Dramatic Reality As Real Life

Hey y'all. Sorry It's been so long. Getting married, going to school. Anyway, I have been writing a lot, but it is mostly school papers. Here's one.

Dramatic Reality As Life

Dan Weil

Student: California Institute of Integral Studies

Abstract

Dramatic Reality is a core concept of Drama Therapy (Pendzick, 2006), but its root is represented in all forms of psychotherapy.  This paper examines how drama therapy uses the concept of dramatic reality to explore the bridge between the outer and inner worlds.  This paper also explores the idea that we as humans experience everything through the duality of our inner and outer worlds, thus, in some form, always existing within the realms of what drama therapists call dramatic reality.   This space between reality and fantasy is not just a psychological concept, but the way in which we encounter everything.  This paper will explore the ways that dramatic reality is used to safely construct representations of the real world, explore the connections between these constructs and the real world, and the paradoxes within this relationship.  This paper will also examine how some of the leading drama therapists in the field use dramatic reality and play.  Finally it looks at the use of transitional phenomena in play as part of the deepest journeys into dramatic reality.

Play

Why do we play?  From very early on, humans engage in games of pretend.  Is it simply a childish way of relating because we don’t understand the world, something we should eventually grow out of, or is it the purest form of how we relate to our surroundings?  We come into the world without the concept that we are separate (Rathus, 2006).  We don’t yet have object permanence, or know that when mom leaves the room she still exists.  We don’t know that there are different things going on in other people’s minds, that we all have a world inside of us.  Even at this early stage we like to play.  Very young children enjoy games of peek-a-boo.  With the onset of language they enjoy jokes such as mom calling herself Dad and vice versa.  During the nursery school years, children’s make-believe is characterized by a wildness, an anything-goes that could only exist in a world of no rules.  As children age, their games become more systematized.  They play sports with set rules, or make up their own games that nevertheless have specific rules.  If one walks in an Elementary school playground one will hear as much arguing over rules as playing.  As adults we relax by reading books or watching movies or sports.  When we meet people we don’t play with them anymore, we ask where they are from and what they do.  We don’t realize that we find humor the same way we always have, in incongruities.  A tough person acting dainty, or even simply one person resembling another make us laugh.  These incongruities reflect the biggest incongruity, the dual experience of the world through our inner and outer lenses.  Dramatic reality is the bridge between the inner and outer world, the place we used to explore as children, the place where we still reside.

Different Explorations In The Playspace

            There are many different ways that drama therapists help their clients create a safe space to explore their core issues.  One common theme is the working out of real life issues within the creative space of dramatic reality.  Beyond that, drama therapists fill the creative space with various different constructs to stand in for reality.  Emunah’s(1994) Integrative Five Phase Model begins with surface level theater games and only gradually works toward working through core issues.  This allows the clients to gradually share themselves in the therapeutic setting.  Phase One begins with dramatic play, with the goal of building trust in oneself, the other group members, and the therapist.  Emunah (1994) says that dramatic play “generates spontaneity and facilitates relationships and interaction.”  These goals become the building blocks for the later phases, which employ scene work, role play, a culminating enactment based on psychodrama, and a ritual closing.  All of these may not have been possible without the framework set in phase one with seemingly simple theater games and exercises.

