Act 1

(Editor's note - this will be published as Room For Rent on the side bar. It is also available at Scribd.) 

September

“The leaves are falling fast,” I said to a ghost.

“They are falling far from the tree,” the ghost said.

“Yes, they are dancing,” I said. “Dance is about process, becoming, the passage of time. Shiva symbolizes the union of space and time and indicates creation. This is why dance is one of the most ancient forms of magic.”

“Magic is universal,” the ghost said. “People wear masks to hide their transformation, seeking to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy. They are free. Do leaves really fall far from the tree? It’s hard to say. Did you see a diamond light off a leaf this morning? It reflected an elegant universe.”

“Yes, the diamond reflects 10,000 things.”

“What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that,” the ghost said. “There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle, it’s a circular

movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Really?”

“Yes, then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Fire purifies,” I said.

“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”

“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. And the last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”

“Ah, I see language in space. The word is beauty. The Greeks said it was order.”

“Speak to me,” the ghost said. “Tell me a secret. Plant a seed in my garden. Something glorious for spring. Eternal material with regeneration potential. Turn old soil. Give me a metaphor for digging.”

“They say grief for the dead was the origin of poetry.”

“What are your choices?” the ghost asked. “Choice is a powerful word.”

“Initially I chose to feel resentment for their lack of responsibility. I had to deal with my resentment. Why did I feel resentment? It was because of deception. My lack of knowing. Clare’s lack of truth. Her mask. I was angry I didn’t see behind her mask sooner. I was blind. I forgave myself and started to see.”

“Were you really angry or were you confused, sensing the sadness? What did you see?”

“I sensed the sadness beneath the surface. How they tried to fill up their emptiness. How their containers were bland and empty.”

“Is this really true, their containers were empty?” said the ghost.

“They were filled with anger and fear. I saw how they never learned. How their destiny brought them together intheir misery. How the two of them were on this endless negative spiral of energy.”

“They forecast their death?”

“I’m afraid they may end up killing themselves. It’s the chance they’ll take when they get desperate further down the road. The choice they will make. This is the way, their nature. How I process it. How I paid attention to their pain and suffering, their loneliness.”

“What do you mean? Please don’t talk nonsense. Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract. We have no time. Turn your hourglass over and talk. Remember we are all death deferred. We are all orphans sooner or later.”

“Ok, here’s the play,” I said, “a story inside a story with a through line. The inside is the outside veiled in mystery. I made a choice inside the puzzle. I am not saving anybody here.”

“Yes, I see your CPR accreditation is up for renewal. I’ve read your relationship resume. You’ve had your share playing many rescuing roles. Ok, then, stop the bleeding and start the breathing. Three compressions near the sternum. You know the procedure. It’s not about justice, it’s about procedure. You’ve always been here, wherever here is, haven’t you?”

“Sure, I’ve always enjoyed passing through incarnations. This is my nature.”

“Tell me a story. If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage. I need some entertainment, some drama with character development, arc, conflict, resolution, direction and movement. A through line,” said the ghost.

Metta.

Bone script

Once he started, establishing a voice, setting and characters in the human condition on paper surrounded by illiterate simple, loud, noisy, volume addicted humans with royal blue ink it was a joy.

He sat at a warung, a cheap food place - plain white virgin rice, spicy chilly, egg, green veggies, tempe, tofu, deep fried crackers - on the other side of the Berlin Wall. He'd escaped from the tyranny of noisy educational sad robots trapped in their expectations of perpetual childhood.

A village woman piled her trash near a grove of banana trees and lit a fire. Roosters, hens and chicks scattered. Smoke curled around a man pushing his chipped blue plywood cart loaded with plastic dishes, cheap cloth, simple tools, brushes, mops, bags, hats, and basic household goods. Rolling the wheels through neighborhoods.

Cumulus clouds gathered momentum.

Nearby were the yelling village people. A tall thin woman with her 3-4 year old, monkey boy child. Pregnancy was her ticket out of hell, loneliness and misery. In a village you traded sex for security.

She and her mother tormented the kid. He cried. They laughed at him. They created a mini-monster. A boy who hated women now and later. He was dependent on them for food and affection. Mother and daughter uttered primal grunt sounds. The mother combed her daughter's hair scavenging follicles for nits and lice. Protein.

Crying children. Perpetual distractions.

Time-death.

The primordial darkness. Cosmic birth. The cave of inner being.

He saw her through a window when the metro pulled in.

Alone and cold, she waited for the green metro door to open.

It was late. She wore a thin black sweater and long gray skirt.

She was slight...olive pale skin, black hair pulled back, around 45.

She limped into the car dragging her right foot. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot looked like a case of elephantiasis. She sat twenty feet away.

She bent over and slowly raised her skirt from around her ankles. The burned and bloody skin damage ran three inches across and ten inches high. Either first or second degree burns. A layer of skin was exposed, red, lined with white. Bare and exposed. She needed medical attention.

