A SKIT FOR THE THEATER OF LIFE'S END

The curtain is down on stage; the house lights are dimming slowly, giving people time to settle down, which they do. Wagner’s “Parzival” is being played softly over a public address system

As soon as the house lights are off, the curtain rises and a white spotlight illuminates what appears to be a tall female figure clad in dazzling gold and white, bedecked with jewels, standing at a podium center stage. The music recedes like a wave falling back on a sandy beach, and she raises both arms to capture the attention and silence of the audience in this small, elegant theater before she commences to speak.

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Theater at Life’s End! “I am your hostess, Lucy Golden Years, who will introduce your speakers as they come on stage. What you are about to hear has been tailored especially to your tastes, so we hope you will enjoy it. First let me introduce Mrs Penelope Oldage. Come along, dear.”

A similarly bejeweled lady enters from the left wing. She moves stiffly, her obvious age seemingly a contradiction to her youthful dress, which glitters with sequins, sparkles with stones all set in a brilliant white background. As the first speaker steps down from the podium, all but vanishing behind it, Penelope mounts its steps, thereby assuming height she had not on the floor. Her crowned head nods happily to restrained clapping of the audience, then she too raises her arms and the onlookers become silent. Her voice, that of a younger, alto opera singer, commands everyone’s attention.

“It’s so nice to see you all sitting here, practically filling the auditorium, each one of you destined soon to become a personal friend of mine. Some of you come here in the glory of your lives, fulfilled, secure, happy, having outlived griefs, troubles, wants, losses, ready and eager for the most thrilling adventure of all, your very own demise. You’ve seen other people die, but that has not told you much about what to expect for yourselves. Others of you are glad to have it all over, the poverty, the suffering, the hunger for food and comfort. But one and all must wonder what lies ahead, just as your predecessors wondered, and you all hope, even in the face of a complete absence of evidence, that there will be a future for you, or that there will be a “you” to witness it.

“Well, I’m not here to disclose information about that most pressing of subjects. If you ask me I’ll have to deny any special knowledge. I’ll support and guide you in any other way so you can come to terms with what is to you “the unknown.” I’ll be here as you approach the portal marked “Exit”, to support you if you stumble, and encourage you forward when you want to turn back. And you be sure, I want to make the move acceptable, fun or funny if possible, for death is in no way frightening, the scary tales people have always told notwithstanding.

“First let me deal with the question of your vision, about which some of you have complained. Right now you are losing the sight you were used to having on earth, but you have yet to develop fully that second sight which sees behind the facades to the realities beneath. So it’s as if you see two images of everything, neither quite in focus, often as if you were seeing through a glass darkly. That will pass shortly. I suggest you practice patience and avoid being disturbed by the condition: let me assure you it will not last.

“Now something more important: you will soon feel as if a large wave were picking you up as you swim near the beach. You’ll see it looming high over you, foaming and curling at the crest, and you may wonder what it will do with you. Will it crash down on you? Will it lift you to new heights? Will it swallow you? Some of you may already feel the beginning of that wave, uncertainty in your footing, loss of touch with your surroundings. To those people I say, let yourselves be uplifted; ride with the wave; it’s going to take you anyway, so why not relax and go along with the ride? This will be the beginning of the trip through the exit door.

“As you feel yourselves uplifted, try to feel trust in what is happening. Think of yourselves on an air mattress floating down a wide river -- no waterfalls or even rapids, no rocks, just  floating smoothly downstream. And imagine this to be happening to you right now and feel that it is going to happen for a long time.

“Can you feel that? Are you floating?”

Affirmations rise from here and there in the auditorium, few at first, then gathering force and volume. Soon the hall is abuzz with sounds of voices speaking together their acknowledgment and appreciation for what appears to be happening to them. Penelope waves farewell to her audience and climbs down off the  podium to cheers and clapping. She is replaced by Lucy Golden Years who again raises her arms for silence.

“Thank you for your warm reception of Penelope; she had an important message for you, didn’t she?”(Applause.) “Of course, you still want to know what’s in store for you, right?”

Expressions of agreement and some laughter sound throughout the theater.

