so useless.

RICHARD

You’ve been presented with a great opportunity!  Jobless AND you can’t go to the slave factory to get the treadmill BA?  You’ve got the grand opportunity for detox.

LISA-ANNE

And from what am I detoxing?

RICHARD

You can quiet down, go into meditation.  Ask your source for assistance and guidance for your next right course of action.  Each of us is more powerful than we think we are. Calls for responsibility though.  Whatever our paths are out of this old culture a-dyin’.

LISA-ANNE

Justin tells me you have other lines of work besides working for the State.

RICHARD

Work is a loose term for what Ken and I do.  We make a living from various sources.  And we’ve been training ourselves in different trades.  Ken’s getting better at blacksmithing, and I’ve taken up more homey crafts – sewing, tomato cultivation, candle making.

LISA-ANNE

I love your garden.  All those varieties!  And you teach?

RICHARD

Tutor.  Don’t get much money from that.  Justin’s told your mother he wants to start a garden.  Maybe you could help with that?  And this is more radical, but perhaps you could try and take in a friend or two?  I see Miss Georgia hanging around here more.

LISA-ANNE

She’s taking time away from the family.  They’ve got issues.

RICHARD

Smart girl!  Well, I’d suggest you all quietly go about finding who you like to be with, who gives you energy and who you enjoy giving energy to.  The time may come when you’ll need to anyway, and you won’t get a choice.  Not that I am saying the world itself is going to end, mind you.  You may have heard me referred to as a “doomer.”  Derisively?  Well, I’m no such thing!  The old system is doomed, yes.  But there will be life after the vEmpire’s Last Grasp.

LISA-ANNE

Huh.  Did I tell you about that boy at Justin’s school?  Who got attacked by Justin’s friend?

RICHARD

I read about it in the papers, but – Justin’s friend, eh?

LISA-ANNE

Tyrone Jeffries.  And the boy, Manny Gutierrez, awakened from his unconsciousness.  People say he’s different now.  He’s making most of the nurses nervous.  Guess there’s one who thinks he’s just fine.

RICHARD

Springfield Med?

LISA-ANNE

ICU.  Or he might be in his own room now.

RICHARD

The weird nurse is Lila Tracy no doubt.  Hm.  I wonder if this boy in the ICU is presenting a new story too?  May be useful.

LISA-ANNE

Scary.

RICHARD

Oh, all adventures are scary.  That’s why they’re adventures.

LISA-ANNE

I think I just want to be domestic.

RICHARD

Then the Brownies will get you!  Ooga-booga!  There’s adventure here too.  Especially as what we’ve thought of as home vanishes before our eyes.  We’re all thrust into it whether we like it or not.  We need to get through this best we can with as many people as we can personally tolerate.

LISA-ANNE

We have no community here in this troubled place.

RICHARD

We hunger for it though.  I practice engaging people in line at the grocery store.  Heck lines at the HannaChopper are at least good for that!

LISA-ANNE

Oh, I zone out in line at the store.  So I don’t get too irritated with the person in front of me who gets into it with a newbie or a fed-up clerk.

RICHARD

You owe it to yourself to be present even then.  I should talk.  I zone out behind the computer in my office all the time.

LISA-ANNE

It feels like all my dreams and goals have collapsed.

RICHARD

Only the fake ones.  Maybe you need to grieve them.

LISA-ANNE

Not ready for that.  Not ready for any of this.

RICHARD

Oh, you’re fine.  Resilient!  Your mother and brother have rubbed off on you and you don’t even know it.

LISA-ANNE

Mom’s really scared.  She thinks her job’s on the line.

RICHARD

All jobs will soon be quaint relics, memories along the lines of “what were we thinking?”  Our ersatz economy goes down the old crapper, and I say “hoopla!”

LISA-ANNE

What is to become of us?

RICHARD

That, my dear, is in the hands of powers much greater than you and me.  We just get to show up to ourselves in the present moment.  Look around us, look at our own back yard.  Right here, right now. Why see?  It’s spring!  A gorgeous day keeps unfolding. I’m grateful for this beauty.  Aren’t you?

LISA-ANNE

When I was younger, I wanted to live in a flower house.  Hm.  You suggest I help Justin with a garden.  Perhaps I should make my own little place?

RICHARD

And figure out your story?  In the language of zinnias and begonias?

