and toward the burning theater on stage with a frightening set design including the former cafe where he sits writing.
    two figures approach center stage from opposite directions. they shake hands and then step back from each other and circle one another while singing their lines.
    x: moving on clock hands.
    y: moving between.
    x: a weird lovely day of odds and ends of various experience divorced from schemes.
    y: a web of manifestation absorbed into an out of our minds.
    and another figure cartwheels on-stage and lands standing between them.
    z: to ponder this that is this and this that is that and an unnamed beast to wonder and behold.
    x: again a story of secret romance of eating living flesh.
    y: lick up the blood.
    z: all are equal.
    y: stand up and bow down kowtow eager to please straight at the heart - knocking on heaven's head.
    x: give it to me or you're dead.
    z: fled away from frightened fear rage double cross backfire - boom!
    explode set.
    y: again another attempt to have direct communication with it.
    x: a glance at it is blinding.
    z: to dance with it is bewildering.
    x: to be it is beyond amazing.
    y: a chance at an equation.
    z: a memory of happenstances flung far afield to witness the death that is the death of death contradiction supposing a confused flurry furry blurry exiled demons.
    x: what?
    y: when?
    z: now.
    y: subordinate domination.
    x: who divides the pie how?
    z: who has survived the battle of thieves?
    y: it goes down, the flames - a rejoicing.
    x: what is the meaning?
    z: what is the cause?
    y: a tradition.
    z: a flag?
    x: and maybe he (glances at him sitting at the table in the cafe writing) was thinking maybe that maybe he wasn't thinking at all.
    y: a ghost who remains at the scene of the crime.
    z: what is defended?
    x: what is attacked?
    the lights turn deep red. snow falls lightly.
    y: to be lost from it.
    x: to be no longer looking for a way out.
    z: to have surrendered to the will that controls the masses which if there was a mass will it wouldn't be able to do so.
    y: jealous of not being able to control rather than angry at being controlled.
    x: to be the one who gives the word.
    another figure lowers from above on a wooden platform. the figure steps off and joins the others who are now wandering freely around the stage.
    q: because what is the message?
    z: do not obey this command?
    x: authorize questioning?
    y: how does one get oneself set up to get others to obey in order to tell them not to?
    q: how does one become the authority to tell others to question authority?
    x: and who questions this one?
    and he sits in the cafe silent in the noise around him. he lights another cigarette. he plays a game of chess with his imagination. he doesn't need a board or any pieces. he doesn't need to move his hand. there is no opposition.
    z: what is there for him to defend?
    x: what is there for him to attack?
    q: anything that tries to stop him.
    y: anything that gets in his way.
    z: anything between him and his imagination.
    q: some will die for god, country, family, lovers, friends.
    x: he will die for himself and his imagination.
    y: he'll let it go until it comes down to letting himself go.
    z: they can have god, country and all the rest.
    x: they won't get him.
    y: he is both what they desire and what they fear.
    x: he holds one in one hand and the other in the other hand.
    y: all in his imagination.
    z: he controls the machine he is controlled by.
    y: he pulls the strings that pull the strings he is pulled by.
    q: instant feed back at a point between his eyes.
    z: and it's a lovely day.
    q: cool morning becoming gradually warmer.
    x: then why is it snowing?
    y: because we are inside the burning theater.
    q: perhaps those are ashes.
    x: and dust to dust.
    z: down by the river (where he shot his baby) he stands where others have stood and reached this point of departure.
    y: into the beginnings of it.
    x: down and through a rabbit hole.
    q: living to be alive.
    x: a crack in the wall of rationalogic reason surrounding him.
    q: can we get out?
    y: not until we have sung our lines.
    q: wait.
    x: don't ask him to speak anything that makes sense to you.
    z: or else.
    q: he has fallen far behind.
    y: he does not lead nor does he follow.
    x: he is where he wants to be.
    z: defending it and attacking it.
    q: to lead it following to it.
    z: to open it as it closes.
    q: to be forever not coming nor going.
    y: where is he not?
    x: can we find him?
    z: he's right over there (points at him at the table smoking a cigarette).
    q: my beautiful beloved of one beating heart that pumps our shared blood.
    x: to feed you as i am fed.
    z: i sleep.
    y: i wake and there is no one but myself and you.
    z: though you are not here.
    q: i damn all that keeps us apart.
    z: though we do not need to be together.
    y: i hate all that will not allow me to see you.
    z: though i do not need to see you.
    x: and anything is everything without being something.
    z: so with flags furled my armies watch and wait for the first available openings which come up every now and then.
    q: i see them appearing around me moving into position.
    y: who defends these walls?
    z: though these walls do not need defending.
    q: who issues the commands?
    y: who sits on the throne?
    q: what walls?
    x: what commands?
    q: what throne?
    z: where do these exist?
    x: it's all for you who would be mine.
    z: to see you laughing.
    q: to see you with nothing more to desire and nothing more to fear.
    z: where does that exist?
    x: there you find the walls.
    q: there you will see who issues the commands.
    y: there you will see the throne.
    z: none of this will harm you.
    y: do you dare sit down?
    z: none of this will keep you from harm.
    x: so what is it for?
    q: what does it do?
    x: who does it serve?
    y: are these questions in your mind?
    z: they are not in mine.
    q: do they trouble you?
    z: not me.
    q: are you laughing?
    x: are you amused by this?
    z: all those who are not may be dismissed to go their own way.
    y: let them go to wherever it is they are going.
    z: what is that to you?
    y: it is nothing to me.
    the snow/ashes stop falling. the lights turn from red to blue. he gets up from his table to go use the bathroom.
    z: we are where we are.
    q: we are where we can laugh.
    x: we are where we can dance.
    z: we are where we can be amused.
    y: and alone.
    x: i am not troubled by this.
    q: only if that does not allow you to join me.
    z: whether you choose to or not is no matter.
    y: only that you are allowed to.
    z: and that you allow yourself.
    x: but how do i know this?
    q: how do i know if you are laughing, dancing or are amused?
    y: i am left to guess.
    z: i am left to imagine.
    x: and i do imagine.
    y: i imagine that you are laughing.
    q: that you are dancing.
    y: that you are amused.
    x: i imagine that i am not alone.
    q: with the way this world is as it seems to be at the moment, that is all i have and all i can do.
    z: it is enough.
    x: what else is there?
    z: but i can also imagine that you are not any of these things.
    q: i can imagine you caught in a web of lies.
    z: i can only wonder which is true.
    x: can anyone tell me?
    q: it depends on who has the crackers and cheese.
    x: a habit.
    q: a play.
    y: a game.
    z: something meant to be controlled.
    q: something unchanged.
    x: the hunger of it gone.
    y: static satisfaction.
    the lights turn green. a light breeze blows across the stage with once in awhile scraps of paper and plastic.
    z: and there is someone who is no one.
    q: anyone at all.
    z: someone i made up out of imagination and flesh and blood.
    x,y,q: that sounds scary.
    z: i have called him here to serve me in this world as a vehicle for my continuing experience.
    x,y,q: oh my.
    z: he and i are the same except he is the manifestation of who we are. he is the flesh and blood. i am the imagination.
    x: they are companions.
    q: they are separate yet undivided.
    z: i will deny him as he will deny me.
    y: they are products of the machine that we have discovered and we designed and had built for us.
    x: the machine is all.
    y: it does not die.
    q: it does not exist nor does it not exist.
    x: so many things are that way these days.
    y: blame it on the computers.
    q: the machine is not a computer.
    x: though part of what it is is a computer.
    x: we are all computers.
    q: the machine may be a metaphor.
    x: but it is very much more real than that.
    z: this is the same with him and me.
    q: and it is for you.
    x: you who may exist and live or may not.
    y: perhaps the time is not yet.
    z: i have thought i have seen you before, but i was mistaken. i told him he was wrong but he often does not listen. i have no command over him. i do not want a puppet robot. i allow him freedom as i rely on it for new experience. if either of us is a puppet robot, i suppose it could be me.
    x: how does he know?
    y: who can tell him?
    z: what am i independent of him? what is my existence beyond his? when i no longer perceive myself in reflection through him is there anything else to be perceived?
    q: and they both will die.
    x: the machine lives on.
    y: kitty cats, kitty cats - where do you roam?
    x: here pussy pussy pussy...
    q: but you are here with us.
    z: yes. that is something. i sometimes forget. his existence becomes so dominant. and his existence brings up many questions. and i had too many to begin with. now they are at least doubled.
    q: and double the trouble.
    z: this is all as how the existence of others have always brought up questions.
    y: quite similar questions that we all have from time to time.
    x: i think he asks too many questions.
    q: he is troubled.
    z: and many different answers.
    y: some of the answers are confusing.
    z: before him and without him these questions did not occur to me - except about myself. and i forget these questions as they occur and each time they are asked again. there are no definite answers.
    x: there are no definite questions.
    q: how do you know so much?
    x: i don't know. these are just my lines.
    z: all these questions make our head spin like a galaxy of stars or an atom of particle/waves. it never stands still. it is always happening.
    x: each moment.
    q: all these points of awareness along the way.
    y: each are uniquely amazing in and of themselves with their own little galaxies or atoms spinning.
    q: threaded together in a series on a string tangled around itself.
    x: is this like string theory?
    q: what is string theory.
    x: it is a theory about strings that make everything up.
    y: we're making this up.
    q: oh - i forgot.
    z: i'm not. i'm not making anything up. this is really happening.
    x: oh, sure it is.
    q: sounds made up to me.
    y: who really thinks that way?
    z: i do.
    q: well, that's you.
    x: so what else?
    z: so, he's in it more than i am. he's subject to it.
    x: it?
    z: the world.
    y: oh, that bug-a-boo...
    z: he's the one who feels the pain - a fact he never fails to remind me of when he's feeling it. he has cursed me in his pain. he has screamed and shouted for me to come out where he can see me and be in it with him.
    x: what did you do?
    z: what could i do? i don't exist where he exists. i am only his imagination.
    q: i thought he was your imagination.
    y: same difference.
    x: what may be real to one may not be real to another.
    z: he feels that i am judging him. i am not. i am merely observing him. but i do feel it. it's just not attached to me that's all like it is with him. i wanted to see what is was like to be utterly abandoned and alone in a world that has no pity or compassion, only regulations and laws. to be surrounded by darkness and despair one could do nothing about to get away from except to die and hope for oblivion.
    x: that sounds depressing.
    y: that sounds cool.
    q: maybe you should make someone up too.
    y: i just might do that.
    x: not me. i like me just fine, even if i am only a character in a play.
    q: better than oblivion.
    x: sometimes.
    z: that's what i keep telling him. i don't think he believes me. sometimes he holds a gun to his head and threatens to blow me away if i don't give him better answers.
    x: what do you do?
    z: i wait until he puts the gun down. he'll blow himself away too. he doesn't want that. but sometimes that's what it takes for him to realize that. he walks up to the point of oblivion. just one moment away. bang. not even that. and he stands there awhile looking out over the abyss. he imagines not existing as much as he is able. he also imagines pulling the trigger and nothing happens.
    y: what does happen?
    z: he doesn't know. something. he enters into some other dimensional vortex matrix or something and comes out someplace else.
    x: wow.
    z: but he doesn't believe this enough to pull the trigger.
    q: that's good. i'd miss you.
    z: oh, someone else would take my place.
    x: not unless he's the one writing this.
    q: do you think he is?
    they all stop and look at the table where he is sitting, writing. he doesn't look up.
    y: it could be.
    x: (looking at z) do you know?
    z: no.
    x: do you think it's possible?
    q: anything is possible.
    z: i don't know. it's all some neat little sidestep flip/flop turnabout dance done with mirrors. it could be any which way. and then it's narrowed down to a 50/50 binary possibility - yes/no with a pinch of maybe if salt that extends out into infinite forever or almost close but no cigar with schrödinger's cat swung by its tail.
    x: that's a little too strange.
    they go back to wandering randomly around the stage.
    q: is the cat alive or dead?
    y: that's the question.
    z: what's in the black box in the corner of the room with all our toys?
    q: we are told it is forbidden.
    z: so, of course, we go right to it and pick it up and shake it and pound it and try to pick the lock.
    x: so, what's in there?
    y: and is it alive or dead?
    q: and it's driving us nuts that we don't know.
    x: is this symbolic of anything?
    z: it's symbolic of everything.
    y: it's our ultimate desire.
    x; maybe it's our ultimate fear.
    q: we must seek to kill it before it possesses us.
    z: it already has possessed us.
    y: who's to say that what's inside the black box isn't another black box, and inside that one, another one, and so on?
    q: not me.
    x: or me either.
    z: i don't care.
    y: oh yeah - you've got your own problems.
    q: maybe what's inside the black box is what we put into it without our knowing. we cannot know. that's how it works. we can only imagine.
    z: yeah. that is what he and i did  we imagined together that what's inside the black box is all the pain and suffering and loneliness and sorrow and despair and alienation and annihilation and oblivion and all those who seek the same out of desire and fear. and meanwhile, back in the room, he and i play with all the toys and games and such while having tricked the others by telling them not to look inside the black box.
    q: i doubt that.
    x: me two.
    y: i guess me too.
    z: i didn't say this was real. it was only what we imagined. we can imagine whatever we want, can't we?
    x: yes. but what's the point?
    q: does there need to be a point?
    z: the point is no one came back from the black box to tell us what might have been inside it. they're all in some never never land by now.
    x: what kind of a point is that?
    q: if you're looking for a point, you're in the wrong place.
    y: you should be in another play.
    z: this is our fortress where there is no point. if there is no point, we can be anywhere at all.
    q: or everywhere at once.
    z: he does not understand this. he thinks that's too much of a contradiction.
    y: there can be no contradiction if there is nothing but contradiction.
    q: so one would think.
    y: pick a paradox, any paradox. any will do. turn it around and around in your mind until you find the way into and out of it. that is where you will find us.
    x: but i'm here too.
    z: welcome.
    x: yeah, right...
    and here the lights turned orange and pink. he lit another cigarette. the wind stops and is replaced with random thunder and lightning flashes. also some stage hands roll on a television set that plays cable news.
    z: so, my dear one beloved, my beautiful child, my flower, my bee, my potato, my true baby blue, my sunshine, my rainstorm, my cure, my disease, my life, my death, my everlasting, my nothing, my desire, my fear, my hope, my despair, my gain, my loss, my yin, my yang, my tao - this is all for you.
    q: who are you talking to?
    z: anybody at all. whoever might hear me. whoever might not hear me. whoever there is or isn't. whoever there is who might be possible. whoever who is who might be impossible. i am in love with the infinite sea, as a great poet once said.
    x: was that patty smith?
    q: i think it might have been.
    y: i thought it was alfred e. neuman.
    z: him too. but i am in love. that's the point.
    x: i thought you said there wasn't a point.
    q: being in love is always the point.
    z: yes. and i am in love with someone who doesn't even know i exist and i do not know they exist. it is all imagination. and his imagination. he is the dreamer of endless dreams of dreamers dreaming dreams. he is amused by his dreams, though not all his dreams are that amusing. many are not. or, rather, these offer more of a challenge to find that which is amusing about them. a challenge he is not always up to but figures out eventually. there is always something one can find amusing. there is always the possibility. the hairline crack in the thick concrete. just enough. the flickering point of illusionary faint light in the otherwise pitch black that is either infinitely small of infinitely far way if it exists other than just an imaginary trick of mind to keep itself from going entirely mad and slipping into the void of said madness. that is the ultimate point where what he finds amusing originates from. it is a point on the very edge of spacetime. it is the impossibility of the here and now. that is also my love. beyond that point is beyond his experience - even of his dreams. what might exist there is not his concern. he thinks of it now and then. but what's the point?
    x: the here and now? is that the point?
    q: whatever point would there be, or should there be?
    y: haven't we gotten off the mark?
    z: my love hates me.
    x: hates you? why?
    z: i must think that. otherwise why would that one not be here?
    q: s/he hasn't met you yet?
    z: i think it would be a she. opposites attract.
    y: men can be opposite.
    z: yes they can. but not in my case. but it doesn't matter either way. it's not sexual. it's not even anything. it's just love. it is something i fear and desire both. it could be an it.
    q: maybe you hate it.
    z: yes. that is possible. i think i do. for all my love, there is also all my hate. how can you love someone you can't also hate?
    y: how could you ever be sure?
    z: i cannot. i am distracted by everything that is. i cannot concentrate on my love, or on my hate - nor my fear or desire. it is only an object i can only hold for a moment like that infinitesimal point of light. yet it is always there. i can ignore it but i cannot escape it as it seems to lie deep within myself.
    x: you're in love with yourself?
    y: he also hates himself.
    z: is there any other? isn't everything else illusion? how can i be in love with illusion? though i have been in love with illusion before, or what i thought was being in love.
    q: maybe this is only what you think of as being in love.
    z: it could be. but this is all of my existence - all of my being.
    y: if you exist.
    z: i know i exist.
    y: what - i think therefore i am?
    q: that's shit. it proves nothing.
    x: doesn't it prove something exists even if it's not you?
    y: it could. maybe.
    z: i know therefore i am.
    q: what do you know?
    z: that i exist.
    q: but you're a character in a play, just like all of us.
    z: maybe.
    y: maybe?
    z: maybe i represent the author.
    q: that's shit too.
    z: perhaps. but i still know that i exist.
    x: dada.
    y: dada?
    x: deliberate irrationality.
    q: what does that have to do with anything?
    x: deliberate irrationality has something to do with everything.
    z: deliberate irrationality is the illusion. i am in love with the illusion.
    q: i thought you said you couldn't be in love with illusion.
    z: i asked, how could i be? i never answered the question. the illusion is the other. one always loves the other even though, as in this case, the other is oneself. ergo, deliberate irrationality.
    y: that doesn't make sense.
    x: that's the point of deliberate irrationality.
    z: yes. it is also the point of love - and of amusement, if we want to go back to that.
    q: i find this all to be amusing.
    x: that's also the point.
    y: the point is to be amused?
    z: doesn't god amuse itself?
    y: i wouldn't know.
    x: who does know?
    q: god probably doesn't even know.
    z: what else would be the point? if one isn't amused by what one is doing, why do it?
    x: so that's the point of everything, amusement?
    q: amusement is a distraction from what one really ought to be doing.
    x: what does god distract itself from?
    z: the void. oblivion. what was before creation.
    y: that would be something one would want to distract oneself from, i would think.
    x: i don't even want to think about it.
    z: the illusion of creation distracts god from the void and oblivion. this amuses it forever.
    q: and what about us? what about all the bullshit?
    z: who creates that but ourselves?
    q: god?
    z: god creates the parameters. it sets up cause and effect so that what exists can exist. we turn cause and effect against ourselves. and god allows this as it sets up a grand drama that is both tragic and comic but ultimately results in nothing since nothing is where it all came from. it is amused by this drama.
    q: at our expense.
    z: yes. at our expense.
    x: so god hates us.
    z: god would neither love us nor hate us and both love us and hate us. god knows we are illusion. but god must allow itself to forget in order to enjoy the show as god is the one playing all the parts.
    x: the old god is within dada.
    z: and dada it is - yes.
    x: good old dada.
    q: god sounds lonely.
    z: yes, it is. ergo, creation - the illusion of many things all happening at once from one end of the spectrum to the other.
    y: you've got this all figured out, don't you?
    z: no. not at all.
    q: the loneliness would be the worse part. worse than the void and oblivion stuff. what is void and oblivion? it's nothing. nothing forever. but being alone forever, that would suck out loud. no one to love. no one who loves you. no one to share experience with. i can see why it would create everything. but deep in its heart it would know. but the possibility that there is someone else would always be tempting. suppose there was someone else? why does there have to be only one god? why not two? why not a baker's dozen? why not a thousand?
    z: there are always more. but each is just as alone as one. it always come back to one.
    q: we're not one.
    z: we may come from one.
    q: who you represent?
    z: who we all represent.
    y: we're just monkeys up in trees.
    x: there's always the top monkey.
    q: who needs to be the top monkey?
    x: isn't that god, or what god is supposed to be?
    q: god could be anyone. god is everyone. god can be a bum on the street.
    z: a bum looking for love.
    y: isn't everyone looking for love?
    z: some of us look for impossible love.
    q: like you.
    z: like me.
    x: what is the point in that?
    z: it avoids complications. it avoids disappointment.
    q: it avoids any connection.
    z: the connection is with the self. it always is, even if a connection is made with another. that's where imagination comes into play. one imagines the connection. why does one need the object realized? the object can be entirely imaginary.
    q: that doesn't sound like too much fun.
    z: it is amusing though.
    x: so how do you do this?
    z: you just do it. find love within yourself and feel it, object or no object.
    q: i doubt you can feel love at all.
    z: i doubt it too. maybe this is all i got.
    y: i feel sorry for you.
    z: i feel sorry for everyone.
    y: except yourself.
    z: why feel sorry for oneself? what is there to feel sorry for? i'd rather feel love, even if it is an illusion - even if it is only myself. maybe i should be in love with one of you.
    x: not me.
    y: nor me.
    q: don't even think about it.
    z: so, what choice do i have? so i make it all up.
    and the lights go out. and x,y,q and z each pick up and light a candle and carry it with them as they continue wandering about the stage still singing their lines. the only stage light is one over the table in the cafe where he continues writing and once in awhile smokes a cigarette. a stagehand comes out every so often to refill his coffee as she has been this whole time.
    x: what?
    z: nevermind. it was a joke.
    q: it comes and goes.
    y: actually that's not true.
    z: we are open to one another.
    y: that's not true either. not for me.
    x: what?
    q: we will let you near to a certain point but no further. at a certain point, or perhaps a sphere of points, we say stop.
    y: and stop means stop. if you don't stop we will use any means available to stop you - even if we have to kill you.
    x: kill me?
    q: not you. anybody.
    y: or, failing that we resort to self-destruction.
    x: self-destruction?
    y: if you penetrate our sphere you will find nothing but a void and oblivion. we will not be there. we will be elsewhere.
    x: where?
    q: making it.
    z: a turning screw.
    y: a headless wonder.
    x: what?
    z: that is what he almost did - self destructed. people were closing in. i had to protect him, and protect myself. that was the agreement between us. he wanted out. i wanted to remain. he was and is my only contact with this world.  i can only perceive it through him and his senses. i could hide myself from him no longer without losing him. without me, without someone, he was lost. so we pulled the switch. i took over and got him out. now he's safe and life continues on.
    x: how did you switch?
    z: remember dada?
    x: deliberate irrationality? yes.
    z: exactly.
    x: what?
    y: the dada-anada.
    q: who else?
    z: the mind shift/ship.
    q: dive into it.
    y: dive out of it.
    x: drive it off a cliff.
    y: you got it now.
    z: at first he hid himself in the back rooms frightened to come too close to the windows that looked out onto the world. he hated the world.
    y: so you took him to the island?
    z: yes. exactly.
    x: i think i've been there.
    z: and that was better. he learned to become amused. and now he joins me, sitting beside me. now he laughs. maybe for the first time in his life.
    y: how romantic.
    q: yes.
    x: how impossible.
    z: exactly. that's why nobody gets it.
    x: i get it.
    z: i knew you would. and he gets it too. he watches the people who he thought were big and powerful before and sees them as the comical clowns small and frightened for their own shadows. he's learned to hide in the shadows. no one suspects a thing. the shadows are the last place anyone would look for someone. they assume anyone reasonable would be frightened of them too. but we are not reasonable. not anymore. those days are gone. and good-bye.
    x: so it has a happy ending?
    z: it has a happy ending.
    x: so that's it?
    z: no.
    q: there is the machine.
    z: yes. i haven't been concentrating on that for awhile. i was too busy getting him settled down. it's been on automatic pilot.
    x: automatic pilot?
    y: it's always on automatic pilot even when it's not.
    q: who are we to control it? it is beyond control.
    z: we just give it suggestions.
    x: like what?
    q: like anything.
    y: like dada.
    x: is the dada-ananda the machine?
    z: the dada-ananda is the imagining of the machine. this has been for thousands of years. it's a bit scattered about and disjointed and disorganized, but that is what makes it work. it flows where and when it needs to. it depends on nothing and in doing so survives all. we can only have glimpses of images and scenarios that begin and end anywhere and overlapping. the machine has many origins. everywhere humans have found themselves. and now all the machines become one machine - more like a system of machines. perhaps a dance of machines.
    q: it isn't one thing. it's many things similar and different. it's things in contradiction. it's things in opposition. each part proves the other part false, yet they all work together. that's the magick of it. it transforms itself over and over.
    x: so, what's its purpose.
    y: its purpose is itself. we either go along with it or we don't. if and when we don't, we die.
    x: don't we die anyway.
    y: i was talking collectively. a collective death. a non-continuance.
    q: but this is part of its function. everything comes and goes. everything rises and falls. the machine surfs.
    x: so that is what this is all about?
    y: who made you the fool, anyway?
    x: fool?
    z: nevermind. it's just a dialogue.
    q: it's what everything is all about. everything that humans do is all part of the machine and the machine's continuing.
    x: what about those against the machine?
    y: that's not the machine we're talking about, though that machine is part of the machine. but whether that machine rises or falls has nothing to do with the machine's survival. it's just another wave.
    q: the machine's purpose is the great purpose.
    x: what's that?
    z: survival, of course.
    y: that, and amusement. humans are not content with mere survival.
    x: so it's a human machine?
    z: you could say that.
    q: i wouldn't though.
    x: why not?
    y: the machine is not human nor human created.
    x: who created it then?
    y: itself.
    q: it could be that humans were created for it, not it for them.
    x: is the machine real?
    z: it's as real as imagination.
    x: so, it's not real?
    q: is imagination not real?
    x: no, it's imaginary.
    y: you're confusing imagination with what it imagines. what it imagines is imaginary. what it is is real.
    x: i guess i see that.
    q: its other purpose is to arrive.
    x: arrive where?
    y: to arrive at a point where and when one digs it and the groove thing happens.
    x: like now?
    q: like now.
    x: that makes sense.
    z: any point that is that but isn't here and now is useless to us.
    x: and to the machine?
    q: same difference.
    x: i thought you said the machine wasn't human.
    y: it's not, but it is.
    x: i don't get that.
    q: you don't need to.
    y: neither do we.
    x: i won't worry about it then.
    z: don't worry about any of this.
    q: don't worry about anything.
    y: except paying your rent on time and stuff like that. don't become that far disconnected.
    x: so it's all here and now?
    z: exactly.
    q: what is the point to it otherwise?
    z: that's the problem with utopias and proposed paradises. they all occur some other place and/or time. some even place them after death. if that isn't useless, what is?
    q:  it doesn't matter how carefully and cleverly they worked out even to the finest detail - they're useless if they aren't here and now.
    z: fuck some place else. fuck some whenever time whether in the near or distant future.
    y: the here and now is all there is and all there ever was and all there ever will be.
    z: fuck anything that forgets or denies that.
    y: the machine keeps it constant and always here and now.
    q: one just has to find out where and when that is.
    x: but it's here and now, right?
    z: exactly.
    x: but you just said you had to find out where and when it is.
    z: exactly.
    x: huh?
    z: both. there is no contradiction. it's all in your head.
    q: that's where the machine is.
    x: in my head?
    y: in our heads.
    q: in our imagination.
    z: fuck everything else.
    y: fuck everyone else.
    x: so i just live in my head?
    q: live in your head and bring your head out into the world.
    y: surround yourself with your imagination.
    x: but what about reality?
    z: fuck reality.
    q: you'll be surprised how pliable reality is if your learn how to use your imagination.
    x: but nothing really changes, does it?
    q: doesn't it?
    z: what has been shaping our world for the past 10,000 years?
    x: our imagination?
    z: exactly.
    x: but isn't that insanity?
    q: it is madness, yes.
    y: but better your own insanity than theirs, right?
    x: i guess so. are they insane?
    q: look at them.
    y: and look again.
    z: look closely.
    q: see how it works and then copy it on your own for yourself instead of for them.
    z: fuck them.
    y: meanwhile we're still sitting here digging this groove sort of thing happening all around us and grinning ear to ear despite how otherwise we may come across to anyone else.
    q: why should we give them anything?
    z: they only get suspicious.
    y: they start acting like there's something wrong with you and start fucking with you.
    q: so just walk on by like there's nothing going on while in your head everything is glowing and spinning out webs and webs.
    x: so they have to figure it out for themselves?
    z: well, that's what this play could be about - to let them in on it a little.
    q: just a little.
    y: not too much.
    z: just enough.

