L and the Counsel Continued: The Laborer

L: While the comedian is left to his laughter, you with the tanned skin and parched hair, you only shake your head. Your eyes reflect a calloused despair. Your stature is bent as if a heavy stone settles on your back. Skin peels at your chapped lips. And you gaze at nothing. Tell me, what measure does life have to you?

Laborer: Life is a measure of sweat and hunger. For men like me, there is no relief from either. My eyes were softer and my skin was smoother when I was a child. But age has brought me the burden of my stomach, and so I labor. Before, I used to curse the heat of the Sun, and the bitterness of sweat lashed at my tongue. Now my skin is dark, familiar with the Sun's hot rays, and the bitterness of sweat has given way to the dull taste of dirt. Only when there is a repose and a cool breeze sets in can I close my eyes and remember the joys of my youth. Those moments are fleeting, however, and easily forgotten, for the bulk work of my muscles makes my mind empty, and this is why I hold the gaze of an ox tilling the soil, heaving beneath a heavy sky, looking at nothing. When the Sun goes down, I go home to rest. My slumber is blank; I have no dreams. The morning starts, and so does my toil. Many think my heart to be made of stone because I do not laugh or smile nor do I frown or weep. There is no desire in the man who possesses the plight of the laborer, the soul of a beast. I only look forward to the final sigh when death will bring upon me a release.


Note: Although I worked longer and harder on the segment of the Comedian, I like this one the best out of the set so far. It's short and simple, but the voice carries the whole sweat-and-toil world of the laborer real well.

L and the Counsel Continued: The Comedian

L: And you, Comedian, why are you suddenly convulsing with such fits of laughter? Your sides are quaking with it like you are possessed by a force I cannot fathom. Tears form at your clamped lids and you fully bare your teeth revealed beneath a bent upper lip. You shake your head as you spew that disruptive, unsettling noise. Tell me, what are you laughing for?

Comedian: I cannot take this preacher's sincerity seriously! Nor can I keep still in quiet respect of any man who seems so adamant in his beliefs. Who do they think they're kidding? Tell me, where does man find truth? Is it in a flash of light? Is truth whispered only to lone men in mountains? Do dusty tomes in some ancient labyrinth hold truth in volumes? Can I subscribe to truth with an annual fee? Is it beneath the carpet settling with the dust? Does it reside in the mold with the cockroaches? Or perhaps truth lies tangled in the hairs of a woman's crotch? In the scent of a warm release of flatulence? Can truth be held in the hand? How much does it weigh on the scale? What is its value on the market?... The absurdity is too much! These questions make as much sense as the word truth does in itself. And that is none, none at all! Now death, death is logical, it's a cold, solid fact. A fact that many men simply cannot accept fully although it stares them right in the face at every moment. So they try to compensate with these so called truths in order to deny the impotency of their lives. Many assuming-holders-of-truth, particularly those who are well-groomed with a pedigree of prestige, assume staunch positions, grow beards, have their suits properly tailored. They seem large in size with their backs straight and their chins raised. Their brows are unusually thick and daunting! Others actually take these men and their elaborate babble seriously because they see authority in them. But, like truth, authority exists in this world only as one of the most successful cons! When I look at these men of truth and authority, all I can see are lofty dwarves on stilts! A dignified procession of freaks! A carnival sideshow, natural in its vulgarity, attempting the pristine! And then I'm not able to keep myself from laughing. Hilarity builds an enormous pressure at the pit of my stomach, and it can't just sit there or I'll burst. So I open my mouth and let the cathartic cackles hold me through.

L and the Counsel of Men: The Preacher (Rough Sketch Exercise)

L: Tell me, Preacher, you who spend many days in the presence of the Lord, you who immerse others in the waters of baptism, you who command a congregation in a solemn, sombre mood at the heel of the cross, you who reign behind a pulpit - a man of God... what is the meaning of this life?

