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Narrative Voice #1; A key element in the ultimate conspiracy is the effort to stop my screenplay about the ultimate conspiracy. Mere speculation? We shall see.

I am the author of many screenplays, none produced. My personal favorite is The Woman from El Dorado, an excellent concept; timely, sublime, sexual, murderous and sensitive. It was stopped. This stoppage could only be deliberate. Those spineless wormy weenies producing films whine and bitch about everything except what truly matters.  They grovel at the feet of the CIA and FBI. These institutions are full of conspirators, no doubt the best on earth, but i have no respect for them. Compared to the conspirators i know of, they are children at play. Right now there is a bigger conspiracy going on, bigger than any they can imagine. I’m talking about a universal conspiracy.

Note from his favorite teacher; I urged him to write smaller pieces so he could finish better, or simply finish. It makes no sense to begin a massive project that may take years to complete if one is unsettled and unsure of selling it and he has enough trouble finding and keeping a place to live. It takes time to write a three hundred page novel or, for a three hour film, a screenplay. And do it well. Plus what he actually gets on paper has no rhythm, no form, and his dialogue is rigid and flat. His work is uneven. He does have tremendous enthusiasm and the ideas are excellent, abundant, sometimes brilliant, but he can’t seem to get them to come out of his characters. I would encourage him, he’s worth watching, but he must do his own work. He's that kind of person. Receiving help wounds his pride, he has to figure out how to write and rewrite, and he can only make progress alone. It’s that simple.  

 Another Assessment; Great ideas, no details. I never heard of him before, what’s he done, anything? 

Voice of God (based on a true story);  Oh yes, i agree. If he started small, on poetry and/or short stories, he might have some initial success and be not dismayed. Of all writing opportunities today to pass through the screenwriting needle’s eye is the toughest. It's not as small as the real eye of the original needle, i reserve that one for rich people, but small, yes, unmistakably so, more the size of a tarp grommet. Why does this tough screenplay publishing condition exist? I know, but can’t go into details, there are too many. Lay it all at the feet of Mammon. Look through the narrow fissure our lad seeks to pass and you see money and the mooch. Mooch means sex. That word will become popular in about twenty years. I have this bad habit of getting too far ahead in time. 

Most who write screenplays don’t realize the market is so small.  Add to this that the process of writing a screenplay is so diluted by input from producers, directors and actors “in the moment.” Only a strong initial story is necessary and survives. Once the story is clear other hands propel it forward. Unfortunately, most of the time the ‘conclusion’ is no real conclusion at all. It is a happy ending. You might think i love happy endings, having myself created the greatest happy ending of all time, but i don’t think happy endings are appropriate for people on earth. It’s bad for them, it's not real, not true to life and death, it’s not of the flesh which is what earth is all about. Heaven is different. I would love to help this very creative but disorganized youth make it to the top of the heap, but once there i would have to thunderbolt him off, like everyone else. He can learn nothing from dissipation. Sex would only distract him, it distracts almost everyone. Trust me, wait; somehow he will be wise.

 Narrative Voice #1continued; My screenplay, La Dorada, is my very best, my most humane concept. It is the story of a Guatemalan man, a refugee who is a popular local figure in his small village. He has to flee to Los Estados Unidos to escape assassination by the Guatemalan military. Once in the United States, he finds that now, in this safe, free county, he is in greater danger. The CIA and FBI want him dead as a favor to some caudillo in the Guatemalan Government. Here, the refugee, let’s call him Jesus, unless that symbolizes too much, is taken in by a church group and has to remain on the move.  Eventually Jesus will be fully integrated into society. He is given a completely new identity. Two English tutors accompany him for months, and he even receives a new, fictitious wife, on paper with photographs and a cover story. Those helping him feel warm creating this woman, this home, and embellishing her character with tales and traits they know will appeal to their student. Moreover, giving Jesus a personal history makes them feel he now has a place in society and is a part of the country,. They show Jesus pictures of a woman someone found in an old suitcase in a church storage room. No one knows who this woman is, or was. She stands, slim and golden haired with two equally bright children. Letters carefully written by a female church volunteer places them together at events in the past; church meetings, county fairs, vacations and the name of their honeymoon hotel a short walk from the sea. 