    all that is left of the world is memory. he wants no more from anyone. be-bop diddly squat. what he has already pisses him off. they dumped all their useless negative energy into him and drove him off to take it away like that black tar pool thing on star trek next generation one time. all their sins. so they could have a nice day.
    and it was left to us to take him in and care for him and to keep him from going back and killing them or as many as he could get before they shot him down. we've done this. and we're only probably imaginary. no one real was willing to do it. they just gave him some crummy checks that barely let him live. he had to con the rest. we had to con the rest for him.
    and we wonder why we have to take these ones in - these who are born and rejected. these who are offered as sacrifices to the gods of the weak and faithful who go along with the crowd, large or small.  who are their gods? what god would demand this? and who would worship and serve such a god? they say their gods are powerful and are to be obeyed. they say that they are to be given authority. who has authored this lie?
    we know no such gods. our power is ourselves. it lies in our hearts and minds. it is this power we give our authority to. it is not power over anyone but ourselves. the same is true with our authority. who else are we to command? who else are we to be commanded by? we exist and live and move among the others whose power and authority is over others. we work the machine.
    the machine is that which their power and authority is given over to and from which their power and authority is received. we take our cut from between what comes in and what goes out. we have the devices and the ways and the means. we have the will of our free hearts and minds. we can imagine anything. and we do imagine anything.
    we appear as no one who has nothing. we are never suspected - or, if we are suspected, nothing can be proven. we need no signs or symbols or words of our own to identify with or to be identified by but employ the signs and symbols and words already employed we find along the way. we charge them with our own energy and transform them from receivers to transmitters in our hands while they remain otherwise in the hands of others, even those in high station. even the highest authority among them must obey. we obey no one. we invent. everything we have is stolen. everything we are is imagined. nothing in this world is ours. why should it be? why would we claim it? its all junk trinkets and gizmos.
    but none of this is about it really and maybe merely an illusion that can vanish as quickly as it appears as needed at the moment. should we hold onto it? should we worship it? should we kneel down and pray to it? it serves its purpose and it is gone. none of it holds up to scrutiny or examination by even the dullest mind. it isn't meant to. we have nothing to prove. this is not an argument. it is not our doctrine. it is just something out of our heads. go investigate something else. this is all a lie.
    it's all zero. and at zero it is beginning and ending no matter how far or wide it may extend itself. as nothing it is everything. it is the source of that which seeks it and it is the goal of what is sought by it. all else is dada. but this is dada too. this is perhaps the most dada of everything that is dada. it dances with dada. it arrives at dada-ananda. what else can say that?
    the focal point of the projected image. the eye of the needle. what passes through and what is left behind. what is transfixed and transformed. what is transfixing and transforming. what we experience for ourselves. what we fell for ourselves. what we think for ourselves. what we speak for ourselves. what we do for ourselves.
    he is folded. he is out of the game. he is tired and wasted. he's reached the end of it. he's found his way back home - or what passes for home in this world. a close enough approximation. he is safe and warm. the others have forgotten him. they set their computers in their banks to send him checks. that is far as their thoughts extend to him. what he has he has built out of bits and pieces broken and discarded by the destruction around him that he has collected along the way. it was the destruction of himself mainly and all the structures they had enclosed him in. they all had cracks he slithered and slipped his way through like to low down snake in the grass that he was until it all exploded. then he got up and ran like hell.
    now he's sitting here grinning a grin that will not go away. he survived. he thrived. he grew his own. he reached what he had been told was unreachable by letting go of any and all ideas of reaching it. he reached the here and now which was where and when it was all along much to his surprise. he had just given up and was expecting the worst. he went through the worst to get here. all his nightmares came true and laughed in his face. he laughed right back. then they shook hands and called it a day. and what a day it was. now it reached him. it comes in and sits down with him and tells him all its stories and secrets about whatever he needs or wants to know.

