the idiotplayers

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Baeth leads Tranzi through the bush after dropping the canoe at the loading spot. In a rush of words, Baeth says, “Tranzi, I was just on a bit of a walkabout. I could see a large rock looming up out the trees. I wanted to see how big it really was.” Without saying more, Baeth continues to lead Tranzi. They stop and rising up out of the bush is a large granite boulder.

“Wow. It’s beautiful,” Tranzi says stopping to look up. Tranzi guesses it to be around 10 meters at the base and rising, perhaps, 15 meters. It is pink granite with veins of quartz running through it.

“Yeah. But look here too,” Baeth says hurriedly leading Tranzi around to the other side.

Tranzi stops in place when she sees what Baeth is pointing at. It is a rock carving almost a meter tall. The carving has an immediate penetrating quality. It is a human-like form. The body has some thickness, but the rest is single lines. Its neck is elongated into what looks like the stem of a plant. The hands, without any detail, look to be grasping the base of the neck making kind of a figure 8. The neck extends to a flowering circular head all around the edge of which are strokes – maybe like eyelashes, Tranzi wonders. In the center of the larger circle is a smaller one, like a pupil. They both gaze in silence. Tranzi crouches down onto her haunches, so does Baeth. From here Tranzi can see more clearly the relief of the carving in the fading light. There is a jauntiness to the curving line of the whole figure. It dances, sways.

“I’ve seen a picture of this before … I think that it’s an image of Nanabush, a trickster figure of the Anishinaabe peoples,” Tranzi says. “A messenger between the Great Spirit and humans.” There is a pause.

“What does it mean, trickster?”, Baeth asks.

“Ahm … I heard a First Nations elder tell a Nanabush story once. It reminded me of the Nasruddin stories from the Sufi tradition.” She shifts her weight. “Nanabush works in unexpected ways this elder said, changing perceptions, challenging conditioned responses – bringing in something new. That’s what I remember.”

Baeth nods. “It looks old. There’s lichen and stuff growing around. Anyway, I don’t think it was carved by anyone anytime recently,” adds Baeth.

“Hmm,” Tranzi utters. “It’s old. I can feel that.” She pauses. The eye could also be the sun with rays coming out around it. “It’s intense,” Tranzi says almost to herself. Human. Plant. Eye. Sun. Flower. Trickster. Tranzi ponders the image without allowing any one of the details to rest in her attention. Instead, she holds an empty space there. She’s practiced this many times.

After some of this pondering, holding space, an impression comes. She feels it defusing through the chest. Then the idea of it comes. When she puts it into words in her journal later, she can only understand it as a symbol of consciousness itself, of I, both receiving and transmitting creative force. Plant-like: turning sun into food. Human: turning light into vision. Divine: emanating vision back upon itself both as visible light and as inner presence. It is a symbol of the dramatic universe — interpenetrating levels in contact, spinning up and out and down and in, transforming energies of cycles within cycles. A symbol of both time and timelessness. She lets this impression soak in and find its own way.

Suddenly within the bliss of it, an urgent need enters. Tranzi senses the time shifting around her and within her. “We need to go Baeth. It’s getting dark.” Indeed, the sky above is a deep azure and the trees and rocks stand in quiet relief against the orange glow of the setting sun. She sees the whole of the trip, where they have been, where they have to go, the trek up river to the main road, the guy they hired to meet them at the gas station on #72, the amount of food left, the distance to be covered. She sees this and she weighs it, she senses it, she feels it. She’s looking for cracks and bumps in the trip-field, places in need of attention. They will have to be extra careful about bears tonight and about sealing the remaining food well when they are on the move. Her moment grows to take it all in. Finally she turns to Baeth and says, “Looks like a good night for the stars.”

She and Baeth both stand. Pausing, Tranzi places her hand over her heart and bows. She bows in gratitude for the moment, for the insight, for the opportunity to understand and for the great responsibility she feels, which itself is like a strange gift. Baeth also bows. She is thankful for wandering in the bush, for chewing her fear a little slowly.