“But the whole problem here is that it has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with experience. You know how some of your experiences in life were impossible to describe in words? I mean, you were unable to do them justice with words? (Sounds of agreement)

“Well it’s the same with dying. We can’t give you a preview of the entire process because there are simply no words to describe it. Can any of you accept that?” (Sounds of some agreement)

“You could at least try!” yells a male voice from the middle of the audience.

“Oh, we have,we have,” replies Lucy, “for many years, and to no avail. The information we forwarded was simply unusable. It only added confusion and actually almost spoiled the experience when it did come. So now we say nothing.” There is complete silence in the hall. Lucy picks up something from her podium.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, our next guest is from the other side, completely, so few of you will be able to see him. We are able to reproduce his voice by means of some sophisticated wizardry provided by engineers at Google. Though even then, there  will be souls who cannot hear the voice. They will, however, be able to read what he says on the screen.  

Without more ado, here is Dwal Kul, longtime advisor to mankind in its search for spiritual enlightenment.”  

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!” The voice is very deep, accented slightly, and seeming to come from a large man who could project his voice into every corner of the hall, though he is nowhere in sight. Rapt silence reigns.

“We Tibetans are entranced by numbers so I should be able to tell you how many groups like your own I have shepherded through the Exit, but in truth, I lost count long ago, not that it matters a great deal. Though if I could tell you, perhaps it would lend credence to my next two statements: First, no matter how many times I have witnessed the joy of a soul released from the shackles of his body and his memories, it is still impossible to describe. Words are attached to the experiences of earth; the unearthly evades them. Hence our apparent unwillingness to try to communicate the experience to you.  Second, many of you have spent years searching for your identity, for your selves, and for some this has been a successful undertaking. However, let me say emphatically, you cannot go through the Exit without completely giving up what you so ardently sought, though, ironically, you must have found it to be able to give it up. Seems unfair, doesn’t it?”  The great voice pauses as if to let the implications of its statements sink in.

Then it continues:

“Many folks have expressed disappointment at the necessity of giving up all they had striven to acquire in their lives at the very moment when they could sit back and start enjoying their accomplishments. Think  of authors, musicians, inventors, professors, doctors, all arriving at the point at which they could bask in the light of their achievements, only to be snatched from them by what they think of as a premature death. How benevolent can a system be, they demand to know, which would pull the rug out from under them at the very moment when they would be enjoying the present moment for the first time in their lives?

“Well, like any factotum working for a large enterprise, I have to say two things: First, the way affairs are managed here is out of my hands. I don’t call the shots. And second, by way of an attempt to comfort people with those questions, please accept  my guarantee that you will understand soon and be reconciled to what happens. Meanwhile, let’s get on with the presentations.” 

The big voice falls silent and leaves the listeners quiet in their seats.

The theater darkens as strange sounds reach for the ears of the audience from out of the walls. Holograms appear above the podium, vague and colorless at first, then coalescing into bright colors and grotesquely human forms, as if out of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. And they aren’t still, but writhe and strut as they do on his canvases. Gradually the ugly figures fill the space above the watchers, some of whom duck when the hobgoblins cruise too near.

Then the cloud of horrors descends upon the audience, buzzing them, getting in their faces, making grating, screeching, screaming noises. The house lights go on, but the panic is wholesale: members of the audience struggle to their feet and flee the theater flapping their arms about their heads as if to ward off attack from their pursuers.

Two dozen people remain seated, laughing loudly, and to their laughter is added guffaws from The Tibetan. 

“Those poor souls forget they’re already dead, and that no further harm can come to them. But oh, look at the identities, passions, comforts, and possessions they cannot leave behind!” exclaims the big voice not unkindly.

 Then to his remaining audience: “Come friends, let me treat you to something very special for having stayed in your seats when others fled. Here is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing “In Paradisum.”

As the curtain descends and the house lights go out, a hologram of the greatest singer on earth, performing at the zenith of her talent, commences to enthrall the audience with the power of her majestic voice.