    an opening of will, but no direction. a possibility out of all that is possible. who and what to be next. what to turn on. what to turn off. and where and when. and how and why.
    he's got the how down. in theory anyway. he sees how it works. he sees how one can move oneself into any position one may want or need to be in. that part is easy - though it wasn't easy. it just takes will. will and dada.
    but to be who? to be what? he is master of himself. it took him agonizing years of struggle to do it, but he did it. that and dada - and a little application of metaschitzophrenic science. who among the ceos of the world have accomplished that? and if so, why do they still need all that wealth and power? what are they still trying to compensate for? something is still squiggling in their id. they are still slaves to their most primal fears and desires. they aren't apes, they're reptiles.
    so he holds onto himself, his long lost friend, and what he's got together and weathers the raging storm of madness swirling around him though the others. he cannot stop it any more than he could order the sun to shine on a rainy day, even if he was one of them there ceos. he can only stop it within himself and that's all he really cares about. to hell with them and theirs. to hell with their screeching grinding gnashing smashing shattering wild cacophony of ordered disorder seven times over of all the hell-bent contradictions they squabble about who's right and who's wrong all day and night and on every channel on tv hour by hour without rest or interruption except to stock up on more ammo year after year and decades into centuries into millennia into eternity but they're suddenly gonna stop when jesus and/or the aliens come.
    to find a place in it where one can minimalize the damage this havoc inflicts upon this individual who does not have a group to turn to - as if a group is any protection. groups are the targets. that is the best one can do. and he's found a small place no one else wants or has overlooked. it's not much but it provides him with all that he needs and then some. he watches those around him trying to stake out larger higher ground but that just puts them in the middle of it. why would they do that? and all they have to do to get it and hold onto it when even those at the top are slaves. it seems to him such a hollow victory. but then, all victories are hollow.
    and so what is it he's got? he shrugs and says, gazorbnik.
    and one looks down at him, which is easy to do, and asks, what is gazorbnik?
    he smiles and says, i've been trying to explain to myself what the heck is going on with me and that's what i came up with. what it means, maybe, is this way and that way and 18 other ways that only held together barely in the time it took to think it and by the time any of it came out of my mouth or through my hand onto a page it had already divided splintering into a thousand or more pieces and threads and possibilities until i then gathered up what i could out of all that and maybe put a new form of it together along with another which might have been its opposite and another which was not either and another which was none of the above and so on until it once more slipped through my grasp and comprehension and i was left with a handful of odds and ends that once were connected into something strung together by other odds and ends and whatnot but now unless one understood that and the process that created it in and for the moment it was created then none of it would make diddly doo-wah dada squat sense to a wooden nickel stuck up a rat's ass and for all it was worth probably never did and so when you now ask me what it might mean i find it rather difficult to explain while telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth as i would expect you would expect me to do. so, as it turns out, i might as well say gazorbnik - dig?
    and he moves from the cafe to a bar trading cups of coffee for gin and tonics. baseball on tv. sloppy songs on the jukebox. video poker. and others like himself maybe probably wondering what they're doing here too.
    and he can't help or keep from wondering that if he could just add 2+2 and consistently come up with 4 or even 5 instead of a scattering of numbers from minus zero to infinity and most of them of the irrational ilk and trade inside out and sideways that he wouldn't be here. where would he be? he likes it here. let the others have their toys and things they make with their 2+2= 4/5 technology that gets things done in the world. let them move and shake and rock 'n' roll together on their party boats screaming out with their rebel yell, more! more! more! he'll just sit here in his content as a clam world laughing his idiot fool head off watching their world going up in flames of passion they lust and hunger for everlasting. and later, when it burns itself out and cools down, he can sift through the ashes to see what's left that might be useable and useful - if anything.
    such is the path and the journey of the mixed-up mystics of madness manifested as just a man and his monkey. yes - it is such a joy. one takes it easy. he thanked gazorbnik that his simple soul was saved by such a simple thing, as complex as it was. what path should he have taken? the winding path up the mountain that led to the ancient vaults of cryptic occult knowledge that one must be on bended knee to even catch a glimpse of? fuck that shit. if it ain't in the street immediately accessible to any and all no matter where they may fit into the grand scheme of things then where the fuck is it except stuck up some mucky ducky high priest's butthole one would have to kiss and suck to get it if one was so lucky and chosen and elect and blessed to be allowed to do so? ha! the fatheads in fat hats with the hand jive speakeasy joe sent me masonic world of the most exclusive country club in the world. the opium dens of philosophic clouds of obscure tomfoolery. his was the enlightenment of song lyrics and comic books. his was the enlightenment of the public library and common bookstores. his was the enlightenment of the community college and the state university. his was the enlightenment of his own wandering musings. and his wasn't enlightenment at all. how can he say such a thing? he's crazy.
    who is he as he scribbles away now in a slightly drunken haze instead of just a caffinated buzz? just another not quite a dime a dozen bum on the dole. he gets his monthly allotment into his bank account to save him from begging change or collecting soda cans. big deal. and he's recently weaseled his way into going to school with the same taxpayer's money in order to pretend that he has a life and ain't just lazing around being a do-nothing doing nothing all day. yeah - who's fooling who? and you're going to take his word for anything?
    ha!
    what you see is what you get. you get what you pay for, and you're not paying for much. and what you have faith in. and what you have doubt in. if he has faith, his faith is gazorbnik. gazorbnik in your face, darling. figure that one out. put that in your pipe and smoke it. hopefully it'll send you into a flaming tailspin and that'll be the best thing that ever happened to you. it was for him. you can't rebuild until you demolish it all down to street level again. unless you like the way things are with all the business as usual. unless you feel safe and secure with whatever you've armored yourself up with that gets you through the night. jesus? buddha? the flag? a gun? astrology? a crystal ball? satan? cnn? hippies? popeye? the 3 stooges? - whatever. no matter. if it works, it works - and good luck with it.
    but what is he selling instead? the inquiring mind wants to know. is there something for sale here? should you get your credit card ready? it's just his experience and what it all may or may not be. it's all the doubt in the world and then some. it's all what you've already got. look around. it's just a waste of your precious time away from everything you've gotten for yourself from the others. all that protects you. all that lets you hide in the dark with a night light. he's just trying to get into your head to drive you out of your mind. that's his plan. and he may already be inside. have you checked the alarms recently? is your virus detector up to date? but he really doesn't need to. he knows there's someone else in there already. someone just like him. someone on the point of madness. someone who can't make sense of the world. someone who thinks just a little too much. someone who feels all the pain. someone who has nowhere to go. someone who looks out at you every time you look in the mirror.
    and how did this someone get in? who left the door open? how did this someone get behind and inside the walls you thought were so secure? is this someone after you? is this someone the boogieman? is this someone the devil himself? this is what you begin to ask yourself. this is what he began asking himself long many years ago. this is what he began asking himself when he first acquired language enough to ask it. that was as long as that someone was inside. the someone was born inside. that someone was him. that someone is you.
    now what?
    now what for him was that he went insane. he didn't know which side of the mirror he was on. was he himself or was he the monkey? does this question sound familiar? and if he was the monkey, then who was him? and it spun out from there as you may or may not have been reading.
    so what is it for you? do you ignore it and hope it goes away? do you drink and drug yourself into oblivion? do you just avoid the mirrors or cover them over with pretty pictures or black drapes? but what if there really is someone in here with you? and what if that someone is really you? maybe the real you. maybe you're the fake. maybe you're the intruder. maybe you're the monkey. but you know better than that. you're not so far removed from reality like maybe he was that you don't recognize who's who in the mirror. you know you're safe. you know you're not nuts. you know you're not about to flush it all by asking a bunch of silly questions about your own identity. you know that you are in control. you know who you are.
    nevermind.
    we must have mistook you for someone else.
    sorry we brought it up.

