(with the sun peeking over her)
“i love the taste of the morning
my imperfect body covered with snow
i touch your visions and guide you
(a tear dangles beneath her eye)
I knew your grandfathers parents
and their parents
have seen fire and ice
life and
death
my arms are always open
my trails forever evident.”

reaching majestically into a star filled sky
exhaling into a black silk smoothness
the crickets now singing
against the nights heavy curtain
Now
the mountain sleeps.
cradling her fragile love for
her mother,
the earth.

neonduskmondayjune719991037pm

As I walked through the wilderness of this world,
I lighted on a certain place where was a Den,
and I laid me down in that place to sleep;
and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream.
~The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, 1675~

A classic red velvet curtain opens to an empty wooden stage. Butch walks out from behind the back curtain, struggling a bit with finding an opening and then almost tripping. He walks to center stage and stops in the center. A stage hand, with an unlit cigar hanging from his mouth, walks out with a silver retro microphone. He places it in front of Butch and adjust it to the height of his mouth. He connects a wire that he was carrying to the microphone stand and a sudden large squelch startles Butch. As the stagehand slowly walks away, Coco emerges from front of the stage right wearing a stunning blue evening gown and carrying a hand held microphone. She stops at center stage, slightly to the left and in front of Butch by twenty or so feet. She gazes blankly out into the crowd. The already dimly lit stage lights begin to fade and at the same time separate spot lights begin to turn up on Coco and Butch.
As the scene goes on, several stagehands carry out life-like male undressed mannequins and place them on the stage. They are placed randomly around Butch at all angles. By the end of the scene there will be over one hundred undressed mannequins on the stage nearly and then totally covering Butch from view.
Coco: (lifts up the microphone that she has been holding on her side) How do I begin? What have I done? (looks down at her feet)
Butch: I remember the first words you ever wrote to me. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Yup that’s what you wrote to me in our first email exchange. But now, no, I wasn’t kidding. I was married, two young kids. I was working in a huge dot com company during the big dot com explosion. Times were good. No, times were GREAT. The sun shinned everyday. Stocks seemed to split every month. Bonus were multiple and huge. We took two hour lunches paid for by the company. Everyday was a celebration. I had a brand new home in an all-white neighborhood surrounded by an all-white town. We lived by the ocean deep in the scrub pines of south Jersey.
Coco: I have no regrets in my life so far. I am who I am and who I will always be. It, what ever “it” is is rooted to my soul. Carried on through generations. It clutches to my heart with iron claws.
Butch: We met at a design conference somewhere in Florida. The internet was in it’s infancy. It was so raw and clumsy. We fell in love with each other before we even saw each other. But I knew you through hundreds of emails. Like a blind man feeling someone’s face.
(Now some of the mannequins being carried out are different brown and beige and some are females.)
Coco: I tried to be normal. Go to school. Have a husband…well I did have a husband….several. I tried. I prayed. I begged. I took pills.
Butch: I remember that picnic we had..somewhere up high overlooking a river. There was that slow moving barge that took all day to go by. The picnic basket filled with cheese and fruit. Going down to the banks to throw rocks.
Coco: I feel like a magician, how I make it through the day, appearing in places I shouldn’t be, while people wait for me on the other side of the curtain. Queen of the double life. I am a professional liar. You caught me a few times but you were so stupidly in love.

While Butch slowly becomes surrounded by naked mannequins he is delirious to what is going on around him. He is unaware that this is Coco’s “breakup” speech. Thru the small crowd gathering around him, he keeps his eyes focused on Coco.
Butch: (laughing) That night in New York driving back and forth through Times Square. You were like an excited little girl. Or that time driving around in Tampa, the sun an orange ball and the sky…. (Butch looking up and around pointing at the now glowing red lights of the theater)….the most beautiful sunsets EVER. Sryacuse. Fort Henry. Oswego. Wellesley Island. Point Pleasant. Cape May. New Hope.
Coco: (shaking her head and looking down) You are stuck in the past Butch…
Butch: …in the beach house just me and you…and the romantic rain
Coco: I liked you the most Butch…I did…I really did…the only way I know how to say goodbye is for you to become one of them….just another notch….a number….
At that moment one of the heads of a mannequin that a stage hand is carrying out falls off and rolls around on the stage.
Coco: I remember him….he was such a klutz..
Butch: (now almost completely covered by mannequins) That time in Boldt Castle, we were so in love, like little kids running around…in the car playing the Traveling Wiburys on the cassette player…
(singing now “Handle With Care” by The Traveling Wilburys) “He love’s yer sexy body, he loves yer sexy mind. He loves when you hold him, grab him from behind….Ohhhhhhh baby your such a tasty treat…
Coco: I stayed with you the longest..
Butch: (very low murmur) Remember when I beat you in that miniature golf game? The bet was any sexual favor you want….and all I wanted was for you to go through a day in a short skirt with no panties…
Coco: I was drawn to you in some strange way. Pulling excuses from my hat. You never knew. Nobody did. Fake smiles. Invisible doors. Mirrors. It was so easy. Too easy. One night stands. Outside. Inside. Married. Single. Cars. Hotels. Dating sites. Parties. Close friends. Just one quick smile. Oh hell, I could configure out a room full of men in thirty seconds and have sex with all of them within two days.
Butch: (his last muffled words) I love you Coco. Always and beyond….
Coco: I have to go now.
(Coco walks off the stage and halfway there she is met by a man dressed in a tuxedo. He takes her hand and they go off together. At this time all the lights die down and the customary applause from the crowd begins. When the house lights go on, the stagehands have begun moving the mannequins back off stage. They begin in the center and work towards the area where Butch was talking and has now been silent since the end of the play. As the crowd files out of the theater they may be able to see that when they reach the microphone that Butch was standing under there is indeed a life-like “Butch” mannequin. He is a little different then the others, almost identical to Butches looks. Shocking and ghastly looking as a stagehand picks him up and carries him off. Butch has indeed become “one of them.” A number.)

We do not go (to the theatre) like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it. - Charles Lamb

The Empire State Building as seen from New Jersey. Days before becoming the second tallest building in New York City.......again.

Life Magazine called it: "The Most Beautiful Suicide" and Andy Warhol made this photo into art prints.

WHERE OH WHERE HAS MY UNDERDOG GONE?

In this corner.....the rising champ of the century.