November 1,2013

 Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

    of New Zealand

OLYMPICS-JANET

BLACKBIRD - FRAN DAYAN

When I retired and moved to Sonoma, the thing I wanted to do most was to sing. I first went to one local chorus only to find myself handed a sheaf of Christmas songs.  Growing up a Jew, I knew these songs held little significance to me so I returned the sheaf with a thank you. Yes, I felt somewhat ungrateful but I couldn’t help myself. My blackbird was whistling  fearlessly in my ear.  As I left the hall and expressed my disappointment to an acquaintance she told me of a rock and roll chorus she’d heard about and was I interested? I shook her arm beseeching her to tell me where I could locate them. 

For many years I practiced psychotherapy and I was thinking of the needs of others all the time. Now, I had retired, it was MY time and so I began learning to sing, harmonize, and raise my voice in ecstatic song. Once a week I could count on an hour and a half where nothing entered my mind but a great rapture in the sounds we created. It raised me beyond the limits of my body. I never thought I could have such a sense of well being, that I could actually feel blissful. 

Singing rock and roll brought back a flood of memories of my earlier years immersed  in music, dance, nostalgia and love. Also, many years ago my son had been in a rock band too which added another layer of reminiscence. Recently as part of Sonoma’s Vox Populi Chorus, I began to direct song pieces that had special meaning for me. People actually stood up, raised their hands and clapped when I directed ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ (another Blackbird moment). I can’t explain it, except to say all this was the best thing that ever happened to me besides my son, my partner, my politics and Sonoma. My blackbird was definitely rising. 

Then just last week, we were all requesting new songs for our next song cycle; I requested a song and the deep desire to direct it, which was granted. I was ecstatic! The song was one Paul McCartney had written called ‘Blackbird’. The main lines go something like this:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, 

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.  

All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, 

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see, 

All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly into the light of the dark black night... 

These were amazing lyrics that I've always loved.

I recently learned that Paul McCartney’s lyrics for this song were inspired following his seeing on the news a young black girl being harassed and taunted as she entered her new school following the desegregation of the South. I also heard that the blackbird in England and Western Europe was a songbird not the American  blackbird that squawks. So Paul McCartney is singing to this young black girl imbuing her with her beauty and courage in the face of such hate.

I realized for myself, the song 'Blackbird' was how my life had evolved, from opaqueness into light and clarity, from quietude to proactivity.  

A friend  in my writers group just wrote a short piece called ’In the Future’ about how as a young four year old child she had so wanted to read but her mother didn’t think she was old enough. There was no reading taught in kindergarten either so to her great disappointment she was only allowed to be a ’Bluebird’. Finally in First Grade she learned to read and became a ‘Redbird’ a source of great pride to her.  

Now I know I’ve only ever wanted to be a Blackbird, not a Bluebird or a Redbird but I only just found that out. I didn’t consciously realize what those lyrics meant to me until I was 78 and finally had the realization that my life had turned from normal and responsible to joyful.  

January 2014

Time Marches -Shepherd

Once upon a time, there was a clock maker who had made clocks all his life, it seemed, and the routine was beginning to wear out his fingers and brain, which was tired of looking at numbers only 1 to 12, including Roman Numerals, and the three slots in a drawer for long hands and short hands and the long  skinny second hands in the longest compartment…all well organized but tiresome.

His wife encouraged him to do something else. It was obvious to her that he was getting a bit overwhelmed with his job. In this era, people worked as long as they could. There was no retirement, social security, or welfare. So our clockmaker was still making clocks even though he was becoming an old man.

Sometimes, at dinner, they would be talking and he would say things like, “What was the weather today, 10, 11, 12, long hand, short.”

“Abraham”, his wife said, for that was his name, “what are you trying to say?”

“What?” he shook his head and said,  “I asked about the weather. I haven’t been outside

all day!”  He had no ideas of his strange comment. 

And once, he brought in several of the clock hands, both long and short, and started to make designs on the table as they ate.

“I think you need to get away from making clocks!”  Martha , the wife shakily stammered -  because she was getting quite concerned and worried about our clockmaker.

“I have a little clock I am making that I like. I think people will also like it because it is unusual. If I made it big enough, the town could buy it and put on the tallest building so everyone would see it and know if they were on time or early or late for whatever they were doing.”  Abraham replied.

