Volume Six of The Lost and Found Season of the Most Pope Joey
Number Two of Kids of Lower Utopia
Softdoor's Older Sister's I AM Knot
Page 1 - (River Beside Her Self)

V6 No.2. Kids of Lower Utopia:
Softdoor's Older Sister's I-AM Knot
(The Realizations of River Scout Finnagain)

The annotated volume six , number two
with commentary by Comrade-X
edited by Toc Fetch, and Claudia Cline
Spring of 2000 till the Summer of 2001
pencil on paper 33’‘ x 51’‘
Ricco/Maresca Gallery NYC
September 6 and October 27, 2001

V6.2 Image 1 Page 0 (Cover). River Beside Her Self
(Vertical drawing of River and PapaWolf walking together)
33" x 52" pencil on paper, 2001

Dark is the Voice of HolyBean
Italic is the voice of the piece: the Work itself (The Page)
Bold is the voice of Comrade-X: the Knower
Gray is the voice of the Narrator: Toc Fetch, the doer

Synopsis: Kids of Lower Utopia; Softdoor's Older Sister's I-AM Knot, V6 No 2, was published for my opening at The Ricco/Maresca gallery NYC, 9/13/01, (only two days after the fall of the World Trade Towers - this timing was so bad that it achieved a feeling like a mythic wink). It is an eleven page Novel told in staged koans - earmarked moments of realization in the life of River Scout Finnagain. Each page was made to stand alone and …all together as a comic. The actual language is pure American mutt. A crossbreed made up of part direct-observation, part axiomatic poetry, part implied photo-faith, and all summed up in a language of velocity vectors (grow-language) in graphite under the influence of Non-dualism, comic-read, and cheek.

The Scene (of this subtext): Two workers producing art on an assembly line. One worker "knows" what is to be done, and the other worker "does" what is to be done. The one who "knows" is named Algebraic X, but is called "Comrade-X," by the one who "does." "The one who "does," who imagines himself the doer, is named Toc Fetch. His name is among my names.
What follows are the potent moments in a year long dialogue between the two workers. (A note for setting the scene; both workers time-trip from too much imagery, and are both religious Non-dual Noncontinuums, therefore the consecutive continuity of the pages is a non-issue in their work. Thus the work actually began with page five. "Fuck'em," says Comrade-X, "one moment's as good as another!")
This work took place under the patronage of The Simple Stories of Yes, which is owned by PapaWolf's Civil Ink.

(Despite Comrade-X's last comment, and the actual order the pages were done in, I have presented them on this site in the actual page order of the book. -Elizzy.)

The Page* (1/23/00) "Dear Odysseus, Oh such paper I found! 150 pounds of heavy headed history, almost hot pressed, toothless but rough as warm porcelain (...I like to speak my lines clearly), 51 x 356 inches, I'm in love. I felt her with my lips on the bus coming home and she was willing. She has the finest cotton skin and when I open her she curls back shyly. She is a modest girl from an old French family, and I am old enough …finally, to savor my own patience, kindly.
And when I eat her shy heart, as she does mine, we will sing in her smooth thin voice an ecstatic song of strong loss.
Your voracious pal, Toc Fetch

Hello… my name is Holybean and I'm to tell you about my Uncle Toc's comic; "Kids of Lower Utopia," which is volume six of The Lost and Found Season of the Most Pope Joey. This story, number two, has its own title Toc calls it, "Softdoor's Older Sister's I-AM Knot."

So…Inside everyone is everything. PapaWolf said, the world is - because You-Are. Inside of your eye is everything you see. Inside you are all wonders. There are talking animals and talking mountains and talking winds, and everything talks to you if you let them. You let them by listening, by accepting everything as it is, inside where you feel it.

In everyone, among all this talking, is an animal called The Very-Self. I think everyone's got one. It's called The Very-Self because it is more like you than you are, and it knows how to know everything. The Very Self lives in the place where time just begins, where time is just a trickle, so 'when' doesn't matter to him. He sees things the way that space does - everywhere at once - within and without. But The Very-Self is the hardest thing to find because he is so well disguised as everything else. The Very-Self comes to you at your death, and meeting him is what actually kills you, because you melt into him… and that's because… you want to, like you wanted to your whole life. Anyway, The Very-Self lives in the sweet dark cave of your Heart and is always looking-out for you. If you're bad he'll find someone good to bug you, if you're too-good he'll send someone kind of wild to aim you in a better direction. If you listen to him you move like water, and the best direction is always towards him. And "him" or "her" is also a disguise.
I'm telling you about The Very-Self because this story is about a woman named River whose just like you … like me.

(Page 1) River's Very Self comes to her disguised as an old black wolf. An old wolf who she wants to ignore, because she is scared of the wild things he wants her to do. River hides deep in the ho-hum of her life from her PapaWolf, but when she has starved her Self close to Nothing she always returns to the woods. She loves the woods because the woods always feel right and beautiful - full of an alert peace. But whenever she is alone in the woods her heart wakes-up, and the old wolf comes again and asks her why she doesn't love him anymore, and why they can't do like they did when she was a kid. But when she was a kid, adults were always angry at her for being her Self, and living out her Heart. So after some big-big troubles with schools and teachers, River began to not listen to the voices inside her. And she, being as strong as a kid, shut her Self up.

She gets lost into the world, and gives her all to stay there. Though sleek as desperation, another bite had changed her mind. Her mind is a vast drifting liquid flower, and she is convinced her clothes don't fit. She does not fit, is not fitting. Her expectations of buying things eases the fist of her heart, but when she finally holds her purchase there's something missing. The things are just things, after all, with nothing to say. She misses the conversations.

She thinks that if only PapaWolf would just turn away, walk back down the dark, and leave the daylight alone, maybe she could eat her Self free. But she does so miss the chats with every thing, like she had when she was "The kid."

She can't talk to him now, his words come out alive and go where they will, they climb her thoughts, and she swallows them, and is all "yes," before she can even know.

She knows she is not enough of her self, to do what he wants. Though she was once. As a kid he told her things to do, crazy things, and jerky-jumpy with laughter she got in trouble, took beatings. And, being helpful even there, she cut her self till she saw her own blood. It looked scary, and her fears gave away more than everything-that-could-be-taken.

Now she is finally on her own, alone. She fills her mute days with someone's assignments and sitcoms. All brightly packaged nothing, done to death, and manicured with laughter.

And still her tender cringing heart that hides behind the brave liquidity of her breasts, feels as if she were dragging it along behind on her rough shadow. A small leathery rag, tumbling along between …familiar paws. His familiar paws that are always walking in her shadow.
If her heart gets under foot then "Fuck-it!" She fears his paws not being there far more then she does his words.

"Art is anthropomorphic's whenever it isn't being Nothing," said Comrade-X, the brassy voice …of his own opinion.