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"That left me wondering, however, what function religion fulfills, and why it appeals to so many people I suspect that it has to do with the human brain; what my late husband Heinz called "the lizard brain." We still dream when we sleep - much as people did thousands and millions of years ago. Our brain associates feelings and images and makes up "story lines" that pervade our unconscious, and powerfully affect our sense of power and meaning. This kind of experience gives rise to religious tradition, and responds to the images, the music, the worship, and the stories we know from ancient traditions."(Edge: THE POLITICS OF CHRISTIANITY : A TALK WITH ELAINE PAGELS)
:: note :: . . . hmm . . . last night dreamt a hugh complex dream about renovating an old room . . . have spent the last month stripping and preparing the studio for a badly required exterior painting . . . the job was done in a mysterious sistine blue . . . then dreamt the dream . . . dreaming and working have merged . . . not for the first time . . .
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"Kommerell does not go as far as Nietzsche when he talks of the "wilderness of bitterest and most superfluous agonies of soul in which probably the most fruitful men of all times have languished! To listen to the sighs of these solitary and agitated minds: 'Ah, give me madness, you heavenly powers! Madness that I may at last believe in myself!...'""(JCRT Issue 4.2 : Laughter as Gesture: Hilarity and the Anti-Sublime)
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Ich bin ein Berliner
Ich bin ein Berliner
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Farewell
Dismounting from my horse
to drink some wine with you,
I asked you --
"Where are you going?"
You replied --
that your heart's desires were ungranted,
You were going back to rest on South Mountain.
Then you went --
I put no more questions,
The white clouds floats endlessly by...
Wang Wei (A.D. 701 - 761)
"Accordingly, the book is content to maintain the West's fascination with the exotic elsewhere, and to repeat the unequal exercise of power that enables us to name peoples as the 'other'. . . In fact, this book is primarily about anthropology's history rather than photography's. In that context, many of its contributors do offer trenchant critiques of the ways the West has chosen to represent the victims of its colonial ambitions." (nytimes:How the Other Half Photographs: Looking Globally)
:: note :: . . . a nice news critique/review of a complex issue . . . studying any of the arts is full of perils . . .
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"Movements encompass floating foot movements and gentle shoulder shrugs that emanate from a flow of breath rather than mechanical lifting of the shoulder. Such movements are referred to by Koreans as "motion in stillness" and express qualities of mot and hung, which Van Zile wrote roughly translates, respectively, to "an inner spiritual quality of charm and grace and a feeling of lively animation or enthusiasm, both which lead to an irrepressible joy or giddiness."
"There is so much culture embedded in dance. This is what drew me to dance ethnology in the first place. We can learn so much about a people by looking at dance, which goes beyond being a source of entertainment."
"All dance comes from a particular culture at a particular time. Dances don't just come out of thin air. They reflect attitudes toward the body, religion, values."(Honolulu Star-Bulletin Features)
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. . . have been reading from archival material re: performances . . . this note struck me as pertinent . . .
"The traces left behind by performance are perhaps more susceptible to the approaches of contemporary archaeology than methods taken from textual analysis: the documentation of unwritten happening, attested through material trace, is an archaeological project. For certain, performance is inevitably in the past and ultimately enigmatic. It was thus around questions of documenting performance that I was drawn back to archaeology, a discipline intimately concerned with retrieval, recording and reassembling."(Mike Pearson & Michael Shanks. Theatre/Archaeology.)
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::note ::a portrait . . . performing as the demon of lonliness . . . more than twenty years ago . . . fifty years ago I thank my mother for her courage . . .
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“Bernhard’s personal investments in his characters’ utterances are everywhere apparent - many plays, for example, include characters whose diatribes against Austria and Austrians resemble Bernhard’s own - more often than not those authorial commitments ar impossible to specify very precisely. In an early novel, for example (Der Italiener ), we encounter a narrator who says, “In my work, if I see the signs of a story developing anywhere, or if somewhere in the distance between the mountains of prose I spot even the hint of a story beginning to appear, I shoot it.” It is the same with sentences: I have the urge to take entire sentences and annihilate them before they can possilbly take shape. “Which is (as Bernard surely knew) almost precisely what Nazis liked to say of “culture”: “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my Browning.” A character speaking and author speaking a Nazi propagandist: how does one come to terms with such intimidating abysses of personation? How does one distinguish the voice of the author from those of his represented personae?” (Gruber, William. Missing Persons Character and Characterization in Modern Drama. from Mental Life Thomas Bernhard's Comic Types p. 109)
:: note :: . . . there are many connections between theatrical space and screen space . . . when I first started writing on the blog screen it was this connection I wished to explore and as always been the subtext for 'If' . .
