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 88- Footnote Page 3

 

 

money with Softdoor's talent for remembering the tiniest details of strong Dreams. Softdoor waits in passive mode for her pal's mock examination to be done. Softdoor is learning from her pal the art of relentless Doing while D-ll is learning from her how to Observe (Di-Ob) without judgement.
Page 19 - (Gowin-Out.) D-11 chides Softdoor that she is not using her Dreaming talent to set up for their future ambitions. Softdoor can never convince D-11 how little choice she has, how little she owns her Dreams.
Page 20 - (Cake-Eater.) D-11's insistence on using Softdoors dreaming, solicits from Softdoor the name "Cake-eater" (this is in reference to Marie Antoinette's supposed callous statement towards the poor -- "let them eat cake." It is their personal code for greed). D-11 answers with a reference to Kubrick's (hellish film) Full Metal Jacket, a reference which they found so funny and now apply to everything for the laugh.
"The-place" is a campsite in the woods where the kids feel …just right.
Page 21 - (Atree.) Here they are on their way into the woods but first D-11 must get her weapon, because even in Lower Utopia there is ignorance equal to evil and these kids would not lie to themselves about the dangerous nature of the-mutual-reality. They know the only monsters to fear are human. Softdoor's mom calls them Performance-Misanthropes. "Monsters pass you by everyday, monsters practicing tolerance." These kids know that monsters have respect for blood, and the kids know that blood is the only outcome of meeting a monster in the Woods. So they know to be are quiet and quick with their stingers.
Page 22 - (Is-Lorca.) Here they are getting D-11's double-edge-clip-on blade out of Atree's hiding place. D-11 feels certain (a belief) that her blade is blessed by the Woods because it stays in the woods in the care of great "Atree." It is a thing of intuitive luck for her. Softdoor quotes a kind of personalized version of a Garcia Lorca's poem -- The Boy Unable to Speak (translation by Robert Bly) - quoting it for her friend while hefting her up to the hiding notch.
Page 23 - (Mr.P.) Having grown up on performance rituals from the influence of Softdoor's mom; Eeo, they are always creating new rituals, and the girls are innately Koshirie-like by nature so the element of tongue-in-cheek is interlaced in everything. They believe the woods can feel their Presence, and from their side, to be aware is to be polite - is to show love. So they bring offerings to the king of trees standing at the edge of the woods, they offer him little dances and songs and water and roadkills for his roots. They feel like they are creating safe passage in the woods by preparing their feelings this way (sincere...but not without humor). Once you are in the woods all things are equal to their skill and wit. And that is Animal Ethics; but to enter from civilization requires a polite awareness for good luck. So the girls offer Atree, Marilyn Monroe's happy-birthday song to President Kennedy as a bit of tongue-in-cheek, because as a parody on their gender it sooo totally cracks-them-up (this from real life).
Page 24 - (I-Am-Cool.) Small talk on the edge of the woods about Toc who is Softdoor's Uncle, (and who I AM). All of my comics are about the same place, an inner possibility called Lower Utopia.) (Here is a piece of a letter to my pal Gioia): The word Utopia, meaning "not-a-place" or "no-place" (which is the same as every place [which is Watermelonsugar, ho-ho]). Utopia can only exist within a no-place place such as the Self. We look quietly and carefully for the utopia in each other, we chat with double meanings hoping for a spark knowing that where two utopias overlap is a stronghold where the friends meet. When I was a kid I went to an experimental utopian school that was based on the principles of Advaita and silent internal self-inquiry. We began in Switzerland with about 15O in `73, and later that year we moved to a university campus in America where we grew to about 5OO. Even with 5OO we all knew each other with a sweetness that lightened the air. It was understood that everyone had their personal demons and daimons, but all together we were diligent with love. By the third year, however, the utopia was gone. There were over a thousand-five-hundred by then and strangers everywhere, and suddenly rules hardened. And the arts, that were so alive in the first years - so much the essence of its health -- were now seen as a danger to peace. Why? Because a number had been reached and there were now one-too-many virtual mutations perking, and utopia was no longer being lived, but merely projected out onto a group. The No-place had become just another place in a list of possible places. Because utopia is very personal, when that number is reached, "The center does not hold." When that number was reached, the artists that held the very sweet feeling of that experiment to its potential, quietly, one by one, began to leave. When there were no more happy mutants (and visiting Blys and Martins), then there were no more passionate ideas by which the university could sharpen their reality and by which they could split the sub-atomics of Samadhi into the day. And the feeling, that was its heart, was gone ... and when the heart stops you're dead. And so another utopia evolved from a sweet rogue summer into a cold smiling rhetorical despotism. Spirit without soul starves. It is in the act of art that the seedling for Utopia (and Religions) effervesces. Because people intimate with Images always come to know that Knowledge (all that ancient and sacred … stuff) is just someone else's image; and no one's image is more sacred than your own. And the Image (your Self) is there waiting in everything and so can be shaped out of anything. My Utopia now lives on in a feeling. It is a Lower Utopia - below the mutual reality, quiet as a wink, and unspoken; having learned its lesson. So now we look quietly for the Utopia in each other, and when we recognize it in anOther we admire it as quietly as our own, hoping our own is just visible ... enough.
Page 25 - ("Baraka"). Here they are re-membering an owl that flew in front of their truck on the way home from the movies. "The headlights of the red truck, tunneling the dark road, lit the owl in its low and leveled flight. D-eleven's father stayed equaled to the owls speed so that the owl seemed held as if winging in place, illuminated against the dark woods beyond, leading on, and on. Everything slowed: the down whooshing curl of its finger-feathers, the slightly rocking flat of its leveling tail, the under-hung wind-drag of its long legs, heavy with the dipping hooks of its toes.