Wooden Blank, with

Cross foor a beat

Detached itemless Look, my toes

Arrival

Sleep. Into deeper sleep, much deeper, no pause, ever, but deeper, and the lost continent. Comes. Returns. And one is inside, now. Deep inside. Sleeping. Comfortable, asleep.

Who is this.

This is Dasy.

She enjoys, Dasy,

She is deep. Dasy deep.

She is asleep. Soft, dreaming.

Do. Light. Now: do lightMy speaking alone, pleases me.

You're big on speaking but not on communication.

How happiness, floats into my language.

Like a dream. I'm dancing, and probably you're quite blind to that fact, but O.K., I smile so much it hurts.

The theater, the peverse theater, the joyus theater, the noble theater, abandoned finally.

Talking in the dark. Inhabiting streets, with no axcess, no. . .excess.

On this, empty Sunday. At this location, a God will manifest himself. His presence, already intimated, in this vibrating light and heat. But the time, far off, of course. Of his true manifestation. An unplacable time.

Tonight, nothing is here. The rose, ready to manifest.

In this pregnant, calm, space.

The belief is as follows

A rose, hovering in the air

will manifest.

And everything will disolve

Into sweetness.

Is this the . . .tremendous Sunday?

Not yet. Not quite yet.

Look at this section of the bookshelf

Watch to see, if certain

important books, fall: into my hand.

I want something. . .out of the ordinary to happen.

Did language effect me?

Don't make promises

The rigorous spiritrual leader

Who named mountains for himself, slid down mountains like weight.

The rigorous spiritual learer

Who carried full meal tickets into the mouth of disaster, handed out prises saying, these must belong to somebody nice.

The rigorious spiritual leader

Who grew fat, opened a tooth pick universe that said OUT on the door in and vice cersa on the crest of the no time out control panel , who was the lady at the controls out of control? The sugar maiden for sure. For sure.

The rigorous spiritual leader

Who flew home on a flying saucer suitcase said, see how I pack? I have no style, I zip on insight, that's all I need to reveal my real inventory.

RIGOR RIGOR!

SPIRITUAL VALUES
SPIRITUAL VALUES!

Is this a war of the worlds, or am I totally down-town.

The rigorous spiritual leader

Who looked in a mirror, tried to comb his hair, but it wasn't there.

So much for the surface of things he said, but I don't cry, I just try to balance good on my own side of a spinning what-d-ya-call it? And nobody could tell if he fell off because it happened so fast he was back in his apartment in a seeming wink of the eye but who winked? Nobody I know. But then, I don't know everybody. I'm too much into milk, cheese, and sometimes maybe a slice of apple pie. Who'll join me?Theater that is no theater

Didmantle the theater

Take down the curtain

THIS WAY OUT

I arrived at the theater for a performance: I opened my eyes, I took my fists, which had been jamed into my tweo ears, away from my ears.

I was ready to be. . .filled with images and words that would have upon me, great, purgative emotional effect.

And then, the theater was taken away. Wiped out.

I was left with nothing. The performance was. . .withdrawn. I was left with nothing into which I could. . .plunge, with my emotional identification.

I was left with nothing to. . .think about

The next thing I knew, I was flooded with richness, that had no content. A kind of blank fullness.

And then , in that blankness, because it was full, there was continual yet totally evasive, un-capturable finally, a whole multitude of things that left as quietly as they arose.

Zip, zip, zip, except it was faster than that by far.

I was perfectly, fulfilled.

TRhe other people who had accompanied me to the performance, when the performance was withdrawn, experienced, so they told me, a kind of anguish of withdrawal, a kind of emptiness that left them bereft.

Not me.

I was rolling over and over inside flashing light that was solid at one moment, and totally porus the next.

(GOD) No more theater! Good by!

What the shit was that!

(MAN thru curtain) Good by.

I am a mirror, but so is the world

Bounce back and forth

Rise The red building acrioss the street is in me, and I see it as red, release the redness, let it change me.

drunk on molocule of water. Breath of air.