In one session of a class I took with Emunah on Drama Therapy Process and Technique, she began by having the class walk around the room, then imagine ourselves a year ago.  Next we broke into pairs and talked as if we were a year in the past.  We played make-believe, embodying our past selves, yet not having to dredge up any intense experiences.  At the same time we were immersed in our memories, interacting with the other participants, and pretending.  Next we embodied an idea of ourselves in three years.  Rather than relying on memory, now we created who we were.  I found this exciting to imagine myself with a private practice.  Next, Emunah had us all drink a cup of juice.  At the bottom on the cup was a character trait that we had to take on at the “party” that was about to begin.  Now we were becoming characters and interacting even more, exaggerating ourselves or becoming something else, and of course, having fun.  Next we broke into groups of four and became a family, with each person taking on one of four roles; avoidance, angry/blamer, mediator and, attention-getter.  Then without words we improvised a scene and the audience tried to guess which role each of us had embodied.  Finally we broke into groups, took on one of the four family roles, and spent five minutes planning a family outing.  Our simple play had seamlessly become scene work, where we explored intense family relationships.  We didn’t need to bring our own lives into the sketches, but certain dynamics from our own families often bled through and informed the scenes.  Emunah had taken us, in a very safe way, down the road of dramatic reality toward deep sharing.  The place where we began to open up was not when we were asked “tell me about your family,” but rather when we began to play.  The fictional play allowed us to expand our possibilities, get beyond our life scripts and move beyond our dominant selves (Emunah 1994).  It was at the moment we weren’t trying to be who we are, that we expressed ourselves.  Emunah (1994) sees drama therapy as fostering “liberation, expansion and perspective.  Drama Therapy invites us to uncover and integrate dormant aspects of ourselves, to stretch our conception of who we are, and to experience our intrinsic connection with others.”  The use of play, the exploration of the self within dramatic reality, clearly works toward these lofty goals.

            David Read Johnson (1996), sees the encounter between the therapist and client as the most important aspect of therapy.  He bases this idea on Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theatre, which stripped away all props and costumes and even plot so that the audience and actor come face to face with nothing between them.  This same encounter can be employed to connect the client and therapist.  For Johnson, the therapist goes beyond the guide and actually intervenes into the playspace, becoming the client’s play object.  The client leads while the therapist is there to support the client and help create an encounter between the client and therapist, but also between the client and their true self.  In this way they both dive into the client’s playspace and explore what is there, letting the core issues present themselves as they will.  This seems much more free flowing then the play in Emunah’s Five Phase model.  Though Emunah has a model based on a process, and lets the client’s own work fuel the direction of therapy, there is still an external framework.  Johnson’s poor theater approach of DvT (Developmental Transformation) evenvelops the client and therapist into the client’s playspace almost like a science fiction film, and follows the streams of consciousness that pass by.  Robert Landy (1994) uses play to help the client gain perspective on the roles they take on in life.  After the play is over he deeply analyzes what happened.  Jennings (1992) sees the fictional realm as a place of deep, almost mystical truths that connect all of us, and does relatively little analysis or interaction of what therapy goes on there.  Though these drama therapists may vary in their focus on affect(Emunah), embodiment (Johnson and Jennings) or cognition (Landy), they all recognize and utilize the power of play.  This shared playspace is filled with imagined realms, hopes to grasp and fears to face.

Pretend States As Reality

The elements we bring into our play are based on the outside world.  The people, the emotions, and the places are all based on what we have experienced.  Pretending to be a wolf on the hunt may represent violent or predatory feelings, or ones of camaraderie.  Winnicott (1971), when looking at a mother and baby, calls the playspace the potential space between them, which he contrasts “(a) with the inner world (which is related to the psychosomatic partnership) and (b) with the actual, or external reality (which has its own dimensions, and which can be studied objectively and which…does remain constant).”  I take this idea a step further with the idea that even real life is a form of dramatic reality, that it is simply more objective than imagination. Pendzick’s idea of dramatic reality takes this potential space and places it within reality, rather than adjacent to it.  She calls dramatic reality (Pendzick 2006) “imagination manifested.  It is an as if made real, an island of imagination that becomes apparent in the midst of actual life.  Dramatic reality involves a departure from ordinary life into a world that is both actual and hypothetical: it is the establishment of a world within the world.”  This world within the world is not separate, but informed by the outer world that surrounds it.  If these pretend states are just pretend, why do they affect us so greatly?  Can’t we tell the difference between living something an acting it out.  Apparently, our brains can’t.  We don’t differentiate between real emotions from life and fictional ones that we feel while watching a movie.  That is to say, our brains don’t.  Why does this happen?  Mirror neurons may be a large piece of the puzzle.  A study at UCLA found that the pain neurons which fire when you poke a patient with a needle will also fire when the patient watches someone else getting a shot (Iacoboni M, et al. 2005).  The same phenomenon is found when comparing the brain of a person who feels sad from a life event with one watching a sad character movie.  This means that we can feel something that doesn’t happen to us, we can even feel it if it happens to a fictional character!  This goes beyond sympathy into empathy.  It also breaks down our idea of the barrier between the self and the world around us, making our experience of dramatic reality as real as reality itself.  This begs the question; what is the difference between reality and dramatic reality?

