if . . .

… wait … before the banishment … everything came from something that came before … the circle … the red circle … walking on stilts … images of scholars talking to stones … ringing gongs by the river of forgetfulness … videos of a mask walking through tall grasses … a video … …wait … i was watching a video … i had been taking notes … it was a long time ago i had climbed a ladder looking for an escape … found … … remember … there were two ways … one to have a sixteen foot ladder and open the ceiling trapdoor or to lean a ten foot ladder and work up to the second shelf-like section to open the second trapdoor … i kept hearing noises and wanted easy, ready access to scale quickly up to the attic at a moments notice … built a permanent ladder … … wait … when the dreamer had asked about the video i knew something else was in the dream … something what was meant when it was really about another thing … when writing as the scribe it was necessary to look past the first given word

... never wanted to be the scribe ... had not trained to write or even be a listener ... it all came to be much later ... after the banishment ... couldn’t keep my mouth shut ... delivered words with a snake tongue ... it wasn’t terrible but led to a time away ... returned after the self imposed exile to the imagined home ... took some time to read the land ... run the rivers ... ferry over the straights to islands and backed onto the blew treez prairie ... a sorrowful canadian dropping down station to station ... ... oh but that glorious age of eerie exile ... running amok in the sunfield room at the top of the stairs ... a place deserted by priests searching beyond the holy theatre ... part of a desperate group of renegades ... howling, twisting, fermenting traditions ... something fishy and playing along through bottoms forest dream to the robinson crusoe nightmare ... radicalization of ritualization … gesture transforming … ... before that were farm field tricks and furn