    he forgets that this is all just masturbation. he forgets that no one is going to read it even when it's offered up for free. he forgets a lot of things. he can't remember it all. he forgets his fear. he forgets his sadness. this just brings it all back to him. the frustrating madness. was it frustrating? what is not frustrating? isn't frustration good for the soul? is it if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger? his madness didn't kill him. almost a few times, but it never succeeded.
    but this seemingly tragic tale ended up being comic. he's laughing now. he doesn't see too many others laughing, not without a sneer added to it. if this has any meaning it is to bring that to someone else. to bring it to you - if you exist. this is not truth. this is not to be followed dogma. this is just a story. a story of one man and his madness. one can take from it what one will. one can leave of it what one will. one needs to put together one's own puzzle out of all the pieces one may or may not have. sometimes those are the pieces of one's own self-destruction. that sometimes has to occur. it sometimes occurs without one's knowing. if it does, holding on only makes matters worse. it increases the pain. it increases the madness until one is not only mad but insane to boot. insanity is not fun. madness is a joy. we can only offer this and hope for you our best.

    he wanted it all. he wanted to experience everything. he feared nothing except what everyone fears - death. well, he feared insanity too. but death is always the big one. he feared that his insanity would lead him to death. it pointed him in that direction often enough. but he, like everyone else, threw as much bullshit in front of it to push it away. one day that will no longer work. but then maybe he'll be ready. but ready or not, here it comes. and who does not fear death? there are the nihilism folk who pretend they don't who hide behind their books by sartre or whoever they hope absolves them of the primary fundamental human sin. he's been there too. they're just jesus freaks to him. same difference. one belief is as good or bad as another. faith is faith.
    he wants it all. he wants to experience everything. and the chances are he won't. oh well. tough shit. and he's not so much afraid as he is pissed. what the fuck? one sip of the broth of the soup that is only one small portion of the banquet feast. not even that. it's what drops from that that he might lick off the floor, or even standing outside the kitchen door and maybe getting a whiff of the smell of cooking. that is all he or anyone is given. we are left to imagine what is would be to sit at the table and chow down until you puke and then after you have done so go back for more. give him that and then he'll be ready for death. what more is there? if not, then what the fuck is he doing here at all? if it's not for everything, then it is for nothing.
    and he rails at whatever god or gods or goddess or goddesses or whatever there might be who gave him this glimpse at what he'll never have to hold. damn them all. though he'll never be anyone who can do a thing about that he gets some amount of satisfaction in going down to his grave with fuck you as his dying words. fuck you whoever whatever you are - even if you don't exist. if his last thought is one of this whole stinking universe and all involved in it burning in everlasting fire, he'll die a happy man. if he can't have it all then what good is any of it worth? not any of it. not galaxies of it even. he wants it all.
    and not just for himself. he wouldn't be happy with that either. he would not be interested in it if it was offered if taking it denied it to anyone else. he doesn't understand those who think that way. he wouldn't care how terrible evil the other person was. take the most worst person of all of human history and say everyone gets in but him - or her - and he would not take one step forward. he may not want anything to do with said person - he's not saying that - but to deny them everything just because they were a major asshole is absurd. they still exist, don't they? how can they be denied what is given to others? who would want such a thing? and whoever it is who would want such a thing would get his vote on being the worst person in all human history. so maybe they should be the one who is denied - yes?
    but this does not include those who would deny themselves. there are many who maybe just wouldn't be interested. they are satisfied with their sweet short lives and all that their lives give them and want no more. then that is what that is and that's how that goes. he doesn't understand why anyone would feel that way but he understands that there are those who do. it's none of his business. except if these, because that is all they want, try to convince him that that is all that he should want and be happy with, then the hell with them too. and he seems to be saying to hell with pretty much everybody, isn't he? that's the way he is. he has about a little use for anyone as they do for him. and they've made it pretty much clear what little use they have for him - boo hoo.
    that just sets him free. no more obligations to anyone - except those who he had a hand in bring into this world. he owes them everything he can give them that they might need. and the most important thing he can give them is freedom. so that pretty much does away with that obligation as well. neat and pretty. so he can go for what he can get out of everything. he ain't going nowhere until he's seen it all. and if he is forced to leave, he'll just find his way back. he did it once, he can do it again. let the mother void have him. let her dance the jitterbug on his unmarked grave in her high heeled pink and spangled sneakers if she wants to. let her squat and piss with dead smiling face and call him every name in the book and then some if that's what makes her hot to trot and hold her head up high with her psychic hair blowing in the cosmic winds a-blowing. nothing is impossible in his imagination. and that is how he gets to it. what he can't see, he imagines. and he imagines everything.
    because if he is denied one nano-second or one micro sub-particle of it all he imagines that he'll be back with a vengeance. and by the power of that imagination which was the seminal creating prime mover father of all the big daddy mother fucking monsters that is his birth rite to call upon, he will dig himself out from whatever tomb he was laid to rest in and forgotten and take it all back. he imagines that he can do this. and to him his imagination is real, though to others it's just delusional nonsense of a man gone mad. he's ok with that too.
    whatever.
    whatever he imagines.

