Characters:

NAMELESS

NAMELESS TOO

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT

PROFESSOR PLUM

SIMON

MAMA

TETE

MR. MAYMAN

A DOUBTER, A SNEAK, A PHONY

TRADER

RESTIVE REVOLUTIONARY

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA

TADAS

SOLDIER

THUG

CONNIE CONVERSE

FARMER BROWN

And other assorted characters.

EPISODE ONE

Music, familiar and strange. Is it American? East European? Mideastern? Asian? African?

SIMON: I’m going there. I’m going there. I’m going there. He scans the audience. I’m going there with you. I’m going there for you. ‘Cause really I am you. And I’m not going just to go. We’ve got things to do.

NAMELESS: Tell us who you are.

NAMELESS TOO: And tell us where you’re from.

SIMON: To audience: I am you. Simon’s the name. The Land of Now is where I’m from. To Nameless: And you?

NAMELESS: I am Nameless, the nameless one.

NAMELESS TOO: And I am Nameless Too.

NAMELESS: But we are not the hero, the main character or any such thing. (Indicates audience) You are. Yes. This tale is told in the so-called “second person”, which is “you”. And “second person” is a terrible name for YOU, since YOU are number one, the protagonist, and live the coming events like they are happening to you. Because they are.

SIMON: So if you are me, what do we do?

TOO: You’re hurt, you’re scared, a self-dealing sack of shaving cream. But you want to do better. Don’t you? So you’re on a mission: save the world if it kills you! And it will. You just don’t know when. But first, you must first extract the hidden, extradimensional knowledge blowing in the wind. That wind blows strong in southern Illinois, by the big river.

NAMELESS: Outstanding in the field, you spot a high spot that seems less wet than the swampy terrain around it. You’re on the river’s flood plain but the spring waters are draining away. You walk over the driest patches way, way out there, with the long bluffs on one side and the big muddy river on the other. Are those turkey vultures or bald eagles soaring in the howling, wet sky? Even here, there’s wind-born plastic. But, still you’re standing in that other realm, a dimensional cocoon untouched by FOX and CNN. The only fox here runs on four legs, her mouth full of weasel. Soon her nipples will spout milk for her little kits. The cold wind cutting into your Pendelton tears a tunnel through your soul, makes you gasp for air in shock, but still you’re happy to be knocked back for a moment into oneness with the wild. This little slice of it is all you need. It’s why you came. To reclaim your lost estate.

And so you drove the roads and now have found

The marshy fields of Kingdom Gone.

NAMELESS: Wet wind fills your collar. You tune in within to a white-hot whining. Step into its glowing core where the lore is stored, swirling, twirling like a slow tornado. Listen. It’s in the wind but this wind is in you. It’s all there- the lost record of your extinct ancestors - the names of their gods, their line of queens, the lay of their land, faded protocols for ascension to invisibility, methods of preserving food by lowering its temperature- you will hear all that. And more. And so much more. But the plain truth is spliced between streams of bullshit, double talk, triple talk and camouflage. And in the center of that tangle, supposedly, you might hear the unpronounceable name of god.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Simon is a likely boy and apt to learn. But someone has to shake the crazy out of him and I am willing.

TOO: What the hell would you know about a “Simon”?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Simon had been schooled in old ways, old songs, old tales at mama’s knee. She taught him they came from a vanished world.

TOO: Wait .

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He knew that by bringing back that world, the people of today could re-create and re-enter paradise.

NAMELESS: DON’T GIVE IT ALL AWAY! SHUT UP!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What?

TOO: Who are you?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Proffert. Bishop Matt Proffert. Here’s my card.

NAMELESS: Reads: “Most Reverand Matthew Proffert, spiritual authority and patient teacher”. What are you doing?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Telling this story. Simon’s story. I’m going to call it the Song of Simon.

TOO: NO! The rule is SECOND PERSON. Take your little card back. Gives PROFFERT his card back. To audience: In other words, YOU, the audience are cast as Simon. You’ll live the adventure as if it is happening to YOU. YOU are the protagonist.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Protagonist. What is that?

NAMELESS: Really? But who ARE you?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Proffert. Bishop Matt Proffert. Here’s my card.

TOO: No, no , no, no.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Yes, yes, yes. We’ll have no crazy abstractions here.

NAMELESSES/TOO: SHUT UP!

The Bishop shuts up and shrinks back.

NAMELESS/TOO: Thank you. To audience: Go ahead Simon:

SIMON: To audience: I’m in the field. And I am you. He scans the audience. I’m here with you, speaking for you. Tune in and listen to the spirit speaking. You hear what the spirit needs to tell you:

NAMELESS:

NAMES OF GOD

There is just one wind spirit, but she speaks in three voices. The voices can sound sweet, like Rhine maidens. Or they can screech like harpies, hungry bird women, raging against the desecration of their nests. They will tell you god has many names, numberless as the stars and flowers: Nambo, healer of lips; Sir Cozy, protector of royal comfort, Heebon, who can really pile it on. Bendtwister, destroyer of parties, Hamsickle, the sex fizzler and ham slicer. Then we get to the big ones: Obit, biographer of the dead; Tuckinster- the imploder, and Leap, creator of next big things. And that’s all. Did I say the gods were numberless? OK. Sorry. But still, Nambo, Sir Cozy, Heebon, Bendtwister, Hamsickle, Obit, Tuckinster and Leap. That’s eight. Eight gods. Still a lot. But raise a doubt, and those HARPIES, will say that these , “maybe”, are the names of functions within a single god; organs cognate to, say, the liver, heart, lungs, eyes, darkness, love and loss.

TOO: So then, what is THE name of god? The Harpies stay silent, acting AS IF it cannot be uttered, implying that it is so VERY sacred that even if you even say it even once it will destroy you, just like the Nazis melted horribly away when they opened the stolen Ark of the Covenant.

NAMELESS: You back off, spooked, not wanting to say that name, even by accident. Again, you fix your gaze on earth’s vanishing wild. But it’s all hollow. The big, speckled Turkey Buzzard and the once regal Bald Eagle are just large smelly birds now. No majesty there. This fallow field on the Illinois river IS a doorway to other worlds, but there is very little left here from when the lost realm was a material, geographic PLACE. What used to be the visitor center is now a correctional facility. And there is a place where you can go horseback riding. They know a lot about horses, but nobody there knows anything about that land beyond, or whether you can get there on horseback. If they did, they would be sore afraid.

SIMON: How does any of this help me bring back that glorious vanished world?

TOO: Get out.

NAMELESS: You head back toward your parking spot by the highway.

Twilight. You see your car’s silhouette, barely, until hi-beam headlights coming ‘round the mountain blind you- uh, and -shit, what did you kick there- OOF- you trip and fall into a furrow, filled with ice cold water.

SIMON: SHIT SHIT SHIT . To audience: You, as me, are soaked across your thigh and half your ass. You, as me, lie there trying to get up without getting wetter. Harpies screech with laughter. What made you trust them? Did they say the name of god is FORBIDDEN to pronounce or just that it is UNPRONOUNCABLE, like a French sentence? Or maybe, (FLASH!), and this might make it worth getting wet, MAYBE the name of god is unpronounceable because god doesn’t have one. God is anonymous. God can be known. But no name is left behind. Prove me wrong.

TOO: Well, sometimes JESUS will let you know that He saved you. But He is just one aspect of god. He is number nine in the hierarchy of name-bearing divinites. So there’s Nambo, Sir Cozy, Heebon, Bendtwist, Hamsickle, Obit, Tuckinster, Leap and, on top of the heap, Jesus. And they are ALL very, very real, brothers and sisters.

SIMON: Does any of this matter to god? No. But it matters to you as me. It’s why you as me, SIMON, drove 267 miles, parked and went out into that wet field. That wind, that lie-filled wind, blowing through that low -lying riverside desolation is my only info source about our lost world.

NAMELESS: You find your car in the dark. Still soaking wet and half-blind from the headlights that are now parked just ahead, you fumble for your keys. A tap tap tapping on your shoulder turns you around into a sucker punch followed by a cryptic allegorical warning:

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Stay away from the fertile flooded plain. Or else.

SIMON: You don’t understand. This mission is our only hope.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Don’t waste your time. Hope is over. He punches SIMON again.

SIMON: OW!! What? Why? What?

SIRENS/HARPIES/ WHIRLING ELECTRIC NOTHINGS: BRING IT BACK!

SIMON: HEAR THAT?

NAMELESS: But why care about god’s missing name if even god themselves doesn’t care? And why bore us about some “lost world”. WHY?

You’ve always been weird about names. Why even have one? God doesn’t. Is god an idiot? No name would describe you any more than a name could describe god.

PROFESSOR PLUM: They say the Arctic-dwelling Inuit people have 27 names for kinds of snow but no name for snow. WRONG! They DO have a name for snow. It’s called snow but just in their own language, which is called Inuktitut.

SIMON: Inuktitut?

PROFESSOR PLUM: But the “no name for snow” lie is the right made-up idea. And the “no name for god” idea is right for us. Everything is made up. Making things up is endowing meaning to something that had none, like our long, lost kingdom. Of all the lies from which we draw deep meaning, the idea of THIS magic land is the meaningfullest. That’s because, unlike all other lost and holy lands, this land is YOUR land. Belief in it will make life worth living AND guide you back to your true, cosmic home. Come home.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Who the fuck is this guy? And why does he get to talk?

PROFESSOR PLUM: The name is Plum.

TOO: Please be quiet! We’re doing second person!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You are. I’m not.

PROFESSOR PLUM: My right to speak is endowed by my creator- the one with no name.

TOO: I’m calling the cops.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: I am the cops. And the robbers.

NAMELESS: Then I’m calling Simon. Simon!

SIMON: WHAT?

NAMELESS: This so-called Bishop is wrecking everything,

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Hello Simon. Well, Nameless, where’s your second person now?

NAMELESS: Don’t worry. (to audience) You’re still out there. You’re all Simon to me..

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT. Proffert. (extends hand). Bishop Matt Proffert.

SIMON: Pleased to meet you, Bishop, Mr. Plum.

PROFESSOR PLUM: It’s Professor Plum now.

TOO: Now?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Yes. It comes from a board game I was once forced into. We tend to think of death as an end. But with this game, it’s only the beginning. I did hard time there. A victim treated like a perp. No clue, just a tough school of hard knocks where I earned my PH fucking D. But I finally figured out the trap. Watch out for the trap.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: The trap? What trap?

PROFESSOR PLUM: So you don’t know everything?

SIMON: I do. Just maybe not all the details.

PROFESSOR PLUM: The trap is made of words and so is the bait. Follow the word trail deep into the word forest. Adding words of your own is like adding water to the sea but you will anyway. Find the bridge of words spanning the river of words. Night comes and you can’t read. So listen to the night words, large and dark. Silence falls. Then back come words, words, words. Some burn like fire. Others fall like rain. Carry on through the torrent that’s come to burn and drown you. And then a rainbow. You come up wordless: dry: safe, and solid.

SIMON: What’s the point?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Needing a point is the point.

The word habit will itch.

Tear your soul.

Pull you away.

And then, you’re stuck.

That’s it.

SIMON: But why, Professor?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Words will never describe the true nature of things. Reality lies beyond, like forgotten glory. Build sentences, paragraphs, chapters, volumes, and you will make a tight- wound web of lies. Use words to get yourself out and you’ll just wind tighter into the web. And there you’ll be suspended, a fresh meal for the web weaver, the one called “spider”.