The light from the camp fire buffets in the trees as they make the final trip across the river. The sound of crickets pulse. There is just enough light for Tranzi to navigate. Baeth sits low in front scenting the night air. Awake to the rhythm of Tranzi’s paddling. Awake to the uncertainty of the passage in the twilight. Awake to her own feeling of being there. Her hunger for food is growing, and she looks forward to having dinner with everyone.

John and Stefan are waiting on the shore with lanterns to guide them in. They joke comfortably with each other. John and Baeth walk arm in arm from the canoe to the camp. The tents are set up. The fire is hot. The food is ready. Tranzi and Baeth wash up down at river and join the men for dinner. They take hands and Tranzi leads them in offering Grace before eating. Slowly, allowing the words to bring their inner content.

All life is one,

And everything that lives is Holy.

Plants, animals and man all must eat to live

And nourish one another.

We bless the lives that have died to give us this food.

Let us eat consciously,

Resolving by our work

To pay the debt of our existence.

Amen.*

They eat quietly. Enjoying the food. Enjoying the company. Enjoying the vibe of being in the bush. Reflecting on the day.

After dinner Tranzi explains about the rest of the trip. Where they are headed, about the bears. She asks everyone to stay close to the fire tonight. When everything is washed and put away and when the food stuffs are hoisted up out of reach of animals, John and Tranzi head to their tents to rest. John lies on his side and listens to his breathing. Tears well up like moisture out of the thawing ground.

Stefan stays at the fire and so does Baeth. He plays softly on his harmonica and Baeth sings along. They talk quietly together and Tranzi hears their gentle murmur like a thread of smoke rising into the night.

The next morning they get up and find that the black flies are back for another season. By noon they are trudging along the edge of a peat bog through viscous clouds of them.

FIN

* This is the Grace that JG Bennett taught his students and which is kept alive in the Bennett line.

John sits as low as he can in the canoe. He is on his haunches, his thighs tucked in tightly under the center thwart. The weight of his body on his calves is certain. His feet have already started to bark loudly with pain. Tranzi coaches him in a steady voice. “Paddle hard John. We’re just getting into the main channel now … Get her angled more to port.”

Everything is in confusion. There’s no room think. He wants to shift his weight, but he can’t. There’s no time.

“I want you to turn that rock on the starboard side,” Tranzi says firmly. “There’s a pool around the back of it where we can rest a moment.”

John is losing his bearing. His muscles work like big ropes on a pulley. He shifts his weight and the canoe tips wildly. Tranzi turns her head to look at him. She doesn’t say anything but rolls her eyes. They are just about to hit the rock. John digs in deep and turns the canoe around the rock. They get into the pool on the other side and find fingering enough to hold on.

John senses the cold more now. He hangs his head to stretch his neck muscles. He’s breathing hard. “I can’t believe that you’ve done this four times already Tranzi,” John says between breaths.

“Try to use less of your own energy and let the river do more work, John.”

“That sounds like rocket science to me right now, Tranzi,” looking up at her.

“Put your sight out in front of the canoe. Pick your spot and paddle toward it. Dividing your attention will actually use less energy overall.”

John nods and tries to understand what’s she’s saying.

“Do you see the smoke from the fire there?”

John nods yes.

“Pick a rock, or a tree, or whatever on the shore.”

John sees a birch, its white skin standing out from among the cedars. “Okay, I got something.”

Stefan is starting dinner. Chickpea curry and rice. As things simmer, he reads over some lines he wrote in his journal a little while back.

I heard the shadows say, “You cannot know the depth of my darkness.”

I closed my eyes and the night inside spoke in wisdom tones.

I heard the rocks say, “You cannot know the gathering of my substance.”

I sensed down through this flesh and entered into these bones.

I heard the sunset say, “You cannot know the poise of my moment.”

With the inner tongue I tasted the livingness of the air’s unseen zones.

Baeth watches as John and Tranzi skirt in behind the rock. She can’t see them. It’s as if they’ve disappeared. Something’s wrong. Then she laughs to herself thinking about the child who imagines she’s disappeared just by covering her eyes. She watches and relaxes her gaze. She imagines them behind the rock resting.