This amuses him and soon he has dreams of her. It hurts Jesus that he can’t meet his wife and children. ‘It's happening to me again,’ he thinks. This might be what he was tasked to endure, what God gave him to bear. In his own country children and adults often disappear and no one knows where they go yet everyone knows where they have gone. Killers of the world, wolves in human form, have cast away their sheep skins in favor of a uniform. A uniform is better; trim, with spacious pockets. These wolves have learned that persons completely gone are soonest forgotten. 

The first children he lost were shot by a death squad. Jesus and his Guatemalan fiancé were part of a community, as close as one can get outside a family. A sense of community, he notes, does not exist strongly in the north. People here pay more attention to what they own. Aye, so much paperwork all the time. Northern people are more strongly linked by property than community. Jesus would have children in Guatemala but the young school teacher he fell in love with and courted vanished. Her assassination made trouble for the Guatemalan army because the woman was educated in Texas. When the family she lived with there and who sponsored her in the University wrote to their congressman, the local judges and a few others and were shuffled aside they contacted the press. They struggled through talk about all this being another country or communism, etc. No officious nonsense was good enough for these people fighting to find out what happened to their beloved. They appeared on tv, were condemned as do-gooders, but wait, there’s more; a commercial break. After the commercial break who remembers what was on before? They move along to new, more vital information. Social media is no cure reaching only a self selected audience. 

Here in his new home pressures on Jesus increase, in part because he can’t safely leave his new home. He meets and speaks to very few outside the church. Most don‘t speak Spanish or know anything about Guatemala. Jesus is not good with languages. Of course, i don’t speak Spanish or know anything about Guatemala either, who does? My story takes place here, and i know a lot about this country and our illusions and how easy they are to love.

Love happens to Jesus. He falls in love with his fictitious wife. She becomes his refuge. This woman was created to hide his past, to shelter him and he falls in love. La Dorada, the Golden One. He wants to forget she is invented; he needs her so much he begins to believe she is real for longer and longer periods of time, the fantasy times gradually eclipsing periods of reality. The members of the church group, themselves under increasing suspicion from investigators, begin to wonder how to keep him safe. They worry that without her he might ‘shut down,’ although a more likely reaction might be to explode, as one deacon suggests. As they see what happens to Jesus they hesitate and withdraw from helping him, even though they know that helping this man will draw them closer within the realm of their own spiritual lives, to God. Their love of God is manifest in their love of this man who is dangerous to love. Typical of religious people, they vacillate between heaven and earth. 

They feel helpless, watching this desire for an illusionary wife The Golden One consume him.  

The next step in the story is to have Jesus actually meet his “wife,” like Jimmy Stewart meeting Kim Novak the second time in Vertigo.  Jesus learns who she is; prostitute, nun or another man’s wife. This part of the story has yet to be developed. Now that i think of it, this is actually the heart of the story, but who really wants to come face to face with a favorite illusion and see it blown to bits? As it surely must disintegrate; the fate of idealis.

Over all, it is a story of intrigue and self-delusion, conspiracy and half-truth, but most of all it is the well-worn tale of how we live what we hope for and believe in, no matter how fantastic. We trust people and they disappoint us. It is the story of desire, even for a lie, craving, loving it no matter the consequences. In illusion we find rest and live passionately.

The conspiracy that stopped La Dorada was earthly in nature. The second conspiracy, much broader in scope and still flexing to bind me has roots in truly uncommon soil. 

I call this story They Walk Among Us (not the final title). We know the truth, it should be clear to anyone with blood pulsing through brain tissue what has been and is happening to the missing children. They were among us in our families and communities and taken to another place (perhaps on Earth itself) or planet, trained using the most advanced techniques and then returned to us. Now they walk among us, waiting for the call to action. To those in control of the universe humanity is a particle beneath their span. Here is a sharply scented clue, if not the answer, to an often asked and never answered question, “Why are normal people strange?” 

Normal is how i know and it is personal. Let me describe the situation.

I stumbled onto a bargain, an old house left vacant by tenants who assured me the landlord didn‘t care and probably wouldn‘t trouble himself over the property for many months. I believed them mostly because i ardently wanted to believe it. For a struggling screenwriter, or any other kind, this was an irresistible opportunity. The roof and plumbing leaked, but most of the place was quiet and dry. I saved money by going naked to avoid doing laundry. In addition to saving cash, this demonstrated a total commitment to my work. I bought boxes of canned goods, a bag of coffee and started to write. 