Ah, what a web of intentions. Sitting in cafe, watching city

Something WANTS to happen here. I open a door.

If one confronts, this trajectrory, this web

This world

I went to the cafe. Crystalized morning. I went to the cafe. That is, I left by the front door. A click released the lock, which reverberated in me that click

A world, full of intentions

A grid of intentions

a web of intentions

decorate, circle back on themselves

So. Have none!

Oh great mirror city

is it this moment that will release me?

lift physical into spiritual.

The great work, trajectory tantra, alchemy

salvation comes from the real self, thoughts of the spirit are for it to share

change is necessary

the great work

the mirror. Enter geo city

world is mirror. sometimes fall into trap of believing in it

then stop. poetry is realizing you project into it, it's so THIN

Great city, room in which it could happen that. . .

a streetcorner. The space, the atmosphere, projected into. . . .

he arrived in a city

Oh city, city of. . .apostotic mode

City of turnings, that's what I call you

Because each small street turns, geometricised, and reveals an abyss? No. But a reflection of it's former self.

The chimera named Ali appeared and spoke his own chimera self

What city is it, where a corner resturant, speaks. . .

Geometry city, mirror city

Light. . .like othrer place. nectar of light

paint little flowers on faces

angels, fairies

Is it you, richard? Yes (bum) I realized the sweetness had to me in me. Ecstatic. Not in art. Drunk on a molocule of water. a sip of air.

Is this really your kind of town?

I haven't been here very long.

But you get the feel of things kinda fast, or I miss my guess.

I'm the kind of person--

Nothing satisfies you, yes?

You're right

So this isn't really your kind of town. I mean, for the first day or two, you said to yourself, hey , maybe this is ok. You managed to squeeze out a little poetic frisson from a turn around the corner into this vista, then that vista, but then with a lkittle more time, it didn't resally seem to hold up, did it.

You're right.

Of course I'm right. This town is a shit town. Take it from me, I had deep experience of this shit town, and a shit town is what it is.

That doesn't leave much doubt.

On the other hand, a lot of oppoprtunity is here, for somebody looking for a certain kind of something.

Oh? What kind of something.

You don't expect me to make myself overly clear, I think.

Well, I don't know if that's your habit or not.

What about your habits. (Pause) Don't your habits have something to do with the overal situation?

I get myself into certain situations where I don't know quite. . .how to respond.

Ah, like now?

Yes. Why the hell don't you know how to respond. (Pause) You want absolue clarity? Or are you aware of the disadvantages built into absolute clarity. That seems to be the question I'm putting to you, and you seem to me perfectly capable of coming up with some kind of response.

Yes. I should be. Certainly. . .

So? Do you want absolute clarity?

Let me ask, if I can-- can we define again the area under discussion?

Suddenly things get clarified. You're interested in entertainment. You're one of those people who can't be alone with his life. This perpetual drift from city to city, a diversion. That's all.

Go on

Go on to what?

Go on with what you wre saying

What do you want from me, anyhow? That's not what you're gionna get buster! You're gonna get a truckload of shit, that's what you're gonna get, and don't tell me you don't like it, because by the time I'm finsihed with you, you're gonna LOVE it.

. . . . .

What do you think about my sloppy methods

They seem unnecessarily sloppy.

Guess what you don't know. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

I think you're acting more vulgar than you are, in truth.

O.K. From now on, what you get from me is nothing but pithy aphorisms. We'll see how good you are dealing with that. Then we'll know where we are, won't we?

Yes.

O.K.

Let me introduce you to a man who tried to encase himself in a work of art.

Oh? said the doctor. I can help this man escape from a work of art, but only if he genuinly wishes to do that.

What city is this?