LISA-ANNE

I like portulaca and asters.  Dusty millers and coleus.  Wow.  That’s invigorating.

(She closes dishwasher and sets it going.)

RICHARD

Maybe you should think about herbs too.  I know a gal in Madisonville.  Perhaps she takes apprentices or teaches classes. 

LISA-ANNE

That could be fun.  Got to start somewhere.  The grocery store, huh?

RICHARD

Anywhere people go who might just be able to have more than two lines of conversation with you.  Not rock concerts or pick up bars though.

LISA-ANNE

More than half of those people are drunk or high.

LISA-ANNE

Sobriety. Helps.

(They listen to the pleasant churn of the dishwasher.)

                             SCENE TEN

                             IN TYRONE’S CELL.  PHOBOS, a fear entity circles around a weakened TYRONE, lapping at his energy.

TYRONE
(moaning)

In the name of Jesus, kill the queer who made this injustice happen.  Finish my sacred job for me.

PHOBOS

Yes, yes!  More, more.

(TYRONE continues moaning hateful supplications.  WAKIB KAME bolts in. TYRONE bolts upright, alert.)

WAKIB KAME

I see you.

PHOBOS

You’re not wanted here.

TYRONE

Who’s there?  What the – ?

WAKIB KAME

I’ve been compelled by this entity’s actions incited by you.  It’s not about him, you know.

PHOBOS

We’ve supplanted your kind.  You have no power here.

(WAKIB KAME slashes the air in PHOBOS’s direction.  A golden light streams down upon the Fear Entity, who shrieks in pain.  TYRONE shudders.)

TYRONE

That’s it.  I’ve lost my frickin’ mind.  Devils are tearing me apart.  Jesus help me.  Kill the bitch.

PHOBOS

I will not be treated so cavalierly.

WAKIB KAME

Too bad your boy hasn’t learned about containment.

PHOBOS

Useless in any case.  I too need freedom.  Are you here to destroy him?

WAKIB KAME

No. I come to transform you.  What happens to him after? His choice.

(WAKIB KAME invokes a pulling motion, and PHOBOS is sucked into his arms.  Flashing light, stage darkens.)

TYRONE

Damn!  I feel like my left kidney’s attacking my right.  Unhhh…

(We hear him fall off his bed.)

                             SCENE ELEVEN

                             IN MANNY’S HOSPITAL ROOM.  MANNY sits up.  JUSTIN sits in a chair by his bed.

MANNY

Are you here to continue the abuse?

JUSTIN

I don’t condone what Tyrone and his buddies did to you.

MANNY

He’s getting his.

JUSTIN

Don’t tell me about it.  Is revenge going to help?

MANNY

This isn’t revenge.  I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but while I feel the deepest anger, I’m also grateful to Tyrone Jeffries.

JUSTIN

You want a frickin’ medal?  You want to be canonized maybe?

MANNY

A tiara and a float would be just fine.  Look, after the incident, wherever it was I floated to, it was … I went somewhere.  Like those near death stories, I discovered a powerful guide who showed me things.  You want to hear something crazy?  He showed me you.

JUSTIN

He showed you me?  Like how.

MANNY
(satiric)

Oh, we become lovers.

JUSTIN

In your dreams pal.

MANNY

Just kidding.  No, he showed me I could tell you these things.  For some reason, you would get it.  Your friends are surrounded by entities nourishing themselves off their fears.  They have been getting a huge energy returned on their energy invested.

JUSTIN

Like as with the oil, except the EROEI is getting weaker.

(MANNY looks at JUSTIN quizzically.)

Energy returned on energy invested.  The initials?

MANNY

Right, right.  With each succeeding generation, these entities appear to be getting stronger, but they actually have always been easy to dispel.  They keep us in the dark, in divided states, tell us lies that so-and-so is worse than they are because of this, that, the other.  All the isms are separating, exclusive.  Dying.

(JUSTIN studies MANNY.)

What?

JUSTIN

I get the feeling I’m not talking to the silly frivolous queen I sneered at in the halls at Springfield Central.

MANNY

Tyrone’s attack changed me.  Ripped open a veil that had been obscuring the true reality.  Things are not what they seem.  We see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.  Have you met your guides yet?

(TWO SHADOWY FIGURES dance near JUSTIN, then dance out.  MANNY smiles.)

JUSTIN

You know, you’re really freakin’ me out.