Paradox of Existence

When we play it is in the realm of the not real.  We are exploring possible worlds, yet we embody them as if they were factual (Elam, 1980).  In this way, the arena within dramatic reality, or the playspace, becomes reality.  At the same time, we are not in the real world.  For example, a client may be in therapy to work out anger issues toward his/her father.  The therapist may play the role of the father, or an empty chair may represent the father.  The client is able to say whatever they want without fear of actual punishment from the real father.  They are allowed to vent in a safe environment.  Afterwards they may feel a sense of catharsis, or, at the very least, some release.  These feelings are real.  The act of expressing oneself has real effects.  At the same time, the client’s father is not present.  This is the inherent paradox of the dramatic space.  The drama is based on reality, feeds on real emotions, and is a representation of reality.  This brings about the philosophical question; what is reality?  We are all inherently subjective.  Our experience of the world is based upon the way our brains are formed.  A bat or a whale, animals that rely on very different modes of “seeing” the world, experience reality in ways we can hardly imagine.  Their experience is so different that one could call it another reality altogether.  This means that even what we call reality is a construct.  What follows is that the difference between the outer and inner worlds is not comparing a reality and a construct, but two constructs.  If one sees reality as a subjective experience then the power of drama becomes much more understandable.  The constructed reality within drama becomes the subjective reality we experience through our senses.  The represented sadness or joy or catharsis can become real, because to the brain it is real.  By fading into dramatic reality, a place where we have much more power to explore time and space and emotions, we can find peace in ways we never could in the “reality.”

Transitional Phenomena

While working with Autistic children for over half a decade I realized that one of their biggest struggles is with transitions.  Waking up, coming to school, arriving at school, beginning recess, ending recess, leaving school, and leaving school are all events that could throw off a kid who is calm and focused.  I asked myself how could it be so hard to make these small transitions.  Then I noticed the same thing when picking up my friend’s daughter from school.  She would be so quiet on the car ride I thought she was angry with me, but then she brightened up when we got home.  I realized later that she was just acclimating to the change.  Then I thought about myself.  I get extremely nervous starting new schools or jobs, even if I’m not worried about any specific bad thing.  All of these suggest that it is not just Autistic children, but all of us who have trouble with transitions, but all of us.  Dictionary.com (2011) defines a transition as a “movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another.”  We usually don’t think of leaving work and coming home as a change from one state to another, but this is what is happening.  Landy (1994) would say we are shedding the role of the worker and taking on the role of father, mother, lover, etc...  Transitions still affect us now, but our biggest transition was from the womb.  Then we went through a time where we didn’t know we were separate from the world, living in a near hallucinatory state Winnicott (1971).  It sounds as if we come into the world in a state where dramatic reality, and the inner and outer worlds don’t merely overlap, but are one and the same.  A primary caregiver’s love and support becomes the slow transition from being physically connected in the womb to the realization that one is autonomous.  When the mother begins to leave the child for longer and longer periods, the child may hold on to a teddy bear or blanket that symbolize the mother.  This is the impetus for what Winnicott termed the transitional object.  The child can play with this object, engage in make-believe games, proudly show it to others, or simply clutch it close to the body.  At this very young age, an infant is playing not just with a stuffed animal, but with something that represents his relationship with his mother.  He has realized he is separate from his mother, and that mother exists when she is not nearby, but he is still not completely comfortable with this fact.  With the transitional object he infuses reality with his inner emotions, marking an extremely early instance of dramatic reality in the child’s life.  Unlike us, he is not merging the inner and outer worlds into dramatic reality, but beginning to separate them.  This type of metaphoric play continues as children grow, as evidenced with Winnicott’s (1971) various case studies, including one where a child used string to connect himself to his mother, and another where a little girl represented her younger sibling and herself with two stuffed animals. 