But just as i was well started on my story, La Dorada and later the projected inter-galactic conspiracy, ten thousand words and a few days in the house, a person walked in the door. I was told i had the only key and here someone just walked in. I was upstairs and heard them walk onto the porch, put the key in the lock and i knew by how the hand pushed in the key and turned it that trouble had arrived. I sat on my pillow on the floor, waiting. I heard the footsteps and remained motionless, slightly slumped over the cardboard box full of canned food which was also my writing table.

Upon entering my house this person lit a cigarette. I hate cigarettes. I smelled it from downstairs up through the floor, that‘s how leaky the house was. The stranger smoked awhile down there, then came up the stairs. I sat motionless, quietly listening to the person struggle, wheezing, up the stairs, then to throw open the door and walk into the room. He looked at me, stunned, like he had never seen a naked man sitting on the floor of an empty room with his arms around a cardboard box.  

A fat man with long hair, his hair and body rocked side to side as he walked. He was bald on top and his side hair was very thin, but he had grown this meager pelt to his shoulders and it waved on the ambient currents of air like a cobweb.

“Who’re you?” he asked.

   “I live here.”

“No you don’t. You ain’t Ja’ Fay.” He meant Jack Fahey, but his accent constricted his vocal chords so extensively he could produce only half the name.

“Jack Fahey has gone to Florida; i’m living out his lease here.”

“What lease?”

“His lease for the year. He has three months to go on it, so he said i could live here since he’s paid up on it.”

“He lied to you. He had a month to month lease.”

“Who are you? “

“Who am i? I just happen to own this property.”

“Well, Jack Fahey . . . “

“I don’t care what Ja’ Fay said to you, he ain’t got claim to this property and if he told you he did he’s a liar.” He pronounced liar lar, giving me the impression he was from Texas.

“I can get a copy of the lease.”

“Get it, with the subleasing agreement. It don’t mean nothin to me. I signed a month to month lease with Ja’ Fay, not a year lease and he never paid up front, fact, he was always late. I’m glad to be rid of him.” 

Soon after beginning to speak he looked away at the walls and windows, as though his mind were half engaged elsewhere.

 “Soon as i get hold of him i’ll get that lease and receipts,” i said.

“Get them. I want you off this property. I gotta work on that roof, i got people coming in here. You got a day to get out. If you’re still here tomorrow noon i call the sheriff. I oughta call him now, but you gotta have fair warning. You’re prolly telling the truth. Ja’ Fay lied to you. How much you give him for three months?”

“Nothing. He just said i could . . .”

“Nothing? I swear, what some people do.”

His shoulders sat erect on the sphere of his belly and when he inhaled smoke the expansion of his chest was barely discernable. He looked at the ceiling, the walls, his hair like a fan sweeping, walked into an adjoining room, then walked downstairs, calling out over the sound of his feet clunking down, “Tomorrow, i’ll be here bout noon.”

That guy had to be from another planet. Tomorrow at noon gives me enough time to find a shovel and dig a hole in the back yard. “Before you call the sheriff, sir, come look at this enormous hole." Bam, back of the head with the shovel! The hole would have to be big, too big, i couldn’t dig it deep enough. Something would go wrong, it always does. Let him call the sheriff, let them come, let violence, let fire, let hatred come. They will find me calmly at work sitting on the floor with my box of food and manuscripts, all i need, and let them send me out, again, onto the street.  I will write until they rip the pen from my fist. Difficulties purify me. I will go in glory. I’ve know men like these. I know why they do what they do. I know who programmed them.

Here is where the manipulations began; the first radio transmissions a hundred years and more ago alerted them for early radio waves fell not alone on homo sapien ears. Those of whom i speak, having detected our activities in this part of the galaxy, immediately visited. Here they determined the primitive state of our race and our probable life span. Every species, like every individual, has an inwardly calibrated ‘chord of durance resonant’ as an old poet wrote, and based on this data they decided to snag, snatch or scoop up, with a beam of heavy light, (the actual landing of intergalactic vessels anywhere, including the southwestern states, is really very rare), select humans. With heavy light these humans are pulled unharmed into orbiting spacecraft. There they receive training and the implantation of tiny wafers containing coded instructions and all that is necessary to control or terminate contact with them if necessary. It is like a sport or video game for those above. They tap into this communication system, a vast number of human beings going about their ordinary activities, and some activities quite extraordinary. It is work and play at the same time, this watching through human eyes, as one might watch television from inside the actors. The progress of certain humans, their brain functions; heart rate and bodily movements are displayed in three dimensions. If the host of the installed wafer proves arrant or unmanageable ~ boom, heart attack, problem solved. Some people are monitored only once a day or every two or three days because they change so little from day to day, we all know the type. 