Is this the city where

looking out the window

in late afternoon,

a beautiful vista seems dominated by the faint tracer-bullet patterns of many autombiles in motion, evoking,

as they cross the visible-from-a distanance multitude of bridges spanning the magic river that gives mythic dimention to this city nestled in it's curve

--automobiles evoking that specific seen-from-far away energy that paints precise,

punctuated,

energy strips in the imagination of someone

who perhaps relies too much upon that same imagination?

(There he goes, encasing himself in a work of art, in a proto-type

at least)

How dare you rely too much on that imagination

if what you long for, really, is being someplace else, as legitimate a longing as any of those invented for you by that multitude calling itself, hero, (heroes) or common sense,

or all the uncles and great uncles by default

who decided to bankroll your very viable future so that if you cheat (cheating in their terms) you're gonna get a come-uppance that'll leave you sitting pretty from the point of view of those who can hardly be said to have your best interests at heart.

See what I mean?

So.

He made plans.

But-- here's the important part.

He didn't try to defind them

Plans?

Plans.

To himself or others? But of course both suddenly find themselves under the same ruberic.

It all adds up to the same thing, no? He made a work of art for himself, into which he might hopefully disappear. Then, seeing corners at the corners, and in response pulling the entire ediface of his sometimes cofortable enough life,

over his body like a blanket,

could he be in fact so blanketed?

And was that any different than simply to live, as he did live, within the aura that was so important to him now?

(I mean more imprtant than many other things).

Time to escape the new woman said.

But.

Escape what, escape to what?

The new woman did not say escape to what

and we all knew to escape,

but we did not know to escape to what.

So what made her new, this new woman ?

She was always new because she was so. . .etherial.

I take no responsibility for my own etherialness, that's what she should have truly said.

But she did not, of course, which became in his sense one big, missed opportunity.

That was not new.

What was new was that he began to perceive, under this blanking artifact, artifactly enough,

that what was new and strange was his own relationship to whatever spewed forth, because now, believe it or not,

he did not have the feeling it was necessary for him to be mountainous in his efforts of will,

all directed to making his life cohere

into one of the twenty seven life-models ordered specifically into HIS consciousness on pain of death,

which certainly could not be avoided

down the road someplace.

Road, road, road, he said to himself in the hopes it might indicate a direction.

Also realizing it could be more than one.

And again automobiles started jumping a little bit like pretend molocules of a very bright light-- ,

and he decided to spend a lot of time and effort creating what was more than a simple lament, because it was never simple

requiring the participation of a whole caravan of accomplished manipulators of the road,

none of whom, nevertheless

would ever be quite so route oriented, so he imagined,

as he who preseumbed to include them all under his personal and sometimes recognizable banner.

There was a lot of debate later-- which route did he take to sucess and glory that was---

Oopps, I almost said unprincipaled when I mean to say unparalled. And with the parallel-- though words are not things that can ever be parallel to each other like worlds can--

he nevertheless fell quite off the track.

Into the car?

But do cars ride on steel tracks, or on asphalt pavement sometimes.

Put them together this way--

Have you ever imagined one of those incredibally ravishing contests between automoble and passenger train?

Somebody thought you'd have to go back to the turn of the century for that,

but what they were really imagining, his friends volenteered, was the nineteen thirties.

But the confusion was understandable, because the turn of the century was the epic,

par-excellence,

of that powerful iron horse metaphore as drug,

and if there's one thing that did need to be drugged,

it was this sensiblity in question that above all

was scheming to GET OUT OF HERE any way possible.

Doctors of death on the rempage again

Spreading their venomn wherever they can

If you look forward to

Panic and chaos

You can be sure it's required to pay us

Money and love to assure our dispensing

Time off for kissing through holes in the fencing.

That's a tricky bit of verse, isn't it. Do you know what it means, really?

. Here's the main thing. You're looking for an escape route--

Am I?

It could manifest itself in different ways. A route, a method of locomotion. A secret door.

You can't find the secret door, because it isn't in this world, but in the other. The one you want to escape to.

So use it. Use the secret door. Remember--

It isn't in this world, it's located in the world you want to escape to.

Use it.