SIMON: Are there any words that even comes close to the truth?

PROFESSOR PLUM: “It is what it is.”

Pause.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You realize that dwelling on states of being is going to stop the flow of dramatic action?

Pause.

PROFESSOR PLUM: It is what it is.

NAMELESS: But access lost Eden wordlessly, and you’ll transcend space, time, and self, with no identity, just attributes. In a floating forest of a million words, with no fixed name, you are finally anonymous, aware of the living ocean all around you, the ocean whose center is everywhere, where words and gods float side by side. Abiding humbly and lovingly, you are finally home. Welcome home.

TOO: BIRTH OF A SIMON

Just born, you hear them call you “Simon” and know for sure it’s not you. But you quickly learn to respond to that name or there will be consequences.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: So sing Simon, of your early life, your birth and your big, big plans.

MAMA: Simon the Small, you know from vere you come?

LITTLE SIMON: West Texas town of El Paso.

MAMA: No.

LITTLE SIMON: Streets of Laredo?

MAMA: No.

LITTLE SIMON: Ghost Riders in the Sky?

MAMA: You not jukebox.

LITTLE SIMON: Then where?

MOM: From under cabbage leaf by castle. Far avay.

LITTLE SIMON: OK. Bye.

MOM: Where you go?

LITTLE SIMON: Back.

TOO: You roll saltine crackers into your dirty red bandana and tie it to a stick. The old screen door slams behind you. And when the crackers are gone, you eat dirt.

ZHMUD

NAMELESS: Zhmud is real. It’s far across the sea, deep in occupation but beloved by spirits.

MAMA: Back so soon?

SIMON: I got lonesome.

TETE: You born alone and you die alone! But Jesus…

SIMON: You’re NOT born alone. Your mom’s right there. You hope. And if you die alone, you’re lucky. Whoever’s at your bed will leave for one second and you’ll slip out, down and pass through the wall, sure as Jesus, if he’s real.

TETE: Kid is genius.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Oops.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Looking through Viewmaster Frame slippage. Reel roll. Kid is back in Zhmud.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: ZHMUD? What the hell is that?

TOO: Mama and Tete beg the lord of the manor to send you to a distant school for the bright. A few of the kids speak Zhmud back in the barracks, at night, never at school; not at lunch, not on the swing-set or merry-go -round, because spies. You scramble to decipher their tongue. In class you stay silent when called on, though they ruler-rap your knuckles. Kids teach you how to ask for the bathroom while you hold it in. Then you burst forth. You get to like squeezing out drops of meaning. Soon you hold forth in full flowing sentences. You sit at the head of the class and wish the teacher would get to the point. They want to dress you in child-sized priest vestments someone’s mom had made, but you know it’s a trap.

SIMON: So am I from Arizona or Zhmud?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Arizona and Zhmud. They’re both just frames.

SIMON: Frames?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Oh you know, like backdrops. Backgrounds. Interchangeable themes for the views on the reels. Sometimes one slips out and another slips in. CLICKNG SOUND. Professor bangs his View Master on something solid. OK good. We’re way out west again.

TOO:

PAPAGO PLAZA- SCOTTSDALE

Locals luring tourists,

In a west long time gone.

Plastic coated scorpions,

Hot desert sun.

TETE: Big “Shopping Center” is wave of future.

SIMON: We swing through glass Arizona doors from out of the hot and into the freezing AC stores. Dad had quit running The Corral bar and opened The International Gift Shop. There’s also Baskin Robbins, Mister Shops, Marbetts’ Hair Salon, and more and more. Wax lips and licorice from T.G. &Y, Mode O’ Day dress store and the lady that lost hundreds of pounds, skin flaps hanging from her arms.

Bottles of pop,

Two cents returned,

Candy or comics?

Mountains of thought.

We kids fought.

KID: Oh ya? Ask the president!

SIMON: We watch the election on the TV through windows in Dick’s Firestone , just past Mayman’s Toys and Hobbies. Kennedy wins.

SIMON: What are those numbers on your arm, Mr. Mayman?

MR. MAYMAN: You’ve heard of “lucky numbers”?

SIMON: Yes.

MR MAYMAN: These aren’t.

MAMA: He married Lutheran girl.

SIMON: Christmas time. Wishing for Maymans’ miniature German tanks. Showing off to carpool kids on the last day of second grade, I climb out the back of dad’s new Chevy wagon and ride on the back bumper.

TETE: YOU GET SPANKING WHEN YOU GET HOME!

SIMON: I jump. My face scrapes nicely along the hot Arizona pavement. I’m one big scab-face all summer. On the shopping center sidewalk, shoppers recoil in horror. The scab glaciers recede and it’s back to school.

Out at Canyon Lake, big strong dad swims along with my brother and me all the way across. It’s only a narrow neck at the far side of the lake, a quarter mile wide or so. To us, it’s an ocean. We swim there, rest and swim back. It’s deep enough to drown. No whining. Breathe right. We’ll make it. We make it. We made it. Like real swimmers.

Fifth grade and Kennedy’s killed. Rheumatic fever for me. Mom and dad work the store and I’m home alone, hurting, scared. Sonic booms and no desk to duck under.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Jesus had it way worse.

SIMON: After some months, they take me with them to the store to lay on a cot in back. Mom brings me to lunch at Helsing’s coffee shop. Did those burgers come with a smear of thousand island dressing? Ketchup and mustard. Onion slice. Lettuce. Tomato. French fries too. Deluxe, my friend.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What’s all this biographical crap?

SIMON: Just trying to enjoy the frame. Before it slips away again.

MAMA: When Restaurants close, they not really gone. You can remember taste, smell, noise, and how they give so much food: not to get you fat but to be nice. Put extra food in bag. Take home! Bye-bye, folks!

TOO: And now, teetering toward manhood, yearning for SOMETHING-

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: -with ZERO idea of how lost you are bound to get-

NAMELESS: -wish, wish, wishing for a pilgrimage. A place. Buried treasure. Answers blowing in the wind. The highway calls. Pack up your dirty red bandana, stick it to a stick and hit the road. Again. For real this time.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Go east, young man.

NAMELESS:

CAVE IN ROCK.

This place seems serene. For a second. Then the wind picks up so hard it almost picks you up too. Air, earth and water are at war. Fire is scared and rarely shows up. Earth would smother it, water drown it. And air- you know- they say a wind can put out a small flame but it makes a big flame even bigger? Forget that. Here, the wind will put out ANY flame. This is where your special insight into love and absence comes to die. So get lost, fire, if you value your puny life.

TOO: EVEN YOU could be snuffed out, run off , erased or dunked. You looked for a sign and found nothing. And in that nothing, you hear the cry of the Harpies:

HARPIES: Galindra.

SIMON: Who?

HARPIES: What?

HARPIES: Galindra!

SIMON: Where?

MAMA: Galindra, east of Zhmud. You’ll be King! Look at audience. And you. And you. All of you.

HARPIES screech.

TOO: You make a solemn vow:

SIMON: To audience: You as I will seek that land beyond. Forever. Or until we find it. And we will be King there, in the land that mama called Galindra, not Zhmud, and not Eden. Glorious Galindra, just and loving, will live again, like it was in the age before bibles.

MAMA: Watch out for doubters, sneaks and phonies.

A DOUBTER, A SNEAK AND A PHONY: We’re your friends. Give us a kiss!

SIMON: GET OUT !

DOUBTER: DON’T-

SNEAK: -BE

PHONY: -AN

ALL: ASSHOLE!

SIMON: GET OUT!

MAMA: What you believe- that’s real.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: God is a place.

SIMON: Shangri La?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Bangs his View Master then looks through it. Shangri Nah.

SIMON: Gimme that! Grabs View Master from PLUM and looks through it. Brick buildings that look- I don’t know- old timey. Ivy climbing the walls. There I am, toting a load of books. Big books. Smart books.

PROFESSOR PLUM: It’s called college! Roll that reel!

NAMELESS: All grown up and college-bound, you leave the dusty cowboy towns of Arizona, jump the barbed-wire turnstile at the far-off border, walk past the pointed AK 47s into deep imprisoned Zhmud. You walk all the way across the forlorn land with only a dime and a dream. OK more than a dime. More like seventy thousand dollars, a gift from the lord who owned your parents.

MAMA & TETE: Serf’s up!

PROFESSOR PLUM: Some of the reels must have paired off and had kids. This one is some kind of hybrid.

NAMELESS: The great university is the highest in the land, built on the ruins of the old capital. Dig down and find scattered yellow records and ancient, runic maps. Whispered new ideas blow through the drafty, medieval student quarter. Fancy carriages unload young nobles. They huddle conspiratorially, making their way to dark, half-hidden taverns to drink deep. Even coffee is legal. Revolution rustles through the alleys but Simon throws himself into his studies. His burning roommates beg him to join their cause. But he has bigger fish to fry.

SIMON: I’ve got bigger fish to fry!

TOO: But to find those fish, Simon, you have to burrow into the heart of the occupant’s empire. DON’T YOU?

TOO: After brown-nosing your way to a prize internship, you’re allowed to rummage through decaying records of trade transactions. Ancient records show the flow of life, death and money, from the beginning of slavery, naming names of sellers, buyers and prices paid for batches of bound humans, fresh off rivers running from far-off Slavic lands. Old parchments even record justifications for the enterprise.

TRADER: We don’t believe in slavery, but these are Slavs.

TRADER laughs.

NAMELESS: You find fragments of Zhmudish, your mother tongue in the margins. Out in the swamps, restive rebels agitate for violent change. Your silence makes you suspect.

RESTIVE REVOLUTIONARY: (to BISHOP) We thought Simon was one of us. Now he works for them.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Simon studies while his classmates run rackets, take Cuba hostage, star in tv shows. But Simon unlocks the codes of rusty Zhmudish runes.

SIMON: Galindran runes. Not Zhmudish. Zhmud was just one small part of a great republic called Galindra. It’s all in the runes. Only they’re not runes, exactly. Well, some are.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He sponges up folklore from villages.

SIMON: Old folks say that all events, from great die offs, to little fads and crazes, are directed by waves emanating from the earth’s core. This core is made of a metallic compound rich in nickel, but worth more because it is ALIVE! I found that out just by learning.

TOO: You start to go off on tangents.

SIMON: ALL OBJECTS THINK! Think they don’t? Galaxies of atoms spring to life in a well-ordered square dance, but with surprise leaps like a living mind. Hey, if it walks like a duck, then it thinks, even if it’s just a pencil.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What?

SIMON: What?

PROFESSOR PLUM: What? I thought you knew what you were doing, Proffert.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He’s imploding.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Abort?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERET: No yet. I’m ordering a combo platter of exorcism and electroshock. Strap him to a power pole and bring me a crucifix.

That happens.

HEAL!

TOO: Under electrodes you writhe delirious, screaming.

SIMON: MEXICAN BULLWHIPS AND PAINTED BASEBALL BATS. INTO THE TENT! YOU WANT OUT? RUN THE GAUNTLET!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: It never happened!

PROFESSOR PLUM: Banging View Master. This thing’s broke.

NAMELESS: Zapped, you remember mom and dad and the back yard. So what? Just shut up about it. What about those fun times? Watch the bruises slowly changing color. Purple turns blue turns red, then distant yellow then gone. God loves you.

BISHOPE MATTHEW PROFFERT: Wake up.

SIMON: What was that?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: A brief shining spark!