Humans have had children in space and these kids will form the vanguard of the new, standard human.

How the Story Started;  He imagines himself lifted by heavy light aboard a ship skimming above the atmosphere. Who among us has not dreamed of such a journey? Creatures with many eyes in tubular heads and three arms and three legs greet him. They want to cut him up and experiment on his sectioned flesh and say, sadly, they can’t put him back together. Although they can reassemble him precisely they are unable to put life back into him. “Hey, we’re good, but we’re not that good.” For his comfort they talk like they come from the Midwest with a slight southern twang. Then they discover, by chance, that he is a vegetarian and therefore they have no ethical right to take his life. There is no question of morality, for these creatures have based their social behavior on a strictly scientific/philosophical basis. They are required to release him. These monstrous looking creatures from the other side of the universe treat him with respect, as an honored guest. His hosts inform him that according to a theory derived from a correlation of archeological data from hundreds of other civilizations on other planets the human species is not expected to become completely vegetarian for ninety-four years. 

Narrative Voice #1, continued; I know someone who needs to be scooped up by heavy light and experimented on, he just walked out my door and is headed north on this street and i’m sure he eats no less than two pounds of slightly cooked meat every day. He hums so happy you won’t miss him on your Earthscan Slime Detector, his girth being near to continental. He owns property. He just put me out on my ass and that’s fine by him, he owns property. 

Thank you, gentle earthling, this specimen suits us perfectly. We shall cut him up and spread him out. Soon he will be moon dust. 

Now they have me in their vessel and respect me for being a vegetarian and therefore ethical and they are obliged to answer my questions. So, what’s this all about?  

We are experimenting on some humans, training others and sending them back to earth. These people, the ones we have tested, we know to be ‘nice guys,’ as some call them, nothing else is special about them yet they are quite rare. Now they await the moment to act. 

Here is one unique aspect of my screenplay; the creatures in control need not be seen. All the action can develop between humans. This allows for a strange twist at the end, if necessary.  All the action may be the subconscious creation of one person or of humanity itself, not any kind of cosmic conspiracy, but a desire shared by all the world, a Spiritus Mundi that flows through everyone. If God becomes a casualty of scientific investigation we must replace Him with another unifying force, an all powerful, invariable, infallible authority with one purpose; to give hope. This is just a thought in case we need it for the comfort of religious types.

This is the information our government wants to suppress and this is why; a) They Walk Among Us, we are invaded and the government is powerless to stop it. We ordinary people must not know of it and, in a larger sense, b) ordinary people alone can answer the vast and imponderable questions of existence. Ordinary people are free of power delusions. We little people are sufficient and capable of knowing everything and wisely exercising power over ourselves. 

Objective Details; War roils every corner of the universe, even against the Abductors of this struggling screenwriter. Socially advanced as they are, they fight. Their enemies from the other end of the universe are in many ways completely different.  On one side, these distant creatures are assertive, proactive and, above all, determined to win. They believe in creative stress, that duress can be healthy and is necessary to improve social systems. Their strength of purpose has brought about evolutionary change. They believe love and joy are attainable through force of will. Not manufactured, that word carries the disturbing image of vomitous factory chimneys. These are the more subtle principles of Disciplined Mind and not smoked up, foggy minds. Good food. Exercise. Fresh air. Sleep. No speculation, facts only. 

The opponents of this civil order are from the other end of the universe and are their precise opposite. They are non-goal oriented. They are   mystics preaching the gospel of Love and Flow, Flow and Love. They are Slack. They do not think progress, they are non-hyper motion, never seeking the pinnacle of quality, so if that’s your groove go with it. Given these aspects, is it any surprise they have developed so slowly? Without good Time Management skills they constantly seek opportunities to relax. 

This is the Dark Kingdom. Remember it this way; a few hundred centuries ago the entire bunch turned off the electricity and returned to a purely mechanical way of life. They grew food in plain dirt and ground their grain using water power, shunning electric light in favor of candles.

It was grim, but eventually they came back to the use of more advanced technology. Whereas before they were helpless and could have been neutralized throughout their range with ease, their growing technical re-enhancement now requires cautious reevaluation.