Two men across from her stared and diverted their eyes.

She sat, fingered a phone and grimaced. No tears, just a stoic face.

The metro rolled through night. It passed a river, a neon bright Everest furniture store, fast food emptiness and an expensive private hospital filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions and potions and patients with money.

She inspected her ankle, touching an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors.

Two old women balancing collected piles of scrap wood on their heads took a shortcut through village mud.

A perfect white and yellow winged butterfly danced in a slight spring breeze.

Dance

As a Japanese monk said, "You are always a fool whether you dance or not. So you might as well dance."

The Moroccan girl with wild brown hair tied

back is not on the train as it leaves a white station.

She sits on her haunches. Her bare feet

dig soil, grip small earth pebbles as exposed root structures dance with her toes.

Her toes are her extended connection where her shadow lies forgotten. It spreads upon vegetables. They wait below her. They prowl toward late winter light.

She is not on the red and brown train that zooms past green fields where her sheep in long woolen coats eat their way through pastures after a two year drought.

She is inside green the girl with her wild brown hair pulled tight. She is not on the train hearing music, eating dates, reading a book, talking with friends or strangers, sleeping along her passage, or dreaming of a lover.

She does not scan faces of tired, trapped people in their orange seats impatiently waiting for time to deliver them to a Red City in the desert.

Her history’s desert is full of potentates sharpening their swords, inventing icon free art, alphabets, practicing equality, creating five pillars of Islam and navigation star map tools, breaking wild stallions, building tiled adobe fortresses, selling spices, writing language.

She is not on the train drinking fresh mint tea orconsulting a pocket sized edition of the Qur'an. She does not kneel on her Berber carpet five times a day facing Mecca in the east.

She does not wear stereo earphones or listen to music imported from another world, a world where people treasure their watches. Where controlling time is their passion for being prompt and responsible citizens to give their lives meaning.

She is not on the train and not in this language the girl with her wild brown hair tied back with straw or leather or stems of wild flowers surrounding her with fragrances.

She is surrounded by orange blossom perfume beyond rolling hills, cut by wet canyons along yellow and green fields, where her black eyes penetrate white clouds in her blue sky.

In her open heart she hears her breath explore her long shadow, causing it to ripple with her shift. Her toes caress soil and she is lighter than air, lighter than a feather of a wild bird in the High Atlas mountains far away.

She smells the Berber tribal fire heating tea for the festival where someone wears a goatskin cape and skull below the stars.

It is cold outside. Flames leap from branches like shooting stars into her eyes and someone plays music. It is the music of her ancestors, her nomadic people and she sways inside the gradual hypnotic rhythm of her ancestral memory.

She is not on the train. She is inside a goat skull moving her hoofs through soil. She moves through fields where she danced as a child seeing red and yellow fire calling all the stars to her dance and she is not on the train.

Metta.

Eight

Eight mirrors, eight letters, eight whispers, eight sensations.

Eight breaths, eight emptiness, eight certainties, eight ambiguities, eight naked dancing birds,

eight laughing fools, eight hungry ideas, eight reflections,

eight musical notes, eight encounters, eight degrees.

Eight bells, eight echoes.

Trees burn facts and opinions in spring.

A blind dancer and a deaf dancer compliment each other.

Metta.

A Tomato Based Culture

From Fujian, China to Ankara, Turkey (a kind of fowl) to Bursa along the Silk Road with Doner and Pide, all the sliced and diced tomatoes, all the bamboo baggage filled with laughter and forgetting inside the smashing of utensils and wash and wear drip dry neon holiday flashing factories along metro subway tracks where world weary

pedestrians completing a simple sentence with a full plate of delicious shoppers dancing inside fire breathing ovens stoking love's fires before racing home to mother, father, sister, brother all wearing traditional anxiety values around heavily medicated ma-scared necks handing someone change, your fragile receipt for paying

at the cosmic bowling alley for strikes and spares and did you know the great father liberator has a train car parked forever at the main station, a gift from Adolph, the Further and it was all imaginary, this T place where idle men stood around looking bored and unemployed, uneducated drinking brown tea

after artfully massaging a microscopic silver spoon around the rim, deep into the universe of sugar stars clanging metal against a small glass destroying cubes manufactured in a filthy factory - so an inspection engineer whispered in her strict confidence - don't use the sugar she whispered across a plate of pasta on a chilly Ankara night before they went to a wedding in Ulus, the ancient Roman village, deep in an underground cavern filled with musicians, dancers, and children

gypsies played anvils

far away from shy lovers holding hands under the table inside the rising sun of their desire, their passion for yawning bamboo chairs where two elderly women in multi-hued headscarves smoked exploding drops of water from plummeting icicles onto tiled roofs above the cafe where a ghost scribbled in shadows burning his fingers to see the why eye and the falling water drops were music to his ears

Metta.