SIMON: I can see clearly now.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Stop. You’re not some genius.

SIMON: I’m just a vehicle. Right?

NAMELESS: KINGDOM COME

Bright, detailed visions help you map the lost land, flesh out the invisible realm that’s vibrating a hair’s breadth away. You’ll catalogue every aspect of Galindra: secrets of love, transport, recreation, diet, recipes, dreams and jokes. Do they hope? Do they cry? Do they ask why?

SIMON: I have to find a way to bring them from their phantom zone to earth. I can. I must. I will.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: You’re tripping.

SIMON: You call this tripping? This is nothing. Back to Eden, baby.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: That was long ago.

SIMON: Go back far enough and you’ll reach the future.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: STOP!!

TOO: But you can’t. And so Simon, you master fragments of lost language- a few proverbs, folk sayings, and rhymed, unsolvable riddles. Scraps of lore lie scattered about in pieces like pottery shards. Could you ever remake an entire pot? Could the numberless grains of sand between the hill and the river ever recombine to reconstruct the lost mountain they came from? OR IS IT ALL TOO MUCH?

SIMON: Where is she?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Who?

SIMON: Beyond the sea? Waiting for me.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Someone to stand on. You don’t need that.

SIMON: GAAGH!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Simon broke down like a dustbowl truck. Or so his friends would have thought if he’d had any.

PROFFESSOR PLUM: But Simon knew he’d broken through. PROFESSOR bangs his View Master furiously. Out pops a reel. He replaces it with another one. OK that was close.

TOO: Crossing the neighborhood baseball field, you pass over the pitcher’s mound, daydreaming of finally getting one over the plate and then- sky cracks, dove descends, voice booms-

VOICE: PEEL BACK YOUR BRAIN. TOUCH THE SPOT.

NAMELESS: Sirens sound. In your brains furrows and folds you feel the lost world you came from- rough, fuzzy, tender and mild. See the view? Past Amazon, flying carpet burns, cigarette fired synapses- more visions bloom the hills, forests, oceans of long gone Galindra.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Like a crystal receiver, your mind picks up radio waves, TV signals, UV light, gamma rays, and every other meaning-charged ray, wave, light, particle or signal. Find the right frequency, you’ll find the portal to ancient performances looping in the cosmos. Enjoy!

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: If god wanted us to-

SIMON: God wanted us to want. The cure for want is love. And if I can access the pageant of Galindra planted in my brain, I’ll can funnel it out into the wide world. The great belt will loosen. Behold, Galindra!

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Ceremonial grade BS.

The ground shakes. Thunder and lightning.

NAMELESS: Heaven blessed, hell bent.

Bust goes the dam.

Pour water, pour, blown open spouts.

Words surge, pressure packed

Walls broken, flung out.

All fall down. A letter is laying on the ground. SIMON picks it up. On it are big block letters spelling SIMON.

PROFESSOR PLUM: A letter.

SIMON: From?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: It says “occupant”.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Looks. That’s who it’s from. It’s for Simon. Open it, Simon.

He does.

SIMON: IT CAME THROUGH. IT’S ALL COMING TRUE! BEYOND THE SEA! WAIITNG FOR ME!

End of Episode 1

Episode 2

Recap:

NAMELESS: Welcome back to Kingdom Gone, episode 2. In episode 1…I revealed my name: Nameless.

NAMELESS TOO: And I am Nameless too.

NAMELESS/NAMELESS TOO: To audience: Then we revealed your name. SIMON.

SIMON: But I’m Simon.

NAMELESS: You all are.

TOO: You are on a quest.

SIMON: Where did I come from? How can I get back there?

NAMELESS: Your visions told you about your people’s origin in the land of Zhmud , which is the only living sliver of ancient Galindra, a lost and Holy Land.

SIMON: Well not totally lost. Galindra lives in another dimension. And I’m going to bring it back.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Maybe.

SIMON: OH hello Bishop-uh-

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Proffert. Matt Proffert.

SIMON: I know I know, I was going to-

PROFESSOR PLUM: Damn! He bangs an old “View Master” stereoscopic viewer, trying to get a reel unstuck. These old View Masters never work right. Reels stick, Futures pass into now. And don’t get me started on the past. HE looks into his View Master again. Aah! Better.

NAMELESS: You, Simon, have been everywhere, man. Arizona, Illinois, even college in Zhmud, now occupied by the brute Empire of St. Petrol. That’s where you started to unlock secrets of old Galindra. You learned a lot but never really got to the core.

TOO: Then a letter came.

AND NOW, ON WITH THE SHOW:

SIMON: Finally It’s. come. Straight from the Central Committee- A job in the stacks! Not just any stacks: the captured Galindran Archives in the Hall of Fallen Foes of the Imperial Capital, St. Petrol .

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: You applied for that?

SIMON: Years ago.

TOO: Here it comes, Simon! Your handlers from college remembered you! IT’S ALL COMING TRUE!

PROFESSOR PLUM: What’s coming true?

TOO: YOUR WISH! YOUR GREATEST WISH! ALL OF IT! JUST FOR YOU!

NAMELESS: The gasoline smell of St. Petrol hits your nostrils as you deplane through the rear Petroflot jet. A smiling taxi driver exchanges your dollars, promising you “a good rate”. HE drops you and your bags at Hall of Fallen Foes. You and your bags climb the two hundred and thirty two steps to the massive entrance.

MINISTER OF FOES: Welcome Simon. As Minister of Foes, I ceremoniously appoint you Archivist for old Galinran texts in the rustic records room of your vanished tribe. Here are your epaulets. Our seamstress will sew them onto your shoulders.

SIMON: Thank you. May I change my shirt?

MINISTER OF FOES: You don’t seem to understand. I said shoulders. Not shirt.

SIMON: Gulp.

MINISTER OF FOES: Don’t worry. Our seamstress Marija will make it painless as possible. Just don’t fidget. That could hurt. And remember-your work is top secret. Unauthorized leaks will result in the painful stripping of your epaulets, followed by a slow but violent death.

SIMON: That sounds reasonable.

MINISTER OF FOES: Welcome to the team.

TOO: Between rows of goatskin-bound, vellum-paged books, you find answers the Harpies never gave you. You spend the occupants loot without shame, enjoying lush St. Petrol in all it’s abundance: there’s sausage. Cheese. Bread. They even give you your own office coffee pot. But that‘s not why you came.

SIMON: No that’s not why I came. I came- Uh- what? Oh hi, guys.

Enter BISHOP and PROFESSOR.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Why did you?

SIMON: What?

PROFESSOR: Come.

SIMON: How did you get in here?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Visitor passes.

SIMON: Those are damn hard to get.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Not for us. You were about to say why you came.

SIMON: Reasons.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Like?

SIMON: Bring back Galindra if it kills me.

BISHOP AND PROFESSOR: SHHH!

SIMON: Coffee?

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Coffee? Really?

SIMON: I love that second cup. Aah. I have it even before I have the first.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Impossible.

SIMON: Quantum physics.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: As if.

SIMON: Mix and match scraps of infotainment and anything is possible. It’s quantum. It’s physics. And it’s the answer. Just like love. Take Yiddish, for example.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: What’s THAT got to do-

SIMON: It’s a hearty soup with nuggets of Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, Arabic, French. Italian. Spanish, swimming in a rich, medieval German broth.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: So what?

SIMON: That shit is old. And the story of a people is encoded there. It will be the same when I decode Galindran.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Yiddish is alive. Galindran is dead.

SIMON: So was Lazarus.

SIMON enters a sspotlit separate playing area and lies down on a psychiatric couch PROFESSOR PLUM acts as shrink.

SIMON: Dad moved us down-

PROFESSOR PLUM: Wait. Bangs his View Master against the couch and replaces a reel. Piece of shit. Go ahead.

SIMON: Dad moved us down to Tucson but didn’t last long at Jacome’s department store. So he left to find work in Detroit. We stayed in Tucson with our pregnant mom, my brother, and our Mociute, or grandma. She was outside weeding one day when an elderly gentleman in a fedora walked by and said hello. He’d been in the gulag too. That evening, he came over and serenaded Močiute with sad Yiddish songs. She smiled her big smile, then cried.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Looking through View Master. You seem to have landed back in Arizona.

MAMA: (She mimes a crying “baby” in her arms.) Now picture our great hero, my genius son Simon of Zhmud, doing the impossible.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Oops-spoke too soon. He’s back in St. Petrol. Bangs View Master. Replaces reel. Piece of Sh-

SIMON: Please watch your language around my mom.

MAMA: Dat’s right!

PROFESSOR PLUM: Even I’m not nuts enough to attempt reconstructing Old Zhmudish, sometimes called Galindran.And I speak fourteen languages. What makes you think you can?

SIMON: I’m a cunning linguist. Zhmud was my first language, Galindra’s closest living cousin. Mama sang the old songs. It’s all there.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Coupla lullabies are gonna unlock Galindran? Gimma a break.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Simon may be onto something. Galindran culture was said to have been encoded in song. Thousands of songs recorded their history, the line of rulers, tales of crones and seers, myths, mirth, rites of passage, eros, recipes, initiation into cosmic truth plus various tongue twisters. They also had their own “99 bottles of beer” song.

SIMON: I know.

PROFESSOR PLUM: You know? How?

SIMON: Harpies told me. Actually they sang it to me.

TOO: But your parents didn’t sing , Simon, except when mama did dishes or when tete worked the farm as a boy.

SIMON: You sang on the farm, tete?

TETE: All night.

SIMON: Wow.

TETE: No wow. Farm vork so hard. Like hell. So ve sing and ve forget. Now I hate sing. Make remember.

SIMON: (to audience) Dad spoke English like a Hollywood Indian.

TETE: Dis not Gallup.

SIMON steps off the couch. And goes back to “St. Petrol”.

PROFFESOR PLUM bangs on his View Master.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Deep in the archives. Simon read, read, read, not knowing that love lurked .

NAMELESS: One regular day, you bend down to a low shelf at the south stacks to read a faded label, when you feel a shadow loom.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Please, sir I need to scrub here.

TOO: You know the accent: Zhmudish.

SIMON: Lower Zhmud or Up-HEY I KNOW YOU! You sewed on my epaulets!

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDAENA: What do you see? A seamstress who pierces human flesh? A withered washerwoman? Or a brightly-aproned Zhmudish maid in love with the village poet?

SIMON: What’s your name?

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Marija Sophia Magdalena. I had just cut my braid to marry Tadas when the soldiers came and dragged him north to make a soldier. A twenty-five year term. He was just 17. We knew what they did to Zhmuds: only the toughest survived. Tadas was tender. I walked all the way to his St. Petrol barracks. I found no trace. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Bupkiss.

On the stone steps of St. Petrol’s Zhmudish church, built to show the empire’s benevolence, I found him. Tadas was begging, all disfigured, dirty, dehydrated. I gave him water. He held out his left hand, which held his cut-off right hand, which held his severed manhood.

TADAS: Don’t think they don’t, because they do.

MARIJA: Right there, he died. A Petrolian soldier came around the corner.

SOLDIER: Halt! You know this boy?

MARIJA: He’s- my-

SOLDIER: You’re a Zhmud! And dis guy’s dead. You’re under arrest!

MARIJA: My captors tattooed my innermost thighs. At my trial I denied nothing. It was useless. My sentence: scrub these archive floors forever.

SOLDIER: ‘Dose floors ought to be spic and span by den.

TOO: In the archives she sees Simon. She watches in secret as he pokes and probes the old records. His hungry eyes cover every page of every record .