The critical question is, why are they like this?

As near as can be objectively determined, their condition stems from being in part of the universe where many inhabitable planets exist. One serves for one purpose, another for the opposing. A lot of trash can lay around, a lot of business be left unfinished. In addition to this, most of the solar systems in their area are bathed in magnetic/gaseous fields that temper the light, admitting heat and producing what they call ’flex rays.’  These ’flex rays’ filter the chem/bio causes of sudden mood swings. Thus shielded, their inner weather is mellowed. The inhabitants of this Dark Kingdom grow slowly and, without radical shifts in conditions, consistently. They originated the phrase ‘made in the shade.’   

Not so the Kingdom of Light. There the mind and spirit are tempered by hardship and living within narrow limits and the need to make critical decisions quickly. They are direct, forceful, born to struggle, their home planets are few and pleasant seasons short. No gassy filter calms them. 

     This is the nature of a vast conflict beyond our nearest stars. All humanity is a particle under the arch of their domain ~ the Milky Way itself is only a plinth of one column. Nay, not even so large, but a single and by no means singular nail head in the plinth of a basement door of an outbuilding of the universe. That is the true size of our miniscule species and of their range within the universe. Within it the human race is so small, oh vanity!

The Kingdom of Light has trained millions of humans from every country on earth to think and feel as they do and all will work together. Of course it is possible and more expedient to eliminate human life by simply crushing these undeveloped billions and shoving the rubbish aside. But we come not to conquer but to cultivate. We especially want to keep the farmers on earth cultivating, they are the best we have seen anywhere. Besides, cultivation is part of the evolutionary process and evolution can be a product of mind, evolution can be intended. 

Training humans is tough because conditions on earth are not precisely the same as they are in the Kingdom of Light. No matter how well trained, a human may slip back, get out in the fresh air, play softball, drink a few beers, scream and shout, go home to make love in a hot shower. These individuals make love, (and write poetry), not solely for the purposes of procreation, sleep deep and dream, go for coffee in the morning and reject the newspaper in favor of literature and Pow! Gone! No bio-chip or chem-wafer can hold them. The solution is the human ability to learn, but this solution is also a problem productive of disassimilation. They can be trained to function according to specific instructions and then they will continue to learn and grow away from the original text. It’s frustrating. You never know what kind of strange blossoms may sprout. Humans require constant pruning.

    Kingdom of Light,  Dark Kingdom, these sound like the two opposing halves of all existence, perhaps the yin and the yang? 

A disturbing image; His father came back from a war in Asia and grabbed him in a personal manner, shouting, “Gotcha by the ying-yang!”

Interjection point in script; They tell him (or her, we can be flexible here, because main character gender is not yet relevant) a startling fact; you have a brain implant, we installed it years ago. Don’t worry, it very quickly stopped working. Your brain wore it out. The one we put in your father, you remember him, the guy who frequently smacked you around, he didn’t wear out his chip at all and it’s still transmitting information even though he’s been dead for twenty years. In fact, it’s sending as much data now as when he was alive. 

Your own implant got all crossed up and exhausted by your excess of cogitation soon after installation. That is why we must replace it with a new model developed for the rare, extremely active and powerful brain. This is a top of the line piece, real cutting edge, but maybe a  word like ‘cutting’ should not be used to describe a device lodged in cerebral tissue.

Now he remembers a dream, or was it reality? He had it when he was thirteen, that age on the threshold of shadows and bright sun. He lay in bed alone, had been asleep a short time, when an orb of light grew bright beyond his feet and, spinning up just above his paralyzed form,  began to emit sparks and move along the centerline of his body, very slowly, until it descended on his forehead. He felt no heat. He could not move, only his brain was active. 

That’s right, that was us, he is told, the sparks were not necessary, we just added them to get your attention. People need that, they expect it. 

The cherry on top? 

The cherry on top.

No need for sparks to keep my interest. 

Yeah, we know that. Entertainment is superfluous to a keen mind. 

I remember that night. I thought the orb was a dream. 

What is a dream, what is life? Can either be held or saved?   

Okay, what’s next?

Now that we have explained all this to you it’s time for you to be re-implanted. Don’t be frightened. You will again think it a dream, or you were awake, but you won’t know for sure. This is a state of balance.  Currents remain in balance as fluid stirred in a container is in motion but unchanged. Doubt is a healthy state; trust us, what will happen to you is for the best. 

