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Cabin in the Woods. Podcast Episode 3.


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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