MARIA SOPHIA MAGDALINA: He jumps down, turns the old Zhmuvonic books around. He reads them in the rest room mirror.

SIMON: Hidden messages. Trouble is, they’re hidden.

MARIA SOPHIA MAGDALINA: You lived in secret, a self-made scout .

The truth of your past- you found it out.

Through years of study, rebellions pass by.

Burrow your archives, stare at the sky.

The scrawled, cryptic script, now unlocked,

Thaws your bones and warms your heart

Bore through those books with a burning brain.

Go back again and again and again!

I’d love to go with you but I’m not a man!

NAMELESS: She sees SIMON literally disappear into an ancient tome only to emerge from the back cover hours later. The grass of love regrows on Marija Sophia’s plowed-under heart. She reveals herself.

SIMON: What the-

MARIA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Make love to me.

NAMELESS: Word becomes flesh. Right in the stacks. It’s your first time, Simon, even though you’ve been thirty-three for many years.

SIMON: WOW.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Yes wow.

SIMON: Someone might come. Let’s get a room.

TOO: And you do. Right on the scenic St. Petrol river.

SIMON: Jesus came. There I am, sick with desire, in a Petroflute B&B, with Maria Sophia Magdalena. Lust is hammering in your head. Jesus steps in like a phantom, outlined in light-a Big Man in a plain robe with the kindest eyes. Moving through the room in rhythm, slow and steady, he knows me. Divine light shines through. Maria Sophia Magdalena and I make sweet, pure love. Jesus keeps walking and goes out through the far wall. Next morning, we drive out to the gulag to meet her parents. Her mom anyway. Her dad is dead. Jesus can do anything.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Anything? Then bring back my dad!

SIMON: He went out the wall. Talk to the wall.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: To wall: BRING BACK MY DAD!

SIMON: And while you’re at it, BRING BACK GALINDRA! AND EVERYTHING ELSE!

Enter JESUS

JESUS: You want to bring back glory? That’s your job!

ALL: How?

JESUS: Just think about it for a second.

SIMON: Galindra was love. And so will we.

JESUS: Bingo. HE leaves.

SIMON: Kiss me, Marija.

SHE does.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Come out of her Simon, get real. Perhaps we could publish a little volume, or at least a pamphlet of the those surviving ancient Galindran fragments and old sayings you’ve uncovered. We’ll print it in lost ink!

SIMON: We need more. Way more. An Encyclopedia of Classical Galindra! And I’m the man to do it.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: And I’m going stand behind you admiringly.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: At least make it Christian.

SIMON: It goes back farther.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: But you’re a believer?

SIMON: I wasn’t. Then I saw her face..

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Blasphemy. You’ll never see god.

SIMON: God sees me.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: HE HEARS YOU TOO! SO SHUT UP!

SIMON: Was it blasphemy to disappear into the old chronicles and bring myself out?

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Well-

SIMON: And next I will bring the rest of Galindra out with me! HA HA HA!

TOO: But before your maniacal laugh can change pitch, the butt of a snub nose .38 is already coming down on the back of your head,

Sound of a gun butt hitting Simon’s head.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: Dream on sucker!

NAMELESS: Something is shaken loose deep in your skull. You plunge into a technicolor riptide pulling you out to sea.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: (to Marija) Not a word of this to anyone, girlie, or you’ll get the same.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: You don’t scare me one bit, you thug cloaked in bishop’s drag. I’ll tell the-

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Quiet, Piggy.

A gun butt comes down on her head and she falls.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Fucking bitch. See you soon, Simon!

TOO: When you come to, the sun is already setting.. Is that a golf ball or a lump on your forehead? Ooh there’s one in back too. Ouch. Definitely twin lumps. The palms are swaying above you as hundreds of newly hatched turtles race across the beach for the ocean waters, where they’ll have only the tiniest chance to survive. But it’s better than nothing. Your chances are worse. Still. you desperately slap the sand castle next to you up at the little man with the gun. It works! Sand sprays into his ugly blue eyes and he falls back, lobbing his pistol into the air. It drops right into your hand. Even more improbably, his yellowed Panama hat flies off his fat head and drops squarely onto yours. Most days, it would have been way too big and slipped down over your eyes, but the golf balls settled into the rough of your hairline hold it in place. You’ve got the little fucker!

SIMON: Alright start talking. Who are you? Who sent you? And why did you do the things you did? And what are those things?

THUG: Whadayou, a detective??

SIMON: Talk.

THUG: Starting where?

SIMON: Starting with naming the things you love most, who your parents were and what would make you happiest. And where the hell are we?

THUG: You’re as weird as he said you were.

SIMON: Who?

THUG: Him. Them. You oughta know. What kind of a defective are you?

NAMELESS: From behind. a hairy hand touches your naked shoulder. It’s the little thug’s chimp, holding a Luger to your skull. And it IS a skull. At least in back. The impact of the .38 had scraped away chunks of scalp and skin leaving only bone. Shaking, you place the gun into his or her paw and turn to face the now double-gunned simian. He or she has the drawn features and rotten teeth of a meth addict but at least his or her head is intact. It’s been a pretty normal day but- are those girls coming down the mountain?

HARPIES, SIRENS WHIRLING ELECTRIC NOTHINGS: Did you think we were on your side?

Grass skirts flowing from volcanos

Swirling, surrounding,

Protection from chimps

And white suited thugs.

But they’re all wrong, like drugs.

Angels mean as alley cats

Hawaiian guitars

Beating you witless

Spinning

Shit scaredless

You wake in a hut

Knife at your gut.

THUG: Show me your badge.

SIMON: I didn’t know I had one. He pulls out a badge. What’s this?

THUG: Eat it.

SIMON: It’s metal.

THUG: I said eat it.

SIMON: You’re lucky it’s tin. Nice and soft.

SIMON eats his badge.

Happy?

THUG: Not exactly.

SIMON: How did I get a soft, edible badge? And who sent you?

THUG: A Mister Bishop.

SIMON: Bishop Matt Profert. That’s a lie! He turns to the audience. He’s our friend. To THUG. What’s he want?

THUG: Call off your Galindra project and you’ll be safe. You’re getting too close. This is your first and last warning. Go back to normal. Or else.

SIMON: Or else what?

THUG: Nothing. Just or else.

SIMON: Gulp.

THUG: He’ll set you up anywhere you want. Boca. Folly Beach. Aspen. You can have Zurich or Dubai. You name it. But give up Galindra.

SIMON: I’ll take Manhattan.

Thug pistol whips Simon again, knocking him out. PROFFERT AND PLUM enter.

PROFFERT AND PLUM: Is he out?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He’ll need a cheap, comfortable place to stay in Manhattan.

PROFESSOR PLUM: No problem. He can have Connie’s. She’s leaving today.

THUG: Connie?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Converse.

THUG: Connie Converse. Never heard of her.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Exactly.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He waves his hands around. Magic music. Poof!

SIMON: Wow! The thugs are gone. And look! Skyscrapers! Subways! I must be in New-

CONNIE: Hey! You’re on my stoop.

SIMON: Sorry. I’m looking for a place to live here in Manhattan.

CONNIE CONVERSE: Have mine. Here’s my key. 2C. I’m out.

SIMON: And you are?

CONNIE: Connie. Connie Converse.

Nameless here in old New York.

Maybe Michigan will work.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Bangs on View Master. What the hell, somebody switched reels. This one’s about Connie now.

SINGER: CONNIE CONVERSE

Her New York work won no one.

She went to Michigan.

That project done,

She mourned some.

Then she was gone.

Now we want to know:

Where did Connie go?

We should have asked before.

We could have had her back.

Too late. It’s past .

Maybe Connie found the mirror in the lake.

And saw the starry night.

She drove her Beetle off the dock and

Slowly sank until she reached

The farthest, deepest star.

You take her place and off you go.

Cobble truth, put on a show.

Wheat paste posters through the town

Don’t stop until you’ve won.

We’ve only just begun

But for now, we’ve come to

The happy end of episode 2

PROFESSOR PLUM bangs his View Master

END OF PART 2

KINGDOM GONE

Episode 3

NAMELESS: Here’s your recap. SO far nothing has been all that easy to follow. What we know is that I, your narrator, am Nameless. That’ s my name.

TOO: And I am Nameless Too.

NAMELESS: But we don’t just narrate for you. We narrate for the main character, Simon.

TOO: But after all, that is you.

NAMELESS: So think of yourself as Simon.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Crazy? I agree! Impossible.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Actually, it’s quite possible. Things can really jump around.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: How?

PROFESSOR PLUM: How? Well, consider the prosaic View Master. Slip in a reel and click. HE does. Rome. Keeps clicking. Paris. Abraham Lincoln. Pizza. You. Simon. See? Quantum physics!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Says who?

PROFESSOR PLUM: My name is Professor. Professor Plum. I’m a professor. And you are?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Proffert. Bishop Matt Proffert.

PROFFESSOR PLUM: Let me guess. You’re a-

SIMON: You’re a bishop!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Hello Simon! Points to SIMON. This is the real Simon.

SIMON: Hi.

NAMELESS: To audience: YOU’RE the real Simon!; This guy is just, like, an avatar.

SIMON: I’m real. And I’m on a quest.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Meet the real Simon. He’s on a quest.

SIMON: Bring back the vanished land!

TOO: To audience. YOU are on a quest!

NAMELESS: To audience Bring back the vanished land!

SIMON: It is called Galindra!

PROFESSOR PLUM: It’s a combination of “Gal”, which means the end and “Indra” their chief god.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: I thought it was called Zhmud.

PROFFESSOR PLUM: Well, the tiny land of Zhmud is all that’s left of Galindra. The rest has vanished into another dimension.

SIMON: My mom and dad are from Zhmud. And, by extension, so am I!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: But Galindra is long gone. Right?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Nothing left of it but a few dusty old records locked in the vaults of an evil empire. But Galindra still exists in another dimension. It’s close, accessible. And when we decipher it, we’ll be able to bring it back to earth again.

TOO: To audience: You, Simon, make this your mission and vow to bring Galindra back to our world.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Simon winds up working in the archives of ancient Galindra, in the occupant’s capital of St. Petrol. There he meets the great love of his life, sad Marija Sophia Magdalena.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Call me Meg.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: But the occupants become threatened by Simon’s work and ban him from propagating Galindra. He is banished from St. Petrol in a violent but magical way. He ends up in New York City, living in the former apartment of a vanished troubadour named Connie Converse.

AND NOW, ON WITH THE SHOW

NAMELESS: Not bad, Simon. Two weeks in New York City and you’ve already begun your climb to fame as a public intellectual.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Knock ‘em dead out there!

SIMON: Hey if I can make it at 91st St Y, I’ll make it anywhere. Maybe even get upgraded a street.

STAGE MANAGER: You’re on, Simon!

SIMON: I’d like to thank the Tower of Learning for asking me to speak here at the 91st St Y. Thanks for the “special little guy” award. My lecture is called:

NEW KINDS OF WAVES

Now listen up because some of this is easy to understand:

Ever notice that things seem to get smaller as they move away? We call that “perspective” But so-called “perspective” isn’t real. Things really do get smaller as they move farther away. This is caused by shrink rays. Same with so called “microscopic” objects. A “tiny” insect seems small because its world is so far removed from ours. But, as Edgar Allen Poe demonstrated, when you come very, very close, the bug expands. And as Franz Kafka described, when you are inside the bug, it is life-sized. Actually, a so-called “microscope” is actually a window into another actual dimension through which you can actually view things closer to their actual size. Please try to follow along.

