DOWN IN THE HOLE, IN THE DARK...HOW MANY INNER VOICES DO YOU HAVE?

FEBRUARY - DEEP IN THE BUNKER  DARK
- FLICKERING YELLOW CANDLES ONLY
- HOW MANY INNER VOICES DO YOU HEAR?
______________________________________
SCENE 1, Hank and Frank



Hank:    I woke up this morning, feeling like I'm
doomed. All my inner voices are condemning me.     

Frank: Oh yes? And how many inner voices do
you have?

Hank: I've never counted. But there are at least
          five voices, more like six.

Frank: Is that so?

Hank: One condemning voice
          is my ex-wife . Another is my grandfather.
One other is the mine captain boss I had. I should
have killed that prick years before he died
a natural death... Now I have to perform
an exorcism... to clear his spirit from my brain...

Frank says:  "What are saying? What are
                    you doing? Where'd you get
 those nasty magazines?"

Frank is leaning forward over Hank's shoulder,
watching him read some kind of scrapbook,
inserting pictures with scotch tape...
He notices a horrible smell...
       "Something stinks over here!"
 
Hank: "Don't look at me!" "Why d'ya think I dug
        a twenty foot tunnel?"

Frank:  "Pardon me? What did you just say?"

Hank: Why d'ya think I moved my bed twenty 
          feet away?"
         "To get away from the stink of you!" 

Frank knows this is not true:  "You dug
             that tunnel when you were going insane
about the cave bear people!
            You kept muttering about 'the people of the
 east'.

Hank: I remember thinking something about
'the east'. I remember  saying, 'Gotta go!'

Frank: You said that several hundred times.
           It was more like, "GOTTA GO!"

         The truth is - neither man
has washed  (washed using water, that is)
 in three months...Both of them are wearing
the same clothes now in February that they
dressed in last October... and stayed in right
through November, Decemeber, January etc.

           November, that's when the wolves
begin to howl. They howl
all along, every night, most of the year,
Full moon or no moon...But in November
that's when the howling REALLY begins...

the moaning, the barking, and the gutteral
sounds...


Frank: Speaking of "the People of the Bear Cave in the mountains to the East," how did you meet that
woman of yours? How  did ya ever manage to split up?

Hank: She tried to kill me with a hammer...
         but that wasn't the worst of it!

Frank: What was the worst of it?

Hank: She crept up behind me in the dark.
          I didn't know she  was there behind me.
She whispered real quietly in my ear, "I'll kill you in your sleep!" That really spooked me.

Frank:  Was she serious?

Hank: "It sounded as if she was extremely serious - serious as a heart attack, serious a hemroids
in the fall."

Frank: I hope you hopped on the next train
          out of there.

Hank:  No, I added a second oak door to
         my office. I figured by the time
she hammered through the first door,
I could make my escape out the back
and hop in my car before she could
get her shoes on, I could take off.

down the driveway.

Frank: Did you ever do that? Did
          you ever have to make an escape?

Hank: Oh, two or three times I left...but I kept    going  back.

Frank:  So you never  made the great
escape...?

Hank:  No. I got arrested instead.


                          *


They have just returned back from Artie's Bar.
They are both lickkered up.
           They've been hearing stories of various
insanities that have taken place in the various
burrows up and down the 'Main Lane of WAIT-A-BIT!'
            Some of the stories are hilarious.
Some are just plain disturbing - like an
attempted decapitation with a chain saw.
Bertie got real tired of the preacher
trying to bless him, by pressing his palm
down on Bertie's head.
          "I don't know where those hands have
been, do I?" said Bertie. "He might be
a preacher, but he has the most obnoxious table
manners I have ever seen!"
          "Not only does he fart continually,
but he keeps picking his teeth when he talks,
and if it's not his teeth, he picks his nose!
He keeps stickin stuff up under the table.
And he keeps scratching his ass under
his coveralls... Then he tries to press
that very same hand down upon my head,
or stroke my face with the palm!
When he's drunk... And I'm way too sober
for that kinda shit, no matter how
loaded I am!"
          "And when he goes outside to have
a shit... he wipes his ass with the snow.
In the last three months, I've never seen
him wash his hands.... then he takes a hunk
of bread in his hand and hands it to me!"                  "Even Barbie avoids him like
a contagious rat plague, and she used to
be so sweet on him...remember?"
          "Yah, sure," says Frank, "She wuz always
slippin her tongue in his ear, and tickling his
butt!"
          "Not no more..." sez Bertie.
           "Well, ain't that a kick in the ass!" Hank says.


  
            Later on, back in the burrow, as the two
men lay in their separate bunks, intoxicated,
loaded so's the ceilings wheeled, Hank asked:
            "How come you never freak out...
like everybody else, as the winter weighs on?"
            "I think it's the 93 days I spent in
the dark in solitary confinement... in the West
Detention Centre."



             "Shit! Sorry I asked!" Hank mutters
into his pillow...Nearly unconscious, he says,
             "I feel so much fuckin better now!"
              
               They both pass out.



               There's no sound but the wind up
from the frozen river. 




                                                            *

THE MIRROR OF ZEN - So Sahn, d.1654 - SOME WORDS FROM HIS INTRODUCTION

        *There is only one thing, from the very beginning,
infinitely bright and mysterious by nature.
It was never born, and it never dies.
It cannot be described or given a name.
The appearance of all Buddhas and Patriarchs
in this world  can be likened to waves
arising suddenly on  a windless ocean.

                  I would like to say just one thing:
              Cutting off all thinking, forgetting all conditions
            While sitting here with nothing to do--
               Spring comes, and grass grows
                  all by itself.

"WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION, AND AT THE END OF ALL OUR EXPLORING, WE COME TO THE PLACE WHERE WE STARTED AND KNOW IT FOR THE FIRST TIME."

                 A few hints are all that is necessary, for some
poems, to provide a key to entering.
            There is a green door in what appears to
be an endless wall. There is no keyhole in the
door, and no door knob to pull or turn.
            It appears there may be great
secrets behind that door, but how to
open it?
              A few directions would be
helpful...maybe just a hint, and the door
can be opened.

             In stories what can happen,
a weird looking street person might
come along, or some person out of a park
nearby, who looks like he lives in the
park... and has been sleeping there
in the same clothes for a long
time.
            Or he's a dwarf or a troll
from under a bridge...
            When you meet this person,
your first thought will likely be -
"This is a guy I want to avoid. He
looks dangerous, crazy... His clothes
are none too clean. There are
pieces of earth hanging from his
coat...And there is a mad look in his
eye. He's not the sort
of guy any civilized person
would wish to associate with....
        But it could be he's exactly
the person you need to open
the door in the wall... And it's
getting to be evening now, and
one distant streetlamp shines
on the door. Now the task
seems impossible.

         In poems from the West,
there is the figure of the green man,
often associated with forests.
The green man is pliable. He can
bend. He can also give youth and life.
          When you find him, the scope
of your life is deepened. Everything
seems more significant. You
see a perspective that you
prviously did not know was
there.
          But in order to find him
you must go on a journey, a vision quest,
it is sometimes called.
          You might have to talk to a shaman.
And the shaman might give you
a nasty looking liquid to drink...
and you know you have to ingest it,
this unpleasant or strange looking
circumstance... You have to digest
it completely.
          To learn anything at all
you must step beyond the village
gates. Only so will a new
perspective come to you.

          Here are some lines from
T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Four Quartets".

We shall not cease from exploration,
And at the end of all our exploring,
We come to the place where we started,
And know it for the first time. 

         One way to approach the above
statement is this:
        Watching a child playing in the park, 
a person might see that the child is in paradise.
The child is playing in Eden, but it is an
unconscious Eden. The child is there,
one with the world around him, but the child
does not know he is there.
          Human beings have what I like to call
"a piggy-back consciousness." We do things
and we watch ourselves doing them.
This self-consciousness, however, has
an unfortunate tendency to separate us
from the world around us.
         Psychologists have argued that this
self-consciousness comes into our being
with puberty. I think it comes much
earlier than puberty, but self-consciousness
is associated with a loss of innocence,
because of the separation that
self-consciousness involves.
        So one step farther is necessary.
We must open the door in the wall.
When we step through the door,
we enter into a new land. And when
we walk in the new land, we realize
we are in Eden once more.
       The world is glorious, new and
immaculate. The return has been made.
We come back to the place where
we started. And we know it for the
first time.
 
 

SKETCH FOR STORY, 'THE MATING HABITS OF THE WOODPECKER."

Follow                                                   Sketch by Ernie Taylor of Roving Reporter at work

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

                   I intend to enclose some of my favourite
passages from William Wordsworth's poem
"Imitations of Immortality".


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
   Hath had elsewhere its setting,
   And cometh from afar:
   Not in entire forgetfulness,
   And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
   From God, who is our home:



"Trailing clouds of glory do we come" -
famous words & spiritual, too!



Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
   Thy soul's immensity;


This is what any real teacher will tell you...
don't listen to all the petty horseshit you
hear about yourself in the media...
Your heart-soul-mind is an immensity
that is the conscious organ 
at the core of the infinite universe.
At the heart of the spiral galaxy
there is one mind... The mind of God
is your mind.

 
 Hence in a season of calm weather
   Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
   Which brought us hither.

Memories of that Eternal Silence
from which we come.

 

   Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
   We will grieve not, rather find
   Strength in what remains behind;
   In the primal sympathy
   Which having been must ever be.


 Years ago there was a pretty good movie
called, "Splendour In The Grass".
The person who chose that title knew
something about something. 

WHAT'S YOUR AUTHORITY? REMEMBERING LAW SCHOOL

              At law school, if you made a statement
of any kind, the first response you'd get from
your professor would always be: "What's you authority
for that statement?"
       After several months passed and I'd been asked
"what's your authority?" about 100 times... being the pain in the ass I'm told I have always been, I started asking the same question back.

       I asked, "What's your authority for property law?"
       The professor said: "I don't understand your
question."
       "We're living in a Christian country, are we not?"
       "Supposedly, yes we are," the prof said.
        "The authority of the law is said to derive
from "God and natural law", whatever that means...  Because Christ and his disciples held property in common, what's your authority for property law?"
I asked."If God holds property in common with others, why do we have such extreme penalties
for offences against property?"
        Of course, this opened up a whole can of worms...
       A long discussion followed, time and again.But not too long a time, "I'd be told to 'screw myself down into my chair,"
so to speak.

       My question was never really answered, though. Not to my satisfaction, anyway.
        So I kept asking questions about
 jurisprudence and its sources. Jurisprudence might roughly be summed up as being, "The morality of the law."
         If anyone were to give such a course
at law school, a course in the origins of jurisprudence.... in those days when I was at law
school, the course of study would have been
a very short course. Not too much
of real significance had been written on the
subject 20 years ago.

         I got answers such as, "God and natural law.
That's the authority for property law."
        Another teacher said just one word: "Necessity."
        That seemed like a pretty good answer at
the time. It was an effective answer, if not
a complete answer.

             I wanted a more specific answer. I had
a disturbing feeling I was going to have to
(create it) make it up myself.

                                         ****