(Pause)

Baffled?

I'll chance the subject a little.

(pull back curtain)

What do you think of this painting

I like it.

You do?

Yes. Then there's no more to be said, is there.

Burn it.

Ah, because you like it so much?

Exactly.

What a spiritual trip

Exactly

You really want it burned.

Yes. I'll take it into the next room, where we always perform such rites of sacrifice.

(closes door). Maybe you want to watch?

No. I trust you

No. I trust you.

It's done.

That was quick.

Yes.(Pause) You should have opened the door.

Did you really burn it?

Yes.

Bastard.

Why do you say that?

I have my reasons.

You must be of two minds

Not at all.

Am I a bastard a hundred per-cent of the time?

No. You have me there.

Have you?

You're not a bastard a hundred per cent of the time. Therefore I have to try to be in sync with you, but I know I 'm relatively fallable and can't pull it off all the time.

Now that I burned the painting which you say you liked so very much--

Oh, I did.

Do you want to see another?

You have lots of them stored away.

Yes. I only exhibit one at a time.

It's snowing.

So it is.(Pause) Anyway, do you want to lookl a at another painting?

No.

I get it. You'd like to ake your own.

Yes.

This isn't a studio. this is a gallergy. (Pause) We don't make them here,

I know that much.

Sorry? I mean, perhaps you think this would make an excellent studio. The vibes might be to your thinking, more appropriate to a studio than to a a gallery.

My vibes don't matter very much.

Don't you wish they did?

Not really.

O.K.

Supose I told you I didn't really burn the painting.

Did you

Yes, you can go look for it in the next room, all you'll find is ashes. And by the way, the reason it was able to burn so quickly is that I use a blow torch,

Ashes were prefigured in our train references.

That's one way of looking at it.

(Pause The race between the automoble and the passinger train could also be thought of as our symbolic confrontation.

Which is which.

I take it back

You can't, you've committed yourself.

(Pause) The autombile is racing to be able to cross at the railroad crossing before it get's smacked by the locomotive of the passinger train carrying, as fate would have it, the unbeknownst

beloved.

So you must be the passinger train. And I'm the one about to get smacked by the loco.

I'd say the one who wants a painting he likes very much, and you really did-- that's the loco I'd think.

The one who carried out the wishes of the loco with such dispatch is also a kind of loco.

(enter doctor, woman) I couldn't help overhearing your conversation and realing that you want someone to disagree, but that's impossible.

I mean, you WERE speaking in what seemed an unnaturally loud tone of voice, so you obviously did want to be overheard and judged, but unfortuunately I judge you in a way that's not to your liking.

Unless

Unless what. Oh, I get it. Unless you liking is to be not to my liking.

Didn't you notice the sun came out?

One minute its snowing, the next minute the sun's out. The only implication is you get melted snow. Unless, of course, the snow was a mistake

How can snow be a mistake?

Well somebody could torch it. Isn't that what they say people do to houses? Gangsters-- they torch a house. Just like we, you, tourched a painting.

You know, I can no longer remember even who's responsible. The one who physically excicutes, or the one who provides the inspiration.

Could I invite you back to my apartment for a look at a very unique art collection?

What's unique about your art collection.

He'll make you burn all your most beautiful pictures.

They don't burn. I had them all fireproofed

in case of fire.

There are other ways paintings can be sacrificed to the gods.

The who?

The gods. I see you don't believe what I'm talking about.

You think you mean Gods, that I don't believe in , but I do-- my own.

Here's one.

You anticiipate that long before it happens

(enters) I told you it would happen. What I didn't tell you was that he would come through HIS door into OUR world. But fromn our perspective, that's not the important thing. Poor us. Look what he's got under his arm, by the way.

Your favorite painting , Eddie.

Oh, YOU'RE Eddie

What does that explain

Isn't anybody else surprised to see a godlike manifestation?

We're not sure what it is.

I am.

Sure

Yes, very sure.

