I have been working on this piece over the last few days. It started out as whole picture I drew last year and posted here. I still think it is one of my better pieces, but I am much more of a digital artist now. I just do not have the patience to finish pieces for framing, and it is so much easier to store art digitally.
June 13, 2010, 11:36
I came up through a square hole in a sidewalk.
The ecstatic voice came from the starry sky over a night street, flat and straight disappearing into utter blackness. I could feel the endlessness all around. Andre and I stood outside a seedy pool hall. The square hole was gone. Suddenly the sound of popping engines roared up from behind us. Vintage cars with customized engines and flames painted on the sides. They did U turns circling the street like mad hornets around a hive then came to a stop outside a dance club bar with a huge red neon sign “Furies” above the door. Pale Women’s faces appeared in the dark window of the club peering out into the night street.
We crossed the street to get a closer look and caught the smell of hamburgers and cigarettes as the door opened to admit the jostling, boisterous young men clamoring for some experience, something they could not name.
“We can’t go in there,” Andre said sadly, “they wouldn’t know us anyway.”
“Let’s go back and try another door,” I said turning to cross the street. Again I looked out into the depth of the night with the endless road running straight into it like an iron shaft through its heart.
Andre came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“There is another option!” Andre said brightly pointing to a bright green glowing sign down the street.
As I was walking into the local farm supply store on my way to look for some galvanized tubs to make into sensory activity centers in my classroom, someone yelled my name. I turned and there was my ex-assistant and one of my truly favorite people in the world. She works for the agency I recently walked away from with no regrets and was full of stories about the doings there from her point of view which is always kind and a little bewildered. She is wise enough not to go too deeply into the mess of it all. I worked with her 6 years ago with a difficult class.
“I have an easy class this year,” she said smiling, “finally.”
I pointed out that it was our class that started her run of hard times. She remembered clearly. Talking with her made me realize I do miss working with an assistant. I have worked with a long string of assistant teachers who, due to the everyday nature of the job, became a part of my world and who I came to love, in a different way than any of my other relationships. They are all very different from each other, but the bond I felt with each of them was clear and honest as we struggled to bring authentic learning into the classroom with all of the obstacles that confront Head Start classrooms .
May 23, 2010, 09:28
Scene II
Announcer: Monkey felt his way up and ever upward. How long he climbed, he could not tell for nothing in the darkness changed except the rocks he climbed and they measured time in a different way than creatures of flesh.
Monkey moves about making climbing motions, slipping and falling a few times, but giving the impression of slow upward progress.
The music matches his climbing song. It is not cheerful or complaining just matter of fact and guileless.
Monkey (singing as he moves):
Here in the darkness I climb alone,
Up through the mountain rocks and bone.
I know not night or day.
Only my fingers to show me the way.
I believe in the light.
From deep within, I recall,
the mighty rise to life,
and from that peak,
the deep and stony fall.
A centipede appears on the installation next to monkey’s hand and bites him.
Monkey shrieks and falls to the stage.
Centipede: That is not a flavor I am familiar with.
Monkey: Maybe because you don’t get many monkeys down here.
Centipede: Oh by my sinuous segments! It is the stone monkey. How goes your journey sir?
Monkey: Dark and solitary, most arduous indeed.
Centipede: Sorry about the bight. But I must try to eat what I can find to make my bellies tight.
Monkey: Is it poison? I feel my hand throbbing.
Centipede: Not very, unless you are much smaller than you sound.
Monkey: You are also blind in this darkness?
Centipede: In the absence of light everyone is blind.
Monkey: What is your usual prey?
Centipede: Small and furry like your hand, hard and furry many legs, hard and juicy very small this is sweetest of all.
Monkey: I do not seem to be hungry. Except for the light and open space, that I am long for.
Centipede: I have never tasted light, though I must say the very thought of it makes me shiver.
Monkey: Will you climb with me a ways and keep me company. I will teach you a song or two.
Centipede: I am not a singer, but a stinger. I will go with you a ways and listen to your songs. It is not often I find anyone who shares my company for long.
May 30, 2010, 09:05
As soon as the centipedes voice stops, monkey begins to climb up the branches of the structure where the centipede perches. The tree begins to rise up out of the floor carrying the characters toward the ceiling where a square of light appears in the dark directly above them. By the time monkey gets to the top of the tree, he is able to climb through the square of light. He pulls himself up and disappears from view.
Centipede: This is where I stop for I see light at the top.
Monkey (poking his head back down through the square): Why let a little illumination stop your ascent? You should really lighten up anyway. besides I thought you were blind.
Centipede (shivering): It is true my eyes don’t see, but I know when light is touching me. I feel a prickle on my shell. When in the hard light I don’t feel well. In soft shadows I will hunt and dwell.
