Chapter 1 

The Dark Night of the Soul

Anything for a buck. A liquid sigh about to fall into the wasting night.

...over the skyline of the city, over the greyblue of the horizon, a single plane travels just out of eye of the crawling humanity ducking into alleyways and buildings. It drops its load- a detonating blockbuster filled with oils, melted crayons, pigs blood, the come of a lost tribe of giants, mucus from old pensioners, tears of gallant lassies waiting for their lads to return, import piss from Patagonia, liquid pulp from the Black Forest, maple drool, anything THEY could find that was running--- rich boy bodies lost in communion, rampant genius afraid of itself, dispirited souls clawing from the black machete's, bodies chasing naked shadows, shadows ski8pping along corrugated walls after naked bodies, abandoned hairy cunts searching the woods for a choice piece, all the bulls moving south in stampede drawing their hoofs in slippery come... they and all are inside the blockbuster falling through the clouds towards the unsuspecting---who are frozen in a kind of epileptic moment. And when it explodes the animated figures think its Fourth of July. They come out and serpentine the streets, arms thrown skyward, letting their bodies swim in the deluge. Only a few have the courage to draw on the buildings....

She imagines an oil derrick. It stands in the middle of a forlorn field- tumbleweeds, rusting metal, bone rock. The dry rod screw begins its descent into the earth, boring through the crust and adobe, the soft loam, looking for primeval bones, transmogrified by sleeping eons into the gushing brew of lust. Past the dead phantoms, past the bristling gates, gates separating the air of the known- a slippage out beyond all voyages and transports-- commerce and heraldic banners, walled cities, the clamoring market, the godded mountains, altars and incense, docks and mossy pilings, the painted temples, the child's hill, out beyond the quiet glassed conversations and bleating horns, the vapor trails, the crawling stucco, the poundings, every day the hammering of concrete, the splitting of streets, the nausea of asphalt pouring---the billowing of souls into the haze, browning before the sweet rains, the boxers, the vultures circling--beaks red, dripping dotting the avenues, the sleeves of desperadoes turned from quietude to a loud, pitying moan like the long far-away shots of cannon knocking against the walls of castles. She is dreaming, bathing in a sunlit room, her body glistening sweat. A bird perches on the window sill.

They converse like old friends. They both laugh. Out he flies.

A hill. It's rim. People standing pondering down the hole circumscribed by the hill. A laughing man is running around. "Jump in! Go ahead, jump! All your friends are down there! All your family! Life continues down there!

Go ahead, jump! You don't want to die...you don't want to be evaporated by the Torch, do you?"

A few fall forward due to his goading. The others kick around the dirt, their heads bowed. One yells across to him. "Why don't you jump? You seem to know all about it. You jump!"

"Oh, I have jumped...and now am back again, exposing myself to the great Flame that is approaching...Hurry!

Jump. Do you want evaporation or do you want continuing life? Go, jump! Life continues down there in the pit...

In the obscene pit. You'll all have TV;s and you'll be able to drive the freeways...and one man will say to the other, "hell, this ain't so bad." And they'll laugh together and swig down their drinks. Women are down there with their legs spread....they're in glass cages and everyone can see them beat-off with walking sticks...you can set up governments....the same as before! Dope is plenty down there....Everything will be the same but everyone will think it's different. So jump! It's either jump or fly towards the Flame!" And the remaining stragglers leap. The single man faces the Flame with open arms.

A fire blows a storm across the waving grains. The grains are wavering slowly back and forth, undulating with a cautious wind that skitters like little girls laughing from the Beast in the woods. Then the fires comes and in and in a moment, in a blink, the grains are blackened stumps, each thin stalk a dark remnant of itself. The millions are running before the deluge, up the sloping hill, clawing their way to the top. The great Flame rises up, gathers itself all at once and forms a circular mouth in the center of the yellow-blue----blowing streams of their Flame toward the bottom slope of the hill.

Scene I

Woman is tied to railroad tracks. A team of writers, posing as outlaws, have just left the scene in a bursting cloud of dust and gravel.

"HiHo," says one, pointing to the perked ears of Rocinante.