MANNY

Oh, pish!  It’s thrilling you, I can tell.  Everyone has guides.  I have quite a few.  You think I’m crazy.  That shouldn’t be strange to you though.

JUSTIN

Excuse me?

MANNY

Well, you did switch out of the Honors track.  What was that about?

JUSTIN

My sister’s at State, and she shared with me the university catalogue.  Flippin’ through it I though, “what’s all this for?”  All that’s gonna happen is I’ll come out and have to work at something that doesn’t really –

MANNY

You’ll end up being a burger flipper of the corporate type.  Instead of “You want fries with that?” it’ll be, “scanned, faxed, mailed or overnight?” 

JUSTIN

I hadn’t put it together in quite that way.  But Mac’s brother was out of school and living at home for 3 years before finally landing a gig.  In collections at a law firm—what a kick in the balls!  Degree in IT.  He kicked himself for not going into engineering, but I doubt it’s all that much either.  Not with Chinese and Indians undercutting everyone.

MANNY

Well, you are ahead of the curve.  You’re a teacher. A way-shower.

JUSTIN

You know, I daydream about that.  Sure I’m smart.  Maybe even Ivy League smart.

MANNY

Hm. Ivy League’s overrated.  Look who got us where we are!  We’re being told balance it out or vamoose.  All of us.

JUSTIN

Getting knocked around sure awoke the preacher in you.

(MANNY angrily crosses his arms, looks away.)

I seem to have struck a nerve.

MANNY

It’s all right.  My guides told me I should watch for the ego crap.  That’s the danger of being shown things.  Justin, I’ve been given so much, I don’t know what to do with it all.  Preaching is so ugly.  I’ve never done that before.  God, how tempting it is.

JUSTIN

No?”  Mr. “One must never wear pearls with corduroy?” 

MANNY

OK. Shriek.  I’m finding my way.

JUSTIN

You know, you are cracked.  And so am I.  But I also see that it’s something rarer these days to meet people who recognize it when you call them on their actions.  And really take it in.  So you just showed me, hey, you can take a hint.  That right there says maybe you do have a lesson or two for me.

MANNY

I’m not perfect.  Got a lot to learn.

JUSTIN

When you’re ready to move, there’s a fellow I’d like you to meet.  Think you and Richard will get a real kick out of each other.

                             SCENE TWELVE

                             The Caldwell Kitchen.  LISA-ANNE stirs a bowl of cookie dough while MARY-LEE sits at the table with a teacup.

MARY LEE

Lisa-Anne, I just want to let you know that no matter what happens you always have a place here.

LISA-ANNE

I’m not going to kill myself.

MARY LEE

Don’t think I haven’t noticed you moping.  I know my daughter.

LISA-ANNE

Mom . . . OK.  I used to think Justin’s decisions were eccentric and that he’d get tired of slumming with retreads and join the ranks of the college-bound –

MARY LEE

Oh, he has GOT to get better friends.

LISA-ANNE

Oh? And who would that be?  He’s as smart as me, maybe even smarter.  I have to admit though he’s really seen through some of the illusions.

MARY LEE

You’ve been talking to Mr. Tinfoil next door, haven’t you?

LISA-ANNE

Briefly.  He came over with seedlings.  Oh, I’m so excited! Starting a garden myself.  But Richard was the one, Mom, who said the University would soon find itself foundering, that everything too big to fail would crash and burn too.

MARY LEE

Well, not everything big is crashing.

LISA-ANNE

Whether things do or don’t, I still feel we’re all on our own.  At least we talk with Richard and Ken.  Our other next door neighbors – well, who the hell are they?

(LISA-ANNE starts mold cookie dough balls on a cookie sheet.)

MARY LEE

I’ve seen the husband, or is it the son?  Hey, why are you talking this way?  What’s gotten into you?

LISA-ANNE

I’m not in school and haven’t looked for a job, so I’ve had a lot of time to think.  To create a space to ask myself “What now?  And who the hell do I know myself to be, anyway?”  I’m still ruminating. Got all the time in the world.

MARY LEE

Don’t be too sure of that.

LISA-ANNE

Huh?

MARY LEE

Lisa-Anne, I’m seeing a lot of problems down the line developing and higher-ups try and assure us that these things will all work themselves out.  And they’ve been saying this line of crock for months.  One day, I think I’ll go into work, and they’ll tell us the place has decided to wind it up.  And we’ll not longer have jobs because the company’s called it quits.