“I’m ready to go,” John says. Tranzi nods, and they push off the rock. John paddles and tries to be aware of the tension in his muscles. After a while, he notices his breathing has fallen into sync with his paddling. He keeps his eye on the birch he has chosen. His paddling is becoming more even, and with this the paddle moves more water. He tries to identify just those muscles that need to move in order to paddle. In a flash he sees that he was tensing everything earlier, even his face. He has a line between the tip of the canoe and the birch. Tranzi turns smiling and nods. He has time now to notice the river. It is so beautiful in the evening sun.

Stefan has put things to simmer off to the side of the fire and has come down to the river. He catches the canoe as they glide in. “Nice work John. I was watching you. Wow,” Stefan says. Stefan was admiring the grace of John’s large frame moving with purpose, Tranzi like a carved figurehead on the prow. In seeing this Stefan also sees something floating up from the depths of the moment. He used to tease John when they were younger. All of the words said with jests and nudges that were really veiled insults and taunts. Tankboy. Turtle. Goo. Cabbage.

These two impressions, one of appreciation the other of insult, held so closely together brings to Stefan an opening of what he can only call remorse. It’s a painful humiliation to see himself, but there is something joyful in being reconciled to the truth.

Stefan reaches out his hand to John in the canoe. Stefan realizes that he has tears in his eyes. “How are your dogs? Are they barking?” Stefan says indicating John’s legs tucked in under the thwart.

“Those dogs, sir, are sleeping, but I can’t let them just lie,” answers John. Stefan laughs at the witty turn wiping his tears. With some groaning and a few swear words, Stefan helps John out of the canoe.

“Dude, you’re totally soggy,” Stefan observes.

“He took a dip before casting off,” Tranzi says chuckling.

“Come by the fire and get changed,” Stefan offers.

“That’s sounds good,” John replies.

“I’m going to head back right away,” Tranzi says. “Stefan can you push me off?”

Out on the river Tranzi senses that her energy is quite low. She still hasn’t seen why she has come here. She’s waited patiently. She’s put herself way out on a limb. She’s exposed herself and her friends to a good deal of uncertainty. What if it all is for nothing? She feels the weight of the responsibility. It is a private and intimate thing. How could she explain this to the others? It is not an action, or a feeling or a thought in itself. Who am I?

Tranzi glides into a landing. Baeth is nowhere to be seen. She calls out. A few minutes later Tranzi has hefted the canoe up on her shoulders and is portaging through the bush. Canoe head.

She hears Baeth crashing down the path in front of her coming toward her.  Breathlessly Baeth approaches and peeks in under the canoe, “Tranzi, I found something that you have to see.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you come back?,” John asks waiting to hear something implausible.

Tranzi and Baeth are out of the canoe now. It’s getting on. It must be after 6 o’clock. Moving down to the west, the sun has fallen below the large cloud sheet. Clear light streams across the sky in long horizontal pinions. Tranzi has moved off upstream back to the loading site. Baeth stands looking at John with her hand, visor-like, above her eyes angled in the sunlight.

“Stefan needed some time alone I think …” She pauses to collect herself.  “That too, but I was coming back for the adventure.” She smiles. “The adventure was different than I imagined though … I saw something about myself that I needed to, but it wasn’t pleasant.”

John shifts his weight and looks in closer. “Saw something?”

With something like courage, Baeth simply says, “John, I saw that I have been carrying something for you … for many years now.” John looks away. She pauses to gauge the impact of this and continues. “I saw how much this gets in the way of our friendship. I want to let that go. I want to ask if we can find some new ground with each other?”

“New ground?,” John replies shifting his weight.

“I know that may sound kinda weird, but let’s just play it by ear and see,” Baeth says finding a way to let John maneuver.

There is a long pause between them.

“I’m going to get this canoe down to Tranzi,” John says finally.

“Ya sure. No worries.” Lots of things spin around in Baeth’s head and heart. She sees them. See hears them. That’s enough for now.