The apparent leader is nattily dressed. Sequins abound. A vial of cocaine is stuck from his pocket, in front of the monogrammed hanky, silken gold.

"Behind us is our fortune....Now we roll towards our mounting glory- a beaming, gridding glow on the darkened cave of our compadres."

"All hail! All hail the heroes of culture!"

The leader starts spewing a foamy speech blown through his head on the tails of the wind. Our his mouth comes the jumbling, bumbling alphabet- not 24 but 24 billions- all frothing like the disease of a mad dog.

It begins raining gold and the spirited pirates reach out their hands in the mighty quest.

Scene II

"Where's the ax?" the engineer asks, grump-like to the fireman. "We need to stoke the fire."

Before they can look specific, an eye catches the form of the quivering, trembling maiden, snug tight on the steel tracks.

"Need we stop?! Where's the brakeman?"

"Agone to the land of dreams, the ultimate show of shows," says one.

They franticize. A life is about to be lost under their spinning metal.

The maiden watches as her death pours down on her. She wants one more surge of feeling before the big darkness spirits her away into the diffusion. "A slab of metal...an iron arm...."

Scene III

The drunken aristocrats are solemnizing their humble beginnings. "Why just yesterday," one says- his hands gilt with the reigning dust, "I was a picker in a nose factory....I dreamt of this day, my day in golden lights...It seemed impossible as the noses passed on the rubber conveyer...it seemed wild and crazy to one day be responded in a community of my talented peers. Then I quite thinking about it...I took classes...I studied all the scripts...my head grew hollow and I became frantic...it was the last day of desperation as I recall, that I suddenly was overcome with the urge to automize my mind...out came the typer and in went the paper. I was possessed by spirits beyond the vale of the reflected sun. Now, I is beyond the scripts...And naked women lie at my feet... Haha" And the man throws the gold dust in the air.

Scene IV

A fading shot of the scene from the rim of the valley. The settled scripters are entertaining the beasts of prey, with their lightning fast quick-draws. The smoke of the iron horse swirls in the background....a body is fomented on the iron tracks. Feathers and arrows dot the horizon.

The alien, HVHI sits in front of his charts and calculations. He wants his connections to be of a deeper, more subtle kind....He sends out a telepathic message.

Our Jane hears him. "Yes, I will come to your observatory," she signals back, not knowing where she's headed but headed just the same.

And soon she is gliding down his telescope with nothing between her and his huge eyes but a thick glass, which she passes through without a problem. After a solemn tea, they face each other to talk. He wants to know where she is from and why she's been floating out in space.

Her voice is tired. "I died. I was hacked up on some distant speck and when my body was devoured by alligators

I spirited up....God knows how long it's been. For all I know my dear planet is dead and vanished by now....it was getting pretty boring until I picked up your message. I guess it's always been a pretty dream of mine--to fly into space and encounter other beings.....But I can tell that you are just one of them...."

The alien looks hurt. "What do you mean?"

"Well, for one thing, you have no exotic shape---no antennae from the nose or anything like that. And you're pretty colorless to boot. In fact, you remind me of my old man."

"Well," HVHI enthuses, “I’m sure somewhere in the infinite there are other forms....If it is infinite...do you think it is?....Do you think it is infinite?"

Jane draws in a deep breath. "I...I don't know. I don't think about it much...All I know is that I've been floating around till time has evaporated....And the scenery is all different... yet all the same....Do you know what I mean?"

"You mean the arrangements of the constellations change, is that it?"

"Yeah, yeah, something like that...No....now...I can't quite say it...it's on the tip of my tongue you know but I can't explain it in so many words....But it's as if each little light pulses in its own life...And that life is fully infinite. It's a spiraling down into invisible infinite. This is the feeling I get when I pass along the blackness and see all the shimmering lights. They're all pulsing out their infinitudes, each single one of them, all profoundly different...and the only thing the same about them is their infinity...the depth...but whether the whole thing, I mean the universe is infinite." And she shrugs her shoulders.

And HVHI laughs. "Yes. I have the very same feeling. I have had it since I was a little boy. My confidence wavers sometimes but when it does I just look and by god, I'm a new man."

David Eide
January 24, 2014