LISA-ANNE

Is it really that bad?

MARY LEE

My colleagues and I discuss it well out of earshot.  We’re seeing more and more clients curtailing our services, aggressively bargaining for reduced rates, paying invoices partially 90 days late.  It’s been a gradual process, but it still feels fast to me.

LISA-ANNE

If you lose your job . . . we haven’t paid off the mortgage, what will we eat … ?

MARY LEE

You know about the house, it wouldn’t matter much. The Town Sheriff has said she won’t kick people out of their houses.  Of course the Banks don’t want to hear that, and are trying to get someone to run her out of office.

LISA-ANNE

The Banks!  Who do those snakes think they are?  Sorry.  I didn’t mean to smear snakes by linking them to bankers.

MARY LEE

Now, now, Mr. Everett is in a hard position.

LISA-ANNE

Which he and all the others like him brought on themselves.  And Mrs. Everett – well, I can’t talk to her either.

MARY LEE

I remember when we were your age.  Way back when it was Carol Burnett and American Graffiti.  Such good friends, though even then I could see that Laura had no idealistic bone in her body.  She and Barry fit in like Flynn as they used to say.  Now… It’s disconcerting to be one of the Luhv Generation and watch this world we’ve had a big hand in making go up in a puff of smoke.  Thought we could help take this planet and make it better, teach the world to sing and live in perfect harmony.  Heh. 

LISA-ANNE

Well, Wendy could sometimes go on about the frickin’ Baby Boomers.  Not that I ever did that.

MARY LEE

I don’t know, Lis.  Sometime in the 80s, it’s like we all made a choice to move away from being risky and chose to be safe. As we understood safe at the time.  Slowly but quickly, too, our way of life got more uniform, more one note.  Sure enough, one leads right into the other.  You know, it’s bugged me for a long time that everywhere I go, I see the same stores, and the little shops and businesses I used to shopping at in my 20s and 30s are gone.  They couldn’t compete.  I admire people today who try small business.  But with all the overhead …

LISA-ANNE

I learned a bit about that in the economics class last semester.  All these extra costs at different levels of government.  State, County, Municipal.  Sometimes the city they incorporate in.  More and more the businesses give way because they can’t make payroll and keep up with the fees.

MARY LEE

That’s just one factor, honey.  That ain’t even half of it.

LISA-ANNE

Wow, it’s a lot worse than I thought.  You know we should take some of these to the other next door neighbors.  See who they are.  What do you think?

MARY LEE

I don’t know honey.  It’s an idea.  I need a little nap, though.  I’m going in the other room and lie down for awhile. 

(MARY LEE exits.  LISA-ANNE finishes the cookie dough balls and puts the cookie sheet in the oven.  She gets a cookbook from one of the cabinets and pages through it when JUSTIN enters.)

JUSTIN

Cookies?  What a good idea!

LISA-ANNE

This. Is. So Weird.

JUSTIN

What? That it’s like old times, huh Sis?  Can I go play Xbox now?

LISA-ANNE

Asshat.  I can understand why moms go to work.  Except for mom coming home a mite early, I’ve spent the whole day by myself.

JUSTIN

Sounds like paradise, it does.

LISA-ANNE

Paradise? Try loony bin!  You’ve got school.  Gosh, I miss it.  Only been gone a week.  How pathetic am I?  Here’s an interesting recipe.

JUSTIN

Georgia still here?

LISA-ANNE

She’s not gone back home to Barry and Laura, no.  Her mid-terms are coming up.  So jealous.  It’s better she stays here anyway.  Rumor has it they’ve been fighting.

JUSTIN

Huh.  So what’s for dinner?

LISA-ANNE

I think I’m going to try my hand at chicken roti.  I’ve always liked it at Jamaica Breakahs.

JUSTIN

That’s ambitious.  And about time, too.

LISA-ANNE

Ken suggested I get Brussels sprouts and turnips –

JUSTIN

Ew!

LISA-ANNE

And roast them.  He was making some when I went over there.  Smelled pretty good.  They’re cooling over by the pantry.

JUSTIN

But – but … they’re still Brussels sprouts and turnips!

LISA-ANNE

Be bold and adventurous, bro!  I’m willing to give it awhirl.  You never know.

(He looks in a pot on the stove.)

