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Martin H
Member
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Posted: Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 01:26 am |
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martinheavisides@sympatico.ca
http://theevitable.com
Martin Heavisides
60 Southport #208
Toronto Ontario
M6S 3N4
Canada
(416) 604 2352
EMPTY BOWL
Either hoeing the garden
or washing bottles at the well,
making soup for a sick man
or listening to someone else's child
studying books, stacking logs
writing to the local paper
or pulling that stubborn lamb
into our world, I know
the song which carries my neighbour
from one thing to the next:
Earth feeds us
out of her empty bowl."
--Peter Levitt
When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a son
Did not the poet Sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
--W.B. Yeats
inch foot
prologue
Indistinct murmur of voices. The stage is in blackness except for a follow spot on a pair of feet in pointe slippers. which--against a sudden terrific howl of wind--step, the left foot first and then the right, from a platform about fifteen feet above the stage floor to a glimmering tightrope wire. Hesitant at first and then more purposeful steps.
"Are you ready?" says a voice out of the murmurs, its last syllable jolted by a clap of thunder with reverberant echoes, the seventh and last of which is no more threatening than the sound of distant gunfire. Step by step as the wind subsides beneath a rising patter of rain, the illuminated feet move cautiously forward. Murmurs, rising roar of wind and rain.
"Can they fire you for that?"
"You don't take Visa?! That's the most horrible thing I ever heard!"
"heaped in every direction, bone showing through"
Very faintly, gone almost before it's heard, the tinkling of a little bell.
"colour of their blood and the colour of our money"
Lashing torrential rain, whipped by a rising fury of wind. Slow but steady movement of the light across the wire.
"Man, old Zeke was whalin'!" "Who do you like as the killer?"
"revolutions of the sun"
"if you become. . . naked"
"heaps of love and hunks of sugar"
"I don't think I like your tone." Gunshot.
Rain and wind have subsided somewhat beneath the rising tide of words.
"Fifty million dollars! why--that's a small fortune."
"piles of money to be made and no competition but idiots"
"I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed. (static) ten to twenty million dead, tops! Depending on the"
Static now rises, an arrhythmic pulse beat, above the subdued noise of wind and rain and voices. Small battered phrases nevertheless struggle up to audibility here and there.
"don't believe anything they" static
"but the light vanished" static
"coping but it's tough" . . .
"portents and dreams". . .
"did you hear about. . . ?" . . .
"know her all that well but even so--can you imagine?". . .
"can you imagine?" . . .
"can you imagine?"
Static accompanied by shrieks and wails in waves that crest and trough. Slow steady footsteps. The light and the tightrope walker follow the wire off right. In the blackness onstage, static, wind, rain--sudden silence.
Act I
With the Skin Off
Scene i Ainu, Eshun, Nobunaga See Me Now
Spotlight up just to the right of Mid Stage Centre on Hakuin, a Zen master in front of a brazieer on which a tin pot comes to a boil. He is
preparing tea--before him is a glazed red teapot and two small glazed yellow cups without handles. He begins to run through some variation
of the tea ceremony and continues with it at a slow, stately pace as Ainu, Eshun and Nobunaga each appear in turn.
Spotlight Down Stage Left into which steps a man in a Japanese kimono, rough grey peasant variety. The right sleeve is empty and
pinned to the shoulder. The left arm holds a crutch, without which he couldn't stand because his left leg appears to be empty as well.
AINU
I have not always been as you see me now. Once I wore peasant garb much like this, but i filled it out better with the full human complement of limbs. Went on day after day, two arms, two legs, all the eyes anybody could ask for or usually gets, gamboling, disporting, happy-go-lucky in the hours of riot and frenzy rescued from the typical bleak day's march of backbreaking toil, which paid for the disporting, never enough of that, always too much toil, never enough happy oblivion in the arms of a woman or a saki bottle. Yes it's true! (shakes empty sleeve) even the saki bottles had arms then or seemed to if you'd taken enough cups. Why could I never land a job crating saki and carrying it to market for some ambitious merchant? The work's no easier perhaps, but the chief goal of working--to forget for a few precious hours that you have to, until you have to again--can be purchased more easily transporting rice wine than in the fields of rice destined for conversion.