Monkey: I have had enough darkness for a while. Happy hunting, Mr. manylegs. I hope I never make it back here, but stranger things happen.
Monkey’s head disappeared upward and the centipede faded into the darkness.
Scene 1
We watched uninhabited stage and waited. Nothing happened.
“We have to follow him,” Andre said after a few minutes. “It’s the only way we can see what happens.”
“You mean climb up there?”
“Yeah, we could do it!” Andre grinned broadly as he said this.
“Well, I guess it beats sitting here waiting for something to happen.”
As Andre and I approached the stage, we noticed a few other members of the audience straggling down the stairs behind us, vague shadows in the dimness. Andre went first, climbing energetically and almost slipping off about 20 feet up. I moved so I wasn’t directly below him.
“This looked a lot easier when the monkey did it,” he said looking back and smiling.
“So slow down a bit. Whatever is up there will be there, but you won’t see it if you break your neck.”
“Good point.” Andre, who was breathing heavily, slowed his pace, testing his hand and foot holds before trusting them.
I could see 2 other figures starting to climb while most of the rest of audience milled about on the stage.
After a few minutes of climbing Andre pulled his head up through the square of light, through which I could now plainly see a patch of brilliant blue.
Andre turned his head slowly, and then looked back down. “This is pretty cool. I don’t know about the plot or the character development, but the staging is really innovative.”
April 05, 2010, 22:03
As we made our way through the last few steps into the theater some other people entered the door down the hall. We entered the theater at the back looking down the curved levels of seats that narrowed as it came up to the large dimly lit stage.
“Let’s sit down in front,” Andre said moving toward the center aisle. ” I want to see and hear everything!”
Other people were entering through another door. They looked as if they stepped out of the 1600’s, leggings and puffy jackets. By the time we sat the theater was beginning to fill up with an odd assortment of people seemingly from many different times and places.
The stage has two large tree like structures in center with four shielded spaces among the branches two, one on top of the other, on either side of the trunks. Above the stage are structures to hold 3 marionettes and their puppeteers. On the right side of the stage is a cloth panel with a light behind it. On the left a gamelan orchestra. The middle of the stage is open space with a large flat stone in the middle, big enough to hold 5 people.
April 14, 2010, 07:31
People shuffled around looking for their seats and conversations drifted about the theater in a mumbling background tide with a few quiet laughs and exclamations. Finally the house lights came down and the stage lighting focused on the flat round stone in the center. The audience settled into silence.
A flat round stone in the center of the stage.
A small platform lowers from the ceiling onto the middle with Monkey, on his knees hunched over, head down. He has bright golden fur and is wearing a crimson jacket and sky blue pants. In his hand is a black rod about 3ft long.
the music is soft, slow, meditative in the background throughout the scene.
Announcer: And the gods banished Monkey to the cave once more to sleep and dream encased in stone. The water crept through rock and crevice dripping and over the eons melted the stone covering and slowly wakened the sleeping Monkey.
Monkey stretches and yawns, rises slowly and staggers about the flat stone, falls to the floor and searches about on his hands and knees as if blind.
Monkey(voice echoing slightly): Where am I? What is this dark place? How have I come here?
A bat glides down and lands next to him and is just outside the small circle of light and accompanied by a fluttering musical interlude.
Bat: Then you are awake from the stone dream? Finally I can fly and report to heaven that Monkey has risen.
Monkey: Wait! You have been attending me here? How did I come here and where is this abyss?
Bat: I am but a watcher and reporter. I cannot tell, but that my family has watched through a thousand thousand generations anticipating this moment when one of us would fly to heaven to tell of your awakening. I know of no how or where, suffice to say that you are deep under a mountain and placed here by the gods. beyond that, I cannot say, for I do not know more.
Monkey: What will these gods do when you tell them that I am awake?
Bat: I cannot say. The ways of gods are not known to me. I am a bat from a long line of bats who have watched over you in the darkness.
Monkey: Will you show me the way out into the world above?
Bat: I must fly now to give my report. That is all I know. I cannot say what will follow. As I said before, I am only a small creature of the dark and know only the journey I must take and message I must bear.
Monkey: Then take me with you. For I am not a creature of the dark and do not wish to remain in this place.
Bat: You have no wings. How can you follow? You cannot navigate in the blind darkness.
Monkey: I have hands that can feel the way.
Bat: Then feel your way up. I must use swifter route. I am sorry for your discomfort, but I have a task to do that was set in ancient times and must not be delayed. Good luck to you for I think you will need it to reach the lands of light above. Move upward when you can and avoid going down and you should eventually come out of this darkness. Farewell!
The bat exits fluttering upwards. The music rises with the bat then fades with the lighting into darkness.
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Myriad Ways 