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"It was Peter Brook who talked to me for the first time of the Japanese expression, the art of the beginner. It is the art of the beginner in the Japanese sense, in the sense of the battle, of the warrior, of the Samourai. That is the capacity to obtain a kind of technical fullness and at the same time to drop it completely and to be ready to behave as a beginner. And in the old tradition of the art of the Samourai one says that if somebody uses the knowledge of the warrior and if he does not know how to abandon it completely if he is not really like a beginner when he goes into battle, without knowledge and without consciousness, then he is like someone who is mad or who is asleep and in this case he will be killed. Because only if he is a beginner, only if his fight is the last, only in this case it could be the first in his life. And he can win because he can forget that it is a question of winning, It is in this sense that I talk about the permanence of beginning; To tell the truth, I speak about the original state."(Jerzy Grotowski. The art of the beginner)
:: note :: . . . a print article, lost many years ago and sorely missed, surfaced . . . turning everything outside-in has placed valuable documents back into the hand . . . i have misquoted this idea much too often . . .
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"The music begins in speech, rises to a chantlike recitative and often breaks into full-blown song. The style is hypnotic and captivating, though it takes time to attune the ear to a purposefully rough-hewn vocal timbre and the metabolism to a glacial pace. Fear not; there is time aplenty. "Heungboga," at two hours, is the shortest of the five pansori. It is also said to be the most humorous, though the humor is mostly subtle and understated."
"In the classic style of performance presented here, a lone storyteller holds forth in front of a screen, wielding a fan in one hand, a kerchief in the other. A percussionist provides spare punctuation, striking the skin or the frame of a drum and emitting grunts of exhortation. (Evidently audience members are welcome to voice encouragement, too, to judge by the hoots coming from a man behind me for a time.)(nytimes: From Korea, Simple Tales Elaborately Told in Song)
"Pansori literally means songs at a place of entertainment as "pan" signifies the place of performance while "sori" means the sound. But what exactly is a pansori? Its literal definition of songs at a place of entertainment isn't too clear."(Pansorisong)
"From the Korean words pan, meaning "performing site," andsori, meaning "song, . . . From July 16 through 20, the festival presents all five classical pansori works still in existence, prefaced by an evening of shamanistic ritual performance and a panel discussion drawing cultural connections between the two. (There's a fine line, it would seem, between a ritualistic shaman connecting the natural and supernatural worlds and the pansori singer who speaks for all the characters in the story.)"(Newsday.com - Pansori: Telling Korean Tales)
"In Pansori performances, audience participation is not only encouraged but also required. Try to listen to Choo-Im-Sae (short words or expressions expressing approval or emotional involvement) of the drummer and the audience."(Seung-Jae Moon:Samples of PANSORI)
:: note :: . . . the research that occuppied Jerzy Grotowski during his final phase of work - Art as Vehicle - was partially based on performaces or performance fragments that have survived from very early times . . . pansori . . . a project proposal . . .
to converge the past cultural practices (pansori) with individual "deep" experiences . . an archetypal, ahistorical, finely executed performance . . . back movement to the ancient / forward to the present at the same time . . . pansori / action . . .
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Discernment
Bathed in a black green cool shade
beneath an intense midsummer sun
a lone gull cry bids attentive skyward glance.
Searing white shapes
with black tipped wings
weave a magical dance
breathlessly disappearing
as suddenly as the opening cry,
into an infinite cloudless blue.
The disarming gentle breeze
lifts ideas and scatters them
to the ground.
As I gather fallen thoughts
being as careful at the beginning
as at the end,
the voice behind the wall whispers:
“The way is to the world
as the river and sea
are to rivulets and streams -
darkly visible.”
With that
I blunt the sharpness,
untangle the knots
and soften the glare.
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Coda
. . .written just before it is too dark to see. . .
Five flames surround
the white umbrella.
A twilight wind rustling sky.
A calm surrounds the fingers
which hold a sphere.
A green world.
Toss, turn, bob and bounce.
We shape the world consistantly.
Call a star and it appears even though
there all the time, brighter and brighter strong
minding the eye into the night - goodnight.
Image seer boy draws a volcano.
The spoken for voice speaks like a true little cat.
Sad to leave, to let go, wipe the tears, turn, go - we never leave.
Umbrella in the sky points to the dipper.