I believe that we never completely leave this metaphoric state.  I believe that this dual experience creates our existential angst or the “human condition.”  Smiling seems to begin as a reflex or a way to connect with the caregiver (Rathus, 2006).  Later babies smile when they understand something.  Maybe humor begins when we realize the paradoxes of how we perceive the world.  This would explain why most humor is based on incongruities.

Conclusion

            Playing within dramatic reality is so effective and feels real because it is real.  If reality is a subjective construct itself, then it is different from dramatic reality only in degrees, not type.  Because the outer reality is a much less malleable construct it feels concrete and objective.  When seen in this light, dramatic reality is not a childish form of play nor a frivolous theatrical technique, but a slight exaggeration of the way in which we experience the world.  This is why work within this creative space can be so powerful.  Drama therapy goes beyond the speaking to the acting out, using the body, which is when we are the most truly in dramatic reality, the most spontaneous.  Much of what we are isn’t in words but physical ways we experience the world, the way children play, first exploring creativity with wild abandon, then with rules.  Soon these rules begin to negate the imaginary world.  Exploring these feeling, which often can’t be expressed in language, in a safe place that is reflective of how we live, is more effective than simply focusing on the inner and outer world, more powerful than discussing the bridge without walking on it.  The inner and outer worlds are not alone, they are always informing one another.  Accepting and working within this dialectic is the most healing.  To be most effective one usually needs a guide or therapist to help warm-up the mind to the task of dealing with difficult emotions, as well as navigating the wild terrain of the unconscious.  A trained therapist can help keep the space safe, as well as choose the correct paths toward fulfillment.

REFERENCES

Dictionary.com, transition

Elam, K.(1980). The semiotics of theatre and drama. London: Methuen.

Emunah, R.(1994), Acting For Real: Drama Therapy Process, Technique and

Performance, Brunner/Mazel Inc., New York, NY

Jennings, S.(1992) The Nature and Scope of Drama Therapy: Theatre of Healing,

Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor, ch.IV.3, pp 229-250, Jessica Kingsley Press

Johnson, D.R.(1996), Toward a Poor Drama Therapy, The Arts In Psychotherapy, Vol 23,

#4, pp 293-306, Elsevier

Landy, R. (1994), Drama Therapy: Concepts, Theories and Practices, Charles C.

Thomas, Springfield, Ill.

Pendzick, S.(2006), On dramatic reality and it’s therapeutic function in drama therapy,

The Arts In Psychotherapy, volume 33, #4, pp 271-280, Elsevier

Iacoboni M, Molnar-Szakacs I, Gallese V, Buccino G, Mazziotta JC, et al. (2005)

Grasping The Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron Systerm. PLoS Biol 3(3): e79.

Rathus, S.(2006), Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Thomson

Wadsworth, Belmont CA.

Winnicott, D.W.(1971), Playing And Reality,  London: Routlidge

The Burrito

            This story is not about a real burrito.

            I used to work in a school with Autistic kids and it changed my life.  I began to see my similarities with them, and the line between crazy and sane faded away.  We differed only in grades.  Some of these kids just had characteristics that were more exaggerated than mine.  Say a kid really like to repeat verbatim an entire Sesame Street skit.  That might seem weird if you are sitting next to a stranger on the bus, but we relate shows and events we enjoyed to our friends all the time.  I once spent a first date describing the entire final episode of Quantum Leap.  We’re getting married.

Or a kid might be so worried he is going to get in trouble on a field trip that he sabotages himself by yelling and licking the windows of the bus.  Sure he gets in trouble, but the waiting and wondering is over.  He has taken control.  Many of us are anxious about the unknown, and have strange ways of taking from the ether.  I used to get really anxious about what I was going to order in a restaurant.  There’s just too many choices.  Now I’m a vegetarian, and that cuts out a lot of options.  But now there are more and more good vegetarian options, and I’m starting to get worried again.  Maybe I should cut out dairy.