Then I was a warrior in resplendent armour--foot soldier, not the gleam and glitter of a samurai, flame red breastplate so blood won't show, streaked with gleams of pure gold hammered and spun into thread, mailed brass, bronze and iron to delfect sword, spear and sometimes arrow. I rose no higher than the rank of archer--less anonymous than a foot soldier in outfit of leaden grey which is how I began, our blue identifying tunic had its own resplendence in the eyes of widows we met with in our travels. It was a good life in some ways, the wages mostly looted which is a feast and famine proposition but you'd be surprised how well it pays when you sack a good-sized town with hiding places for considerable hoarded treasure. The shell master (general in disguise) who recruited me didn't mention it would cost an arm and a leg
The right eye pops out revealing a red socket.
and a little more besides.
Tries clumsily to reach it with his crutch. Knocks it ping! somewhere into the first rows.
If one of you find that I'd appreciate getting it back. I can't afford a replacement (Cackling.) They cost an arm and a leg.
This is spoken as his spotlight fades and another comes up, Down Stage Centre, on a woman in the robe of a Zen Buddhist nun.
ESHUN
I have not always been as you see me now, and soon my appearance will change more radically still. This last change will not be of my choosing. I resemble many others in this.
A girl about seven in identical robe runs out from behind her skirts.
First I was a little girl, as we all are in the beginning except those who are little boys, and often remain only that though their frames heighten and fill out in every direction.
The little girl giggles and runs off left.
I was rescued from a fire that killed my parents. The skirt of our servant's kimono was already alight when she tossed me to someone in the crod who caught me up. She jumped next--the fall wouldn't have killed her even if no one had caught her, but she was already alight head to toe, a human lantern. Hair blazing, skin bubbling, I don't know why as soon as I could understand speech people insisted on cramming my little brain with the details. Not my guardian Nobunaga, he would have spared me 'til I was older if he could, but there was no way to isolate me completely--which wouldn't anyway have been wise.
I often think of that girl. I owe her my life--she ws my second mother in a way.
(Sings)
I knew my ro---obe would fit me well
I tried it o---n at the Gates of Hell.
As her spotlight fades and another comes up on a Zen monk sitting cross-legged facing the little girl from previous scene, also cross-legged,
both attentive to their small bowls of rice. She squirms now and then and sometimes has to cover her mouth in a failed attempt to
suppress a giggle. They are seated at an angle which makes it possible for him to look at her and, over her shoulder, make eye contact
with the audience he addresses.
NOBUNAGA
I was not always as you see me now. People speak of reincarnation as if it invariably involved the transmigration of the soul into a new body, but I have no memory of such a death and rebirth and never met anyone who did--not anyone who seemed a credible witness at least. If it happens then, it appears there's an impenetrable cloak over the proceedings.
TINY ESHUN
You have a very long nose.
NOBUNAGA
I grew it that way especially when I heard you were coming to stay with us.
TINY ESHUN
I like you best of all the monks.
NOBUNAGA
I like you best of all the little girl orphans it's our duty to raise. If there were more than just you, forty or fifty say, I'm sure you'd still be in the top ten.
TINY ESHUN
Huh! Top two or three. Top one.
NOBUNAGA
Yes I expect so. Must work harder on detachment.
But do people live just one life in the one body we know with certainty they walk about in? How many find one identity firmly enough they could be said to be the same person even moment to moment? And how many live a life of great consistency in one direction, as I did once--many masks but one firm face beneath them--only to change so completely and abruptly you could speak of the soul finding a new home in its old familiar body? This is uncomfortable at first, the skin doesn't fit, the organs, nerve endings, joints keep misreading cues, many people don't complete such transformations because of the discomfort and even pain involved. Painful to discover a way of life that seemed logical and inevitable was simply a mass of avoidable traps and snares, for others and yourself. There are better ways.
As Hakuin brings the small glazed yellow cup with its steaming tea to his lips, his spotlight fades.
TINY ESHUN
This is good rice. It's the best way to make it.
NOBUNAGA
Tricky to disentangle, modify and simplify your life.
As his spotlight fades down and another Up Stage Centre shows Wabi, a poet,
Scene ii Wabi, Tamago, Minaki, Taki, Eshun Fulcrum
sitting cross-legged before a begging bowl, holding a tiny gong in one hand, striker in the other, with which he marks stanza divisions by a
sharp rap, and particular beats by softer ones perhaps, as he intones the Begging Song
WABI
(Gong)
If you drop a coin or rice in my small bowl
The Gods will smile on your day-to-day endeavour.
If you pass by and leave my receptacle empty
The Demons of the Underworld will rend you.