JUSTIN

What’s in here?

LISA-ANNE

Brown rice, millet and amaranth.

JUSTIN

What are millet and amaranth?

LISA-ANNE

Grain, Justin.  Like wheat, or oats. Or rice?

JUSTIN

OK, OK!  Sheesh.  Looks like you sprinkled bird seed.

LISA-ANNE

Birdies like millet.  Remember the one time Mom got what she thought was cous-cous but it tasted different?  Always wondered what that stuff was. 

JUSTIN

Did I like – I think I liked that!

LISA-ANNE

Well, I wandered around the Food Co-Op.  You don’t know how bored I’ve been.  I only looked in the classifieds the one day.  Eesh.

JUSTIN

Think long term, sis.  Think of the world that’s evolving, the way our lives are changing.  Heck, we don’t even know if the government’s going to survive.

LISA-ANNE

I don’t want to hear your Mad Max scenarios.

JUSTIN

Hey!  I’m insulted!  I never get all mutant zombie biker here!

LISA-ANNE

Yeah, well, wev.  I still don’t want to hear that noise.

JUSTIN

Ken and Richard will –

LISA-ANNE

And I will respectfully change the subject.  Moving on!

JUSTIN

So.  Wanna hear about my day?

LISA-ANNE

Um… Maybe. Sure.

JUSTIN

Voc Ed is different without Tyrone.  Mac’s gone completely silent.  Thinks it’s my fault somehow that Tyrone’s in the klink.

LISA-ANNE

Well, Mac’s not the brightest of fellows.

JUSTIN

Agreed.  I did get a nice chat with Mr. Alvarez though.  Interesting guy.  Did you know he used to do what Mom does?

LISA-ANNE

Yes. So did you.  Unless you weren’t listening.

JUSTIN

Huh?

LISA-ANNE

He worked for their biggest competitor?  Luxor?

JUSTIN

Ax-man Alvarez?  That was him?

LISA-ANNE

Duh!  Evidently he lost his edge a few years back, and decided to go a different route.  She was bowled over that he ended up teaching plumbing and air conditioner repair at SHS. 

JUSTIN

He said as much.  Wow.  I didn’t know that was him.  Well, turns out the legal stuff comes in real handy when he has to go out on house calls with some of his fix-it work.  Still, the trade is what saves him, both his ass and his mind!

LISA-ANNE

Huh.  I’m not about to go over to Odette’s Cosmos-tology to become a beauty consultant, thank you very much.

JUSTIN

Why even consider that at all? 

LISA-ANNE

Richard mentioned herbs and medicines.  That might be something.

JUSTIN

Yeah.  And we can plant some herbs with tomatoes.

LISA-ANNE

And flowers.  I’ve already started pricing seeds.  It’s crazy how many seed catalogs there are!

JUSTIN

Tell me about it.  Well, don’t be hasty.  You’re still in shock.

LISA-ANNE

Mom wonders if I’m going to be the next Wendy.

JUSTIN

She doesn’t know you as well as she thinks she does.  You’re in shock.  You’re not down.

LISA-ANNE

Yeah.  Thanks.  I didn’t know you could notice things like that.

JUSTIN

I’m learning all sorts of things about myself.  You know, I really am pissed off about all this.  What did these adults do all these years?  How could they spend our future the way they’ve done?

LISA-ANNE

You’re the one who sounds like Wendy.  Going off on the Boomers and Banksters as if they were the same thing.

JUSTIN

Lisa-Anne, you’re pissed off too.  Banksters?  Banker-gangsters? 

LISA-ANNE

Richard uses that – Oh!  That’s good! 

(She pulls out the cookie tray, puts it to the side.)

Hey, what do you know about the Charbonneaus?

JUSTIN

Absolutely nothing.  The people next door, right?  Though I’ve not seen their cars out in a long time.  For all we know, it could be unoccupied right now.

LISA-ANNE

I haven’t seen them either.  Weird.  Maybe you’re right about this being an opportunity.  Ken told me about a couple other ways I can go.  Organic architecture at this place in Vermont.  They give certifications.  Don’t laugh, but they have a class called “Power Tools for Women.”

JUSTIN

Why would I laugh at that? 

(HE looks at the cookies, feels how hot they are.)

I look forward to eating you later.  Sooner, hopefully. 

LISA-ANNE

I have to admit, I’m intrigued.