Martha sighed, loudly. “OK, Abraham, go make another little clock. But then I think we need a vacation, somewhere where time of day doesn’t matter. Somewhere we can relax, sleep late, not be aware of the time and have people wait on us, ... get three meals a day.”

This was quite unusual for Martha to say because in this era, people had never even heard of a vacation. There was a small inn in town where travelers might stay overnight in getting to their destination, but never did they tarry for several days for what would they do in this little village where people worked at their jobs all the time and there was no beach to watch the surf or lie in the sun, nor a mountain to walk the trail or fish in a river. That would be absurd. Maybe Martha was losing her senses as well as Abraham. 

So Abraham went back to working on his new clock. He painstakingly got all the tiny numbers on it correctly, then thought, “Why do we need numbers? Everyone knows where they are on the face of the clock. I’ll just put some dashes instead. “ And he did.

The trouble was, when the dashes were in place, Abraham couldn’t tell which was the 12 and which was the 6 . “Oh well,” he thought, “ I’ll put the hands on anyway.” Satisfied, he brought the finished clock to Martha who could hold it in one hand. She looked and looked at the clock, it was  only about a ¾ inch square, then  at Abraham’s smiling face. 

“Abraham, which way does it go? One way it says 2 minutes to 3, , another 11:20, or almost quarter to 1,or 9 :28!. And I’m not sure which hand is which, long or short! Oh dear. And if I didn’t have my glasses on, which are steamed up from checking the potatoes cooking on the wood stove, I wouldn’t be able to read any of the numbers. Abe, my dear husband, it’s charming but too  small and confusing. “  She looked to see how he was taking this news and he was still just standing there, grinning. “Abraham, did you hear me?” But he didn’t answer. He drank a little coffee, seemed quite all right, but was a bit out of it. 

I’m going to go back and work on another idea I have for a clock. It is quite unusual.” And Abraham walked to his clock making studio, quite content, not even realizing the strangeness of the last creation. 

Martha sat down, sighed again. She knew his productive clock making days were over but…what was the harm in letting him just play with ideas and keep busy. She sat in the chair with the cooling coffee beside her, held the little clock in her hand, unconsciously turning it over and over, the little clock that told too many times.

January 14, 2014

MILEY, Aztec Apocalypse

He crouched there, hidden like a jaguar on the hill, 

a thin Aztec boy hunching in the grass

that tufted beneath a line of gnarled trees

and watched anxiously as the warriors below

bellowed and thumped the weave upon their chests, 

plumes now quivering like flames above their heads,

and shook their spears at the threatening soldiers

amassing across the field, brandishing swords 

and fingering muskets, armored breastplates 

glinting in the sun, helmets of iron 

half-shuttered and black, crowning 

their heads like the mandibles of ants.

He shuddered then, but swallowed a scream

when the cunning Cortez burst into the field

mounted on horseback, his black Spanish stallion

glistening with sweat, rearing and stamping,

circling and whinnying. Nothing he'd dreamt in any dark dream

had ever drawn such a man, master of such a beast. 

No Centaur in the New World had ever burst 

pell mell between the bluffs as hideous with malice,

as magnified by haunch and hoof, 

as Cortez did upon the field that day. 

And then came the rest, exploding through the trees, 

forty mounted men, each upon a beast as brutal as the first,

followed by the armored troops, 

their standards blazoned with a terrible Cross,

till he wished his eyes had suddenly gone blind 

before the sickening sight of what they saw. 

The horses thundered forward, their riders screamed, 

swords in the air and firing their guns, 

as once-great Aztecs broke rank and scattered, 

cleaved like water by a Clipper's prow,

the rest soon trampled or slashed upon the run,

blood like roses sprouting from their necks

as they stumbled their last steps, bewildered by fate,

and fell like stalks of corn upon the ground.

Sonoma, CA  January 2014

©Michael Miley All rights reserved.