Cables converge. Long ago another boy
made a telescope to track Galelio’s moons.
Grind, polish, measure the shallow concave mirror as the father watches.
Focal point over thirty years away.
Reflect Self. Good Night.
Light morning brings fresh water.
The rushing water challenges night dreams
into full daylight smothing ruffled feathers.
Relentless journey through prone silence
into walking the vocabulary.
Needful stretch. How to meet the night?
The painful questions scratch.
The itch begs action not answers.
Thoughtful sun brightens and warms.
Take care.
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
AfterWorld
The Temple
The old one sings.
The old wanderer,
on the edge
of civilization,
leans against
an oriental vase
and sings in solitude
outside of time.
The seer
on the stone
sings from the
other world.
Sings a
flamed song
with authority
of mind
and memory
about regeneration.
Sings a song of sight.
The cascading white
baby’s breath,
the dried miniture
red roses,
and the two
tall peacock
feathers
listen.
Bathe seven times
at the threshold.
Sleep. Awake.
Sleep. Awake.
Step internal
into the external
beyond.
The dead escape
through the jade disc.
See the middle,
immanental,
transcend
the precise
empty
prescence.
A sudden revelation.
Do not forget
the beginning.
No violence.
No birth passages.
No pregnant potentiality.
No fertile gateway.
No map.
Do not travel north
to property woman,
known by her
curly grey hair,
who promises riches
if only you hear
her child cry.
Remember
the warning.
Bear trap
off the trail.
Silence pours
between the verses.
Flowing, glowing, blowing.
The sparks of light within
may be fanned into flame
flame into fire
fire into star
a star closer into sun
& the sun
moves behind
the mountain.
The palm
transforms
the silence
clapping,
clapping,
clapping.
Listen.
The staff
taps searching
for words,
deeds and
utterances.
The rod
pierces
the darkness
to set
in order.
Enter.
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Day 5: Juan de Fuca Straight
Fire Bathes Furiously Red in Golden Waves
Flee down, run down, secret down
with heel heavy haste
through deep forest brocade
into the open ocean
carying and calling fire and light.
The sun raises steam
anticipating a wild entry.
Light curls at the edge of the waves,
foetus listening to the dawn and the deep
and the distant whale song of a mothers womb.
Fire faces Ocean
Mediate the directions,
stretch full the circle,
signal the infinte waves.
The beacon revolves
in sunless noon day and black night.
A still point on an endless wave beaten coast.
Fire meets Ocean.
Dip to bring red brown sea weed into the air.
This healing colour casts a ceremonial bronze invitation.
Wave catcher rolls low, rolls with, rolls to peeks of passion.
Stance must be altered.
Lift
be strong
supported and free.
Dive
harpoon like
spearing golden waves
clutching emptiness.
Curl
wash, wash, wash
take leave.
The sun questions
“Did you enter the ocean brown to be healed?”
It is a time of healing.
Fire enters Ocean.
The return of the Snake.
Three slither for cover
startled from sunning.
On snake point
the living shed skin
and turn to rich blue.
Ocean.
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Interlude/The Snake
A wrapped staff pokes and prods. Checking for support.
Gathering shells, sea weed and rings for unknown reasons.
The ever present bear lumbers about at a good distance.
The blue opens and behind the face of the rock wall,
algae stalagites drip porous green on slimy rock.
Sunlight dances to the music of the tidal pools.
Other worldly craters and black lava like embedded
chunks, perfectly shaped balls, form a crude circle.
The wrist wrapping, snapping colours of blue, yellow and green
tame nothing but excite the spirit. A grey spotted sea lion lazily
approaches.
Pause.
Long green grass floats. The snake splashes a rainbow mist.
The undulations peel away skin to the silent ullalations.
The watersheds beckon. Be careful of the trickster squalls.
Fall into tidewater. The shells break. Departing soaked the
whipping mist and cold rain chills to the bone. Sea pups wave
goodbye. Touch the purple sea urchin. Let the stars recognize
the depth. One door is all you need to enter
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Day 4 - Vancouver Island, British Columbia
SalmonRun
Snaps alive in salty wind. Orange jelly eggs.
On the beach.
Breathe the waves.
Turn back and listen to the roar.
Run the washed, pebble strewn coast line.
Wash inside. Wash outside. Touch nothing. Build endurance.
Sweep west and east and west again. Listen. Take time.
Dance the spine, backbone of invisible cities.
A bright sunflower brilliant light shines.
A place comes.
Smile. You are invisible.
It is good to be strong.
Prepare to cross over. Other worlds wait.
