Mirth

(a play at play)

Archy

How’d it go?

Gaby

It’s over.  I think.  Don’t let it trouble you.  Nothing falls neatly in place.

Archy 
Do we ever find our place in this world?  Do we even have a place?

Gaby 
Those are just the wrong questions.  

Archy 
What are the right ones?

Gaby 
Are we alone? Do the angels watch over us?  

Archy
Do the angels even exist? What angels would bother with us?   

Gaby

The art on the walls and the books on the shelves are your excellent angels.  They were inspired by the muses. 

Archy
They’ve become material possessions sought by collectors.  Would angels profit from collectors?

Bertha

American dreamers think money will solve their problems.

Martin

Let them dream. Everything must end. Even dreams.

Bertha

So? 

Gaby
Do you dream?

Archy
I dreamed I was loved and valued.

Martin

Dreams are the garbage of the brain.  

Bertha
They don’t matter.

Archy

I can't walk away.

Bertha

You’re committed to the show.  Enjoy it.

Gaby

You won’t suffer forever.

Bertha

I’m quite satisfied with what you’ve put on exhibit.  

Martin

We were not expecting much.

Gaby

Just leave my delusions intact.  

Bertha
Gaby.  You ought to exhibit your work.  

Gaby
I brought bread and cheese from the market.

(a burst of light and sound of a loud blast followed by silence)

Archy

The city is under siege.

Gaby
What?

Archy
What will we do?

Gaby

I listen to the wind.

Bertha

What do you hear?

Archy

We should put up a pot of tea and live for the moment.

Gaby

We share our moments with our guests.

Archy

Send the audience home. The end is beginning and I’m feeling weak.

Bertha

Get on with your life. Make the best of it.

Gaby

What of the audience?  Do we need them?  

Archy
An artist ought to be paid a living wage.

Martin

You need contracts.

Archy

Let’s not talk about it.

Bertha

Do you prefer to be alone?

Martin

Does that surprise you?

Archy

We should quit using words . . . 

Martin

We need to give voice to our anger.

Gaby

Are you angry?

Archy

I didn’t want to do this.

Martin

But, you did it anyway.

Archy

What was I doing? Where could I go? Wherever I went, I couldn’t get away from myself.

Gaby

It’s getting late.

Bertha

Why would you leave?

Martin

No one would know if you went or stayed.

Gaby

All artists start with a single gesture, a response to a perception. They continue until they stop. Then they walk away.

Bertha

Listen to the children’s voices.

Gaby

I hear the children’s voices -- 

Bertha

You can sustain their hopes.

Gaby

Until they look into the abyss, and find despair for themselves.

Bertha

Your art would survive.

Archy

I’ll do what I have to.

Gaby

Come, swift Spirits of might and mirth,

Archy

I’ll live in the present. The audience sat through the entire play.

Bertha

The audience leaves after every performance.

Gaby

But we’ll return with other bodies.

Archy

Can I exist outside the theater?

Martin

At the end you are free. You may leave the theater.

Archy

It is time to begin again.

(sunrise. bright house lights)

EDIE AND CYRUS

(a dialogue)

by Richard A. Spiegel

Edie

What do you mean by desire?

Cyrus

It’s complex, eh?

Edie

Yeah.  It is complex.

Cyrus

Let me try to define it.

Edie

Oh, come on.  It’s really simple.

Cyrus

No.  You asked for complexity.

Edie

I’m kidding you.

Cyrus

But desire poses a real philosophic problem.

Edie

How so?  Tell me.

Cyrus

Is it an illusion?  You think you know what you desire, but are you fooling yourself?

Edie

I know what I want.

Cyrus

What happens when you get it?

Edie

Then I want something else.

Cyrus

So, you constantly desire.

Edie

Yes.  

Cyrus

Then you’re eternally wanting.  

Edie

I don’t think so.  

Cyrus

Desire attaches itself to an object.  That object of desire might be what makes a message jump from neuron to neuron.  The nerve message enters our body through the senses.  Then it finds its way to the brain, jumping from neuron to neuron.  Now, desire is what informs the message where to jump.

Edie

I think you’ve lost me.

Cyrus.

Follow this.  Why won’t a message from the eye just stop?  What propels it on?  What force?  Desire!

Edie

Desire is a force?

Cyrus

Like gravity.  The gravity we know on Earth is this planet’s desire to hold us, to possess our presence.  If it let go, it would no longer desire us.

Edie

Mmmmm.  I’m not sure of that.  When we lose something, or let it go – that doesn’t mean we no longer desire it.

Cyrus

Ah, here comes the illusion of desire.

Edie

That’s not clear.  Let’s go back to the neurons and the message that jumps.