Our brains trick us into perceiving that “the inner world” is small and gets smaller and smaller as we descend into its vortex.. It’s as if space has collapsed. But to god, the atoms, neutrinos, quarks, demi-protons and all other “sub-atomic” particles are all just as important, worthy of salvation, and meritorious as objects of the outer world. God cares as much about the affairs of the multitudinous civilizations thriving on sub-atomic particles as he does about you or me. The only place god doesn’t really care about is the town of Pontiac, Michigan

TIME AND SPACE ARE NOT THINGS

How are they things? “Things” are objects. Both time and space collapse often. Conclusion: Anything existing within time and space is also readily collapsible.

Applause. Lots of it.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Well done, Simon.

SIMON: Thanks to you, Professor Plum.

PROFESSOR PLUM: I do what I can. But your ideas are your own. And they’re brilliant, especially now that you’ve stopped obsessing on vanished lands.

SIMON: Don’t remind me. That was so stupid. Galindra- oh brother!

PROFESSOR PLUM: But you’ve moved on. And after this lecture, you ought to be a shoe-in for that coveted professorship: “Endowed Chair of Related Studies”.

SIMON: Wow. Plum post, no? No Plum intended!

PROFESSOR PLUM: May I bring a guest to dinner this evening?

SIMON: Enchante.

Later.

SIMON: Well , here we are! 2C.

PROFESSOR PLUM: It says “Converse” on the mailbox.

SIMON: Never mind that.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Surprise!

SIMON: Bishop Matt Proffert! Haven’t seen you since St. Petrol days! Didn’t you betray me?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: First of all, I brought pie. After that, we’ll get down to the nitty gritty. You see, I was able to obtain your file.

SIMON: File?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: We’re going to clean it good. Here’s your pie.

SIMON: Dreamsicle. Is that even real?

PROFESSOR PLUM: Who cares? It’s orange. Exquisitely processed.

NAMELESS: Time passes quickly as you eat pie.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You better sit down Simon.

SIMON: I am.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Yes but more. Now read.

SIMON: OK.

NAMELESS: You’re two weeks old. You’re taken from your mom and put in a box in a dim brown and yellow room. Every couple of hours you’re picked up and hugged warmly by a big dark woman. Once in a great while, comes a sad hug from mama. And then she’s gone…

TOO: YOU CAN WISH FOR THE END BUT THERE ISN’T ONE

This terrarium you lie in

This half light

An eternity between hugs

No out

Just a dirty yellow glow

No timeline

No release

No new life

No Power

No decision

No opposites

Nothing to survive

No choices

Endless drops of now

And, all grown up,

You hold a woman

And then, another.

Who is next?

How long before

One more caress?

Impress.

Romance.

Seduce.

Let loose.

NAMELESS: Stars pop

From spheres

Flow tears,

No moon.

Dead rock.

Light swells

From shock. .

TOO: No sun can light you.

No wrong right you.

No spell can bind you .

No mind behind you.

Love’s where you find it.

No trap can hold it

No flag unfold it.

Fall down your knees.

Please please please please please

Sing a song to Kingdom Gone

Let go when you’re done

NAMELESS: Beaten and bruised for so long, Simon became constant pain. Victorious, his tormentors rested. Fame followed. Squirming on his hook, Simon addresses a sold out crowd at Madison Square Garden.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Welcome, learned ones. It is indeed a pleasure give you our beloved Simon. Clap!

Applause.

SIMON: My talk is called

CRITIQUE OF PURE MADNESS.

It doesn’t pay anymore to rave like a lunatic. Now, that just blends into the background.

Your hallucinations derive from a mirage of condensed memories- you’re not seeing anything new- just the icing and trim on a stale cake; the little swirls and flowers, the tiny groom and less tiny bride, the cowboys, the small plastic horses frolicking by a bit of fencing that suggests a much larger corral, are all mixed and matched memories. So, no, your scary, scarlet-hued madness, is NOT a form of genius. Move on.

Inspiration, revelation, a glimpse beyond the veil, access to the true, multiform yet formless cosmos is different. Van Gogh took us there, not because of madness, but in spite of it, forging a path through the gnarled olive trees.

To get back to Eden, discard your rage at learning that the apparatus through which you know the world traps you in fixed perceptions like “big” and “small”. The truth is that there is no “big” and “small”! EVERYTHING IS THE SAME SIZE! Relative importance is an illusion. There is no “more” or “less” important. Remember that. It’s important.

Heaven’s people are happy and love freely. Pain is real but so is a wholesome process of relief. Visitors appear offering news and bringing gifts. You reciprocate. These gifts are not for one pre-ordained receiver, but for anyone.

Applause.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Bravo! You killed it out there.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What are you giving us next?

SIMON: It’s called-

THE SUM OF ALL MOVIES

PROFESSOR PLUM: Welcome to Allstate Arena! Hear ye! Simon will speak! Clap!

Applause

SIMON: The whore of Babylon walks among us now.

No guttersnipe she,

She gets around

Like a movie star. So bow.

Watch her grow in power, talents, skill

She’ll have daughters more radiant still.

Offstage now:

SIMON: How was I?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What’s your deal with women?

SIMON: Oh hi Mom.

MAMA: I was in all the plays. I read all the readings. And I danced like a ballerina. Nobody taught me. I was gifted. Back in Zhmud.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Again with the Zhmud.

SIMON: That was mama, not me. I told you before. I don’t promote Zhmud. Or its double, Galindra. I just study it. Sometimes I write down their old sayings and send them to yesterday’s papers.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Enough. Suppose this Galindra, of which Zhmud is the last sliver, existed. Suppose their language, now spoiled by the Zhmuds, was the hidden tongue that unlocked the cosmos. All that’s left now is quaint country jargon and a few folk jingles. You want to elevate THAT? When the Zhmuds rise up from slime, a fear-crazed, hateful mob, what will they do?

SIMON: They will know they’re children of the WORD. And every word will mean its opposite when spoken backwards.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: WHAT?

SIMON: TAHW!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Do you know how dangerous this is?

SIMON: I just want to be happy. Do you?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What if I did?

SIMON: Listen.

(SIMON is silent for twenty seconds. A metronome slowly clicks.)

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Where’d you get that?

SIMON: God threw a handful of pebbles at the sun and called them planets. She didn’t count them first. She was inspirated into action. All your computer does is count, count, count, count, count. But a vast compendium of base-two numbers is not true reality. Combine the prowess of ten thousand computers and you’ve only multiplied stupid by ten thousand.

Medieval thinking knew the obvious: that our planet earth is the center of the universe.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: It is.

SIMON: Yes! And planet earth always remains at the center- quite still while everything whirls around it at warp speed- sun and stars, moons and planets. This earth is the most wondrous, complex, miraculous, abundant, varied, spiritually alive, multi-dimensional spot in the universe.

You can travel outward from earth through infinite space ALMOST forever. The same is true as you travel inward down through the molecular level, the atomic level and so on. “Small” and “large” are illusions. As you descend into the microscopic realm things take up “less space”, “weigh less”, become “harder to see” . But if the illusion were removed and the counter universe were seen for what it is, the exact equivalent of the “big” or outer universe, then we would immediately grasp that we on this earth are seated in the exact center.

Soon we will master human travel to the subatomic realm. When we’ve sailed past nuclei the size of suns, and the orbiting moons of their planets, we will enter a void a billion light years wide, but we’ll cross it in an instant. And when we do, we will see a tiny glow. Bright whirling spirals will grow before us: our own multiverse. When we can distinguish between the galaxies, we will find our own milky way, then our own sun, and then, glowing blue, our earth. Full circle, baby. And guess what? That also happens backward. Traveling out into space, away from earth, past countless galaxies, finally getting to the edge of space, we cross that same vast sea of black emptiness until we see the faint light of another realm, then bright whirling spirals, and then we’ll come within the sub-atomic kingdoms of our own earth, emerging from there into the molecular level and finally onto this giant globe of abundance. Back to square one.

PROFESSOR PLUM: There are certain things no one is supposed to know.

SIMON: Like Galindra?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Galindra again? You’ve been told to knock it off.

PROFESSOR PLUM: How long do you think we can protect you?

SIMON: From what? I’ve told you, I’m not promoting anything, just researching.

PROFESSOR PLUM: And what have you found?

SIMON: Galindra is an ever blossoming, well-populated, fully enlightened, abundant land without swords or plowshares. And it’s alive today in another dimension.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Clearly you’ve gone too far. Way too far.

SIMON: And I’m going to keep going. You can’t touch me Proffert! I’ve gotten too big. New York loves me. Lay a hand on me and face the people’s wrath!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You’re facing destruction, boy!

SIMON: Sirens, Harpies, Whirling Electric Nothings, Come on out!

SIRENS/HARPIES/ WHIRLING ELECTRIC NOTHINGS dance onto the stage.

PROFESSOR PLUM: But this is impossible!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What are you?

SIRENS/HARPIES/ WHIRLING ELECTRIC NOTHINGS: We’re Sirens, Harpies, and Whirling Electric Nothings, all very real at dawn and dusk. Once we were ghost dancers, lost desert prospectors, crypto Jews, and Portuguese indentured in Hawaii forced to fashion our lutes from coconuts. We were boat people, Esteban the Moor, Easter Islanders, that one guy left on Mars, Ronoakians, pirates. Shakers, Luke the Drifter, milk carton kids, Essenes, Illyrians, crevice-fallen polar explorers and more . BUT… but… this is important…we are really just you. Are we girls or gods? Don’t say goddess. We are you. But, unlike you, we actually exist. NOW BLOW AWAY HOME!

BISHOP AND PROFESSOR whirl off stage.

SIMON: Thank you.

SIRENS/HARPIES/ WHIRLING ELECTRIC NOTHINGS: What do you want from us? We talk to you. But you want some great gift. A love that lifts you into bliss.

SIMON: A crone as old as birds

Lived in the eastern woods.

How will she find her way

To the glowing castle?

SIRENS/HARPIES/WHIRLING ELECTRIC NOTHINGS: Follow the nightingale as she flies away to die.

NAMELESS TOO: INSIDE THE TREE

You have drifted all over Illinois since you first made contact with the unseen world in the flooded field. You thought too much. All the names they taught you came to nothing. Thoughts shot from across your head like comets.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Jesus may not be real, but He exists.

SIMON: Oh god.

BISHOP MATTHEW PROFFERT: He appears on earth.

SIMON: In the flesh?

JESUS: In a shroud.

SIMON/PROFFERT: JESUS!

JESUS: I come to life through twenty centuries of thoughts and prayers.

These thoughts pour out so strong

They become my solid flesh and blood and bone.

I come into your room

Gaze into your heart.

Denial melts away.

You must choose.

No guilt.

Shining heart.

You’re changed.

No doubt.

And you must go.

SIMON: Where?

JESUS: Three oak trees grow together into one. Find it in the center of the center of the center, surrounded on all sides by a deadly, dismal swamp.

SIMON: Where, Jesus, where?

JESUS: East of Zhmud.