Forms from that other world approach him now, in the leaky old house where he thought he could live and write, his bed-roll on a foam pad amid boxes.

Suddenly he feels his body stretched, unable to move. Above he sees the spinning orb, without sparks, and he struggles to move his arms and legs and cannot move, not a hair. He wants to cry out ~ he is mute. The orb spins toward his forehead, an odd color, a strange odor, of roofing tar, mold and waves following a metonymic pulse, a clock, but he owns no clock. It is the leaking roof dripping water, an eternal, elemental measure.   The orb touches his forehead.

He wakes with a start. The shabby room is dark, the street outside dark and quiet, rain dripping into a bucket. 

   I am home.

Reality or a dream?

No matter. “A dream is real while it lasts, can more be said of life?“ He writes. Above all, make a word shape of it, understand anew.

This is how, through a long process of hero identification, rejection and reacceptance, his interest and ease. what lay beyond himself was shaped and concentrated by this vision. A dream of extraterrestrial life opened his mind. Here is the process; as soon as he discovered how flawed his parents were he switched allegiance to political figures and when the best were assassinated and the second best failed he switched to God. God was found lacking in scientific clarity. Science has revealed the existence of infinity, for if the universe is not infinite, what lies beyond it? Infinity can’t be grasped by the imagination, so go ahead, try to grasp it. From here he passed on to the possibility of advanced life unlike our own except we, and our other worldly visitors,  share the pain of asking questions we can’t answer. 

His parents did not encourage him to think or have confidence in his understanding and judgment, so he became a spectator. In his mind was the residue of the original, simple law; one must be a master. He never believed in his ability to be any kind of master, even master of himself. 

Ten days and fifty thousand words later, the big man with the sheriff not having come, he hears a knock on his door. Knocking? Why knock if one has a key?

It can’t be that fatty. Better put on some clothes. 

It is a woman over fifty with a smooth tan face and graying blonde hair. Her smile is bright, her face square, stable, strong and eyes light and happy blue behind clear, rimless lenses. She introduces herself as the new property manager.

  “Oh, Mr. T__, your landlord, you didn’t hear?  About ten days ago he dropped dead.” 

"That so? I didn't hear about it, i didn’t feel the ground shake when he landed."

She laughed and then stopped. “Oh, i shouldn’t be laughing.”

“So, you’re finishing out Fahey’s lease?” she says. “And Fahey said he paid up front? Good, we’ll talk about it later. I’ve got to straighten out the other properties. Big Man’s desk was a mess, his business is a mess; his whole life total chaos, as far as i can tell.”

“How did he die?”

“Oh, i don’t know, his heart i suppose. He smoked. He was just walking along and fell over. Konk.” She shrugs and raises her brows then smiles, a clean white beacon. 

“The body was recovered?”

“Yes, of course, it happened right on the sidewalk couple blocks from here.”

So they just struck him down where he stood and didn’t bother with an examination; too heavy for a beam to lift? Many thanks oh Intergalactic Kingdom.

He says nothing, masks knowing what truly happened. She notices his face held neutral, of expression limited and his body a formal, rigid aspect. This startles her, so she quickly leaves. A former school teacher, all that is behind her now, she‘s paid her dues and doesn‘t have to put up with such crap. Before going she comforts him by saying, “If you can live in this place you can have it until i get back around here, no hurry. Call me if anybody breaks a window.” 

I love her, he thinks, though she’s kind of old.

Now possibly two months to write, get busy, let it flow! No matter what happens in combination with luck and talent, the odds against success are great and beyond calculation. All we can do is do our best work. Forces beyond us will decide what they will decide heedless of we, the glittering molecules.

Standard Third Person Narrative;  One day in the state of Montana, on a clear, warm early morning, a woman dies. This woman had a brother. Their mother sends him money so he can come to Montana for the funeral. 

   The deceased had requested that her funeral be done in the tradition of the Lakota Sioux or Blackfoot. 

The widower says, “Or some tribe or other. But the county or state guvnment don’t allow it.”

“Why not?”

“Who knows? Sounds okay to me. “

“Are you not curious to know why?”

“Haven’t the foggiest, so why not just tell me and get it over with and then we can talk about something else.”

Statute on open air funerary procedures; For any traditional open air burial practice authentication of tribal affiliation is required. The yearly number of above ground internments statewide shall not exceed the limit established by the appropriate state agency following an environmental site specific impact study.   