At the portal offer seven salmon berries.
They are bitter this early summer.
The night brought apocalyptic dreams of vast
technological landscapes, desolate cities,
wireless power poles crossing endless empty
asphalt highways and wind catchers
stagnant standing the propellors still.
I awake heart racing - need water.
Surging waves leap the sky.
Gravel chatters in cold rain.
Stagger out, shake off the wetness.
It is written: “ripple, eddie, chops & swells washouts and turbulence
some holes are ‘keepers’, they won’t let you in.”
The ravens grumble.
“Yes you can see.
Yes you have remembered.
Can you face the face.”
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Day Three: Cultus Lake, British Columbia
EagleEye
The jay vanishes letting me know I am watched.
Gold plunges the lake by ancient cedar’s dangling tips.
I linger on the rock washed edge.
Footstepping warm water.
Three tiny steamlets empty shock cold,
below the surface.
Still wind over the lake.
Eye: (soundlessly) Do you see me?
The musican’s hand touches the edge of a volcano.
Rumbles, shakes and eruptions belch green yellow.
Funnels and lightning everywhere.
Volcano lady pointed up to three volcanoes in a line.
He ran and ran and ran into the storm along the shore.
Three unseen though visible light paintings remain.
Eye: (sighing) Do you remember me?
The actor feels his pulse
detecting no movement.
Undresses under the ancient cedar.
The temptation is to seek advice
from the dangling branches.
Lake listen to the coffin or canoe.
Leave a bundle in the damp, crowded air.
Wade in marking place.
Something stirs in the calm.
Just for a moment gliding under the skin.
Lurking. Algae grab and pull.
Suddenly the body washes ashore
like a massive log we name driftwood.
Flee over small, sharp, broken, black gravel.
Run. Shiver. Dress. Morning passes. Leaf falls.
Eagle Eye: (blinks) . . .
Wren or was it the Robin who smiled at the story
of the falling and rising mists over Cultis Lake.
The eye blinked.
“Yes, the eagle blinks spaces which enter other worlds.”
When I first came, that night a year ago, the blue heron
stood majestic, inscrutable and respectful.
Then lifted into graceful flight over the furious water.
Your brooding is known.
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Day Two - West of Calagary, Alberta
After the Storm
The voice stands wrapped & quivering.
The milky Bow River washes orange.
Fast fed from glacial run-off,
after a night of thunder and sheets of rain,
the feet warm the ice cold current
waving east.
Tiny strawberries clothe the path to the water.
Three cricket exo-skeletons close in the eye.
A delicate flower disppears soundlessly into the forest
where mirrored orange traces rise in lush poppy hearts.
Shiny black bear halts all in her path.
The cub blissful and gentle protected sniffs.
I’ve seen this bear once briefly before dusk
running the waves amoung heavy snowed cedars
dripping wet on a brilliant morning in Manning Park.
No need for food.
Nourishment is found.
Thank you for the chantrelles.
What do you want to know?
The old goat
on the craggy rock ledge
moves his head abruptly.
Despite blended grey silver grey
allows himself to be seen.
What do you know?
What do you know?
I ask silently.
Don’t tell me stranger.
I know you as mountain creature.
What do you know?
The stellar jay startles me and laughs,
beak stuffed full of bread decoying from tree to tree.
“No such thing as a free meal!”
Raven screams oracles into the tropical green.
Visit the temple of accumulated fragrance.
Share place with water striders and dragonflies
as they float and skim the surface.
Skunk cabbage pods leave drum mallets.
Elderberries intoxicate beckoning into a world of black mystery.
I step high to the west
wanting to soar high.
Higher.
High to tighten the green.
She can’t be lost.
The grizzly leaves teeth markers.
The old ways are practiced.
We have much higher to go and even further
to descend into the night.
Dark spirit catcher and wind
bring mystery eyes and sleep.
Fly high.
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Travelling Questions&Answers in Wilds/WaterWays
Day One - West of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Unfurling the red.
A gentle snap.
You ‘re at the well.
Are you awake?
Forget, let all drop, abandon shyness.
Water pours through gravel and heat waves.
From a distant swing
the call squeaks a vibrating past memory.
Are you thirsty?
The crows remain.
Follow father’s black blood line
back to grandmother.
Past the pass,
behind the Crow,
where mountain lions cross
and mushrooms flourish.
Not time to mine the black coal
or mime false black diamonds of youth.
Let sweet mists disappear the dams
and resevoirs of Old Man River.
