LETTERS 

When free entertainment hit his favorite park the writer thought about the present. After all, it is here where the mind captures the forms that move with purpose around it. And these wonderful creatures, these performers, they have discovered much. Not long before they had been on the road learning the sacred dances of the Hopi, then selling booklets through the mail about it. They had been on the road but could go no further and wished, again, for the corruption of the city. They returned without a prayer. They set up tents in an industrial park, first, and tacked posters on utility poles. They put on a play about Puritan poets and their death at the hands of Indians. He watched them dress in his favorite park while dogs barked at them. They laughed. Ah performers of free entertainment in the free park, play! And soon the park was filled with people who had read the flyers on the utility poles.

The writer watched enchanted by the free play of the dedicated performers, among mid-day crowds with children running around. It put him in a reverie and he thought of a scenario that he would like to see performed.

The bay is seared under a restless sun, there are no boats and the gulls run askew the boiling seas. One day, someone says, the expanse will support life as it gains confidence. The bay will rise and chase the inhabitants to the mountains where sea elephants will be found between granite rocks. The anemone in the Jeffrey pine. All things will be emptied from the water; what the air supports will come crashing down. The earth will be suspended between desire and eternal rest.

Confusion then, coalesces around the most persistent order. The mind feeds for a time on what occurs when wild nature flies apart. For all but those who desire accomplishment beyond the pleasure of the self there is a separation. The mass spin into the gaseous center of a former star. There is a loss of love and remembrance of how it began. The war between love and wonder; between adhesion and adventure. It is here we see the awful disorder that conditions our desire. So we saw them, away from us, and they were upon us, jabbing us near the ocean, punishing us for the indiscretion.

The performers now stood and bowed to wild and happy applause as people struggled to get up from the grass. A fresh breeze came through the park and everything felt refreshed, reborn. The writer laid patiently and watched the performers tear down the stage, change their clothes, pick up refuse from the park and then they and their magic were gone and the park was empty but for the writer and dogs.

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David Eide
September 8, 1999
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