AUDIO-VIDEO PRESENTATION BY AUTHOR

A Leaf Falls From The Tree of Knowledge

by MICHAEL MILEY

As I open the door to the bookstore, I find myself suddenly in the hollow of a great tree, between roots whose inner sides house small misshapen rooms, closets with red-and-green spotted doors, in a space easily 40 feet across, lit by a blue-green phosphorescent glow. I go to the first door, which is very narrow, but lumpy and leathery like the back of a frog, and open it and see it has a toilet inside, and I know suddenly that I have to pee, but if I go inside, it’s so very narrow I won’t be able to get out again, so I slam the door and hurriedly shuffle to the next one on the left. It’s larger than the first, with the top of the door the shape of a broad man’s shoulders. I know it’s big enough for me, so I open it gingerly, and in the green-blue glow of its interior I can see another toilet. I almost go in, but I detect the sides of the room are shifting, they’re beginning to squeeze, and the door in my hand itself is changing its shape, like someone gripping the waist of a sandwich. I know if I go into this room, the roots of the great tree will close around me and I’ll never get out, so I hurriedly close that door and move on to the next. 

When I open it, I see a small bald-headed man sitting inside, intent on his task, and he says, “Hey hey! I’m already in here, go away, go away! “ So I slam that door and as I turn into the space, I see that every root of the tree has a strange misshapen door on its side, all arrayed in octagonal formation, each with a water closet behind it, and as I look, some of the doors are opening, and strange men in 19th century clothing, with bowler hats and woolen long coats, are emerging from them like the claustrophobic dreams of Rene Magritte. 

So I know now I could go in and safely do my dastardly duty, but the prospect still frightens me, so I look up the trunk of the tree for spiritual guidance and as I do, the space magically transforms into the huge bookstore it was supposed to be, with a metal spiral staircase in the center of the tree, winding endlessly to its upper floors, and tens of thousands of dusty old books piled up all around me. The space is lit by a window somewhere, fixed in its upper reaches, and in the descending amber light of the immense wood-paneled room, dust motes are drifting everywhere in the air. I step onto the spiral staircase, like Jack on his beanstalk, and quickly climb upwards, occasionally looking down as I climb, watching the floor recede, with its books stacked up beneath me in huge disheveled piles. 

At length, I come to a comfortable landing and step off the staircase and find myself browsing through the overflowing shelves, when I land upon a thick, pale, paperback book, by a P. J. Somethingorother, with a picture of a dazzling blond on the cover, as she lounges on a four-poster bed, a smirk on her face, in a tank top with a hint of cleavage and a pleated skirt hiked up above her knees. As I open the book, I can hear the voice of New York critics who hail her tome in superior tones as: “ Unlike any other, an impossibly clever satire on the endless parade of fools and scoundrels that strut in abundance through the streets of our city.”

It’s a bawdy, brazen book, a montage of oddities that breaks all the rules, full of surreal pictures and scandalous disclosures, a scatological but savvy sibling to Cortazar’s survey of impossible things: Around The Day in 80 Worlds. As I thumb through the pages I can see she has a terse, witty style, with very short sentences, unlike me, and many of the pages are nothing but pictures, so I return to the front of the book and see an image now the full size of a page, a surreal painting of a tall lanky figure in a long coat and top hat suspended in midair, surrounded by a visible blue-green music with the texture of oil paint. 

He’s a kind of Oscar Wilde of the sky, falling from the land of giants, and as I look at him he comes alive, emerging from the page, which is a thin film that’s somehow electronic, comprised of square pixels, but three-dimensional. He begins to tell me a story of a huge country house and a family goblin and a dark and dank October night, alluding to forbidden sex among high society women, while a strange Schoenberg-like music is coming off the page, peeling off and evaporating in the air. 

I think, “It’s incredible! What kind of book is this? “ So I turn the page with the man on it and see that its surface is very thin, like an LCD screen, but that its back is very thick, taking up a third of the thickness of the book, and behind it is something like a crystal version of the mechanism of a clock, with small gears turning and registers moving and the sound of ticking, so I turn the page back to the ranting figure, who’s still going on and on with his bawdy story, which I barely understand, but I’m simply astonished at the 3D video page that is alive and moving and talking to me! So I shout: “I simply, absolutely, must have this book!”  So I turn around in a rush and begin to hurriedly descend the spiral staircase, brandishing the book as if it were a torch. 

