Volume Six of The Lost and Found Season of the Most Pope Joey
Number One of Kids of Lower Utopia
Chapter One of Daffodil Eleven and Softdoor Scout Finnagain.
Page 87- Footnote Page 2

 

Doing a story so very small, conveying only the visual minutiae of the innate character of the two girls in their mutual love, and to make each frame necessary to this only, as a supporting frame around Softdoor's dream ... to slow the reading enough to see ... well, it sure felt impossible. When I was a kid the idea of being a girl seemed like really hard luck. And yet ... even then girls always seemed to have had a depth of observation that was astounding (and spooky). Even as a kid I was enthralled by their completely perpendicular point of insight about nearly everything. The girls I knew seemed to have developed subtle strengths - which I admired and mimicked. A care for details (Di-Ob), a quick improve - a spontaneous reading - an agility of attention (Wit), and a strength of willingness (Trust and Loyalty). Girls had all the heroic qualities I admired, all except for the one quality that my pals had in spades. The only quality boys seemed to have had more of was a curiosity and endurance for pain. Hi-ho.
This particular girl in this story (very like a Woods-girl who I knew as a kid), is already a storyteller, and imagines It as the "Great-Thing" she has to offer - her very usefulness to life. She feels chosen by it, as if it were a destiny. Her best friend believes in her and that is about all it takes. This is a portrait of a child prodigy; a prodigy not of the intellect but of the heart. Some are born into a talent for witnessing their Dreams, for being Awake inside their own Dreams. Some kids today are born as shamans, but shamans without a tradition, tribal Dreamers without a tribe, natural Animists in an age blind to the effulgence of life.
This is the contemporary story of a 10-year old girl living in the Catskill Mountains who has a talent for Dreaming. This is a story about A Story in which our young Dreamer draws her more worldly friend closer to the Inner world through the echoes of ritual, and into the old religion of Dreaming.
These kids do not exist in the empirical common sense of the word. They are a pair of comic-book superheroes replete with the mighty powers of insight, wit, imagination, and above all love. They live in a paradise of these talents, in a place called Lower Utopia. And… I try to live there, too.
Page 12 - (Oh-My.) Softdoor is our hero, and she is …a door. She is a storyteller, a door into worlds. Softdoor has strong Dreams that she pays attention to. She is too often sick and therefore is alone a lot. She reads and writes a great deal. And from all this she is as smart as a top-hat.
Softdoor is too humble and level to ever speak with Capital-Letters, and in frame 2, Softdoor whispers her heart's nickname; "PapaWolf," to feel courage. She has a healthy fear of the world.
D-11, on the other hand, will speak in nothing but capital letters. She is bold and already a little too angry, but she loves her pal and worries about her sickness. D-11 is full of strong confident feelings; she is a Doer; she is tough and already scamming and scanning ahead for their future.
A "hangry" is someone who always hangs-out on the village green and is perpetually angry, ergo: a hangry. A "skagger" is a heroin addict. A "D-boy" (delta or dog) is an Ash Boy, a Cinder-ella who is disappointed with the world and would rather hang-out than join in the useless struggle of what he has learned to be a shitty and mean world. D-boys hang with other d-boys, acting-out their complete "fuck-you" stance. And getting wasted by any and all means (to prove their nillistic courage). Yet some d-boys later become Alpha-prime-dispersers. And some become hangries or skaggers. And some die. Within their hearts - this is their time of testing - they are waiting for death to pass close-by (so as to clear their hearts) and start their lives again. The d-boys are incubating and are very e-motional, and a bit dangerous and unpredictable. Best to leave them to their ashes and hope they survive the form of their transitions. (A toast from a surviving d-boy: "Lets hope we all survive the form of our next transition.")
Page 13 - (Chill.) Softdoor is her very name because she is a ready door into Dream. Her imagination is rich and alert. Softdoor occasionally trances during daylight to which she happily gives herself in full faith and Presence. Her trances overlap and sometimes mingle with her empirical reality such that sometimes she doesn't know whether her experiences are from her live free Imagination or things in the mutual reality. That she can still ask this question of her Self tells her that she is still an acceptable member of the-mutual-reality. Here on page 13, Softdoor, on her way to her friend's house, is met by a vision posing as an angel walking a dog. It was sent to nudge her towards completing a task that had come to her in a Dream (Big Dream 21). Softdoor, a little spooked, a little too nervous, tells the messenger to fuck-off. Softdoor thinks it was No-man, (a character who arrived in her latest dream), who sent the message. Noman is no man, and is a rough creature sent by her heart (PapaWolf) to help Softdoor to realize her Self.
Page 14 - (The-Smuggle.) Softdoor arrives at her friend's house. Above the trees a clan of black birds smuggle a snake across the sky (or maybe it's just a bit of dream-spillage).
Page 15 - (Hot-Popsicle.) Softdoor knocks on the door and Mrs. Eleven answers with the Mud twins (Ive and Bein) hanging from her. Mrs. Eleven invites Softdoor in. But because Softdoor always feels out-of-place, she says things a little too oddly, as if she is acting the role of her self. Suddenly Softdoor is interrupted by a vision from her most recent Dream, and says aloud a line she wrote in reference to it. Mrs. Eleven, worries about Softdoor. Softdoor replies to her invitation with a reference to a surrealist movie (I loved as a kid) called El Topo by A. Jodorowsky (my little nod of appreciation).
Page 16 - (Friends.) So the two friends meet. Check-out Softdoors shoes, they were M's idea (M is my young pal who posed as Softdoor for the shoot), and I almost didn't allow them in because they are such an icon of R.Crumb, (and carry his sad overtones); but they are visually exquisite relics. And look at that great shadow of the trellis, I knock my own socks off sometimes - Toc'd-out-of-me-socks.
Page 17 - (AnOther-Dream.) D-11 looks in her pal's face for signs of her sickness, while Softdoor, passively looking back, flashes on a memory of a water-moccasin once on a moony night from underwater at Lorca's pond. The snake pauses, its body bunching to lift its head out above water. Pow!
Page 18 - (Big-Head-Circus.) "Big-Head-Circus" is what D-11 calls Softdoor's dreaming. Here D-11, still examining Softdoor, asks about her strong Dream. D-11 is determined to plant a seed in her friend's vivid dreams about finding useful-sellable ideas. D-11 is determined to find a way to make