Across the river, Stefan sits by the fire working in subtlety on his innards. Like Inca stonework, there is deep shadow cut right up against the light driving like engines of the moment through the trees from the west. Earlier, a deep sweat broke upon his skin. He worked to let it flow down and out the bottom of his tailbone. The intensity was just at the edge of sanity. Now, the air is the immediate presence of something ancient; his body a deep cave.

He sees that more wood is needed. He will gather more. He chooses his direction and gets up softly. His legs resonate, and he allows the sensation to swirl around.

Tranzi is again sitting on her rock gathering herself. She is a slender reed rocking gently. Baeth walks back through the bush just ahead of John. He’s portaging the canoe on his shoulders. He’s spent some time in the bush. The footing is uneasy in places and Baeth walks slowly in case he needs help.

Concentrating on keeping his footing and sensing the weight of the canoe relaxes him. His mind is just full enough with the task to leave some open space. His daughter, Enza, is a warm image inside him. What Baeth said … I’ve wanted to tell her to back off for some time now. I couldn’t find the words.

Baeth approaches Tranzi from behind and slips her arms around her and holds her gently. There is quiet.

John walks by with the canoe and sure-footedly makes his way down the rocky bank. When he’s gone by, Tranzi says to Baeth, “I need to talk with John.” Tranzi and Baeth stand up together.

“John?” John turns to face Tranzi who is now standing beside him on a rock. The sound of the river is the sound of countless molecules rubbing up against each other. “I need you to paddle across this time. I know that you’re a good enough paddler to do it.” John looks right into Tranzi’s eyes and nods. He knows that his paddling is pretty basic, but looking at Tranzi gives him confidence. Tranzi turns and climbs up the rocks. At the top she hears a splash and a loud groan. John has fallen into the river.

She scrambles down to where John is flashing about trying to get his footing. He’s alright. He gets his footing and rises up out of the cold water like a giant from the deep. He stands with his hands on his hips shaking his head. Tranzi starts to laugh at the sight. John climbs out onto a rock and instinctively starts to dance around. It’s kind of a mix between Walk Like an Egyptian and the Philly Shuffle. From above, Baeth starts to laugh too.

John’s pack is loaded into the canoe and they are ready to go. It is just Tranzi’s pack that remains for the final trip. Baeth and Tranzi both pleaded with John to change into something dry before crossing. He wouldn’t hear of it. He had made up his mind.

He deeply senses the cool upon his skin. In a strange way it gives him the proof he needs to see that he is really here. There is wind. There is water. There is the far shore. There is the canoe.

Sitting in the canoe Tranzi explains to John how she has seen best to cross. She sits in the bow pointing out this and that place in the river. To Baeth it all looks like steady flow, but to Tranzi, it is a complex system of force.

Just before Baeth pushes them off, John turns to her and says, “Baeth, I heard what you said earlier. I agree with you. Let’s try and see.”

For Baeth, the journey back across the river holds a certain giddiness in it. She sees that things have changed on the river. The wind is gusting. The clouds are flat and grey. The maples and birch, just in bud, have their palms up, stretching. The cedars growing along the edge of the far shore are glowing from within. She takes it all in a breath. Somewhere nearby a raven gives out a deep throaty caw. It ripples upon the surface of her skin.

Across the river John is sitting on a rock out of view of the others. He is looking down the path they made through the bush to get here. In his mind, he follows the path back, some many miles across two lakes to where his van sits at the end of gravel road. Is it safe there?, he wonders. Stupidly, now he thinks, he left his wallet hidden under the front seat thinking at the time that this was the right thing to do, thinking it would be safer there than out here. He’s given up on looking for cell reception, though he played a bit of Tetris on his phone a while back because he was bored.

He sees that he’s not ready to be here out in the middle of the bush. There’s a strange tension building in his gut. He has missed golfing with the guys for two Wednesdays now. He has missed his Friday steak night at the Keg. Without knowing it, he takes the photo of his daughter out his pocket. He realizes that he is looking at her as she sits smiling in front of blue swirling studio-sky. She looks so much like her mother.