Leave behind the glorious foothills
of Pincher Creek and Head Smashed In.
Tradition longs for past wanderings.
Pass the past,
behind the Crow,
where mountain lions crossed
and mushrooms flourished.
Yes I am awake.
Yes I am thirsty.
The delicate doe stretches
beginning her solitary twilight foraging.
:: comment :: ... this writing and the next six days will document a journey form praire to coast ... a physical map and an inner premonition ... a time shortly before the death of my father ... unexpectedly ...
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... a summer years ago now . . . Felix running . . .
Running to Lake Missawawi
“walking across the middle of the earth
they didn’t know where they were going
or who had sent them”
my father dreamed these words before he died
and I sat at his side then and searched his face
where the sweat poured instead of tears
felt for his hand on the edge of saying
how far we travel into this presence
off down the road on a morning in Canada
a point at the base of my spine keeps
me going, while I think of him,
my friends, all of us,
building some huge useless machine
on holy ground
goodbye to his hooded eyes
tired at the end, but blue as snakes,
goodbye the proud forehead, hawknose
and wry half mocking lips
curved with pain at the big joke
I run by these cleared fields
towards a baffling precision of choice
in which all, and nothing,
is as it should be
into a large sky running goodbye
to the small friendly lines at the corners
of those eyes, acquainted with fear and arrogance,
desolate galaxies now
hurling in a dim flicker of neon
the road opens on a continuum
of decision-making, a slow vision
painstakingly absurd, our work
- weeding the tundra
some plants must be pulled up
others bind the soil together
the truth will not be established
it is like an unexpected animal
I will keep running on the road to Missawawi
with the wheat, the clouds and the badgers,
when the flaps are closed I will sit and wait
with you all close in the hot darkness, praying,
I will write it down, father,
there is a kind of dying, like the wind,
which leaves only bits of paper behind
by Felix Mendelsohn
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"This groundbreaking exhibition examines the complex relationship between healing and the creative process in the work of fifteen international artists whose artistic practices promote curative effects. Taking as its starting point the seminal work of German artist Joseph Beuys and Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, this exhibition examines the variety of ways in which these artists have influenced and directed subsequent generations of artists"(ICA Boston: Exhibitions)
:: comment :: . . . artist Beuys certainly imprinted a way of seeing /being during my student days . . . continues to exert a powerful force . . . 
in the last months a study which became known as Mortal Man unconsciously explored the relationship between healing and the creative process . . . as always the attempt to describe or annotate any work is limiting . . . Mortal Man had many more resources and sources . . . until this moment the connection between Beuys and creativity and healing was dormant . . . never during the working process were any of these ideas discussed . . . processes occur . . . only in reflection does the depth and breadth emerge . . . could be reflecting complete nonsense . . . that is a retrospect risk . . .
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. . . the articulation becomes more exact . . . Schechner in Performance Studies An Introduction identifies Grotowski's Vertical Transculturalism - Barba's Horizontal Interculturalism - Brook's Transnational Theater - Gómez-Pena's Hybrid Culture . . . the distinctions are clear and provide a way of describing work which may touch these spheres . . . here are his definations to be used in the context of performance studies . . .
| Intercultural: Between or amoung two or more cultures. Intercultural performances may emphasize the integrative or the disjunctive. |
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| Transculturalism: working or theorizing across cultures with the assumption that there are cultural universals - behaviours, concepts, or beliefs that are true of everyone, everywhere, at all times. |
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| Vertical/horizontal intercultural research: Vertical research seeks original or true universal performaces in the convergence of past cultural practices with individual deep experiences. Horizontal research locates transcultural or universal truths in similarities among contemporary cultures. |
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| Hybrid performances: Performances which incorporate elements from two or more different cultures or cultural sources. |
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I sleep.
A package dangles from a pier tied off at the end of a washed out bridge. It drops and descends thousands of feet into the ocean. I dive after it.
Nameless faces shout after me not to go screaming that it is too deep. The water is cool. A dog swims next to me.
 (Dagger Child, 1947[^]49. Painted wood, 76 1/8 x 5 3/8 x 5 1/8 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 92.4001. © Louise Bourgeois/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.)
We enter a cave which takes us up to a hidden city. Atlantis I think. It is an old city - narrow streets, majestic buildings and green parks. The dog trails behind me barking incessantly. Pedestrians give me dirty looks as if telling me to curb the dog.
I turn and the dog is hurt. It has been tortured and I am sickened by what I see. There is no blood and the dog’s face is so innocent. I don’t know what to do.