    and in another time zone in the burning theater a man comes storming out onto the stage broken and beaten. he shouts back toward where he came from.
    man: it's a war. to the death. it's down to the wire - to the finish. there just ain't no more room on this rock for the two of us to keep going on in each other's face like this, honey. i tried working it out with you, but i'm through with all your endless complaining bullshit about this and that not being just perfect. take it all if you want. take the house. take my job. take all the money in the bank. take the church and the state and every other institution you want now that i busted my ass building it all for you. now that the all the streets are paved with sidewalks and bright streetlights at night and all the riff raff cleared out so you can feel safe coming out of the kitchen anytime you feel like and not have anything in the world threaten you and scare you back that i had to face by myself and chase away or kill for you because it made you tremble and shake and weep and bitch until i did so. but how do you think i felt? did you think i was as brave as i let on? don't you think i wasn't shitting in my pants? but what choice did i have? i was your hero. you said, go get 'em, and i did. now all you have to fear is me. and i'm outta here. come find me if you think you can strap on balls big enough, baby. come on out past the city walls and past where the searchlights reach. out where there ain't no phone let alone 911 you can call to get someone big and strong to rescue your sweet ass. just you and me. and it won't be like before. i've learned my lesson. i learned that there wasn't any point in being as nice to you as i was. no more flowers. no more sweet words in the moonlight. no more soft beds. so come on out and get me. i can wait. i've been here alone before. i can survive. the mistake i made then was going back to camp with food or bags of plunder slung over my back in the useless hope that when you smiled to see me coming that that smile meant more than that i was just some dumb fuck bringing you something you could use. man, was i ever the goddamn fool. but no more. you were right, i should have listened to you more. and now that i have and i finally understand who and what you are and exactly what you think of me, i've woken from your spell of make up illusions that there was more to you than just someone to fuck. put down your mirror and turn and face me and look me in the eye and let's see who turns who into stone now that the veils of mystery are parted between us and i have driven a stake in the heart of the vampire sucking my blood while i was sleeping and i am feeling quite myself again. i even replaced you with a machine i built down in my laboratory late at night while you were getting your beauty sleep all for just no other reason than to say i did it (here a mechanical woman walks out to stand beside him). i did it all. i did everything i set out to do while you were along for the ride. and even if now you come up behind me and stick a knife in my back i still fucking did it. you cannot take that away from me, even though you will by rewriting the story with you as the central lead character. my reign may not have lasted too long but i can say that i was once king of the whole goddamned world. and maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but it does to me. so you can have what's left and what you can salvage out of the destruction and ruin i made in my apeshit battle to the top of the hill. fix it up and repair it and heal it if you can, i've done what i came here for. you were just a means toward an end. a tunnel of love i passed through on the way to paradise where i am at least free if nothing else. free of you. and you're free of me. but when you curl up at night with the one who performs tricks for biscuits for your pleasure remember the one who is howling at the moon you hear outside your window. remember who you couldn't get to succumb to your will. remember the one you sent out to fend for himself as you've sent him out before. and maybe he's getting a little hungry out here. and maybe he's thinking that you might be his next meal now that he's rejoined the pack.
    at this point the mechanical woman takes out a gun and shoots him in the head. the audience of the burning theater rise to give her a standing ovation.

    and back it returns before or after that whole mess x,y,q and z are on-stage. the tv set has been changed to the cartoon network. the lights are now flashing strobes. x,y,q and z still wander randomly sing their lines. he still sits at the table in the cafe. he is still writing.
    z: out dancing.
    x: hopping and jumping.
    z: fix it to the machine.
    y: calibrate the motion.
    q: translate to a flux of numbers and graphic projections of hyper-dimensional fluid equations and geometries.
    z: synthesize its nature and predict its motivations and send it back into the beat and rhythm it follows.
    x: no one will notice the transition.
    y: when the objective observation becomes the subjective experience.
    q: the distinctions between the two are too subtle for those who are not paying attention as they should.
    x: certainly not to what's around them.
    z: that fundamental level.
    x: they assume it is what it is and that someone is taking care of it.
    q: if they think about it at all.
    y: and they assume correctly. we are taking care of it.
    x: we are?
    y: aren't we?
    q: i'm not.
    z: nor me.
    y: oh.
    x: a ragged line.
    q: one who crawls when one feels one needs to.
    z: one who begs.
    y: i thought it was me.
    z: it's not.
    q: forget it.
    x: one who does not feel ashamed but realizes all is a process of developing the fullness of the self.
    y: there are many cracks in the walls.
    z: one who picks at them with one's fingernails if that is all one has to use.
    q: something weird.
    x: something obviously weird but with nothing other to compare it to except some vague idea in one's mind that it shouldn't be as it is.
    q: so what's so weird about it?
    y: maybe it's the idea in one's mind that it should be different that is weird.
    z: perhaps.
    x: perhaps not.
    q: how does one know?
    y: who is this "one" we're talking about?
    z: the common person, i suppose.
    y: how common is common?
    q: how common is uncommon?
    z: it could be the uncommon person, i suppose.
    x: it could be someone who sits in a cafe at a table by the window.
    y: is it always him?
    x: he gazes out the window.
    y: doesn't he have something better to do?
    x: he lights another cigarette.
    y: why doesn't he read a book instead of writing?
    x: he takes out a book and starts to read it.
    q: once in awhile others come and sit at his table.
    x: now he is alone.
    q: they speak of whatever is on their minds about what they're thinking or feeling.
    z: he remains for the most part silent except to say one thing or the other to signify to the other that he is listening.
    x: it comes and goes.
    q: it's still weird.
    z: one becomes used to the weirdness.
    y: him?
    x: him too.
    q: i think he enjoys it.
    z: i know i would.
    x: he is amused by it.
    y: is this not the state one is to struggle to climb up to achieve?
    z: you're talking about enlightenment.
    y: isn't he enlightened?
    z: i don't think so.
    y: does he?
    x: he doesn't know what to call it.
    q: all the torment and pain and suffering people go through in a world that is unfair and unjust that is controlled by the greedy who manipulate the needy and wanting toward their own ends of gaining more than they already have gotten until such time that another groups outmaneuvers them and they gain control for awhile.
    z: a brief synopsis of human history.
    y: what else is new?
    q: what's so weird about that?
    x: if no one thinks about it, it's all perfectly normal.
    z: and common.
    y: it would seem to me that that is the only norm anything can be compared to.
    q: does that make it weird?
    z: only the people who think so are weird.
    x: he tries to stay as far from that as he can.
    y: but he's right in the middle of it.
    z: he is also very far away.
    x: he is on an island.
    q: it would seem that it's all perfectly normal for people to be weird.
    z: one would think that, yes.
    q: is it not so?
    z: weird people are outside the norm but a group not having these people would not be normal.
    y: it would be weird.
    z: yes.
    x: if they try to bring any of their weirdness into the norm, they are considered dangerous.
    q: and it doesn't take an order from the high command to silence them.
    x: others around them silence them quicker than any police force.
    y: is this where madness comes from?
    z: normally.
    x: the system imposed is so efficient that no orders need to be given.
    y: even in a free society?
    z: especially in a free society.
    x: he is amused by this as well.
    z: he laughs to himself.
    q: is there anyone else to laugh with?
    z: very few.

    he writes it one way and he writes it another way. and another. it keeps coming out more or less the same. what else is there? is it the way it is? or is it the way he is? is there a difference between the two?
    it.
    him.
    and all those who worry about this or worry about that - as he remembers he used to worry too - trying to figure out what's wrong with it all. why does one feel so twisted and chewed up by it? why is one in such agony and despair? why is one at the boiling point of rage? why does one feel like destroying it all? why is it all one can do sometimes is to curl up in a fetal position at night shivering and crying to no one? and why do others go out dancing?
    he doesn't know why others may feel that way - if they do. and he knows they do. he knows why he did. he was and still is mad. but he got from crying to dancing easy enough, even though he's only dancing in his head. he's not a very good dancer in real life. he always keeps losing the beat. he's just too much a white boy.
    he knows how he unwound himself from that tangled mess. he doesn't know if others have done or can do the same. he does know that they don't like talking about it. maybe because it can't be talked about. it can only be experienced. but they don't seem to be interested in going into beyond or beneath what can be talked about. but he admits that he only sees them on the surface the same as they only see him. but it seems to him that they are all too willing to accept that it's all so impossibly fucked up that nothing can be done about it except to find some distraction from it like he probably has. if it won't go away, then ignore it.
    is all of this just a distraction for him so he doesn't have to face it? he remembers all the distractions he had set up. he remembers when all those distractions that he held together with rubber bands, paper clips and duct tape collapsed in on themselves and left him out in the open and utterly defenseless. he remembers the band-aids and bandages he covered himself with to keep himself from bleeding to death from the wounds received from that collapse and its result. he remembers all that business that didn't amount to squat in the long run. he wanted to run and hide but there was nowhere he could go. all the doors of all the houses were locked, the shades in the windows drawn down. no one came out when he called to them. he was alone. he had nothing.
    and he remembers after the initial panic of it ran its course how it good it began to feel. his wounds which were infected before had healed in the open air and no longer hurt and burned. when after walking around awhile he noticed that there were no mean nasty horrible terrible big ugly monster things out to get him like he thought there were and would be - well, except for the police. but even they were nice enough when they told him to move along if he did so. he remembered saying to himself, well, what the fuck... and he noticed that he had a big ass grin on his face and he was feeling like a radiant angel trucking around through the streets of paradise that no too long ago had appeared to be the streets of hell and he another one of the damned. all it was between the two was something that had shifted in his head - in his mind. the mind shift/ship. a trick done with mirrors. so this must be the imaginary city that i imagined, he thought to himself. what a possibility out of impossibility. and he began meeting the weirdest strangest people who were pretty much where he was at but just further along the way. the veterans of the wars lost so long ago. he began to learn from them the ways and means of all this happenstance and circumstance. he was alone no more. and he found his way home for the first time in his sweet short life. and that's where he's at now.
    and that's more or less it, except he almost was trapped there as well. the people who he met still seemed to be caught in a struggle between us and them and good and evil, only on some other playing field in mindspace. they pulled him into it just like the others had in the real world. luckily he pulled himself out again. he wanted no more of any of that however cosmic it was or seemed. he was still trying to get it out of his own head. this is what he remembers of it, though he's spared some of the details that aren't really all that important. and back in the real world he is now a madman. he's ok with that. he doesn't have to work. he doesn't pay taxes. it's all ok to him. let the others run the world if they want or need to. let them fight over it. let them turn their faces from him. let them go on thinking that any paradise is a utopian fantasy that will never happen and they could never reach except sometime in a distant future or in death. he's digging it here and now and eating it all up like a hot fudge sundae served to him in a diamond chalice on a silver platter on bended knee by the gods themselves. he plucks the red red cherry off the top of the nuts and whipped cream and bites it off its stem and is all very amused by it all.
    and someone who now happens to be sitting at his table asks, what are you laughing about? oh nothing, he says, nevermind. what were you talking about? and this other gives him an odd look and continues on with how fucked up everything is. he sighs and listens.
    he remembers when all of that was important to him too. but they still have their real lives to led. he doesn't. he remembers too how he tried in vain to unravel what he was tangled up in like they are. he remembers when he too thought it was hopeless and there was no way out - except to go insane. but now he has gone insane and he's on the other side of that in the greener pasture. and he still isn't quite sure how he got here. he just knows that's where he is. but anytime he hints of this to the others they quickly cut him off with well rehearsed and pre-reasoned arguments about why and how he's wrong and has no idea about what he's talking about. shut up, they say. enough of your delusional nonsense. listen to us. we're hip to what's really going on. we know about all the evil in the world. let us tell you what the bad guys are up to now.
    ok, he says. and he grins his grin and sits on the island watching the waves come in and go out again while he sets his outward form on autopilot that nods and agrees with everything they say which is all they want because they never suspect a thing. it's their world exactly the way they want it. if they only knew the possibilities.
    a friend of his once told him of - he thinks it was agustine -who wrote himself into orgasmic fantasies of heavenly ecstasy writing about christ and all that business. it was one of those guys anyway. and is that all he's doing - jerking himself off over all this business? well, if it feels good, do it - right? what should he be doing instead? and aren't we all jerking ourselves off in some way or another?