What he thought;  And what do we do with the body, unembalmed at the request of the deceased, until a site specific impact study is complete? If a whole bunch of people wanted this the result would possibly be a tremendous upsurge in the vulture and rat population, to say the least. This and suppose it becomes a trend? Yet expecting vast numbers of peaceful, fun loving though dieing Montanans to request burial on litters mounted high overhead on poles on the windswept prairie because one citizen wanted it is unreasonable. In time of grief who is reasonable, who thinks of the morticians of conventional subterranean entombment thrown out of work? I’m going to miss my sister. 

Standard 3rd Person Narrative continued; His sister died and left no child to 'call back the sunny April ' of her prime. He thinks; she was looking for someone who would say no to her. She could then spend her life trying to get this person to say yes. If his reply was yes, love, she would have nothing to do with him. Thus she held many in contempt, for many came to her, an attractive woman, well spoken, with an amusing style. “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, just as hollow as it can be," she sang very low, for cancer had closed almost every fissure and reduced her stream to a trickle.

Inexplicably, he lost touch with his sister. They communicated once a year or less and then not at all. They lived on different sides of the country. Another reason was her husband, whom she lived to serve. He was the one who said no.

The widower also said, "She drank too much. You know how i could tell?"

   "Because she was your wife?"

"No, because her sex drive was low. Alcohol does that." His composure would not be shaken, or he failed to notice the sardonic intonation of the question. At any rate, he would not give this fool a generous regard.

“Are you sure i needed to know that?”

“Well, now you do.”

And there she lay, embalmed as she did not want to be, the girl who sprayed him with a garden hose once and refused to do it again because he liked it. The dead are depthless, hollow shells in their hollow boxes. Her dark cheeks are like pits below the bones, sinking away amid the dust and odors of preservation, of vanity. She didn’t want to be in that box. And how many other people in cemeteries didn’t want to be there, didn’t choose where they lay and wanted to get up and run naked and feel the grass on their stretched skin? Why is it that people who know they will die, and know it will happen tomorrow, don’t run naked out in the street, run to the park and roll on the grass or run into the ocean and drown? It must be in the cells, one cell in a billion that stops them.

We know the structure of cells, their parts and rates of decline, some consumed in a few years and others that take a thousand years to turn to dust. Bone cells. When we see them dead we know they are not there, the vital part has fled, yet we have nothing and no one else to say goodbye to.

Again the brother-in-law repeats himself. Ruling by repetition, he says the same thing over and over until it settles. It becomes stone. 

William is his name. Now it is ugly and repetitious, William; a collection of will and i am; every cause of calamity and grief, all in one name. 

He thinks, ‘That arrogant, mindless bastard wore out my sister. I was not there to save her. Unfaithful, weary of spirit, i slept through my watch. Besides this, she didn’t ask for help, not from me.’  Her pride isolated her. 

He wants to walk up to the man and smack his jolly, tan face, but holds back. William looks like the woman who came to his door inquiring after the status of the property formerly owned by Mr. T__; bright smile, blue eyes behind lenses without rims. He wears the same shaped rimless lenses. Except for their sex and height, they share a vibration, an aura. They must have the same kind of implant. But one is pleasant, the other foul. How subtle is the work of those from beyond.

On the way home, at Union Station, Chicago, he contemplates jumping under a train to get rid of his implant forever, but perhaps jumping is what the implant is telling him to do. 

Contemplating steps he must take to live closer to the earth as his sister must have intended, since she wanted to be buried that way, he feels positive, capable. She was weighed down by her husband,  a heavy stone. He bears no such weight. She thought she needed to struggle and sacrifice for her husband, who knew of her need and used her to his advantage. Her one living brother has no such need. No matter what the conditions or consequences, implant or no implant, lousy or happy childhood, he must live and think his own thoughts, free. This alone can exhaust any device that might twist him into bizarre contortions. 

Knowledge, passion, imagination, creativity, these obliterate the intruding circuits. Only in force of thought is there true freedom. Emotional, spiritual and physical strength all depend on an outside element; the love of another or the love of God, the love of food, exercise, sex, rest. Only the mind, though dependent on the purity of blood from below, can go where it pleases and create its own structures and retain what it  determines to retain. Dream thought calls to the future. Only through the interplay of action and contemplation may one find contentment and serenity. If a mind is active and at peace, the generous earth is harmonious. 