A young woman approaches and tells me that I must eliminate all vestiges of arrogance, laziness, selfishness and partiality to oneself. She says this is a delicate matter. The danger could be to destroy any sense of self-worth and warp the personality.
I remember thinking that I read that recently in a article about breaking down Egotism and I want to ask why she was talking to me but she is already gone disappearing into the crowd that has gathered around a statue in the park ahead.
The dog struggles to get up. His legs have been severely cut and the attempt is futile. He lies on the cobblestone preparing to die. I can’t bare to watch him and run into the nearest open entrance. It is a courtyard full of furniture and abandoned household items. A jewlry box catches my attention. I examine it and find no name. Opening the box reveals gold amulets.
From a window on the second floor a women coughs. I know she is the owner and I am full of guilt. I apologize profusely and place the box down backing away. She accepts my apologies saying they are not necessary at all.
She is an older women dressed in white with sharp features. I have the impression she could be a film actress.
I awake.
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I sleep
The green hill. An immaculate, polished, perfect hill.
Two tiny streams flow tranquilly down changing colours as they empty into a calm, clear lake. There is a figure lying at the bottom of the lake.
At the top of the hill a gentle pulsing begins. A whisper wind in the ear tells me to step back.
A giant persimmon rolls down the hill and splashes into the lake breaking into thousands of marbles which skim along the surface. They transform into black balls flying towards me. They seem like eyeballs and they travel straight and true following a barely visible grooved bore. I’m staring into a rifle bore and hear a shot.
I turn to see a white horse stumbling in the furrows of a freshly tilled field.
I awake.
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I sleep.
The smell of smoke hangs over me. All night I dream of my father who has miraculously come back to life. I don’t know how to explain this phenomenon. He has been dead a few years now and yet here he is with us in all of the normal family situations. At the supper table, watching TV and working in the garden.
A year after his death I saw him crossing 25th Street leaving an Italian restaurant where I went for my first date. I recognized him but later rationalized that it was someone who looked like him. I’d been told we each have a double somewhere on this planet.
I’m around 16 years old and running towards the house. I have to warn the others that there is a fire blazing and not much time to get out before the whole place burns down.
At the back door I can barely enter the kitchen. The beautiful hardwood floors are charred and glowing embers. On the table is my Nono (grandfather’s) Mass card.
A black and white picture of this noble, elegant man in profile. He looks gentle yet is a dramatically imposing figure.
I awoke.
:: comment:: That day I burnt all the flowers given to me at the time of my fathers funeral. They were dry and tied with a black ribbon. For six months they lay atop the filing cabinet. I can still see them when I close my eyes.
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I sleep
Enter a old, dilapidated, second hand bookstore. Young kids swarm the place. I find myself pushed to the only empty corner - the ‘ancient manuscripts’ section. The owner, behind his desk, peers out at me nodding and head gesturing in some sort of silent language.
A telephone rings beside me. Hadn’t noticed the booth with it’s almost obsolete dial phone. Reaching for the receiver it stops ringing. I’m here to purchase a book for “Jimmy”, a young, eccentric collector too sick to leave his apartment and whom I’ve never met. He leaves notes and cash in my mailbox. Since I read the books before passing them on it’s a nice co-dependant relationship.
The young kid behind me is astounded that the tome I’m buying costs only $22.00. He claims he didn’t even think books in the ‘old book’ section were for sale. He thought they were reference books. As I’m talking to the kid I slip the book seller three special coins. He winks saying, “Jimmy will return this soon enough.”
The book is handed back to me wrapped in a silk shawl. A beautiful, priceless fabric. I know I am in the possession of something incredibly rare. I calmly leave the premises, arrive at my apartment and run up the flights of broad marble stairs to the atelier which has two massive doors with no handles - just push to enter.
The left door has a Thanka scroll pinned to it and I knock on the right. Loud music and chanting can be heard from behind the doors. My knocking thunders echoing in the hallway. No answer. I knock again this time lightly not wishing to disturb.
Suddenly, as if all the above were a daydream, I find myself cramped into a small auditorium waiting for a lecture by a renowned scholar of eastern religious studies. His wife, a well known musician, is introducing her husband who will speak on . . . her voice trails off. I remember the book. It had a page missing. On the table to the right of the speakers podium is a white flower in a glass, waterless vase. The flower droops. A foreboding tremble chills me. I fear the scholar will soon die. He has four objects to pass on.
I awake.
:: comment :: . . . planning to devote July to recording dreams . . . night dreams from the past to the present . . . why July . . .
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