A painting that returns from the dead either wasn't dead, or else has regenerative powers related to a god's interest in such a potent image.

It's wonderful that you and your god have the same taste in paintings.

I don't know that we do.

But he's the sacred messager.

Perhaps the momentary snowfall made it possible for him to appear. One miracle generally is accompanied by several other, smaller mircales. As if an earthquake were possible without an aftershoock or several, I mean, it isn't, so that's why I run the circle of possible analogies.

May I speak?

Does a god have to ask permission?

Weren't you shocked at the timber of his voice? It wasn't expectedly god like was it? Which implies on my part, how much happier we'd all be if he or it didn't speak.

We can forget one phrase, I suppose

You mean when it said may I speak?

Yes.

It will be hard to forget.

(Pause) May I look at the picture.?

Is it exctly the same?

It looks the same.

Should we re-burn it?

I don't think so, since it was re-manifest in such a miraculous way.

How chaotic this world seems sometimes.

I wouldn't use that word for a miracle.

You think it's a real miracle?

Well, let's say yes.

(Pause) You must love pictures more than you love anything.

No--

I don't think miracles are handed out right and left. Therefore if one occurs, it must be linked to a pivot point inside your private value system. (Pause) See what I mean? Else it trivializes the miraculous.

I'm sorry. You can go on theorizing if you like, but I'm really erasing everything you say from my consciousness.

You think it's so banal?

No, but it's another message I'm anticipating and I'd rather clear the airwaves of all possible interference.

That's not possible.

Its possible. I'm encasing myself in a work of art. You know what that means? My life, really. (Pause) That's why I wanted to burn a painting I liked very much. A distraction, right? It had to be cleared out of my life totally. I think you get the point even though I've been careful to circle rather than zeroing in.

Now, let's pretend we've finally made it to the beach--

What?

It's a warm, sunny day, we doff our workaday apparel. We strip down to bathing suits or perhaps no clothing at all,

and slowly march into the shining ocrean.

From which, within the briefest possible period of time, one or two of us start to rise, as if we weighed now ,

no more than air, into the sun.

Why talk about a beach, we could do that right here.

I don't see it happening.

I was allowing myself a moment of revery.

Maybe this. . .God, can help.

Shall we give it permission to talk?

That would be like ordering it to talk, and I don't think we can or should give orders,

If the mood comes?

I don't mean we'll be punished.

(Pause) It just doesn't seem such good form.

Who's speaking?

It'e true, I don't think the words are coming out of me, exactly, or they are, but I don't seem to be the originator.

That's often true. Of words. But of images? I'm not so sure-- which can explain a preference of sorts for painting. One can be reminded, through being ravished by certain images, that a second side of the self does exist, one that is genuinly the self, even if not communicatable.

Perhaps its not so wise, this overiding need to avoid contamination

Does the other always contaminate?

Do the words of the other always contaminate?

Why is sharing, necessarily contamination.

Because sharing masqurades as sharing, which is not sharing.

Open a door

What?

It's time to open a door an let something else into the room

Something else or someone else

Another god?

Let's hope one god is enough, even if its a god that does not speak

Let me remind you, it spoke, but we stopped it from speaking..I don't think we could stop a true god from speaking

Of course we could, that is to say we could stop ourselve from hearing its speaking

Even that--

Gods are not all powerful. We have secret places they can't rreach, you know. Well, not so secret--I should rather say VAST places they can't reach

Can you remember even, what was the one thing this god said?

No.

Terrible of you

Maybe the suggests it wasn't a god speaking.

Dangerous of you to suggest that, since the god is listening.

Is it present?

He means, perhaps it's just an image of the god and the god isn't present.

Well, I don't think you can burn a god like you can burn a picture.

I don't even think you can burn a picture, since it seems to have retuned

Thanks to a god only, perhaps.

My point was that in burning the picture, that made it remain in a kind of purity

And did the return of the picture reduce, or mock, or attack, or call into question, or rather

deepen that purity. What do you think.

