Below is the full text for Episode 3 of Fight With a Stick's podcast series, The Refrain Getting in Sync With the World. It can be found on the usual podcast platforms and on the Fight With a Stick website: https://www.fightwithastick.ca/podcast . The immersive sound environment was composed by James Maxwell. The script was written and performed by Alex Lazaridis.
Cabin in the Woods
Prologue
Sit back a moment and get into the mind of something around you
Could be a chair or a table if you’re in a room
Could be a park bench or a leafy tree if you’re at a park
If you’re in the forest in Tanzania it could be the family of baboons sitting with you
If you’re swimming in the Salish Sea amid a family of sea lions in a flush of algae, kelp, plankton, sunlight and bracingly cold cold water, just be with all of that
Or something else
One: Evolution
At the moment of the universe’s birth
a cabin appeared on an outcropping of rock
About 12 billion years ago sound emerged
from cosmic dust
knocking on the cabin door
About 500 million years later
selection pressure on noise
shaped some sound into words
“Let me in” was the cry
10 billion years ago words made ears
so that words could be heard and consciousness
could wrestle with confusion
that comes from word shaped meaning
“Who is it?” was first heard then
Ten minutes ago it rained
Two: Cabin on a rock
Wetness forms as a rain drop
rain drop is wet
wet is wet
wetness feels around things
or makes night
night feels itself around a globe
a person regards the moon
moon thinks I cannot touch the person
except with light
person wonders can I touch the moon?
all that dust
all that powdered moon-face
bird touches tree branch
and thinks my toes touch so far from my head
tree touches bird with its branch
so far from its inside
the inside of a tree feels around under a skin of grass-covered earth
grass lifts the weight of a creeping mist
mist regards the cabin on a rock
eagle perceives through waiting
waiting perceives through eagle
cabin on the rock thrums
and makes drumming with the falling rain
in the night
inside and outside
inside a universe and outside it
inside a cabin and outside
electrons agitate
floorboards hum as one
under feet
over rock
the rotating earth shoves the light of dawn over the cabin
light permeates
moon hesitates
a hand reaches for the door
body goes with hand
inside atmosphere suspends
door opens
inside and outside air exchange worlds
lungs open
something has taken a breath
something has given it
Three: Running
The side of a face puts its bones against a paddle
that dips in the ocean and listens
The great walrus rests its throat on the ice
and opens its flesh to the depths
Another face puts ear to railroad track
to sense oncoming events
Two feet put skin to concrete
and receive the fullness of seismic dread
A bird as delicate as it is small
finds itself surrounded at all times
by flutterings of air
A heavy rain cloud measures the weight of the bird
and finds it is less than zero
Then the eggshell that surrounds the day
cracks in several places and electric light
burns through
Running replaces waiting
Four: A wasteland
There’s a war in the heaven of all gods
this afternoon
By evening they will be dead
A truck crosses a wasteland made by the conflict
empty of gods of any size
a truck carrying an absence of freight
but laden with values such as formulas, phrases
and parables
There are no signposts in the wasteland
All directions are possible
The driver stops
gets out
opens the back and looks in at an empty space
crowded with numbers, letters,
judgements, and passions
Who asked for these
and where were they to be delivered?
A person delivers
a truck delivers
a river delivers
as does a road
a cataract
a whirlpool
and gravity
Insect delivers honey
soil delivers microbe
mother delivers child
sky delivers rain
rain delivers rain
stick stirs honey microbe child sky and rain
Something stands by to eat it
Something gets satisfied
gets hungry again
Hunger is a form to contain desperation
Desperation is movement inside a form
that breaks the form
Movement insists on form
makes truck
truck insists on road
road insists on wasteland
to remake the gods
who laugh now and make company
as afternoon is reborn
Epilogue
The lazy footsteps of a spider have become
so loud in the tiny bones of my ears this morning.
There’s a crawling.
There’s a multiplying and erasing.
Silence never arrives.
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