    a shattering of light across the stage of the burning theater.
    z: he's becoming confused again.
    x: who?
    z: the man in the mirror.
    y: i thought he was in the cafe.
    z: there too.
    q: what's his problem now?
    z: he doubts his paradise.
    y: doesn't everybody?
    x: most people don't have a paradise to doubt.
    q: i thought his paradise was based on doubt.
    z: it is and it isn't. but there is doubt, and then there is doubt.
    y: what does he doubt?
    z: its reality.
    q: i thought it was imaginary.
    z: that's what makes it real, but only for him.
    x: so what else does he want?
    y: you'd think he'd be happy with that.
    z: he wants it for everyone else too.
    q: even if they don't want it for themselves?
    y: where have we heard this before?
    z: i tell him that we're working on it.
    q: we are?
    z: some of us.
    y: you?
    z: i'm part of it.
    x: are we part of it?
    y: i don't think i want to be part of it. it sounds like a lot of trouble.
    z: we all are in some way.
    x: is that the reason for this play?
    z: no.
    q: so what does he say to that?
    z: he doesn't say anything. he just nods his head and shrugs.
    x: he doesn't believe you.
    z: i tell him to take a good look around at what we're working with.
    y: besides, what is paradise for one is a living hell for another. nobody's going to agree on anything.
    x: yeah.
    z: he knows that. he doesn't expect some one size fits all thing that has historically been proven not to work even though it still has widespread currency, even among those who should know better.
    x: true.
    q: so what then?
    z: well i tell him that the first thing we're doing is to put that idea finally in its grave for good. and the best way to do that is to give it to them on a worldwide scale. cram it down their throats till they choke on it and puke it up and never want to go anywhere near it again.
    x: that sounds good.
    y: it seems to be working so far.
    q: are you really doing this? you're just some imaginary character in an imaginary play in an imaginary theater - one that's burning.
    z: maybe.
    x: maybe what?
    z: maybe that's who i am.
    y: what else are you?
    z: that's not for me to say.
    q: something to do with the machine, right?
    z: close.
    x: so you're doing this with the machine?
    y: the machine doesn't follow instructions. the machine does what it wants.
    q: it does accept suggestions though.
    x: so this is all suggestion?
    y: so this idea of yours - or this suggestion - does everybody have to go insane?
    z: it would help.
    q: that's what happens when the big mono idea is shoved down their throats, right?
    z: it could.
    x: so everybody goes insane and finds their own paradise?
    z: it's not that easy, but something like that.
    q: they discover that they're already in paradise like he did. that it already exists.
    z: sort of.
    y: what does he say to that?
    z: he laughs. he says, fat chance.
    q: yeah, that's what i say too - fat fucking chance.
    z: that's the nature of it though - fat chance.
    y: so it's just something you're telling him to make him feel better?
    z: not exactly.
    x: you're really doing it?
    z: not exactly either.
    y: they're doing it to themselves.
    q: or the machine's doing it to them.
    y: their greed is doing it to them. everybody's in on it. everybody's going to make a killing. they're putting chickens in everybody's pot. they're going to make everyday seem like christmas. they're bringing the workers their revolution. they're bringing each religion their own messiah and savior, even throwing in some aliens. they're turning the power structure pyramid upside down and shaking it out so everybody gets their share of the pie in the sky. they're breaking the chains of master and slave alike. it's the big payoff. everybody's a winner.
    q: and then everybody pukes their guts up.
    x: and they all go insane?
    z: they already are insane. they just don't know it yet.
    y: i think most of them know it. just look in their eyes, that'll tell you. they can't wait to go apeshit and tear the place apart.
    x: so you think it'll work?
    z: me? no.
    y: i don't either.
    q: count me out.
    x: yeah, i guess me too. but what about him?
    q: he's an idiot. he'll believe anything.
    y: he's not an idiot. he's just around the corner a little.
    x: more than a little.
    z: more than a lot.

    and he looks in the mirror and says, well then, come up with your own goddamn idea. others have tried and failed. others are still trying. you think you're so damn smart, think of something. i'll write it down for you. just because they have failed and are still failing doesn't mean everything will. it doesn't mean you will.
    and the mirror image looks back at him with burning eyes that would burst into flames of rage if not cooled by barely held back tears of sadness and sorrow. he's seen that look before. it means trouble. it's the look of someone who sleeps but never rests. it's the look of someone who is powerless because of doubt, not because of lack of power. it is the look of authority when that doubt clears. it is the look of one who fears nothing. it is the look of madness. it is the look of one who could do anything dangerous at any moment. that is what holds him back. is there anything he might do that is not dangerous? and it's not the danger to himself that concerns him. he fears nothing. he can only die. it is the danger to others. it is himself and himself only who stands in the way. it is he who keeps himself in doubt which prevents him from acting. he knows what will happen. he sets up and poses riddles for himself to keep himself confused. but he's just about run out. so what is he to do now? does he give up and let himself go? does he leave it for the others to stop him? will they? will they even see him coming? and what will he do? does he even know? what can he do? does he even know that?
    there is a plan and it doesn't include him. he would only fuck it up. it would never be put back together again. it's been thousands of years in the making. the experiment would have to be terminated - or our involvement in it anyway. we do not want to do that. this is our entertainment. it amuses us and we don't intend for it to end. we've invited him into it but he's a goddamn pig-headed fool who's trying to tell us that what we're doing isn't right. who the hell is he? we found him in the street. we made him who and what he is. we've given him all that he's got. and we can unmake him anytime we want or need to. we've demonstrated that to him more than once. he thinks he was insane before - he hasn't seen anything. still he resists. still he asks too many damn questions. he still challenges us. still he makes his idle threats of taking us down - though he could do it, but he's been kept from those who could show him how. and so we've checked him with himself. it was easy to do. just his mirror opposite that he can't get past. but it's wearing thin. he's trickier than we thought. soon he'll figure it out. but maybe not. that's the chance we take. it's the only chance we've got. besides, he not really sure if we're only his imagination.
    or is it him who keeps us in check? do we really know who's who? one in the mirror and one not. it's just a game. but he cares about what happens. he wants us to care. he cares about these monkeys that he's one of. they are nothing to us. why should we be troubled by his compassion for these creatures just because he's one of them? just because he has empathy for their pain having lived with it himself. he tries showing us that pain, forcing us to feel it. we will have none of that. he doesn't even feel it anymore. we made sure of that. we don't care. these are stupid brutish animals who care only for themselves and what they can get for themselves or for those of their kind that they divide themselves into. why should we empathize with that? who ever could? he does, but he's entirely mad and his empathy is what drove him mad to begin with. one would think that he's drop it by now. but he doesn't. he's short circuited his brain somehow with all the thinking about it he's been doing. we warned him about that. but he never listens. we say, fuck their pain. fuck their suffering. they cause it to themselves. let them figure out how to stop it if it makes them so miserable. why us? we're doing just fine. we can sit here all day long and laugh at their antics. or is that him that does that? how can we be sure?
    nevermind that.
    we're tired of him coming to us for help. we're tired of him coming to us to stop it - like we could now. we're tired of him coming to us and trying to get us to change our mind. we see nothing wrong with how it is and how it's going. he listens too much to what the others are telling him - oh, the humanity of it all. we advise him not to but, as we said, he doesn't listen. he forgets that it's already been worked out. he forgets about the machine and how it was long ago set in motion and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it from following its course toward its own destination. and what if we could stop it? what then? do we give everybody soma and a dumb fuck job to do that they're bred and conditioned to love more than life itself? we could do that. is that what he wants us to do? but he says that's what they're doing to themselves anyway. so, let them, we say. what's the problem? it's their choice. they have free will. if that's what they want to do with it, fine. he just wants us to make it right. but what's right? he doesn't know. he just says that what we're doing isn't it.
    we laugh. we remember feeling that way too. we remember feeling the rage of seeing injustice and cruelty and all that business. we also remember how good it felt when we stopped banging our head against the wall. he remembers it too. we remember how we learned to look away from the madness. and he does too. we remember looking in the mirror and seeing the look of anguish that he now sees. we remember wanting to kill the beast we saw oppressing all that is human in people around us. he remembers it too. but that is not how we feel any longer. nor does he really. he's got his cake and is eating it too. it's a forgotten dream. it's a childhood nightmare.
    he just walks away.
    he's pissed.
    but he'll be back.
    he's got nowhere else to go and no one else to talk to but us.
    everybody else he knows is still in the dream.

    and he knows who they are. and he knows where they live. it's easy to find them. he can smell their stench and stink miles away. it is the smell of death. it makes it easy to avoid them. it's easier to stay out of their way as they race by in a headlong plunge into the infamous lake of fire and bottomless pit.
    ha!
    who needs to cast them out? who needs to push them? they push themselves. we need only let them truck on through dead set eyes front determined and motivated neither looking to the right nor the left because they're convinced they're right and everything else is wrong that they don't realize that they're exiting heaven and entering hell - if there is either such a place.
    if they stopped and talked with us we could have told them. but they wanted it in 25 words or less because they had a big meeting to get to or a date and they couldn't be late. if time is money, they haven't given us a dime. so why should we tell them anything? they can figure it out. they're smart. just ask them, they'll tell you. they're so smart they're rich. and how smart is that?
    the common rabble. the unwashed and dazed. all those they wouldn't let through their door. here we are. where are they? have they found their paradise? have they found their happiness? have they found a fountain spring of everlasting joy that is beyond all understanding? or are they still sticking needles in their arms in one way and another trying to reach that ultimate highest high and never come down except when they crash smash flat fat on their face and wake up in the same god forsaken ugly reality they were originally trying to escape from only now it's ten times worse?
    so money didn't work. so sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll didn't work. power didn't work. occult knowledge didn't work. gods didn't work. freedom, liberation and revolution didn't work. what's next? what else is left for them to load in their rusted rig to feed into their vein? what's next on their list that will give them the thrill of a lifetime? good fucking luck. let us know how it works out. but don't wait too long. we have our own big meeting to go to. we have our own date we can't be late for. history draws to a close. the house lights dim. the show is about to begin.