He is in the middle of a fairground with strollers in kimonos sometimes drab, sometimes elegant, colourful, dazzling. They study the
wares on offer in wagon carts or barrows which line the right and left border of the stage.
(Gong)
Why should it matter to Gods if a dealer in verse is fed?
Poets are the fulcrum on the gleaming scales of balance
That weigh and judge life, universe and all.
To the left are displays of turned pots, jewellery, finished garments hanging in rows and belts of fine cloth; to the right, meat, drink,
produce and dividing all the stalls, a curtain leading to a tavern/bordello off right, whose madam emerges to stroll, dressed in a kimono
of silk so fine it whispers as she walks, in a pattern that mingles emerald green and crimson. Tamago.
(Gong)
You have no idea the cumbrous invisilbe weight across my back!
Think the scales of balance shift only rarely? No!
The glide as first one tipping pan, then the next, is favoured
By a little extra weight, this is monotonously steady!
Deeds wrong or right, secret or open, even mere featherweight
Shift the balance of the pans and tip the rod they balance on.
The weight in either pan is half all that is, more or less.
Each time it shifts, the muscles in one or the other shoulder tighten
Knot upon knot, callous upon callous, be thankful none of you
Know song, and therefore judgment, so intimately.
Minaki, an artisan peasant wife, vends at a barrow beside her husband, who also produces pots finely crafted but in other respects,
due to experiences in battle none but he could speak of, and he can no longer speak, is a perfect mooncalf--stolid, oxlike, gentle,
dim.
Ainu, in coarse peasant kimono as before, but with limbs and eye restored, strolls and pauses, as does Eshun, to listen.
(Gong)
Why should the Demons care if scales are maintained?
Aren't they in love with dissipation and chaos?
The Gods want our fine-tuned balance, Demons our instability.
They bribe us with Hellfired rice cake to bring this about.
Pours a small cup of Sake out of a tiny serving bottle.
They still haven't learned this only oils our engines of judgment
Taps side of head. Ainu nods enthusiastically.
Sharpens our knotted muscles' nuance of balance.
We'd fail in our duty refusing such bribes. (Pours another.)
We barely succeed as it is, fail a little each way
Perpetually, but if once our shoulders collapsed
Both pans would tip, fling lose and all that is
Scatter itself in the void of all that is not.
(Gong)
Trust me, a coin of substance in my small bowl
Is no act of charity, only self-preservation.
Many would see the Universe destroyed to get at a particular enemy
But few would wish themselves overthrown in the same calamity.
Wisest to wish the best even for your enemies
You don't know their place in the tap'stry of existence
What may unravel if they are undone.
Holding gong and striker together in one hand, takes bowl up in the other. Examines. Mournfully shakes it. No sound. Tamago,
beside Eshun, whispers something that causes her to draw away, keeping a distance of two full paces between them. Tamago
scowls.
I see you fairgoers fear neither God nor Demon
Poet nor Chaos. (Sighs.) Wind feeds us
Out of her twirling bowl.
Eshun sets a rectangular coin made of clay, with charcters inscribed
Into the bowl Wabi holds in outstretched hand.
He eyes it hungrily, snatches it up, stashes it inside his tattered kimono.)
ESHUN
Don't spend it all on Hellfired rice cake.
The Universe would not appreciate trickling off into void
Merely for the pleasure of one poet's overbinge.
WABI
I've often wondered what a bird's eye view
Would be of that illimitable chaos
Supposing birds or eyes could yet exist
Vast bird, galactic eye that took in depth breadth height
Of all that was no more. What would it resemble?
Anything we know or ever could?
ESHUN
You see it mimic'd everywhere about you.
All form of whatever kind your eye makes out
Is a thin skin on shell stretched over
Chaos and void: the collapsing Universe
Would look just like that with the skin off.
To the sound, off, of a loudly rapped gong, a rope uncoils from above, touching down just behind an as yet untended table Midstage
Center on which stand three transparent half-globes, in the middle one of which is a mandarin orange.
Scene iii Eshun, Wabi, Nobunaga, Tamago, [Nobunaga, Eshun], Minaki, Taka, Strollers, Hakuin
We Fight for Freedom
Seeing that it's Nobunaga rappeling down the rope, Eshun, disturbed, hurries off right. Wabi, scrabbling possessions together, hurries
off the opposite way. About to exit between two stalls, looks back over his shoulder at Nobunaga, jumping the foot or so the rope
doesn't reach to the stage.
WABI
Somebody always has to come up with a topper!
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