JUSTIN

Mr. A thinks we’re going to be thrown on our own resources soon, but he thinks we are all much more powerful than we believe we are. 

LISA-ANNE

Just like Richard.  You know, I look at Georgia – she’s a pillar of strength.

JUSTIN

So are you.  Like sees like, Sis.

LISA-ANNE

Since when did you become my cheerleader?  Not that I’m telling you to stop. Huh.  We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.  Wendy…

JUSTIN

That’s a shame.  She said things like that?

LISA-ANNE

Well.  You know how she was.  Sometimes she and the Lizbot could get downright creepy.  The way they just sort of stared at you with this “Amusing creatures, these humans” smirk.  Still, Wendy certainly knew how to set it off.  Ballsy in a sick way.

JUSTIN

If you say so.

LISA-ANNE

I don’t feel very powerful, Justin.

JUSTIN

You’ll find the right key in.

LISA-ANNE

Wonder how long we have.  Don’t you feel like something’s going to blow any day now?

JUSTIN

I’ve felt that way my whole life!  Don’t you know me?

LISA-ANNE

I had no idea!

JUSTIN

You don’t really pay all that much attention to me, do you?

LISA-ANNE

Not until recently.  Sorry.  Older sister’s prerogative.  Speaking of which, can you tenderize the chicken?

(JUSTIN sullenly moves to do as asked.  MARY LEE enters, yawning and stretching.)

MARY LEE

The oddest thing . . . I think I dozed off for a few minutes there.

JUSTIN

Mom, they’re running you ragged.

MARY LEE

Yeah, yeah. . . What can I do?  If I don’t – I’m too scared to think about it.

LISA-ANNE

How could we have let this happen?  How could we just think someone would step in and fix it all?  We’re all such babies.

MARY LEE

Um . . . Well, I don’t know what to say to that.

LISA-ANNE

We just go blithely along, listening to the buzz and churn of the commercials, the pabulum music.  And we just go along to git along. 

JUSTIN

Sis?  Where’s this coming from?

LISA-ANNE

I don’t know.  Just thinking about Wendy’s ranting note.  Damn banks.

MARY LEE

Well . . .

JUSTIN

Get no argument from me.

(pummels the chicken.)

MARY LEE

I heard AmericanationalBank’s threatening to hire its own police force if the various law enforcement agencies stop performing evictions.  What are those people thinking?

JUSTIN

Well, looking at the one family we know –

LISA-ANNE

Justin –

MARY LEE

Laura came to me yesterday.  She’s not holding up well with all the mess.  Her husband’s been away, and Georgia spends her time here.  My friend is lonely, guys.

LISA-ANNE

I’ve not seen Mr. Everett for a good ten days.  He took a business trip to Boston the other day, I guess.

MARY LEE

I tell you it feels like there’s a war on, but no one’s come out and declared it yet.  We’re all divided, a lot of us are on an us side and a lot of us are on another us side, against all the Thems.  And you know, that’s the old Caesar idea of divide and conquer, only we’re all divided against each other.  We’re all partisan sheep most of the time, shepherded by crazies.  Justin, you’re going to turn that bird into a pulpy mess if you keep that up.

JUSTIN

Oh, sorry. 

MARY LEE

So, chicken?  And chocolate chip cookies and salad?  What else you got going on for dinner?

(She looks in the fridge and pulls out the container with the Brussels sprouts.)

MARY LEE
(wincing)

What possessed you!?

LISA-ANNE

Ken suggested I try something different.  I think they’re tasty.

(Suddenly, the kitchen door bursts open.  WAKIB KAME and OGUN enter, and look at JUSTIN.)

LISA-ANNE

Goodness.  The wind can really be fierce!

MARY LEE

Sounded like a shot from a cannon.

JUSTIN

What the – ? 

OGUN

Do not be scared.  Your associate told you we might come.

JUSTIN

Uh . . .

MARY LEE

Justin?

JUSTIN

You can’t –

WAKIB KAME

They can’t see us.

LISA-ANNE

Knock it off, guy.  We’re getting ready to have dinner.

WAKIB KAME

You now get to know the next leg of your journey.  Walk with us.

JUSTIN

Walk with you?  Uh . . . Mom?

MARY LEE

You see something don’t you? 

JUSTIN

And you guys can’t.

OGUN

She has faith this one.