    from beyond a point of reason - though there is always reason, even beyond reason.
    maybe.
    sort of.
    there are sometimes many forms of reason.
    aren't there?
    there should be if there aren't.
    right?
    but never mind that.
    another cigarette.
    and just forget.
    and so as we were saying - or were we?
    what were we saying?
    something about a pattern.
    yet in speaking about the pattern we fell into and followed a pattern.
    something is wrong, isn't there?
    so let's say some guy, some older guy, who probably could be him but may or may not be (let's call him fred) is sitting around scribbling in a notebook maybe something along the order, or pattern, of what he writes all the time while he's just sitting around with not much else to do (and neither does fred) and he should probably be sleeping (as fred should be too) but he's not alone in being up this late - 1:32 am - (and neither is fred) because there's a number of other people sitting around not doing much of anything either. but one thing they're not doing is scribbling in notebooks like he and fred are doing. how did they get into this? why did they feel the compulsion to write all the time to the virtual exclusion of all else - especially most forms of social interaction?
    well, there's the isolated from birth monkey experiment theory with the monkey later introduced to the group and not having a clue on how to interact and becomes very passive/agressive - weird, withdrawn. that fits in some ways. but they're smarter than a monkey, right?
    so let's say he's sitting here doing whatever, except writing in a notebook. maybe he's here with some friends, though his friends are all asleep with jobs to get to in the morning. but let's say he's a regular socially well-adjusted person out and about and he sees this older guy, fred, sitting off by himself scribbling in a notebook. what would he think about that? would he think about it at all? would he even notice except by some glance? would he be curious? would he think fred was strange? would he imagine that fred was writing about him and how fucked up and stupid fred thought he was? would he care if he knew that that was exactly what fred was writing? would he be aware that fred was full of joy that spilled out of a cup running over? how does one tell that about another - especially when that person just sits there doing essentially nothing? would he want to know what fred was writing? would he want to know why? what does he think? he thinks, if he thinks at all, exactly what the people around him think of him sitting here doing the same thing as fred. and so what?
    some sort of thing to it in it. something as yet unfathomed. but where hasn't he looked yet? and why is he worrying about it? is he worrying? or is he just wondering?
    a curiosity.
    a dead cat.
    a live cat.
    a hat that either cat is or is not in.
    we decide.
    this becomes that.
    one should be curious about what is within oneself, yes?
    one should be curious about what is within others, no?
    an actual explanation. any sort of mutual understanding. but he sizes up others as others size him up. is this someone i can gain something from? or is this someone who is going to be trouble and not worth the time o' day? so why should he expect anything more? am i going to go over and ask what he's writing? am i going to go home with him and go through and read the notebooks he's been writing in over the past several years? am i going to want to listen to him if he talks to me? if i can get him to. no. am i just content with who i am and what i'm doing and where i'm at that i see no reason to change it for whatever return there may or may not be?
    writing about wondering why one is writing. meta-writing. a bit strange. a bit twisted in and out of shape. a bit looney if you ask me. why does he do that? how does someone turn out like that? what can be done about it? how does one get him to stop? what does one offer as an alternative? stamp collecting? there's a useful hobby. at least there's some value in it. and why would one bother to offer an alternative? he isn't bothering anyone, i suppose. why bother with him at all? but he's a bit useless. is this where my tax dollars are going?

    back in the burning theater again. the show goes on. the stage is now backlit so the figures are silhouettes. a fog machine floods the scene. the television explodes in sparks. abraxas plays over the house system.
    x: the twist of mind.
    z: the knowledge of the twist of mind.
    y: and there are those who use language to speak of different things other than what the language was meant, or seems to have been meant, to speak of.
    x: that is not the case here.
    q: it may seem broken and going nowhere.
    y: but it is going somewhere.
    z: it's just that somewhere is anywhere.
    x: to follow the twist.
    y: first, to allow the twist to occur.
    z: this seems to be where the first departure begins.
    q: from language?
    x: from anything.
    y: to anywhere.
    z: perhaps this is the only departure, as once there is one what need is there for another?
    x: unless it departs from departure.
    z: this is possible.
    q: could this be where the misunderstanding is?
    y: what misunderstanding?
    x: i don't think i misunderstand anything.
    z: would you know if you did?
    x: perhaps not. i can only believe i don't.
    z: perhaps you need to depart from what you believe.
    x: how do i do that?
    q: first, you try.
    y: this is where he loses them and their faces go blank.
    x: are we back to him?
    q: weren't we always?
    z: this is when he gets pissed.
    y: for someone who is supposedly so happy he could squirt he sure gets pissed a lot.
    x: i noticed that too.
    z: one does not exclude the other.
    q: he's happy he's pissed?
    z: something like that.
    y: so what's he pissed about now?
    z: the twist of mind.
    q: the shift.
    x: the mind shift/ship?
    z: gabzorbnix.
    y: perceived by doubt.
    x: what happened to the dada-ananda?
    z: the dada-ananda is still here.
    q: maybe gabzornix and the dada-ananada are the same?
    z: they lead to the same conclusion.
    x: there's a conclusion? what is it?
    z: gabzorbnix dada-ananda.
    y: they conclude in themselves?
    z: what else?
    x: are they nouns or verbs?
    z: they are pronoun verbs.
    q: i thought they were prepositions.
    z: they could be that.
    x: i'm thinking particle/wave.
    q: i'm thinking attractive.
    y: i'm still thinking mind twist.
    z: something like that.
    x: are they singular or plural.
    z: the singular of the plural. the plural of the singular.
    q: have we departed yet?
    x: i'm thinking the group.
    y: i'm thinking the group mind.
    q: all huddled together around a fire in the dark.
    z: who hears a sound outside the circle?
    x: who gets up and walks out to see what exists in the unknown?
    q: who steps beyond the perimeter edge that might as well be off the face of the earth?
    y: he stands between the flickering light and shadow dancing between their perception and imagination.
    z: he appears almost real and then not.
    x: one is never quite sure until one checks it out.
    q: and what is the true test?
    y: is it not until one goes where nothing should exist yet something does exist?

    he remembers being led to that point in his empty mind needing to be filled with thoughts and ideas. he remembers being led by his hungry heart starved for experience. he remembers being called a dreamer and being treated like he was a fool. he remembers when he was frightened to come out here alone. afraid that he'd go - poof! afraid to step through the mirrors in the mirror maze. afraid to step through the horrors in the hall of horrors. afraid to step through the image of god. pretty much afraid of everything.
    and when he was the most afraid but he still let go and took one more step was when we took him into our arms and embraced him and welcomed him home.
    and he was returned to the camp and the camp followers. he returned to the group and those of the group mind. he sits on the edge of those huddled together at the table by the window in the cafe. he sits at the table in our kitchen in the house on the island. and he drinks his coffee and smokes his cigarettes.
    and he has brought us back with him. and we sit with him though none of the others see us. none can perceive or imagine who or what we may be - or not. they just see him scribbling in his notebook and maybe mumbling to himself once in awhile. his friends don't mind. they're used to it. they're all a bit weird too. they're almost here, but not quite. they have yet to take that step.
    this is the dress rehearsal.
    this is the part we set him up to play.
    this is a test.
    this is the experiment.
    next year he may be able to buy a computer.
    we'll see what happens then...

    now on the house system of the burning theater plays beethoven's 6th. now spotlights light up each of the figures and follow them as they still wander the stage randomly still singing their lines.
    q: he speaks for one - and one alone.
    x: this should not be confused with those who speak for oneness.
    y: he despises oneness.
    z: can you blame him?
    q: he is one alone and wants it kept that way.
    y: others seeking oneness can keep trucking straight on through.
    x: one.
    q: a point between zero and two.
    z: somewhere wherever that may be existing unto itself yet incorporated into all around it.
    y: it infiltrates anything and everything.
    x: nothing can exist without it.
    q: not even nothing because even nothing is one.
    x: one nothing?
    y: as opposed to two nothings.
    z: or zero nothings.
    x: so nothing cannot exist without it.
    q: which statement is true?
    z: zap!
    y: does not compute.
    x: it computes to me.
    q: you are one.
    y: i am two.
    z: i am one plus one plus one.
    q: that leaves me to be infinity.
    x: mix and match dada.
    z: an argument over the rules of argument.
    x: this goes on around him.
    y: out in the no man's land where two may enter but only one returns.
    q: and this one returns and claims victory.
    z: it's just a story.
    x: perhaps boasting some nonsense statement that sounds good but is meaningless like, god is dead.
    y: but who goes back to verify what is the truth in the stories this one tells in the cafes to enraptured audience?

    oh my dear zarathustra, i remember thee well. i remember thee searching for me, calling out my name - or what you thought was my name. my god, my god, you cried, why hast thou forsaken me? and i hid myself from you and chuckled to myself. i was reminded of myself once coming here in similar despair looking for someone else other than myself - looking for überman. and i watched while you peered into the darkness and shouted and in hearing naught but your own echoes assumed no one was home. satisfied, you returned to the villages to proclaim my death.
    ha!
    i will never be home for beggars and dregs like you who come to spit in your host's face. who would let such a guest into one's home? let them all depart and go elsewhere. i will no more tolerate my name being cursed where i reside than anyone else would. let them curse my name in the streets and the gutters if they want to. i do not hear them. i let them die and rot. and have i ever said anything different? who was under the impression that i would allow dogs into my house to piss on the carpets? let them go howl at the moon for all i care.
    and, yes, my doors are open to all. and, yes, what they have done in the past outside of my house is not my concern so long as they remember that when they enter my house and home that they are my guests and should and need to act accordingly to myself and to others with respect and kindness. and as my guest, they are free to leave anytime they wish. i will not hunt them down and force them to return, so long as they have not stolen anything from me. and as the host, i am free to ask them to leave anytime i wish for whatever reason i may explain or not. and as it is my house and home, i am responsible to all who come to reside in it with me. i will defend them by any means necessary up to and including the destruction of those doing them harm. and no one knows where my house is or isn't or who resides in it or not. many think they are residing in it when they are not. oppositely, there are many who think they do not reside in it when they actually do. so caution is advised.
    are there any questions about this?
    that is the way he would do it anyway.
    but that may not be the way it is.
    what god?
    and who the fuck is zarathustra?
    is he a clown in the circus we saw once?

    an habitual monkey.
    a thing.
    a beginning/ending.
    twisted around and around.
    not much information.
    the point of it could be something that slips away.
    the endlessness of it.
    spinning spiraling yin/yang this/that tao it thing.
    but it doesn't slip away yet neither can it be grasped.
    this madness - or near madness - hangs right in one's face yet just beyond reach.
    it is seen beyond and within what is seen.

    he wonders about his sanity, or what is left of it. he wonders where the boundaries of it may lie. perhaps it is when one is unsure that is when one has crossed them into lands where sanity cannot reach. was there a time when he did know? it was the others who had to tell him. they always told him when he was too close. he didn't know it himself. and then they were gone, both in actuality and in his mind. or else he wasn't listening anymore. he imagines insanity must be like when everything seems perfectly normal. one no longer questions one's state of mind. one is certain one is ok no matter how much that may not jive with what other people are saying or doing - or anyone outside one's particular group anyway. he's never known that insanity though he's seen it all around surrounding him.

    a flame of energy.
    from a spark and into the fire.
    how many ways does this happen?
    how many ways can it be described?
    spiraling points of circles.
    from the time one surrenders comes the victory.
    and he remembers something as he crosses the line.
    all he had forgotten that he had once dreamed of being.
    (you're only pretty as you feel.)
    and he smiled as he took note that he was now that.
    in the books and in the movies the guy gets the girl in the end.
    he's reached the end and lost the girl.
    he wonders about her and the poor sucker who's got her now.
    dragged down and robbed of everything.
    oh by.
    ho-hum.
    interesting.
    he takes out his list and checks it twice.
    he is shining.
    his heart is radiant even though it still turns over at what he sees around him.
    the others sinking deeper and deeper.
    he remembers a different life.
    he remembers all he thought was the cure but ended up being the disease.
    he remembers all he was addicted to like a drug.
    when one has a steady fix one feels all is right in the world - one's own world.
    and one never wants to let go.
    one would have to be insane.
    when one mistakes the border as the edge of reality - as the void and oblivion.
    because what is there behind everything but emptiness?
    when one mistakes this world with all its complex weavings of images as the true reality.
    one doesn't see all the open space and time.
    what is the substance of this illusion?
    what is its origin?
    is it oneself?
    is it one as oneself?
    could it be no more or less than that?
    she may dance a thousand dances for all eternity and one may offer her a thousand heads of her enemies for each one, but all of that will not make her any more real. she is not a mystery hidden behind the veils of illusion she has created around her. she is the illusion itself.
    or not.