NAMELESS: You sell your stuff, buy an ATV and drive to the edge of swamp that surrounds the center of the center of the center. Wearing waders, you climb into an inflatable raft , glide past vipers through miles of muck to the dry, high ground where the oaks grow. You have canned beaver, kippered herring, crackers, and glass jugs of water. Three grown-together trees wait for you in the middle of the island, their one common hollow welcoming you. You squeeze your whole body into it. It is pitch dark because (a) you face away from the opening and (b) night has come. There is no moon tonight, and it’s cloudy so no light penetrates from heaven. You stare into the dark and your outer body disappears . Images bubble up and take flight, melting movies escaping a lava lamp.

TOO: But you are not here for movies. You’re here to transform your flesh into an undying soul-spirit immune to catastrophe. Devoutly you project yourself onto the darkness around you. Leaving the husk of your body in the hollow, you spirit-core rises into the next dimension. All the objects ever imagined swirl about; Coke® bottles pyramids, chopsticks, bicycle riding witches, circus tents, James Bond gadgets, Mesoamerican toys, lists, weapons from around the world, boomerangs, muffins and more and more and more. You are a leaf carried by the surging surf, always floating, never steering. Bobbing over the crest, you begin to descend. You thump down in Galindra. You’re a kid on Christmas. What will you find?

NAMELESS:THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MATTER AND SPIRIT IS BATTER BECOMING LIGHT, FLUFFY PANCAKES

SIMON: What’s that supposed to mean?

NAMELESS: Think.

SIMON: There isn’t time.

GAL: Welcome home, countryman! Everything here is yours, mine and ours.

TOO: The voice is coming from a tall warm couple, their arms spread wide and open. It’s hard to tell who’s speaking since neither is moving their lips, but you hear them clearly.

GAL: I am Gal. And this is Indra.

NAMELESS: Still, no lips move, but the one on the left is gesticulating back and forth. That must be Gal, the one speaking. Now the other one, Indra, speaks.

INDRA: Have a seat in the sand.

NAMELESS: You do.

INDRA: We know your name- Simon.

TOO: They explain Galindra.

GAL: We are not Communists. But we don’t mind sharing. If we minded, we wouldn’t share.

INDRA: Genders here are infinite, but don’t exist. Our history begins now, in the present moment, that’s where the past happens. Don’t try to understand. In the past, which is present now, Galindra is an earthly kingdom.

GAL: But as we discover more, we learn that heaven is right here. Not exactly right precisely here, here. But very, very close. Like a millimeter away. Not in earth measurements. Groove is in the heart. One can subtly slip into heaven- the heaven that is just a hair’s breadth from here.

INDRA: It is the heaven that angels dance out from . You can go there anytime. But you need to acquire that effortless feeling of slipping in gracefully.

ALSO: Cities fall,

But not here.

Kingdom Come.

Heaven’s here.

A hair’s breadth away.

We vibrate, slide and slip within.

Back when you toddled.

You were two or three.

You faced the escalator, scared.

But you blended with its motion

And up you went.

INDRA: And so, the Galindrans discovered the secret of stepping onto the spirit plane. They built a life for each one in the ether of New Galindra. Then they pulled up stakes and transferred over, taking their organizations and institutions, culture, jokes, superstition-coated wisdom nuggets, and language.

GAL: And that is where we live today although we do occasionally show up in certain earthly places:

SIMON: Angkor Wat?

INDRA: Angkor Who?

SIMON: Wat.

GAL: What?

INDRA: We can explain Galindra’s ups and downs and all arounds. But none of it will be the point. That will be revealed. Or not-

SIMON: What?

GAL/INDRA: Unicorn butt.

SIMON: Was this all a bunch of crap the whole time?

NAMELESS: Time stands still, long gone. You enter every house, hob nob every strata, straddle every bronco. Your tongue tingles with their jargon. You joke with kids and cook impossible meals, going to the ends of all things. Why so empty, voyager? Groggy, with one hell of a headache you begin to weep as it dawns on you that it’s not at all what you thought. What else might you be wrong about? And now you know it’s time to go. Harsh light cracks your eyes. Reluctantly, you walk your last walk across the park. A random stumble between boulders opens to a tiny hidden valley. And there you find the Source.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Picture a fountain from which all things flow, a reverse black hole. expelling new creation nonstop. Behold the Source from which all things emerge. Simon kneels before the flowing fountain as if it were god’s throne. So this is it. The cosmic birth canal. All that is spiritual, all ideas, and all that is material, all life, all death, all invisible waves and particles and all energies emerge from the Source. . So THAT’S Galindra! Simon’s own little operations are not the point of anything. For three nightless days he gazes, then turns away only to apprehend an identical fountain behind him. To his right, another. On the left, still another. There’s one above and one below. He floats, supported by the gentle emanations of infinite fountains. Self slips away along with the will to absorb, learn or transmit. All his wishes appear to him as irrelevant fixations on things already fading as new forms emerge.

SIMON: Goodbye Galindra.

NAMELESS: And away you run. Almost exhausted, you trip along, time gets too long, Sexy siren songs, harpy screeches and whirling electric nothings ring through you, boring, nauseating and heavy.

SIRENS/ HARPIE/ WHIRLING ELCTRIC NOTHINGS: Sit down a while. Our laps are warm, soft and ready. Relax, sparkle and we’ll cover you in kisses you will never forget.

SIMON: Can’t relax or sparkle here. No one to kiss.

SIRENS/ HARPIES/ WHIRLING ELCTRIC NOTHINGS: Oh really? Well just look up the escalator!

TOO: The world cracks again and down glide your ancestors from Kingdom Come. Beasts from before the flood trail behind them: wise, upright walkers, a bit like kangaroos but with stubby giraffe horns.

YOUR ANCESTORS: We found you. Now dissolve.

NAMELESS: This is the end of names. You have unhinged.

End of Episode 3

EPISODE 4

Recap of Episode 3

Exiled in New York City for finding out too much about the ancient land of Galindra, Simon becomes a public intellectual, dazzling the city with his revolutionary theories. He is exposed for having continued his forbidden involvement with Galindra but is saved from consequences by invoking the aid of otherworldly powers. Divining a method for traveling into the next dimension, where Galindra still thrives, he makes the journey and encounters an ever-flowing fountain from which all things emanate. As he leaves Galindra, he sees his kangaroid, giraffe-horned ancestors descending a cosmic escalator. He becomes unhinged and dissolves. What will become of him?

ON WITH THE SHOW

NAMELESS: PROGRESSION ACROSS THE LAND

SIMON: Kingdoms-coming

Tongues- loosed

Deserts- open

Pony- express.

Sand- sail it.

Never- forget it.

Fab- four

Opened- door.

Happy- sad!

Best- you had.

PROFESSOR PLUM bangs his View Master. Changes reels. Shows SIMON the new reel.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Poof! The good old days!

SIMON: A transistor radio.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: That’s what you think! “Transistor radio”, HA!. It’s a little, plastic-cased crystal set .

You clip the alligator clip to the metal of your bedframe and put in the earphone . Get way under my covers and tune. Just as you‘d been hoping, the Beatles jump in from Canada with Your song.

SIMON: I’m a Beatle, man. John maybe. And I’m not what I appear to be. “I’M A LOSER!” Of all the loves I have… well, lost. Never won. I’M A LOSER! Perfect. I should have known she would win in the end. We can’t both win. My big-cheeked, brown haired Mexican fourth grader. Nameless here forevermore. “Immaculate Mary, our hearts are on fire”. She’s taking communion. Look away. We will never speak. I’m a loser. LIKE THE BEATLES! Late, wide awake. Stations are fading.. drag that wire across the crystal….I’ll never fall… light… morning. School. No

TOO: You beg god for one little glimpse of dreamland.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: That was me.

SIMON: Who?

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: At school

NAMELESS: And just as you realize that the big cheeked brown haired girl was your own Marija Sophia Magdalena , she looks deep into your eyes, sprouts giraffe horns and ascends to Galindra.

MAMA: School time. Eat Cereal.

NAMELESS: CLOSE TO THE END

TOO: Now you know you’ve come to the end of all you know. Quicksand.

NAMELESS: Once, on a fertile, flooded field , transparent but luminous air waves disclosed the names of the nine gods: Nambo, Obit, Sir Cozy, Heebon, Bendtwister, Hamsickle, Tuckinster, Leap and last, but first, Jesus. They were living in a charged dimension, ready to spill their tricks You had struck gold. But where are those gods now? And where are you?

TOO: But the supreme Lord God is anonymous, can’t be named, doesn’t even have a name. And his address is everywhere and nowhere. So you are once again alone but overcrowded.

So dance by the fire,

No matter how weak.

Dance to the drum.

Pipsqueak.

Dance till you drop.

Pour lemonade onto your grave.

File and save.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Bangs his View Master. Now you’re five, finding another world.

SIMON: “Colorforms”.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Bang agains. Here we go. Twelve.

NAMELESS: Twelve. Dad’s busted flat. You move to a sad old house in Tucson. 302 North Vine. Green trim, push button light switches, sand floor basement. It’s by Mansfeld Junior High. An astronaut went there. Your front yard is brown desert with a few dry dead patches of east coast grass. You catch lizards. The lady upstairs in the back has to count to a certain number for every step up. If she loses count, she has to go down and start over.

You walk downhill, into the arroyo. A walnut woman gazes at you from her glossy Playboy fold out. She sees you deep, your brunette Playmate. Huge brown breasts. And there you go-twelve and little-suddenly swollen like never before. What? Guilty terror follows fast. Was that a sin? Hail Mary. But wow.

We were alone.

She was my own.

So deeply stung.

She became

A scorpion.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Down the arroyo. That was me.

SIMON: What?

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: That was me.

SIMON: We never got it on.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: One time.

SIMON: But-

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: The dream is over.

SIMON: If the dream is really done,

Why did we even have one?

SINGER:

ALONE IS GOOD IN TH END

You looked for completion and what did you find?

A kid on the shore, combing the brine.

You’ve lived in thousands, one at a time.

Watch it unwind.

DOCTOR: Yes, Mr. Simon, what seems to be the problem?

SIMON: Pain.

PAIN MOVES AROUND

And then a sudden,

It can’t be found.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Putting a new real in his View Master. This is all wrong.

Nothing but words.

But I can’t hear the song.

SIMON: From deep in the well

Say a word any word, any world.

No sound rattles around

But still I hear the word

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You heard the word.

But it was silent.

The word sprang, pounced and ate you.

No speaker spoke it.

No heart poked it.

But there it was.

Aimed by none.

For no target,

Only later

Air formed

To carry it.

Then came a hearer,

From nameless nothing

Who heard the word “love,”

Attached it to a special one,

And a lover became your lord.

MARIJA SPOHIA MAGDALENA: Though I’ll always be near

I’ll never be here.

Never. Ever.

Professor Plum bangs his View Master.

SIMON: Bound for Boyne Mountain, Michigan

Early morning, almost there, we drive

White lane all snowy, a barn, bare trees,

Dad says this is what winter was in Zhmud.

Clear, calm and sunny.

All is bright, but bitter cold.

Don’t yet know I’m hosting crabs

From cheap bunk house beds.

Dad’s spirit thread runs

From boyhood into old.

Things he rarely tells,

Today feels real.

His inner tyrant miser

Shrinks back

Into rearview glass.

NAMELESS: Back home in Pontiac, you’ve got condensed books and rummage sale records. Ideals and politics. Christmas stuff in storage. A religion to believe, then toss away. A strict moral compass festooned with near constant recounts of your failures and shortcomings. And you’re going to get a trampoline! wait. Change that to a broken ping-pong table.

SIMON: I’m no victim!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Shut up and suffer..

Grown now, lost, but longing for Marija Sophia Magdalena.