Most teachers are female, and though this made for a lot of cute coworkers, there were also a few strange gender roles that formed.  It seemed that I was the only one that could move heavy desks.  This isn’t so surprising, and I helped as much as I could.  But why was I so much more adept at plunging the toilet than my coworkers?  Where did I learn to work the wooden handle, to listen to the building’s old pipes, to do quick little pumps, super slow deep ones, to almost always get the desired effect.  I was the king of plunging toilets.  It was my thing.  It got to the point that whenever I heard someone saying they were about to call a plumber I stopped what I was doing, wagged a finger, said “wait a minute” and grabbed the plunger.  Then I ran back and made sure someone was watching my kid.  Anyway, nine times out of ten I swaggered back to the front desk, hitting my hands against each other as if they were dusty. 

“Cancel the plumber.”

“I didn’t call yet.”

“Problem solved.”  Then I’d amble back to the bathroom and look at the murky water all over the tile that had spilled when the toilet was first clogged.  Before I was called in to solve the problem.  Why should this part fall to me as well?  I was a professional, not a custodian.  Now I don’t mean professional as in teacher, I mean a skilled laborer in the art of plunging.  Get that damn teacher who works with the little kids to mop this up!

When the Executive Director left the school she gave me a signed plunger as a parting gift.  Clearly I’m not making this up.  I was respected, at the highest level of authority, for my work.

But then one day it all changed.  It began uneventfully as usual, when I heard that the upstairs toilet was clogged.

“Did you try plunging it?” I asked Terri, not caring what her answer was and already planning my strategy.

“It didn’t do anything.  Eddie was in there…”

I held up my hands.  “It’s all right.  That’s all I need to know.”

I headed upstairs, thinking on the finicky toilet.  I used to work in a classroom right next to it, so I knew all about the chain that kept breaking and the low water flow.  You had to know these things to be The King of Plumbing and The Problem Solver.  I was considering checking the chain first, to make sure that wasn’t the problem, but as I entered the bathroom a rotten stench, like rotting flesh met my nose.  I closed the door because I like privacy when plunging, especially when it’s a doozy.  I walked up to the porcelain bowl.  As if to increase the suspense the lid was down.  God the smell was bad.  I was actually beginning to get a little nervous.  Not “oh no there are three kinds of grilled-cheese-sandwiches nervous, but my 1000% confidence was ebbing.

I reached forward slowly and flipped up the lid.  There, filling up almost the entire bowl, was a burrito-sized turd.  Not a small mall sized burrito, but a large thick taqueria burrito.  Turd isn’t even the right word.  Turd sounds small, like a baby bird or a stick.  This was a forearm.  No, it was more like a Tump, or a doop.

It was light brown and seemed soft and flakey like old wood.  Maybe the water was slowly disengaging the outside layer, but if I waited it out this would probably take weeks.  The top third of the tump was above water, so great was it’s bulk.  It was like an iceberg.’

“Assberg” I murmured to myself but didn’t chuckle.

After staring in awe I finally was ready to act.  I pushed the plunger toward the hole, pushed a few times and flushed.  The doop was unscathed and simply shook a bit, like a tired snake.  Or a snake laughing at me.  It didn’t even spin, it was so big.  It just shivered a little.

I plunged a few more time but I could tell that flushing then would be no more successful than the first time.  I set the plunger on the tile, stood up straight and took a step back to think.  Okay, time to solve this problem.  The thing is too big to go down, and too strong to break up.  But this crap needs to be broken up into, oh, maybe quesadilla sized pieces, but how was I to do that?  I could reach in and break it apart?  The thought mixed with the smell made me gag.  I imagined it’s slimy texture between my fingers.

I needed some tool that would do more than simply push, but would break it.  I looked at the handle of the plunger.  Okay, lets slow down.  Before I do something I regret, maybe I can still use the plunger the traditional way.  Sort of.