The divorce was hardest on her. She had trouble falling to sleep for years after Jean and he split. She missed a lot of school. Hopefully that is over now. She’s in grade 10. She hates math, but does well in English. He feels a yearning reach out to her. He hugs and tells her that everything is all right.

He stands impulsively, instinctively shifting his body to shake off the weight of things gone wrong, of changes in life that have come with such a cost. He sees across the river that Tranzi and Baeth are on their way back. Baeth? Why’s she coming back? It doesn’t make sense.

After John and his wife split Baeth called him a few times. She said she wanted to help. She wanted to let John know that she was there for him. He felt uncomfortable with it. It brought back high school feelings of Baeth waiting for him in the hallway after class with a hungry, needy look. The feeling of being pursued. Hunted. One night during this time Tranzi finds Baeth on her front porch crying. She takes her in and makes tea. Silently, Tranzi sets up the chessboard and Baeth, somewhat sullenly, plays with her. She loses, but finds that her mind is now clear.

John is in motion and starts to make his way down the river to the point where he thinks they will land.

On the other side of the river, Stefan finds that Baeth has made a fire and has set aside a good supply of wood. He sits down. His energy is intense from the experience on the canoe. He tries to connect more deeply. Yet, his mind begins to flash images of Baeth. He is fantasizing. He cannot clear his mind and direct himself. Such a powerful urge to run screaming into a tree. His muscles tear away from his bones. He holds himself here. He breathes. He tries to find his center. Each breath is an hour. Each minute a day. He is roasting on his own fire as he stares down into the flames in front of him.

As Tranzi pilots the canoe with finesse, Baeth feels something slipping away from her. It’s her giddiness and sensation of adventure. On the other side of the river she sees the same old Baeth in the same old dress at the same old party, feeling the same old things. She lets out an “Arrrgghh” without knowing.

Tranzi laughs gently. “What’s a-feeling in ya there girl?” Baeth lets go a bit on her hold around Tranzi and leans back to look at the out-of-focus sky. Tranzi starts to sing in a high 1930’s warble. “Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money. Maybe we’re ragged and funny, but we’ll travel along, singing a song, side by side.”

She continues with a dramatic flourish of her head as she sings the bridge part. “Through all kinds of weather, what if the sky should fall?” She pauses for the answer. “Just as long as we’re together …” And with extra pizzazz, “IT”, she pauses for the band to catch up, “doesn’t matter at all.”

Head bobbing. “When they’ve all had their quarrels and parted, we’ll be the same as we started. Just a travellin’ along…” Drum roll with her head. “Singin’ a song…” Big finish, “Side by Side”.

Baeth lets the final notes of Tranzi’s song merge with the sound of the river. She is now awake to the river and sits up to notice. It is place of change, a place where the surface has a being of its own, deep currents surging up from the body of the river met by the flow of the wind. Rocks standing firm around which curious patterns turn like dancers. The canoe is a fragile impossibility amidst so much raw force. Water, canoe and paddler striving to blend into something purposeful.

John is waiting to catch the canoe as they land. Baeth lurches forward to see John steady the canoe against the strong flow of the river. He looks handsome in his outdoor gear with stubble on his face. But she sees something different. Or rather, she sees the same thing differently. She sees the discomfort in his eyes, his glancing away. The same old feeling of hurt wells up into her throat, but instead she says clearly and without sentiment, “Hi John”, for the first time in her life.

At the river, Tranzi stands on a boulder with her hands comfortably at her sides. Stefan approaches. She turns to her right and says to him, “Stefan conditions have changed. The wind is stronger now coming downstream.” She pauses squinting. “I need ballast low in the canoe. When we cross, you’ll need to lie in the canoe with the pack on top of you to stay out of the wind and to give weight.” She looks deeply into this face. He cannot hide the twitch of his jaw.

She steps down to steady the canoe for Stefan to get in. John watches from above and sees Stefan standing on the rock looking stunned. He does not know what Tranzi has said, but he can see its effect. Stefan bites his lower lip and turns with some decision in him.