SIMON: (Staring at a Playboy centerfold)

And if I sin,

And if I err,

And if I poop

My underwear,

You’ll be there.

And if I lose my hair,

You will share.

And if I ever drive down south,

To your big and muddy mouth,

You’ll find me out.

TOO: The apparatus that you use

To experience the world

Is a kaleidoscopic pair of specs

Bending time and space

Fracturing totalities,

And narrow half-realities;

But can those specs detect

far-off frequencies,

Buzzing through the summer breeze

With the busy honey bees?

All that we can really see,

Are the initials flayed onto the tree,

Not the carver’s tale.

Lost in love’s most sacred sin

But fated for dementia

Void of recognition

The way you see

Is how you know

All that glows

SIMON: Wipe the tear,

Drop the Loss.

Walk through fear.

Instead of beer.

Lay awake.

Again, again.

A world is born.

Humpty falls

Ashes ashes

Come to all.

Heaven waits.

Rust the crown.

Down goes a town.

All fold into now.

NAMELESS: Don’t bother living in the moment. Jump ahead and back. Christmas future, Christmas past. Tie your ass to the mast and hear the siren song. Enwomb yourself in every baited trap. Whatever you wish for is all you’ll get.

And when you’re flat and dopesick, you’ll know the awful truth: as long as our Ulysses longs, he’s doomed.

SIMON: I know that. Who doesn’t know that? Goodbye.

NAMELESS TOO:

Simple Simon

you’re not done yet.

Stand tall. Project!

Simon Seed

You can bet

You’re not done yet.

Chart the land

Lost in sand

Sift.

Simon Seed

Don’t let go.

You’ve been called,

You can’t say no.

SIMON: SEND MY MAIL TO THE END OF THE TRAIL

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Don’t credit me with your success or blame me for your failure.

SIMON: I listened to you. Now I’m dead in the water. Sick with cancer too. I coulda been someone.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You are someone.

SIMON: Someone with cancer.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You have a bad cough, no more and no less.

NAMELESS. The bearded Smith Brothers, Trade and Mark, stare at one another, each from their own side of your small, white cough drop box.

SIMON: Come on menthol

Hit me hard.

Unlock my doors.

Open my pores.

NAMELESS: What happened? Working in the hidden archives you unlocked Galindra. Triumphant, you found love. But she’s not here. Nothing here but your cancer scare.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: It’s just a cough.

SIMON: One more fizzy tab. Please.

TOO: Always one more until wave upon wave washes your brain like surf over the shore.

SIMON: HELP!

BISHOP: HAVE I NOT TRIED? No, you had to follow your obsessions. And now look at you. Galindra ate your brain. Your vow is broke.

SIMON: What vow?

BISHOP: You said you’d steer clear of Galindra-

SIMON: THE ONE TRUE GALINDRA!

BISHOP: You promised to stick to lies, hyperbole and mystical half-truths-

SIMON: VIVA GALINDRA!

BISHOP: SHAME! SHAME ON YOU!

BISHOP rubs one finger across another in a “shame on you “ gesture.

BISHOP: This time you’re going away for good. Before you spill ALL the beans. And not to some fancy world capital or any playground for the rich. Buddy boy, you are on your way to CHICAGO!

SIMON: NOOOO!

BISHOP: BIND HIM!

An executioner comes out with restraints, an axe and other scary implements.

Other characters come out and restrain SIMON.

BISHOP: We’re putting all your toothpaste back in its tube.

SIMON: NO!

EXECTUTIONER: We’ll tape your mouth shut!

SIMON: NO!

He does.

EXECXUTIONER: That ought to shut you up!

SIMON grabs a piece of chalk and a small blackboard. He writes: I CAN STILL WRITE!

BISHOP: Send him so far away he’ll never be heard from again: CHICAGO!

ALL ON STAGE: NO!

Simon scrawls “NO!” on his blackboard.

BISHOP: YES! We’ve taken the boy out of Galindra but now we’ve got to take Galindra out of the boy. Bring me a Vienna hot dog, a poppy seed bun, mustard, sliced tomato, weird green relish, sport peppers, a slice of pickle, -

EXECUTIONER: Ketchup-

ALL ON STAGE: Oh, HELL no!!

Simon scrawls “NO!” on his blackboard.

The ingredients are brought and BISHOP makes a Chicago dog.

EXECUTIONER: But how’s he gonna eat it? He’s taped.

BISHOP: Bring us a blender!

Bishop puts all the ingredients into the blender and liquifies the Chicago dog.. He produces a syringe and draws the liquid hot dog into it.

BISHOP: We’ll, Simon, get ready to be a Chicago boy.

BISHOP injects the liquid hot dog into SIMON’s vein.

Simon scrawls “NO!” on his blackboard.

After the goo is injected SIMON passes out momentarily, then wakes.

BISHOP: Remove the tape. Painfully!

EXECUTIONER: But he’ll be able to talk!

BISHOP: Don’t worry, no one is going to take his ravings seriously.

BISHOP: Rip off the tape!

Executioner rips off the tape.

SIMON’s mouth is untied.

SIMON: Over dere. Dese and Dose. Etc.

BISHOP: Success!

SIMON: GO GO White Sox!

BISHOP: What about Galindra, Simon?

SIMON: Ga who da?

BISHOP: Never mind.

BISHOP hands SIMON a travel carry-on.

SIMON: What the fuck you doin’, jagoff?

BISHOP: Oh Professor!

PROFESSOR PLUM enters with his View Master. He slips a new reel in and bangs it against SIMON’S head. Lights change.

PROFESSOR PLUM: Next stop-Chi town!

NAMELESS: You’re on a train, bouncing along on the bumpy Blue Line El from O’Hare, speeding through Wicker Park. You look down between brick buildings to Milwaukee Avenue. Stopping, you notice commotion in a top floor window. You see a horse’s head poke out of the window, then out come his forelegs. The horse pushes out, jumping down into the vacant lot next door. Impossibly, the horse is unhurt and prances about. Another horse comes out another window, then another. Now two or three at a time are pushing their way through. The windows are bursting at their bricks. The horse herd breaks for Milwaukee Avenue. All other traffic stops amid a cacophony of honking horns.

SIMON: I WANT TO RIDE!

NAMELESS: You stick your smallish hands between the stopped train’s shut, sliding doors. You push the doors apart with all your might and tumble onto the tracks. Vaulting nimbly over the trackside railing onto the back of a palomino, you ride away with the rest of the herd.

SIMON: HOW DO YOU STEER THIS THING?

NAMELSS TOO: You head northwest up Milwaukee toward the ‘burbs. You hear window glass break above you and look up at the old brick buildings. Arms and legs are punching through the upper floor windows. Out jump men and women clad in the colors of old Zhmudish clans. They land unhurt on empty lots, sidewalks and gangways, singing polyphonic war songs amid the blare of bagpipes. They move as one onto Milwaukee Avenue, folding into the horse herd. En masse, they mount the horses and gallop northwest toward Niles, Park Ridge and beyond.

SIMON: You mean you just got here and already you’re headed for the suburbs?

NAMELESS: Forsaking Wicker Park and Bucktown, you decide to flow along with the mounted columns of new settlers from Galindra, the ones you call your ancestors.

You cross the old boundary line that once separated immigrants from natives. Our old Galindran tribe, back in the material world to tame it and claim it, is bringing light, love and loaves of rye. Imagine all the people.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Simon. Simon, Simon Simon. You have brought them home.

SIMON: It’s you! The jagoff that banished me to this frozen wasteland!

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Frozen? It’s July!

SIMON: You got me hooked on hot dogs. Thought I’d forget old Galindra. But now Look!

BISHOP: It was all just a test. That’s it, a test. And now we have our chance.

SIMON: What do you mean “we” paleface?

BISHOP: Your work here is done

SIMON: What do you mean done? I’m going to help build the new Galindra. Right here on earth.

BISHOP: They’ll be fine without you. And you are ready to take your place in the Hall of Heroes. The palace of Prophets. After all, it was your work that brought them here.

SIMON: What do you mean “my work”?

BISHOP: Enough. You’ve seen the promised land. Level up.

SIMON: Level up to what?

BISHOP: You stood before the flowing fountain. Right?

SIMON: Before, behind, over, under and beside.

BISHOP: And there you .hung suspended.

SIMON: Yes.

BISHOP: So what’s the next step?

SIMON: Get laid?

BISHOP: NO!

SIMON: Get rich?

BISHOP: NO!

SIMON: THEN GET WHAT?

BISHOP: Nothing. Become the fountain!

SIMON: What? How?

BISHOP: Shrugs shoulders. I dunno. Figure it out.

SIMON: No way. No clue.

BISHOP: Well, perhaps I could arrange a little residency for you. You could mull things over-

SIMON: -Oh wow. Like, where? By the sea? In the mountains?

BISHOP: How does Michigan sound?

SIMON: Aah yes, the vast, northern, old growth forests.

BISHOP: How about just over the Indiana border near South Bend.

SIMON: No thanks,

BISHOP: You won’t pay a dime.

SIMON: I’ll take it.

The BISHOP produces Plum’s View Master.

SIMON: Doesn’t that belong to the Professor?

BISHOP: Yes. I’ve appropriated it. He bangs it, clicks it, and looks at its “view”. He hands it to SIMON.

NAMELESS: The little lake is just big enough. Pure Michigan.

SIMON: I can almost smell the flowers.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: And at my back cottage you have all you need. Bed. Beef. Books. Bathroom. Broom. You can just sweep the dust and clipped nails out over the threshold. Best of all, there’s a large table you can really spread across.

SIMON: There is a place like that I’d like to be.

But this one is not for me.

Love and sorrow.

It’s all one.

Stagger on.

Make me forget

What’s in my head.

Kiss me crying.

Lead me to bed…

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Yes, my love.

I’m always near.

But never here.

Just for you.

From earthen hollows

From empires plowed under

From glossy pages

From my sad rage

SIMON/MARIJA: I’m your wound,

I never close.

I’m the tea that burns your tongue.

I’m the smoke that bites your lungs

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Kiss me.

He does.

SIMON: It is what it is.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Come to bed.

SIMON: I opened my flower

My flower got stomped,

Hammered.

Kicked to the curb.

Tossed in the swamp.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA:

Once you found.

What had been glossed.

Bondaged. Dolled up. Lost.

Labeled bitch.

Centerfold stapled.

Tossed in a ditch.

SIMON: You had me at glossed.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: Simon Dead, unravels your thread.

SIMON: Where are you?

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Right in front. And behind. Left, right and missing.

SIMON: They said you were dead.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: I was. After you got hit on the head with a handgun and were transported to fabulous New York, I got hit with the same gun butt but woke up trapped in the centerfold of an old Playboy cast away at the bottom of a Tucson arroyo. But now I’ve been lifted off the gloss.

SIMON: Centerfold? Tucson arroyo? I saw you!

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: I know. I was looking right at you. You were but a lad of 12.

SIMON: I’ve missed you ever since.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: Let me take you down. Magic music. Back to Tucson, winter ‘65. This arroyo here is all that’s left, of canals dug before the dinosaurs. Wet arroyo water ran downhill and underground, flowing all the way to Zhmud, where it bubbled up and flowed into a swamp surrounding Oak Grove Island. But I stayed here stuck, a lady dark and soft. Boys built me a dirty shrine. But no. Our town had grown from Spanish to Chevrolet. It was the age of Playboy, and I was star centerfold. Boys came. Boys went. Sun baked my colors and then I was gone.

