[FLORALS ]
Teaching Emptiness to the Untrained
Fear of Gossip


Spirit Assistant: Teaching emptiness to the untrained. Moments of passion, deep connection followed by high conflict, negative escalations, massive crescendo. A phantom, armed, clandestine organisation. Ensure that tiny groups of people never again wield so much power. Finally we realise that we cannot reach out and touch someone that is not there 'in the flesh'. Those nights were on fire, we couldn't get higher, we didn't know that we had it all, nobody wants you before the fall. Sentient beings are numberless. [begin to move seeds, one scoop into P1 pouch and one into P2 and then they begin speaking]

Person one: I consider the time has come to say things without mincing my words. Is knowledge evil?

Person two: Well it wasn’t smashed in was it?                  I’m cold

P1: [fast and rambling but pauses between sentences as if on the phone] I’m not against you, you’re amazing. Fused, your energy is like totally brilliant, shining somehow. Yep course. She just said like obviously because she realised that you were going to see me today, she said I’m too hungry, lucky boy, too nice. Set yourself up, fucking tears again. You don’t listen anyway. I'm knackered. So busy, yeh fine. End of a long week. That was bloody clean before you sat on it. It's in the sun, is that why you're sitting on it? Can't you just sit where you're supposed to? It's a surprise. Come as a shock to me ey. You just do what you wanna do. It doesn’t matter, ,,,,monthly. Are you going to call them back? I think you said, only do it. Nah. It’s raining [look outside] now.

P2: [looking down] it's just a shower. You had me thinking now. Defiance I called her. Can you see that on my eyelids? 

P1: Yeh, I spoke to my dad the other day.

P2: What did he say?

P1: [distracted] Your birthday yeh, I have to get you your present

P2: What?

P1: I said I have to get you your present. What d'ya want?

P2: pfff, oh Anything. Just get whatever yes yes, I don’t want to know, you get what you want to get

P1: I want you to be happy

P2: I don’t know what to say. I feel silly making you stay here. Its’ a beautiful day outside.

P1: [towards audience] There are so many ways of saying something. So many [stumbles] ways of saying the same thing. While the truth does set you free it can still hurt. If we bring it down to our concerns and paradoxes knowing and accepting problems with your mind doesn’t automatically mean you are able to cope with the effects provoked by them in practice. It's this passive acceptance of an imagined benign state that we need to challenge and resist. If we turn our thinking and ideas only towards [gestures in circles an imaginary thing], then we can comprehend only what is continuously dying there. Grasping things with our hands.

P2: [towards audience] And evidently not all practical ways to cope with that are adequate. Your heart is delicate, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be fortified. 

P1: [to P2] There's things I wanna say to you but i'll just let you live

P2: [to P1 mumbling]: Undo yourself

P1: [in the sense of, eh, that would be nice but it's not as simple] eh.,,,,...,,,, eh.,,,,...,,,, eh.,,,,...,,,, eh.,,,,...,,,,

P2: To be honest with you. I'm not willing to take something that's dying either. We have all lost.

Spirit Assistant: [at the same time as P1] We have all lost

[P1 and P2 look down to their increasing seed pouches here, noticing them for the first time, holding the pouch briefly, Spirit Assistant stops putting seeds in pouches here]

P2: [hands on knees, zoned out and facing forwards] One day insurance companies will wake up. the-only-way-out-is-through (how the fire of life burns) the tearing down process is very active and you have appetite. She had to open all the windows when he was dying. If you go into a building where they are repairing, chipping plaster, breaking brick, you have a lot of debris to clear up. Benediction of the invisible lives that surround us. The sacredness of private property. Sun baths. The sun can do what no therapeutic lamp can do, no matter what the manufacturer claims for its spectrum. Experience comes slowly. The stomach, the home, a mine, a cave and also a pocket, an envelope, a bottle, a box, a bathtub etc. Do not force the imagination to visualise the light-sphere. Let it be done quietly and easily.

P1: [hands on knees, zoned out and facing forwards] Food, utensils, plants and animals. Heated by a constant fire or kept warm by glowing coals that rarely cool or go out. Chestnuts, wild greens, beans and turnips. A complex organism that depends on an organised, cyclic series of functions and repetitive acts. A special room for drying chestnuts. A short poem of uncertain authorship. June is like January. Endless winters, the late and scanty harvest, sour wine and hungry wolves. In short, a greater abundance of everything. The mulberry was the tree of gold on that land. The liturgy of laughter. Why most of the rays that fall on the tiniest bodies lose themselves as in an ingenious labyrinth and are absorbed by bodies (vegetable or stony) The enchanted liquor is viewed with the disenchanted eye of one who is leaving behind the magic world of sensitive and sentient substances, trying to break free (sometimes with difficulty) from a pre-scientific mentality that stuck like glue and was slow to die. Identify the causes that seem to make the grape a particularly sensitive repository, a privileged vessel, a much more receptive store of solar energy than any other fruit, though all are bathed in the same energy.

[Spirit Assistant resumes putting seeds in pouches]

P2: [snaps back into themselves, passionate] They do not know that they need protection. I don't want to say I can't do it because that sounds really lame, but I can't do it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.

P1: Nothing like this has ever happened to us before. [desperate] They have to stop. They have to stop. Sleeping with the windows open, you can hear it, you can feel the rising energy.

P2: I feel really 'cleansed'. Not in the least bit bothered about everything being wiped. An image in my mind is that I had crumbled and I was just dust. I was happy with that. [P1 scoffs here in disbelief P2 is fine with turning to dust] I wanted things to be a certain way and I had certain angel targets in mind. I feel part of things yet at the same time apart from things and people; looking at things and people very objectively; not with much real emotion; I feel really insular yet at the same time a part of things that are much bigger; vampires losing energy, very relaxing; feel so relaxed; no worries. No need to fake interaction. If I drop toast on the floor it doesn't matter.

P1: Yesterday I was sedated for the removal of the nerve of a tooth. I have had a sense of sadness on not being able to see the removed nerve and bring it home with me. There is a very subtle feeling within me that something has happened. I have real feelings of unfairness; that when things are unacceptable they shouldn't just be ignored and allowed to go on; people being awful to each other and not being challenged. [sharp inhale] Saying things out loud. [scoffs] Someone commented that my face looks more beautiful than usual.

P2: I keep thinking about pigs: rooting about, getting tusks and tossing someone or something out of the way. Also I'm noticing today the pleasant warmth of people's hands as we brush fingers. Human contact and friendship seems very important and natural. My thought process wasn't even there, I just knew it. I'm easily moved to tears. Confusing letters on the keyboard; putting things down in strange places; fastening only one shoe. My instinct is to bawl. Just really bawl [hand gesture here open hands and indicate a rising force swirling] I feel like something is growing out there.


P1: [make U shape with one hand, point fingers towards the space between throat and heart, moves hand up and down indicating]

P2: [tilts head to one side, breathe out] The day felt increasingly heavy to bear, rocking all my foundations. It is like shining a light into a room and seeing all the dust hanging in the air. The lowest point, where everything is reduced down to nothing. I had been crying for most of the evening, the sense of loss and abandonment was very strong. I was overcome with fear. I felt wild, wild with fear. High octave [open fingers and hold hand up], the sounds coming from my mouth were high pitched, sharp intakes of breath, it probably sounded quite alarming but I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop. It was involuntary. I was overcome with fear. I felt wild, wild with fear. I was looking for the swimming pool and I found a stream. Snake-fly. I was looking for the stream and I found a swimming pool.