Am I a woman?

What's the question, Eddie?

Question?

Perhaps it's a question that's supposed to provoke other questions.

It's too bad our picture can't speak to us, Eddie

It's too bad our God can't speak.

Come to the window .

Why, is it snowing again?

I want you to see something.

Stop it Eddie.

Haven't you studied this painting of which I am so fond? Hasn't it filled you with enough image material so that so that this obcessive darting back and forth between windows and doors, and turning of street corners and looking into mirrors, and down alleys and across streets and-- I don't know what else in an obcessive search for image after image after image doesn't come to an end, finally? There's no satisfaction in this nervous twitch of the eye or the soul or spirit or whatever it is that thinks it's thirsy for another sight because it hasen't learned the lession of firery consumation of all that visual garbage that should be visual garbage because the more it touches one the more one is revealed as nothing other than a superficial tickle machine-- let's have done with all that! Please!

Come to the window. Please. For three days, I've been looking across to the tall building across the square, where on it's very top, you can see now, a large open tent, stripped yellow and white, open at the sides, erected I first though for a kind of fete on the roof of that tall bulilding, but there it seems to remain, longer than I would have expected, with it's tent tent flaps and ruffles fluttering in the wind, as if we were at the edge of the sea, not in the center of this bustling city, and I don't know why, but ever time I look at that continuing yellow and white stripped tent in that improbable place, eighteen stories above the ground, the quality of the light in which it seems to float RAVISHES me and I wonder if the rest of us will sharet that feeling of delisious ravishment. . . or I'm being silly.

Shall we burn it? Shall we set a torch, to that tent.

Look at it What's planned up there, do you suppose? what sort of fete?

Let's not try to find out.

A marrage

See the way it's rippling in the wind.

It remind me of the beach (Music rises, they start undressing and sink to floor)

Let me introduce you to a man who tried to turn himself into a work of art.

No. You have it wrong.

Ah, was it that you tried to turn your life into a work of art?

No. It was that I tried to encase myself in a work of art.

A denial of life, then.

Yes. You could say. No. Let me think about that again. Not a denial of life, but an instance that life has to be otherwise than it generally is.

Never end a sentence with is. I mean, never use is as the last word in a sentence

Is it permissible to use it as the first word in a sentence?

Of course it is. It is. It is.

(TV)

I expect you to do nothing for one hour but watch my face. Why?

Because. . .I want to be idolized. That could be one reason. But

I bet there's another.

Let's try to find out together

Could it be, that if you watch long enough

intensely enough

that is to say, looking into my soul

you are then looking into your own ?

Though really, of course, it has nothing to do with you, thank goodness.

It is a device for focusing my own consciousness

Why is it, that absolute focus is more and more achieved by me

only reguarding my own face

Let's think about faces.

That's why we all like painting faces

How did you know that all of us secretly were artists?

(as they get canvasases)

I didn't know that all of you were artists. Of course, I'm comfortable with the fact.

Now I must tell the truth. Though I am, heretofore a writer, I have no more desire to write. Or rather, I have the desire to write, in some sense, but I have nothing to write about. Yet I feel I must write, even if to keep a firm hold on my person. Emotionally, if you know what I mean, and even if you don't. I MUST write, that is my feeling, but I have nothing at all to write about. What shall I do. What shall I do? What shall I do!

. . .are you a man who tried to encase himself in a work of art?

(Pause)

Yes.

I must be the one.

Go to the board and write something.

(Blackboard appears)(He goes, "I have nothing to say")

Interesting that, though you're writing, and a writer, you write I have nothing to say rather than I have nothing to write. (Pause) Why do you suppose that happened?

I couldn't say.

When things don't come from the depths, where do you think they come from.

From the lack of depth

Now let me ask you another question, (silence).

Yes?

Ah, you see? That's your answer.

What's the point?

I'm under no obligation.

Correct

Everything I say is correct. Jesus christ-- I've got to REMEMBER that!