    he laughs at his silly word games the others would consider meaningless while observing all that they do consider meaningful and he laughs all the more.
    the laughter one one either enlightened or mad.
    does it matter?
    is there a difference?
    he doesn't care.
    he'll take whatever comes either or.
    he sits on the fence on the edge between all the this and that of things of it.
    he balances himself such that he will no longer fall one way or the other.
    he thought once it was this.
    then he thought is was that.
    then he thought is was a fine line between threading and he decided to follow.
    he looked up ahead and saw that this line led to a point where one vanished which was what he did once he saw it.
    and in vanishing he appeared where he is here and now.
    and he was free of it and returned to it at the same time.
    he was free of all the expectations it had of him that he always failed to live up to.
    and likewise it was free of him and all the expectations he had which it failed to live up to.
    so now all of this and all of that is at his choosing.
    it is only the moment.
    it is only the moment to be.
    the moment is not the past or the future.
    nor is the past or the future the moment.
    everything is a riddle.
    he begins always at the beginning which he has always sought to find in order to begin.
    now it comes to him anytime he so desires it to do so.
    he only need to think of it and it appears.
    always beginning.
    always new to it.
    he is always taking his first breath of life - which could always also be his last.
    he is not concerned about that.
    he has never died before.
    it must be something else, he thinks.
    the irrationalogic of this thinking amuses him.
    the unconnected dots that can be arranged into any picture one might wish to imagine.
    as long as one does not commit to drawing a line or a single ordered arrangement, one can change one's mind forever.
    now lift this metaphor onto the world and observe closely at what happens now.
    everything.
    but he is not trying to convince you.
    take it or leave it.
    he is not out to conquer the world or any portion thereof.
    he is quite willing to be conquered by it.
    he already is being held prisoner.
    he is under house arrest.
    his physical freedom is severely limited.
    he is just glad that he escaped the workcamps.
    he now lives a life of luxury compared to that.
    he is now inconsequential.
    he is now invisible.
    all this though he exists in the belly of the beast.
    they have miles and miles of files documenting his toenail.
    yet they take no notice of him.
    he is without will.
    without will he will never be challenged or questioned.
    he lets the machine take over to do what it will.
    he watches and waits.
    he watches the illusions and enjoys the show.
    these delusions of grandeur of the others and their wills always in competition and in war.
    go team go.
    he imagines that this is his will.
    why couldn't it be?
    he has no argument with it as it is happening.
    he imagines this is that which he remembers he had forgotten as he had had a momentary desire to live a life as one of these who are his creations imagining itself alone in a cold world in a colder universe in the coldest void..
    he imagines desiring that life no more.
    he imagines banishing it and all that goes with it from his mind never to return to him again.
    that is how he reached the end where it begins again.
    that is how he lost the girl.
    such a sad and tragic tale that was.
    he reminds himself to cry himself to sleep some dark and stormy night.
    but now he is digging it.
    amused and amazed by the ever new wonder of it all in even the most common and ordinary banal everyday.
    who needs fireworks when looking at a spoon blows his mind away into vibrational waves of creation creating itself over and over each moment with peace, love and understanding joy with the only discordant element being all the noise of those around him who don't seem to get it - but even that strikes harmony in the greater symphony cacophony of it all being and not being?
    was that a question?
    was that an answer?
    a question that answers itself maybe.

    another tale told by an idiot no one hears because of their ignorance ignoring everything that might destroy it in a very successful fitting and adapting struggle for its very survival as a parasitic energy virus life form that lives in the human mind and is highly communicable through words spoken and written that are spores that gain a foothold in a fertile new mind and reproduce and spread until that mind is taken over and becomes another carrier and transmitter.
    if one listens closely to what others speak from what they've heard and read one can tell who is infected by and suffers from and is lost to this virus of ignorance that has become a plague in its many varied forms. one can hear in their words the thoughtless knee jerk reactions of static synaptic activity. the unchanging response to any and all situations and stimuli. the adherence to correct dogma that questions everything but never itself. never its own authority. the authority that ignores all that would expose it as being as ignoringly ignorant of all that is different from itself as everything it questions.
    (doesn't mean shit to a tree.)
    this is not ordinary ignorance. ignorance is ignorance. one cannot help being ignorant as none of us are all-knowing gods, though some of us pretend and imagine ourselves to be. like him, for example. but this is a particular type of ignorance. it is special in that it is primarily ignorant of one thing - its own ignorance. and despite all else it may know or not know and how limited or extensive that knowledge of other things may be, it steadfastly refuses to have or accept knowledge of that which it is ignorant. and it will ignore anything and everything that might cause it to have or accept knowledge of this one fact. it will ignore all to the point of wholly not recognizing or acknowledging the existence or the possible existence of anything that could conceivably point to itself as being quite ignorant.
    luckily, it is quite easy to tell when one is speaking one such person who has caught and is suffering from this disease - which survives by creating a sense of comfort with one's ideas to cover up any feeling of dis-ease. as usually when speaking with one such as this - unless one suffers from a similar form or strain of this ignorance - one feels cold chills going up one's spine causing one to feel suspicious and even paranoid of this person. one should trust one's own primal self-protective instinct, though the other will smile a creepy smile and try to convince one not to be suspicious and to relax and don't be frightened and to listen to what this one has to say. get up and run like hell. run like one's life and mind depended on it.
    the only cure for this virus spread disease of ignorance is madness.
    the madness of what one imagines - what he imagines anyway. describe it any way one feels one needs to or wants to. forget about it making sense and wait for the sense of it to come to one's mind. soon one will develop the skill of making sense out anything and everything one might imagine - or at least seeing the sense in anything and everything whether it makes sense or not. especially whether or not it makes sense to anyone else.
    simple.

    he dances around himself with himself leading and following this way and that way and any way it goes from here to there which then becomes here again as soon as it's arrived at and one realizes that one had never left here to begin with and there exists only as an illusion of mind inventing space it does not exist in which is no space. maybe. and all time but now is a similar invention of time one does not exist in which is no time. he writes this out a thousand different ways which are all fundamentally the same. is there anything different? perhaps, but who is here now to argue anything different with him? there are the others - others the mind invents for itself to be other than what it is who are no one.
    eh?
    riddle, riddle, riddle, and me, myself and i in the middle.
    around and around we go imagining creating and enjoying the show.
    a self-induced paradise of earthly delights ranging from the heavenly to the hellish and all in-between.

    all on-stage in a burning theater where the figures are now lit in red again.
    z: the delight of the feast.
    x: the delight of the famine.
    y: the delight of love.
    q: the delight of hatred.
    x: the delight of desire.
    y: the delight of fear.
    z: the delight of war.
    q: the delight of peace.
    x: the delight of excitement.
    q: the delight of boredom.
    z: the delight of life.
    y: the delight of death.
    x: more delight than would seem humanly possible.
    z: but it is.
    y: he is after all definitely and ordinarily human as human can be
    q: who and what is anyone else?
    x: what is their delight?
    z: is it only designed and designated to exist in certain limited circumstances and specific situations and only under special conditions?
    q: and how often do they occur?
    x: and how long do they last if and when they do?
    y: for him it is eternal - or as eternal as he can experience it.
    z: even if that is only a brief passing moment in the eye of the gods.
    q: but, so far, this is the longest and most delightful moment he's ever experienced.
    x: he's forgotten exactly when it began and he has yet to see it end.
    y: maybe he's due a rude awakening.
    z: but to him when it began or when it ends is not as important as it continuing here and now.
    x: otherwise it doesn't do him much good, does it?
    q: even if it was more delightful in the past or will be more delightful in the future.
    y: what is that to him?
    z: here and now is the only reality, if there is a reality at all.
    q: or maybe not.
    x: i'm not convinced.
    y: after the reality of here and now is established, the only decision is whether or not it is delightful or not.
    x: is that a decision?
    z: one can listen to the others describe it as not being delightful at all.
    q: or one can decide for oneself.
    y: he made his decision.
    x: a fantasy decision.
    z: be that as it may.
    y: let him have his fantasy.
    q: let him live in brazil if he wants to.
    z: is it anything to us?
    x: but we're stuck with the rest of it, which is not very delightful.
    z: that is not his problem.
    x: i can make it his problem. i have a baseball bat.
    y: i have an idea.
    q: i have a religion.
    x: i have a philosophy.
    q: i have a book.
    y: i have a god.
    z: he has these things too.
    x: but they are false.
    z: how so?
    x: they have led him astray.
    z: how so?
    y: he does not believe what we believe.
    z: and what is that?
    q: that the world sucks.
    z: i think he believes the world sucks.
    x: he sure doesn't act like it.
    z: he doesn't let it bother him.
    y: well, he should be bothered by it.
    z: why?
    q: we're bothered by it.
    z: must he go along with you?
    x: if he doesn't, he is insane.
    z: he knows he is insane. he doesn't mind. he doesn't let that bother him either.
    x: that should bother him most of all.
    z: why?
    y: all he sees is delusion.
    z: is it?
    x,y,q: yes.
    z: then let it be.
    y: why should we?
    z: does it hurt you?
    x: it hurts him.
    z: he doesn't seem hurt.
    x: when he gets this baseball bat upside his head he will be.
    z: the only danger he seems to be in is from you.
    x: i'm just trying to teach him a lesson.
    z: what lesson.
    y: to watch out.
    q: one never knows.
    z: i think his is aware of that. he's been hit upside the head before.
    x: then why doesn't he protect himself?
    z: he has.
    q: how?
    z: he's gone someplace else where you cannot find him.
    x: someone will find him.
    z: there is no one where he is.
    q: he's right over there (nods toward the cafe table where he sits writing).
    z: are you sure that is him?
    y: isn't it?
    z: why would he write about that person in third person if it was?
    x: i don't know. i wondered about that.
    y: maybe he isn't there.
    q: maybe that isn't him.
    x: i think he's only trying to fool us.
    z: you all are correct.

    he lights another cigarette.
    he learns to forget.
    he watches and waits.
    he doesn't hold his breath.
    the deadbeat club.
    being and not being.
    zap!
    lose what one needs to lose.
    it's a bitch.
    he threw a fit when it happened to him.
    he cried and screamed and smashed and threw things.
    like a spoiled child.
    until he was left with nothing more to lose.
    then it came to him.
    it came to his awareness that it had been with him all the while.
    things had to cleared away.
    he had been distracted.
    he had been busy.
    all the things he thought he couldn't live without.
    all the things he thought he couldn't exist without.
    what else was possible?
    he didn't know anything else was possible or how to get to it if it did.
    he spent day in despair he thought would last until he was dead.
    he was convinced that he was entirely lost.
    then he was pushed.
    something in his head pushed him.
    it all broke open and down he went.
    and up he came again new and improved.
    just like on tv.
    he felt like such a fool.