I grabbed the handle of the plunger and began to hammer like John Henry.  I hit it lightly but forcefully, I didn’t want to splash all over.  I focused on its middle and kept chopping until it started to break up into pieces.  I flushed.  It didn’t all go down, but a bunch of it did.  Three of four flushes later and it was gone.  It was over so fast I couldn’t believe it.  I put the plunger back in the corner and washed my hands.  I opened the window and looked outside at the trees swaying in the wind.  I felt alone with the memory.  I didn’t go downstairs to gloat.  I couldn’t imagine speaking after something like that.

            

Echo Part 2: Science Class

Part 1: Talking To Strangers is my previous post.  Thanks!

            Sally, lost in her thoughts, walked down the hall toward her class.

            “Hey Sally, nice dress.  Was the Goodwill having a sale?”  A few snickers accompanied the usual lame joke that, because it was mean seemed to be clever.  Sally ignored them and walked a little faster.  She tried to angle her head forward and will herself to be in her classroom.  Her legs felt like they would stumble any moment.  Unfortunately, a few lockers away from room 102, her backpack was shoved off her shoulder, and Candace blocked her path.  Candace was as big and strong as any boy in school and her breath smelled like pickles.

            “Hi Candace!”  Sally said as brightly as she could.  Candace squinted her eyes at such obvious fakery.  Sally imagined Alec crashing through a window, doing a shoulder role, and coming up with a kick to Candace’s belly that would send her straight through the wall.

            “Hi Smelly!”  Candace’s pickled words swept over Sally’s face.  She tired not to roll her eyes.

            “I need to get to class.”

            “You need to get out of my face.”

            “Well, actually…”

            “I know what you’re gonna say, but I don’t care.”  She then gave Sally her mean face, which was pretty scary.  Finally, Sally backed up and walked around her to get to her class, her backpack hanging from her elbow.  She took her seat near the row of windows where she could spend the class gazing at the silver dollar eucalyptus trees and doodling.  She found that she could get by in school if she either did the assigned reading or paid attention in class.  When her name was called, as it sometimes was, she did her best to piece together what was being asked of her.

            For long stretches she found herself watching the wind shiver the leaves.  When she looked down at her notebook, she found a series of concentric circles filling the page.

            “Anyone else have any thoughts on this?  Sally?”

            Sally looked up quickly from her desk as all eyes turned to her.  She quickly turned her eyes toward the board as her inner focused illuminated last night’s reading.  Science.  Physics.  Atoms.  She sees a drawing on the board of two arrows pointing towards each other’s points.

            “I think it’s weird that nothing really touches,” She said after a moment.

            Ms. Gleico nodded.  “It doesn’t feel like that does it?  Everyone, pay attention to things you are touching right now.  The clothes on your body, the desk and floor under you, your arms on the desk.  Or head touching desk.  Billy!  Sit up!  It’s hard to believe but what you are feeling is electromagnetic force.  Your hand atoms and the table atoms never touch.  They are repelled by each other.  They get close, but, like two magnets don’t actually touch.”

            “So,” Candace began, if I throw a pencil, at, say Sally, it won’t really bounce off of her head?”  Snickers scattered around the room.

            “That correct Candace, but you really will have detention.”  Ooooo’s and laughs filled the room.  Sally raised her hand.

            “Sally, I don’t want this to continue.”

            “No, Ms. Gleico, I was thinking about what you said about atoms.

            “Oh, okay, go ahead.”

            “If my hand atoms aren’t really touching the table atoms, does that also mean one hand atoms isn’t touching another one.”

            “No one atom can touch another.  Well, that’s not exactly true, but basically yes.”

            “So what makes me, me?  If the parts of my body aren’t rally touching?

            “That’s a great question, Sally, and I think we would need to look at what you mean when you say ‘me’ or ‘touch.’

            “Well, Ms. Gleico, this should make Candace feel really good.  It’s not just her brain that’s not really there, but everyone’s.”

            “Oh my god!”  Candace squealed.  “Did you hear that Ms. Gleico?”

            “I did Candace, since she was talking to me.  All right ladies, let’s call it a draw and get back to talking about schoolwork if you don’t mind.”

            Just after Ms. Gleico turned to write on the board, Sally felt a small wooden object bounce off the back of her head.  She smiled and whispered, “that didn’t really happen.”