Cyrus

It jumps from the ends of the neurons; dendrites and axons or whatever they’re called.

Edie

Okay.  So they jump to the connector they desire.  They might wind up at the wrong connection, but their desire is constant. 

Cyrus

So they keep jumping until they arrive somewhere in the brain and the mind becomes conscious of that message which becomes a mental image.

Edie

Which could be a dream.  

Cyrus

We dream on.

Amygdala and Thalamus (with Mary Clark)

 reflected thought off the cave wall.

“It is easy to see what you’re thinking

but try to control what you’re feeling.”

“I respond to this day’s daze,

this cycling drama of misplacement.”

Once judgment was sustained

the impulse was suspended, insecurely.

It wasn’t as if there was any disagreement.

The casual reader wouldn’t discern any

antagonism between Thalamus and Amygdala;

nothing of biblical proportions or classical reference.

“A musing on the seen ambiguities in uncertain contours,”

Thalamus contended, “would be of no use.”

You understand then,” Amygdala replied,

“how the pressure becomes unbearable.”

“Understandably so, if you lose the overview.”

But neither was there.  They disappeared into thin air.

All our feelings are within the cave wall,

all our thoughts are within the skin

said Amygdala.

When the feelings hit the wall

when we jump out of our skin

does that take us off course

or is that the course we’re meant to take?

asked Thalamus

Desire makes the pressure unbearable

noted Amygdala

and wearable, as wings

responded Thalamus,

I’ve wondered as I’m wont to do,

is free will another name for desire?

Don’t be so serious, I’m smiling because

you and I are having this dialogue

and that’s a rare pleasure,

and when we do as quoted from above,

there’s no antagonism

said Amygdala

Will you two shut up?

I’m trying to run things,

said the Basal Ganglia

(I know I can’t be as subtle as you are, but in my heavy-worded way I try to participate. MC).

Off course, of course, when direction lies

outside the old map.  Put aside the atlas.

Step outside the cave

and see the scattered leaves

from the almond and the walnut trees.

Unconstrained by circumstances,

free will takes flight

on the wings of desire.

And, I wonder about the heart of art.

And this is off course

from Amygdala and

Thalamus.  So it seems.

Bill Packard

wrote a series

of poems

about the erotic

aspect of vision.

He likened

eyeballs to gonads.

Something about the shape

of gonads, eyeballs and thalami

indicates a correspondence

between these internal balls.

but are these parts in dialogue?

that’s what i thought might be explored

in amygdala and thalamus

as if they were names of classical

personas.  instead they turn out

to be walnuts and almonds;

they don’t talk to each other.

except through this anthropomorphizing

that brings us back to the imagination

(where free will reigns).  

have you read keith douglas?

a british poet who died

in 1944 during the normandy invasion

he was only 24

but left some fine poetry

i found him in a 1957 anthology

a famous anthology

edited by donald hall and louis simpson

(and robert pack)

douglas is represented by a few poems

really fine though i think they

speak clearly across the years

in a poem titled OXFORD

about the university city

he writes

This then is the city of young men, of beginning,

ideas, trials, pardonable follies,

the lightness, seriousness and sorrow of youth.

(of course this was before

the university went co-ed

but, he continues)

And the city of the old, looking for truth,

browsing for years, the mind’s seven bellies

filled, become legendary figures, seeming

Stones of the city, her venerable towers;

dignified, clothed by erudition and time.

I wonder what he meant by “the mind’s seven bellies”?

Maybe he meant the bellies of walnuts,

almonds, pistachios, pecans, chestnuts,

hickory and leechee

Well, of course, the parts of all

are in constant and divers

conversation, this is the murmur

of the heart

Douglas is doing what we poets do

what humans do: we give personas

to objects, to parts of the body,

to cities, to stone

why do we invest “selfness” in things?

Packard’s eyeball-gonads bespeak Oedipus,

not to mention Stephen Daedalus

who saw such things…

About “the seven bellies of the mind,”

Augustine refers to memory as the stomach of the mind.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25781825?sid=21105246538771&uid=3739832&uid=3739256&uid=2129&uid=70&uid=4&uid=2

Watching Inspector Lewis,

I’ve grown curious about Oxford

In England, I was part of a communal theater

organized by Donald Gardner

We rehearsed at Cambridge

another university town

the new mystery series “Grantchester”

is set near Cambridge

the main character, Sidney Chambers,

is vicar of grantchester

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantchester_%28TV_series%29

the agon

between detective

and culprit

a tension

Raskolnikov

felt;

the Erinyes

pursuit of

Clytemnestra’s killer

resolved

in Aeschylus’s

trilogy;

a walnut (thalamus)

and an almond (amygdala)

make a nutty duo

both perceive

and interpret

but does either

recognize its actions?