SIMON: Spooky.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: But it’s a dry spooky.

SIMON: Magic me home.

Magic music. The PROFESSOR appears and clicks his View Master.

SIMON: And we’re back-

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: In the Michigan swamp.

SIMON: Not a swamp, exactly. Actually it’s-

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Yes, please. Explain it for me.

SIMON: The water’s edge has a sandy beach. Minnows poke in close. Bigger fish would love to-

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: It’s pretty how the light through the water-

SIMON: Wait, I’m EXPLAINING something.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: But I-

SIMON: Surface thought moves quick, like minnows. Under thought which moves turtle slow. Bottom of the cavern low bass thought just rumbles through the mud, the root of all. . All your petty notions are falling leaves., The root hides below. That’s all you’ll ever know. Now flow.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: If all your wants could disappear,

Pleasures would still come, and fear.

King Lear was doing fine

Until the end came near.

SIMON: What?

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: Can we just come back to one another’s arms?

SIMON: I’ve done enough damage. To you. To me. To billions of spent little sperm.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: I just meant a friendly hug.

SIMON: What’s friendly about a hug?

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA: What’s anything?

SIMON: We’ll always have St. Petrol. Goodbye.

MARIJA SOPHIA MAGDALENA: Peck on the cheek?

SIMON: No. I’m done.

MARY SOPHIA MAGDELENA vanishes.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: What the hell? You can’t just quit. It’s not over.

SIMON: I know what I am.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Buck up. All your groundwork is complete. Your seeds are ready to sprout.

SIMON: My future’s in the past. Send my mail to the end of the trail.

Simon goes to the edge of the yard and hangs his head.

NAMELESS TOO: Once there was a long road winding toward a simpler time. Remember, out at the edge of Muncie, at the Water Bowl, the Muncie Water Bowl?

SIMON: When was I in Muncie?

PROFESSOR PLUM: I’m glad you asked! PLUM hands the View Master to SIMON.

By the mid 80’s, the Muncie Water Bowl had not changed since 1959: round red Coke® signs, hot dog stand, sandy beach and little lake. And teenagers- remember teenagers? Twisting their dates under rock ‘n roll blaring gray metal speakers. Young families too, kids with water wings and moms floating along. Every hello was happiness.. Not a wish in sight. Just enjoy the sunny country afternoon.

NAMELESS TOO: Something clicks You look at what you’d become- a junk pile of broken baubles and old Playboys. So you leave your own show. They curse you for a traitor. You stop slipping into the ether and every other kind of make believe. You gaze at your former wishes in horror, every one. Your dear Galindra, once beloved, is now a Hollywood-glazed doughnut.

MAMA: Have a doughnut. One doughnut.

SIMON No thanks.

MAMA: Have just one.

NAMELESS: The vampire that had been your biggest wish uncloaks herself. You can see clearly now. All you ever wanted, in all your travels and troubles was that soft, mournful warmth that once came from the woman you had forced into motherhood. Once a day, she takes you out of your tank and holds you for a blessed minute, crying. And the only way she can stop crying is by make-believe. Fire freezes her core while she projects a new and saintly persona, the “as if” role of the loving, selfless giver, deftly signaling virtue with every skin cell, the way an octopus displays dazzling, improbable colors and patterns. Then come toll house cookies, southern fried chicken, Zhmudish dumplings and more, more, more. She says things would be better were it not for x, y, and z. You wish with all your might for x y and z to be just the way mom wanted them. Then mom would be happy. You fail. She just boo-hoo-hoos even more. Loser. You should have known better with a mom like her. Poor woman and she does her best, does her best, does her best, beats her breast, beats her breast, beats her breast even as she turns her back on rough stuff all around. And the worst part- you can’t even blame her. She’s just repeating a pattern going back as far as the ancient, ideal land. OR rather the land that knew how to act like the ideal land. WILL YOU DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO SAVE HER?

SIMON: Nevermore.

TOO: So now, finally, once and for all- take your wishes, all of them, including the wish for a new Galindra.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: You must have had a terrible terrible mom.

SIMON: She was actually pretty great.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT What about what you just said?

SIMON: What about what YOU just said?

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: Whatever it was, I wish I’d never said it.

SIMON: And whatever I wished, I wish I never wished it. Wishes can go to hell.

TOO: Don’t bother to hold each wish close one last time, just set them on a cart to roll away.

SIMON: No cart.

NAMELSS: Build one.

SIMON: I will build a cart.

LUMBERMAN: Welcome to Lumberman and Sons.

SIMON: Can you get me a good deal on long boards and wooden wheels?

LUMBERMAN: No. No I can’t.

SIMON: How about a “just OK” deal?

LUMBERMAN: No.

SIMON: Come on.

LUMBERMAN: How about I just don’t rip you off too much?

SIMON: Deal.

NAMELESS: By now he was broke, but he had what he needed. He heard a voice. It wasn’t a Deus ex machina type voice. It was a lady named Mrs. Pritchard. It said:

MRS. PRITCHARD: Don’t cry, little boy. Get your nails and get your tools and make yourself the nicest little wagon you can. Then call your wagon whatever you want to call it.

SIMON hammers together a wish wagon.

NAMELESS: And that is what you did. You hammered out a wagon. And called it your wish wagon.

SIMON: This is my wish wagon.

ANGELUS: Now pile those wishes up, up.

NAMELESS: You load up all your handwritten notebooks-

SIMON: Books. Not notebooks.

NAMELESS: OK You load up all your spiral bound, three-hole punched , college bookstore purchased “books”-

SIMON: It’s all book-level writing. Mostly about my-uh-our lost Galindra- They tell how to pass into that lost land and how to come safely back to-

NAMELESS: OK sure. Let’s move on-

SIMON: Sure.

NAMELESS: You pile up your old archives and maps. Copies of your letters to Congress. Cookbooks, costumes, props-

PROFESSOR PLUM: You know you could donate all that stuff to the college archives.

SIMON: Thanks but no.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He loads up his filthy, blasphemous videos and other documents. He loads up musical instruments, passwords and user id’s, best friends, theories, curses, crushes, springs to catch woodcocks, every wish, longing or desire.

He loads his electric guitars, broncos, Beatle wigs, hot rods and vintage deco bathrobes, Oscars, Emmys and Emilys. Quality, imported toy soldiers of all nations, even ones with little turbans and French Foreign Legion hats. Silly play scripts. Girlfriends rich, poor and only dreamt about. Nobel prizes and Macarthur grants. the Playboy mansion complete with showgirls, tomboys, princesses, Barbra Streisand, models and gymnasts, leading ladies, harpies, angry bitches, and girls smarter than he will ever be, like that Barbara who won the science fair.

Toss on that cabin in the Catskills and the perfect car to get you there. Don’t forget fly fishing tackle , x-ray vision, the gold cache hidden in the Superstition mountains and the cure for anything, which is in Felix the Cat’s magic bag of tricks.

Now drop to your knees and grab god’s ear, begging Her to pile on all the wishes you can’t even remember. Pile them high, high, high like corned beef on rye and set the Kingdom of Galindra on the top-est top. There you go. There’s your wish wagon.

SIMON: To audience: Please, people. It’s not like I’m some end times Buddha renouncing the world. I’m really in hot pursuit of my biggest wish- to get rid of all wishes. Am I holy? I’m just like you.

BISHOP MATT PROFFERT: He built a harness to bind himself to his homemade wagon full of wishes. Then he called for farmer Brown.

SIMON: FARMER BROWN!

FARMER BROWN: Ready for a push?

SIMON: Ready. Ready.

NAMELESS: You heave-ho while Old Farmer Brown pushes from the back. The cart lurches forward and you dig in with your last legs.

FARMER BROWN: You’re on you way!

NAMELESS TOO: You drag it Penitente-like across Illinois and into Indiana, through the college town of Lafayette, past James Dean’s grave in Fairmount, until, finally, way down the hill, you see the big pond of the Muncie Water Bowl. You’ve arrived! What you don’t see is the raging heavy metal rock show and the redesign of the refreshment stand. You don’t see the tank-topped, methed-out Midwest rockers. Their straw cowboy hats and Hulk Hogan moustaches. Beer burps are blaring through the speakers but you don’t hear them. What you hear is the year 1959 rounding the corner to 1960; the faint strain of “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”. You see round, red Coke® signs and old wooden picnic tables. Cute wholesome teens. Babies with moms play in the pond. Soaked with sweat, you stop just long enough to douse your wish wagon with lighter fluid and set it on fire, When the blaze is strong, you strap back in top your cart-harness and pour on the muscle power. The slope of the hill gives you momentum. You splash into the cool water with the blazing wagon coming in fast behind. At the last moment you unhitch and dive out of its way. Momentum takes the flaming wagon way out onto the lake. It floats past the buoys and blows up like a Bond villain’s island. You watch it from the sandy beach, the cool breeze plays across your body as the fiery mass slowly sinks. You lay back on the sand. This sand was made for you and me. The sun sets slowly over the cornfield

PROFESSOR PLUM: Simon watches the wish wagon burn bright as it sinks into the lake. All his wishes are burnt and purged away, even the wish to get rid of his wishes.

NAMELESS: The sinking embers of the wish wagon float on toward the far side of the pond, Everything is exactly how it is. Pink sunset. And from behind you, a firm, gentle hand on your shoulder tells you all is well, here and hereafter.

He tingles . Butterflies. Translucent waves waft from his gut, like the heat waves rising from a desert road. Then the energy really starts to flow from his future corpse. He sees dim radiating outlines of objects and creatures, like transparent little ears of corn that come with Chinese food, antique Matchbox automobiles, kite string unspooling toward rising the sky, free floating type face, pralines , pizza. Faint colors, calico and paisley patterns forming see-through wallpaper, then floating away. Little flares shoot from his arms, painting the beach. He has become the flowing fountain, like he’d seen in old Galindra. He just lets it all flow out as the sun sets somewhere over Muncie.

SIMON: There is no “me”. Only I. And I am out of here.

NAMELESS TOO: Morning comes within minutes. A sign posted at the water’s edge reads, “Beach closed”. Swimmers come but go away unswum. They are each their own flowing fountain but don’t yet know it. Nobody yells. Night comes again quick. Dawn reveals signage all around the property. “For Sale”. Wannabe buyers drive up in station wagons.

SIMON: Who drives a station wagon anymore?

STUBBY KAYE: You’re going to have to leave sir.

SIMON: You’re Stubby Kaye.

STUBBY KAYE: In your dreams.

NAMELESS: At the moment of your body’s death, Stubby Kaye, a real estate salesman in a checkered coat, gently kicks your body in an attempt to wake you. But you have already faded out from life.

STUBBY KAYE: This guy’s dead.

SIMON: Mission accomplished.

NAMELESS: In the beginning was the word. But they don’t tell you that in the END was the word. Too. The last word. And after the last word came laughter.

TOO looks through the View Master.

TOO: Your parents are leaving for a party in Detroit. You’ve already dropped the acid . Windowpane. You are just getting off and tickled pink. Everything’s funny. The couch. The walls. The door.

SIMON laughs, delighted.

DAD: Ve go now.

SIMON laughs.

MOM: Vat’s so funny?

SIMON: Nothing. I’m just laughing.

MOM: Nothing?

SIMON: Nothing’s funny.

SIMON laughs.

MOM: Bye.

DAD: Be careful. Bye.

SIMON laughs.

THE END