Echo Part 1: Talking To Strangers

            The child’s footsteps surround her.  The tunnel’s darkness seems absolute, sandwiched between the semicircles of light at either end.  Panting, she runs toward the other side, her hair patting her shoulders, urging her on.  She is eleven years old with spindly legs that are accentuated by the white socks she pulled half way up her shins.  She watches the light bounce as she runs, until she bursts forth in front of the lake.  There, beneath the blue sky again, she lets herself lean over a fence post and peer down into the water and watch herself catching her breath.  Sufficiently recovered, she takes the lake at a measured stroll.

            The grown-ups don’t pay her any mind.  She tries to look each one in the eye.  The old ladies are too focused on getting their exercise, the couples watching each other.  Sometimes someone, it could be anyone, looks at her and gives a little smile, and she smiles back, or says good day, or simply nods.  She wants to be noticed, to be remembered, to be seen as a regular here.  She reaches into the pocket of her dress and fiddles with something.  Her smile is bigger, her steps quicken.  She walks into a gazebo and leans over her reflection again.

            “Nice day for a walk,” a man’s voice says.

            “Yes it is,” Sally says, her eyes still on the water.

            “I’ve seen you here before.”

            Sally looks up to give a polite smile because she doesn’t know what to say.  The man is standing a few feet away.  She can’t see his face because he looks down into the water.  He has black hair that looks wet and wears a long black raincoat.  Sally looks down at her bare legs and arms, then squints up at the sky.  It is so blue and bright it is almost white.  She shrugs and looks back in the water.

            “How many fish do you think are in there?” the man asks.

            “A thousand.”

            “A thousand?”

            “At least.”

            “Have you ever counted?”

            “Well, no.  But it’s a big lake.”

            “Have you ever swam in it?”

            Sally looks at him.  “You can’t swim in there!”

            “Why not?”

            “You’re not allowed.”

            “What’s that?”

            “I said…”  Before she finishes he turns toward her.  He is younger than she thought, just a few years older, still a boy himself.  He flashes her a smile, then hurtles over the wooden rail.  His coat billows up behind him, catching the air like the wings of a black butterfly, then like smoke, and then he sinks into the water.  Circles ripple out.  She waits, but feels no fear.  His confidence keeps him safe in her mind.  But after awhile the ripples are gone and he still hasn’t appeared.  She leans over, as far as she can, squinting into the water.

            “Hello?  Mister?”

            Nothing but a slight wave lapping the roots, like the tide in the ocean.

            “Ta da!”

            She jumps back and spins around.  There he is with that same grin, completely dry.

            “How did you do that?”

            He smiles, his eyes alive.  “How do you think?”

            If he had said, it’s magic, or, you wouldn’t understand or even not answered, she would have been mystified and in awe.  By asking her to tell him what he did, she immediately begins to deduce.

            “Well, you either dried really fast.  Or you didn’t get wet in the first place.  You could be the first guy’s twin.  You’re not his twin are you?”

            He laughs.  It has a pleasant sound and makes her feel comfortable.  “No, I’m not my twin.”  His calm makes him seem older, a young grown up.

            “Okay.  Don’t tell me!  I’m going to figure it out.”

            “I’m sure you will.  Hey, kid.”

            She has already bit her lip and looks into the water, trying to throw out some more theories.  She looks up when he called her.

            “I don’t know your name.”

            She tilts her head.  “I’m not supposed to tell strangers my name.”

            “Really?”  He steps toward her, the smile on his face, confusing her.  “Are you supposed to even talk to them.”

            “Well…I’ve been thinking about that.  It’s okay to say hello and to answer people when they ask a direct question, like what time is it?  I don’t want to be rude.”

            “So we are having a polite conversation.  Well, good.  You shouldn’t be telling strangers your name.  But I can tell you mine?”

            She shrugs, attempting to look bored.  “I guess. If you want.”

            “Call me Alec.  I’ll see you later kid.”  Without another word he spins on his heal and walks away.  His boots, which she just noticed, clip clop on the asphalt as he leaves her, continuing on down the path and out of sight.  She had no doubt that if she ran around the bend to follow him he would be gone.