“Tranzi, that’s going to be pretty difficult for me to lay on the bottom of this canoe. I mean, I’ll basically be trapped,” Stefan says.

“I know Stefan,” Tranzi replies with an even tone under which Stefan feels her meaning. She continues. “I know there are other trips out there.” She adds a Marlene Deitrich slur. “But after all there is this trip here.” Looking into his eyes.

He draws his head up breathing deeply and holds the breath looking up into the now cloud painted sky. Letting go of the breath, he says with his head still looking up, “I met someone at a workshop in Massachusetts. A beautiful, elderly woman. Lots of experience of life and of her heart. We talked after a day of painting the out-buildings. She helped as she could, but more than moving about, she sat. I could feel that she was being a great help to us. She told me had had cancer when she was 40 and lost a breast. It was a terribly big shock to her. She mourned for some time.” Stefan looks down to Tranzi who is seeing him silhouetted against the sky. “You want my head in the bow or the stern?”

“Bow,” she replies squinting.

It’s incredible to Stefan that he is laying in the bottom of canoe crossing a river the colour of day-old tea. Tranzi is straddling his knees, paddle in hand while John pushes off. The river is much quicker for Stefan than if he could see. When the boats shifts in the swale of the main channel, Stefan can see the dark water brimming over the gunwale. It’s not any better seeing it. The taste of puke inches up his throat.

Tranzi is so slight against the sky. She moves her paddle with quickness. Her eyes shifting and following here and there. Assessing. Weighing. Using the river to pull us along. He can sense her influence on the canoe through its shell, her deft control. She’s moving from one lull in the channel to the next.

Without looking down, she says “Brace yourself.” They skim past a large boulder and the scraping sound is intense against his skin.

“Here we go,” Tranzi says and the canoe lurches down a short rock ledge. Stefan is sure that they are turning end over end. He screams. A narrow cleft opens in Stefan and he moves into his body bracing against the shell of the canoe. A taste of blood is in the mouth.

He is on the swing in the park. He is 5 years old. The swing goes too high. He’s going to fall badly when the chain torques and snaps him out of his seat. He is there. He is here. He is given to bring here, there. He is self backwardly compatible. An occasion of understanding. Healing is entering. Echoing back through the channels of the self in time. Something is being polished.

The canoe crashes again into the rocks. He snaps forward and knocks the pack out screaming. Baeth picks it up and eyes him. They have landed. Stefan exits the boat and is looking for his legs, walking the drunk’s walk.

Tranzi sits in the canoe, head down, stretching her neck, side to side.

Baeth steadies the canoe on her haunches. She says in almost a whisper into Tranzi’s ear, “Tranzi, I see this whole crossing thing is only going to work right now for me if I come back with you. I’m sorry if that’s more work for you.”

“I agree,” she replies, “Stefan needs to be alone right now. Besides,” she smiles with a sashay, “you’ll be working too.”

The story attracts one’s attention because after all who would travel with a living cabbage? Then perhaps it continues to attract when one realizes that the storyline is not entirely straightforward. It’s clear that the sheep must go first. What then? The traveler returns. Maybe there are hidden storage compartments on the boat? Maybe a large storm blows up and carries them across magically?

Maybe it’s not a puzzle at all. For Baeth, it’s crossing the river that attracts her attention. She doesn’t swim. The river is no gentle paddle. It’s mid-May and the water is running fast with melt. It’s also cold and the rocks look hard. Does Tranzi really know what she’s doing? The canoe looks sturdy enough. It is small. Just two at a time and a pack. There’s only one paddle. Tranzi is the only one with any experience doing serious canoe work. We didn’t pack life jackets. This is stupid.

The way that Tranzi deals with her misgivings is pretty simple. With arms around her, she says, “Ba, I’m here with you.” Before she realizes that this is utterly obvious anyway, she feels something complex inside her say this simple thing, “Yes”. Tranzi leans back to look at her friend, whom she is so grateful to be here with, and laughs a bit like Cruella DeVille. She turns and is ready to go.