MARY LEE

I always knew you were special!

LISA-ANNE

He’s just joking, Mom.

MARY LE

Lisa-Anne shut the door.

JUSTIN

Maybe. After I go.  I’ve evidently got somewhere to be.

LISA-ANNE

It’s almost dinner.

OGUN

You will need nourishment.  Take some with you.

JUSTIN

I guess I’m going to be gone for a bit.

(He goes about getting Tupperware to make a take-out dinner for himself.)

Guess I’ll be giving your infamous Brussels sprouts a try on the road.

LISA-ANNE

What’s he doing?  Mom?

MARY LEE

It’s a mystery.  I – I want to keep you home, Justin.  But I’ve been wondering if something . . . Anything I can do to help?

OGUN

Yes, she have fine faith.

JUSTIN

These guys are saying you’re already doing it, I guess. 

MARY LEE

What do they look like?

JUSTIN

One looks like something out of Aztec Mexico, and the other’s a black man with a hammer.

LISA-ANNE

You guys are starting to freak me out!

MARY LEE

This world is so much bigger and weirder than we think.  I’ve seen some things.  It’s partly why I married your father, but we’ve hidden our weirdness so most wouldn’t know.  Justin, trust these two.

JUSTIN

I’ll be back as soon as I can.

MARY LEE

Go with God.

LISA-ANNE & JUSTIN

Mother . . .

(JUSTIN exits with his 2 guides.  The door swings shut behind them.)

MARY LEE

Wow.  It just got cold in here.

LISA-ANNE

Uh . . . What just happened?

MARY LEE

Be still and just sense.

(They still for a moment. LISA-ANNE fidgets.)

LISA-ANNE

I hate it when you get all electro-whack like this.

MARY LEE

What is electro-whack?

LISA-ANNE

Why couldn’t I have a normal mother?

MARY LEE

There’s an off-kilterness to you too, daughter mine.  Shapeshifting one.  You are so good at that, you don’t have a sense of who you are yet.  The false reality will leave us all behind soon enough.

LISA-ANNE

This reality is all there is.

LISA-ANNE

Oh, I think we’re going to find out that it’s a lot less than it’s cracked up to be.  Microscopic, in fact.  Now.  I’ll see to that chicken.

                             SCENE THIRTEEN

                             The Everett living room.  LAURA lies on the couch in a light sleep/trance.  WENDY stands nearby.  GEORGIA enters with her book bag.  She looks around, confused.

GEORGIA

Is anyone here?  Mom?  Is anyone –

(LAURA sits up, unseeing, looking out toward the Audience.)

Mom?  Are you all right?

(WENDY moves to GEORGIA and smiles.  GEORGIA turns and sees her.)

Uh, . . . I wondered if –

(WENDY silently raises her hand to her lips (the sign for hush now), and points at LAURA.)

LAURA
(not her own voice)

I am Mother Earth.  I give you a dream of tomorrow.  Your way of life harms you, is now passing away.  Difficult times ahead. Change in the offing.  Your cars will serve as scrap.  Good service ahead for them.  Unfortunately much conflict over this and other things.  The well-fed ones will go hungry.  Some of the destitute will find sustenance. Those quick to embrace the ancient ways.  Can’t go back, but must recover the ancient ways to move forward.  Move in any direction. Death from standing still in fantasy.  Death throes alternate with birth pangs.  My soils initiate you into a new way of life.  The ancient will live alongside the worthwhile in the new.  Gods and Goddesses return, as they were before, incarnate.  Some acting in Godly realm.  Fifth Dimension. Energies available to help in transition.  Know that you who can listen to the trees, who open to animal wisdom are protected.  All wayshowers with things to do.  My daughters you are listening.  This maternal vessel is caught up in the selfish trance.  She needs your help.  I come to you through her through careful planning.  You’ve always known this area of your being. She very afraid.  You and your husband-to-be must guide her Georgia.  The time has come for you to blast through fear, find out more of who you really are.  What you are capable of.  Time humanity found and recovered its true work as a people amongst all others. Stone, four-legged, six-legged, eight-legged, no-legged, wingéd, water, standing people. All.  A beautiful version of me awaits those who would choose it.  Mother Earth saying so long. We meet again.  Hugs now.

(GEORGIA and WENDY both hug LAURA, who collapses in GEORGIA’s arms.  WENDY stands back and sends energy.)