Don't Feed The Bears

  6/21/09

 The fire was starting to die down so I reached into the darkness behind my lawn chair for some more wood.  The oak takes a long time to catch but the fire had been going a few hours and the embers of the last log were burning hot.  I placed the new log on top.  My face burned but it was pleasant in the cold night for a few moments.  I sat back.

            “Is this where the bears are?” Ralph asked me.

            “How the hell should I know?  I mean, they’re around.  You see all the signs.”

            “Don’t feed the bears.”

            “So there must be bears.”

            “Maybe they’re just being careful.”

            “What?”

            “Like a precaution.”

            “Of course they are.  They don’t want you feeding the bears.”

            “What I mean to say is, maybe they don’t see bears that often, only once in awhile.  Once a year and they just do the warning, just in case.  You know like when we prepare for an earthquake.”

            “What?”

            “Those don’t happen everyday.  But bear attacks…”

            “Who said anything about bear attacks?”

            “The signs…”

            “Say don’t feed the fucking bears!”

            “Don’t they eat people?”

            “Dude, are you saying you thought the sign was saying don’t let yourself be eaten by the bears?”

            “Uh, yeah.”

            “And they decided to phrase is as ‘don’t feed the bears.’  That’s how they tell you to protect yourself from a deadly predator.  ‘Don’t feed the bears.’

            “I thought it was a joke.”

            “The national park service doesn’t’ make joke signs.  What the fuck?  Like, Danger: Falling Cock?  Like that?

            Ralph laughed.  “Yeah, like that.”

            I watched the unpredictable flickering in the fire pit, and the shadows on the ground.  “Any more of that jay left?”

            “Nope.”

Descent

The wind rushes in from all directions, and the trees know not which way to sway

Tumbling down the mountainside with the last rays of sunlight

The clouds of dust rise but she sees none of it

She sits on a rock, writing a letter

goodbye

in my spinning world I imagine

I find her again

I imagine

our words, with their vanishing sounds

will lift away the folded chorus of pastpresent that surrounds us

But just as this impossible silence begins 

an image of myself

unfolds

warm and safe and soft

and that moment will be like the reflection of an entire landscape being captured in a single drop of water

The Words Of The Gods

Stories

Most very old stories and myths don’t attempt to have any kind of moral lesson.  A powerful being is either angered or satiated by the acts of humans.  After awhile the humans learn at least what they should be doing to not anger the powerful god.  They still make mistakes, usually when it has been a long time since the powerful one was angered.  Sometimes it is the next generation that hasn’t had plagues fall upon its head that once more makes the mistakes of not doing the correct rituals or sacrifices.  This sounds like kids today.  They don’t listen and want to make their own mistakes before they learn from them.  But they know what they should do, they are told by their parents what this is.  Whether they do it or not is different from being inundated with the idea of what is harmful and safe and, after many generations, what is right and wrong, good and bad.  This is not the the legacy god, but of people.

Gods

But where did these powerful beings come from?  Zeus, Jehovah, Allah, The Creator, Vishnu?  Where they created by humans to explain the unexplainable things: rainstorms, droughts, earthquakes, coincidence?  Are they representations of aliens that visited us in the past? Is there one true god with many different names?  Let’s forget this question for a moment.  The answers range from silly to impossible to ever know.  Whatever powerful being, or human imagination that told us what we should do created what we think of as good and bad, but we don’t think of these actions as being things we are forced to do, orders from a master to slave, but things that are morally better.  Is this how good and bad should be created and defined?  The preferences of an all powerful being or beings?  What we do becomes good, what we don't becomes bad.

Morality

Our morality is not based on the word of god.  Or rather, the words of the gods are seeds.  From it grows a tree.  The Tree of Morality, that is us alone.  A dog learns what is the rules, what they should do and shouldn’t do.  When they do what they should do, they get rewarded with a “good dog” and a pat and they feel better.  When they transgress they are told “bad dog” and are punished with a stern tone of voice or worse.  Where did we learn this?  The words came from the gods, the meaning is our own.