A Disturbing Idea; Are these the methods of the Dark Kingdom?

1st Person Narrative; That alien conspiracy script was shelved, for now. No one will pay attention to it anyway with the massive forces arrayed against it. It waits for the world to catch up to it.

Film is ever present, yet distant, a realm where i am powerless, a relentless clock. I can’t mold and manipulate the images; they come from outside of me.  

Now i write poetry; i hear the language singing. As you have noticed, this is work with a small i, except at the beginning of sentences when every first letter is capitalized. I now make images from words instead of words from images. Now i use language instead of a camera or an elaborate device containing some kind of digital recording spaghetti. This is fundamental. 

I have chosen language over image. Language is all i have. It lives within me. I can’t forget, can’t abandon the boxes of words that line my shelves. They are silent until i sing in their chorus. They saved me, waited for me to find them at my own speed, waiting until i was ready to listen. Now i can’t remove them any more than i can pull out an eye or my tongue or detach an arm or leg. 

In stillness and solitude the words of the poet alone return, pale, small, true. I know how in a hut or cottage, or by gaslight in a swarming city the poet sighed and blew the candle out, or turned down the gas, well satisfied with the minute creation and a brain still fired and flooded with ideas. These are put aside with the poem and the hope that one poem might say enough and knowing it can never say enough. There must be more, new in each season, new in each tongue grown straight from the fertile rot of experience, even though grass will grow through the tongues. Yes, walt, i hear you, now let us sing. 

Editor of CLOD and PEBBLE, a literary quarterly;  For every poem he uses a different name or Anonymous so only what is said, not who says it, will matter. Only total concentration on the poem itself is vital. Still, the dedicated reader might recognize the author by his choice of words or the depth of his sincerity reflected in what is called ‘style.’ 

1st Person Narrative continued;  I have always hated smoking.  It is a distraction, an affectation, in books, film and life. It is filler material on the page, a bridge from one emptiness to another. 

The fatty smoked, owned property but didn’t own his own lungs. He was brought low. The tobacco company owned his lungs; maybe they gave him a lung implant. It's the same, different only in items numbered.  

Electricity first brought light, a holding of the sun, now it is a tool of reduction. Language was flowing naturally from person to person, then those from the other side of the galaxy arrived and lighted us. They had Ben Franklin tie a key to the string of his kite and had Ampere, Thomas Edison and Steinmetz do their thing. Yet if we accept the outcome we are equally to blame. Check it out, take your time and think about it one item at a time and it will add up, you will grow to understand why now our sleep is difficult, why we struggle more and think less.

Whatever they say, the opposite is true, this is the basis of my evidence and it's a very good basis. It is in fact the core of personality, of the child kicking to get its way, the young revolutionary in the street, the mad bomber, the old diplomat with cloaked intent under a studied manner. This was why the original apple was picked ~ and let me tell you something that if you really think about it, will change your life; God wanted them to eat that apple. If they didn't eat it the show would be over, concluded, done with and nothing new from it and the show must go on. Better it would be to turn all that placid cell tissue into fertilizer and come on with the next. There can be no progress without violation. It’s a happy beginning and the end is up to us.  

We are a hybrid of good and evil and to balance these forces we have judgment; a mind. The ultimate goal and satisfaction of human kind could never be to wander naked and free in weather gorgeous all the time through an orchard, but no one can eat an apple. It’s obvious; people can resist an apricot, you have to peel a grapefruit or an orange and bits of the albedo get under your fingernails, for a mango you need a knife (not yet invented), the fuzz of a peach is sometimes repellant and what exactly is a persimmon? 

Who can resist an apple? An apple is pluck and bite, that fast. An apple has Bite Me written all over it. God tested them and will test us and see how easy he made it for Adam and Eve to screw up? He kindled the living flame of doubt, source of curiosity and daring. Would God create creatures who merely appear to be alive? Give Him more credit than that!

My work is to lift with small hands those who are low, lifting them beyond the present time of blazing meaningless light to simplicity and harmony. Just as a young person is embroiled in confabulation on swift currents that pass into mellow maturity, i ride the flow knowing that someday everyone will be the same size again. Again we will discover the benefits of good food, fresh air, deep sleep crowded with dreams and days full of leisurely melodic thinking. And this is probably what they want me to think, those of the Dark Kingdom. 

Do i glisten, am i in the flow of their beam?

End of “Image and Language”