GEORGIA

It’s okay, Mom.  Mommy, it’s all right.

(LAURA starts to come to.  Confused she looks up at GEORGIA.)

LAURA

Georgia?  Where are you dragging me to?

GEORGIA

Oh, Mom.  It’s who you dragged in that I’ve got to tell you about.  You’re not going to believe it.

                             SCENE FOURTEEN

                             On the side of a hill, just after dusk.  MANNY and JUSTIN stand next to each other while WAKIB KAME and OGUN keep watch.  Crows and ravens caw in the near.

MANNY

So what do you think of this?

JUSTIN

I don’t know what to think.  I know I’m supposed to be here.  And I’m not surprised you’re somehow a part of it.  But I hope we don’t have to have sex or anything.

MANNY

Hard to say.  If so, it would all be kept totally secret—that’s the way these things work.

JUSTIN

Yeah, right.

MANNY

Whatever happens, it’s nothing personal.

JUSTIN

Am I supposed to find that comforting?

MANNY

I would.  I think I’m here to help because I’ve been through something already.  I have a sense of what to watch for.

JUSTIN

You’ll have to tell me how you got past the hospital staff.

MANNY

Oh, we who understand have friends in low places. 

WAKIB KAME

Strip, fair one.

(JUSTIN glares at WAKIB KAME, and starts to strip.)

MANNY

Just do it.  This is mystical time and place we’re –

(JUSTIN gets down to his shorts.  BOTH HE and MANNY are struck dumb.  Various other figures dance in and out of the darkness.  JUSTIN and MANNY both beam huge smiles.)

JUSTIN

My body feels so different.  Wow we’re like, beautiful!

MANNY

We were before we went through … whatever.

JUSTIN

Yeah.  Young.

MANNY

And old too.  There’s old geezers in side each of us.

JUSTIN

I like it, I like it.  Gosh, I wonder if this is forever.  Or is it just for now, to see everything so amazingly gorgeous.

MANNY

Better than Avatar, that’s for sure.  I hope it lasts beyond.

JUSTIN

I see what’s what…  We’re ..

MANNY

Like I said, this working is secret.  Feels like we’re obligated.

(A female version of each of MANNY and JUSTIN enter, and frolic with each other.  The two boys feel everything they do.)

Whoa!  Did you have a whole body orgasm?

JUSTIN
(speechless)

MANNY

Your reputation is safe with me.

JUSTIN

Will it be like that?

MANNY

Oh, we’re boys.  It’s not quite the same.

JUSTIN

That like, changed me dude.

MANNY

Hope I don’t disappoint you.  Our secret

JUSTIN

Knew I could count on you.

MANNY

Ain’t doing it to safeguard your rep.  This is sacred.  It’s part of the intention.  Create a safe container.  You’ll understand later.

(JUSTIN and MANNY look deeply into each other’s eyes.  They kiss.  They stretch out on the ground.  BLUE LIGHT bathes the stage as the figures continue to dance and frolic, as the female JUSTIN and MANNY dance erotic pas de deux.  Alternating heavenly music/primal beat.)

                             END OF ACT ONE

Guh!  but I hate this process.  Because I am NOT going to search for needles in haystacks.  Cerridwen , had all the time in the world when she transformed herself into a chicken to search out the corn-kernel that was Gwion Bach.  Of course–she was a GODDESS.  And I am God, yes.  As are all the missing peoplez who don’t read these pages (and the odd ones who do).

But Actors Theater of Lousyville isn’t one I’m going to consider submitting to–not that the kewlkidz want my godself ass!

Neither is the O’kneel down for your penance.  Or any old LORT theater that can be of-thought.  Nope.  Not I. Nuh-uh.

A friend suggested I buy The Cornucopia of Doom The Dramatists Sourcebook.  My partner, when I referred to it by its correct through the strike-out title, suggested I probably ought not to take that advice.  If I’m going to experience it as onerous, well, that’s a “No, duh!” kind of insight.  And Kali and Brigid have said I need to follow a different path anyway, and Brigid, futher, along with Kwan Yin, suggests I need to have fun. No matter what else I do.

D.S. ref’d above? Fun? NOT!

So.  I don’t know WHAT I’m going to do here.  Divine Self will lead the way, I’m sure.

Here’s a tarot reading on the topic.Play submission Tarot Reading Using Greenwood Deck