Baeth tightly grips the gunwales of the boat and finds the rhythm of her hips against the swell and draft of the river. Tranzi gets out into the main channel and works hard. There are big rocks just upstream. The piece they’re traveling has some swale but no standing rocks in the main channel. She rides the shallow crest of a crosscut current that gets them most of the way there. They beach and unload.

Tranzi says to Baeth, “That was so beautiful. You moved really well with the boat, Ba. Awesome hips girl.”

Tranzi pushes off quickly after studying the river. She see Wolf upstream on the other side and motions with the paddle for him to make his way downstream. She points out the spot.

Wolf hears himself complain inwardly and starts up the bank to find a path downstream. He sees Cabbagio wandering like a drunken man trying to find cell reception. “The deal fell through. You’re ruined,” he says as he glides past. John waits, then replies.

“I didn’t hear you complaining about the profit you turned when I sold your last place.” Wolf becomes a sorcerer unfolding from behind a large purple cape. He emits some kind of psychic fog into the air. He’s very good at this role.

“Something is coming down the river.” He pauses to spin on his heel. “Something dark.” Looking deeply into the distance. “Something whose midwife is death itself,” he says with a medieval flourish. For John, Wolf had a way of moving him into a real horror movie place. Most agreed that Wolf wants to be the tortured artist in conflict with himself and the world. When John gets the psychic fog, he wants out quick.

After a moment when Wolf is into the bush, John calls out in his patented “He shoots, He scores!” voice, “He shoots, he KISSES his own ass!” Wolf chuckles moving hard forward.

Baeth is on the other side in quiet bewilderment, listening to the river and gathering wood for the night. Her terror of crossing the river has become a stillness in the air. A single bird in a tree sings a many-voiced song. The sound bounces off of her ears into her own footsteps in the brush. The open place where her pack is. The open place.

Tranzi has decided that the Wolfman should go next. She has a choice, either John or Stefan, but Stefan needs the work. He doesn’t see how snide he is, with himself, with others. This trip so far is all some kind of existential conundrum with spiritual overtones. He’s brooding and snaps out at Baeth. He’s immediately in front of himself and too caught up to notice.

He is waiting downstream to catch Tranzi coming in on the current. He grabs the rope and begins to walk her back along the shore, which is difficult at times because the footing disappears on the bank and he has to stumble through the river boulders. Occasionally the boat is caught in the current. Stefan’s hands are getting bitten by the rope. He finds some gum from a pine tree and this helps.

It’s getting on to about 3 o’clock. This is longer than he thought it would take. He looks up. The sky is turning, getting an operatic hue. Clouds are starting to mount up, but they should have another 4 or 5 hours of decent light. Cabbagio followed him down and comes out of the bush to help out.

They secure the boat and help Tranzi off. She’s tired and needs to rest before they go again. She finds a place on the bank where she can sit and collect herself. She sits quietly for about 20 minutes. Stefan sees her there and is jealous. Physically she’s so small and yet she gives off this big vibe. Really beautiful and strong. He’s jealous and afraid that she can see all of him.

She moves out of perfect stillness into motion. It’s as if time has started ticking again. Stefan and John are playing Frisbee golf in the woods. They’re arguing. Stefan keeps adding new rules and John is barking. He’s just out to play a simple game, but for Stefan there’s always something at stake, some part of his heart that he cannot bear to let show.

“Stefan. It’s time to go,” she calls out. He puts in a final jibe to John and turns to meet her.

As with all of Rumi’s material, there is so much that comes alive when we hear it. One possible thread is that the journey across the river is like the drawing back of the curtains. It is a journey between the sensitive screen of local experience (the Chinese painting) and the conscious field of the cosmos that appears like nothing itself (the Greek “painting”). It is surprising that the realization in the story comes from settling an argument between the artists. There is a friction between consciousness and experience that is not reconciled automatically of its own accord. The King steps in and decides upon a debate. The Greeks don’t want to debate. They simply want things to be shown as they are in the shifting light of consciousness. Their non-verbal answer shifts the occasion. With the drawing of the curtain, the entire situation of the poem dissolves its artificiality through one’s own contemplation of it. The story reconciles the question of which image is the real image by itself being an image that transmits baraka to the listener. Is the listener the listener still? Or do we enter into the creative inflow by making our own consciousness smooth and reflective in contemplating the mystery of the scene?