As I do, I notice that the mountains of books have grown larger now and more encroaching; they’re clustered so tightly around me that I can barely get down the staircase, so as I rush downwards in a corkscrew fashion; I stumble momentarily on a corrugated step. With that, the book flies out of my hands, and I shout. “ OH NO!” as I watch it tumble in excruciatingly slow motion down a small tunnel winding through the piles of books, twisting, turning, and tearing as it falls. I’m terrified I’ll lose sight of it, so I rush down faster and faster, till I touch bottom, and then I’m suddenly there again in the chamber of toilets, so I rush over and yank open one of the doors, and there’s the bald man I’d seen before, just getting up and pulling on his pants, while dutifully flushing the toilet.

I see him lean down and pick up a few torn pages, a folio of the mysterious book, which he holds now dumbly in front of him. “I’ve got to have that book!”, I shout, and grab for it, but he pulls it away and he says, “Puleeese! Don’t you have any manners? There’s no need to shout! I know what it is! It’s one of those wonderful books by P. J. Somethingorother! Right? I daresay I’ve read almost everything she’s written!” 

“But what’s the name of this particular book?” I continue to shout. “What’s on its cover?!!” 

“Well my friend”, he says, while turning it over, “Only a piece of it seems to have fallen down the staircase. It tore itself up before it landed on my head and now the cover is gone. But don’t you remember the title? Was it Carumbulus of the Bitter Root? That was a great book. I loved every minute of it!”

“No, no”, I say, “it was something else!” 

“Was it Perambulations Through the Red Warbulance?’ he continues, almost chewing the words, so I can barely understand him, while shuffling over to a pile of bookshelves, as I follow frantically behind. 

“No no, “ I cry, “It was some kind of satire on New Yorkers in heat, a kiss-and-tell story, told by the author and a falling man in a long coat and top hat, complete with thousands of newsreels, all of them with a capacity to move, to project themselves holographically into space if I lingered a moment on the  page. “

“Aha!”, he said, “Then it must have been Wrangling with Quimly Behind the Spotted Shrooms”, as he moved back further into the depths of the bookstore, scratching himself under his arm as he went, a bewhiskered smelly old man, pulling his reading spectacles from his pocket, balding and round-shouldered, but excited now at the prospect of selling me the book. Only now, he can’t seem to find a copy of it, so he’s down now, sitting cross legged on the floor, sorting and shuffling amidst the piles and piles, mumbling to himself, “It must be here, I saw it last week!”,  as he tosses the wrong books over his shoulders into the heaps of books behind him and continues his questioning. 

“Was it Pewter Corkscrew in a Alien Sky?” he continues, buried in his search.

“No no!” I say, feeling a mounting panic. “

“Was it Quintessence of Five Blue Spoons? “ 

“Ah no!” I cry out, now feeling despair, as the image of the tumbling book spins down in front of me, my fingers outstretched, as if still hoping catch it. “It’s none of those, sir!"

"Well, the least you could have done is read the title!”, the bookseller grumbles. “How do you expect me to find it? P. J.’s incredibly prolific! She’s written at least 10,000 books! Was it Winkling in Whale Time?” he continues, a plaintive tone now creeping into his voice. 

And as he asks that question, I shake my head sadly and hear something stir outside of the bookstore’s walls, as if rubbing the trunk of the Great Tree, much like the sound of a sigh of a ghost passing by, his hand fondling the bark, while the bookseller searches for an impossible leaf fallen from the great Tree of Knowledge--only to suddenly feel a pillow against my cheek, only to then feel the cool Fall air blowing over me from the open bedroom door, only to inwardly cringe as I feel my mind now desperately reach to capture each fleeting leaf of evaporating scene, which even now begin to blow away. I know with cruel certainty that never again will I look on that book, never again see its living page, with the Oscar Wilde-like falling figure, never again see its crystalline clockworks, or hear or see again that visible music peeling off the page, like pigment dancing before my eyes—unless I can somehow incubate a Door of Return, dream the lucid dream I obviously require, to return one day and recover that book, that title, that leaf, from that Tree….

Sonoma, CA   9/25/13
© 2013 Michael Miley All rights reserved