Preacher: Son, I will tell you what the Lord has taught me through my regiment of faith and constant prayer. This life the Lord has bestowed you is not your own. You should not seek what pleases you or comes to you in your low state of ambition, for what is inside man but an unsettled mind and heart never fulfilled? Man should not seek purpose from within for man holds nothing inside him but a set of vestibules, and true salvation cannot be found in the hollows. Many men who do not look towards God, who determine themselves to have the final word and judgment, will folly in their search of meaning and demean their souls with false pursuits which bear the least nutritious fruit, and they will find themselves eternally hungry; for man does not know any better; he is naturally a fool. And I must make you aware of the many dark possibilities the path of the fool can lead you to. Many men who turn their eyes from the Lord will bite into the most rotten nuptials. The initial taste will be deceiving and devilish in its pleasure, but past the skin which Satan has laced, the flesh once ingested will be a source of corrosion to the body and the soul, and depravity and despair will naturally follow the fool's temptation. So you must seek purpose only in the Lord for the Lord Almighty is the sole mean to a life bathed in the warm light of glory and eternal truth.

An Attempt at the Apocalyptic

A toxic wind blew and it blew hard enough to cast almost everything away. When it happened, most tears went to the way of vapor the moment they formed. I don’t know. It was a terrible thing. That’s what Terry said, old Terry, whose face had deep crevices that seemed to fall into the oblivion beneath the film of his eyes. I couldn’t know if it was a terrible thing or not because I was underground from the moment I started in this world. The things I did know were resigned to the cavern world of steel and canned foods. Nina fed me a lot of sardines, although, I didn’t like the eyes. I would ask Nina for twinkies or those other sugary sweet Hostess snacks, but she didn’t want to spoil me. Once I got into the storage and ate a box full, but my stomach decided to come out of my mouth. Bringing a handful of rags, Terry made me get on my knees and clean up the mess of goo. The goo was soggy and I remember the sour smell was enough to make my eyes sting a little. But I didn’t want to fuss about it because not many people fussed or cried or complained. It was just stone faces all around, impenetrable like the steel walls that lined this little ant farm we lived in.

I once heard stories about the sun. They were my favorite stories.

We were all supposed to do water checks routinely when it came, dripping out of the mess of pipes jutting from the walls. You would have to check with the clicker and if you heard an epilepsy of clicks, it meant to not drink the damned water. I never knew what the clicks meant, but it was an absolute thing to do to pour the water into the dirt, even if I was panting, my throat feeling gritty sandpaper, my flesh like sundried tomatoes. There was a time when Charles, I forgot his face, he always sounded like he was whining, though, and nobody liked that, well there was a time when Charles wanted to drink so much he forgot the absolute thing. He poured the damned water down his throat, I was there. Charles said it tasted sweet and oh so good and he opened his mouth and his tongue glistened with it. Days later though, we were watching whiny Charles whining more than ever before worming around on the floor looking so pathetic. He was an ugly thing then with his face yellow, I couldn’t bare to look at him for too long. Sometime later, Charles died. I remember seeing Terry and some other man, now gone like Charles, carrying his corpse through the lower tunnel, the man said they were gonna berry him. Terry gleamed some of his rotten old teeth and said something like, “Berry him? We’re all already berried right down here.” The other man, now gone like Charles, shared with Terry a grin, but I really didn’t get the humor in it, maybe cause I didn’t know what it meant to be berried.

Len is a corpse now. So is Rudy, Marty, Alice, Lucas, Michael, Mary who was quite a looker, Gabriel, there were many others. I know I forgot some names because they were all my friends. But they were all gone and berried just like Charles. When Len died, I went to Terry to talk cause I missed Len. He just grinned, said I would get used to it. Thought Terry was being mean at the time so I called him a worthless wart and walked away. But Terry was right all along, wise old Terry. He was right because I can’t, even now, recollect their faces, no matter how hard I try to squint my brain. And he’s right because I don’t even care...