The Greek root of “essence,” ousia, signifies “to be” (etymonline.com). The Sanskrit, Hittite, Lithuanian roots say, “I am”. Gurdjieff taught that the essence of being for humans is consciousness. Listening for the echo of I in chest and solar plexus and bringing this into contact with the sensitive field of experience is one method of exploring “I am” which he teaches late in his third series, Like is Real Only Then, When “I Am”. Two further keys to inviting conscious energy are 1) to understand the depth of one’s own unconsciousness by first letting go of the assumption that one is already conscious and 2) to transform the impulses that one would otherwise spend on worry, doubt and confusion by directing these impulses to invite more consciousness. Be practical, but in a sly way. Direct some of your attention to your body and its complex instinctive instruments. Direct some of your attention to your energetic field of sensing, feeling and the vibration of thinking energy. Direct some of your attention to making contact between the conscious parts of yourself and the unconscious parts of yourself. Seek something in life that may have some objective purpose beyond your own conundrums. Create the conditions for more being. The journey is an occasion of being where the wolf, the sheep and the cabbage play the role of the Chinese artists and the traveler plays the role of the Greek artists.

the river, by Debbie of the idiotplayers

Sometimes the initial shift into consciousness comes from the force of the moment. Maybe we’re lucky. In this case, it comes for free, as it were. This kind of luck tends to decrease over time as one’s reservoir of experience is spent away. Therefore, there is also the artwork of inviting the shift into consciousness. Normally this would be the result of arriving at responsible age. However, in Beezlebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff writes about a great shift in the inner and social life of people sometime during the Babylonian period, a cataclysm. Before this, there was no need for social power distinctions to last over longer periods of time. Men and women came to decisions privately and together because all could read and understand in a synergistic way. The instruments of each worked to their normal tempos. Leaders, when they were needed, were chosen based upon essential qualities suited to the task at hand. Yet, the tone of Gurdjieff’s writing does not express a subjective desire to return to a golden age. Certainly he offers no sentimental accounting. Far from it. His work communicates that he was very much in front of the conditions of his existence and the needs of the time in which he taught. He was very clear that some rightly centered intentional action was needed within us to sustain contact with essence. This is especially true at this time given the strange conditions of existence that abound.

It is the essential self that has an understanding of the value of playing roles. The Greek word “theatre” is one of the “th” words that Gurdjieff draws our attention to in Beelzebub’s Tales. He contrasts it with the “d” sound as in “devil”, “death”, “dire”, “doom” and many others. Gurdjieff writes about the theatre during the early Babylonian period as a holy place. Actors and audience direct their attention to the spontaneous play between characters on the stage. It is in the theatre that we look for clues into the question of character, the psyche, the soul. We suspend our disbelief not as a theatrical convention, but a requirement to opening the perceptions. The gift of creative play enacts the present moment as an occasion of unveiling, and it is consciousness that provides the blending of the cosmic and the experiential. The challenge is that sustaining a store of conscious energy requires a conscious effort, especially as we age. In this important sense, the crossing of the river represents a right of passage into the essential self, the self that can say, “I am”.

Conscious energy also brings the possibility of enchantment. The theatre can become a place of abandonment, a place of conjuring altered states. We can somehow mistake the source of I as our own imaginarium with its rich storehouse of colours and hues. There is no easy solution to this, it seems, once a sense of practicality is lost. By practical I mean taking the time, every hour even, to stop intentionally and watch over the heart and recall the states that have passed through. Find out what people nearby are doing; find out what’s going on for them. Stay grounded like the cabbage, sensitive like the sheep and perceptive like the wolf.

The role of the traveler is played by Tranzi, a woman of slender build whose words are at first enigmatic and strange. We wonder what she means. Yet, we come to understand that her apparent madness is really a kind of genius.

Next I will write a bit about the river and comment on the story process itself – what is the order of crossing and all that.