Rustles in Dry Leaves
(Revised)

A Monodrama;
Written for the Stage
by Antarah A. Crawley

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK CITY – 2015

1. The Coffeehouse

Lo, my Syllabus is not yet fit for students, although I have borne it in some form.

My work has not fared well; although I’ve elaborated on it, that was some time ago. I had begun with a sense of purpose, some kind of understanding, but the conceit of it has come undone inside me. It has regressed back into blankness and will not manifest a word. Its silence begs me fill it but I have no tunes of music. In truth, I know that I must write, but what work results is mystery. I know not what I’m writing, what my course is. I essay but I yield no postulation. There appears an inherent flaw: the need to write it out. Essaying never achieves the perfection of one word’s sound. Or a whole paragraph often feels like a weighty body for the sentence, or a concept better visualized than explained.

Perhaps, then, a Syllabus is not the best fit medium to conduct my Understanding.

No, a Symbol would be. Or, perhaps, a System of Symbols, all correlative in their nature. But then one’d need a Syllabus to catalogue and contextualize them. Thus I seek a Syllabus with which to study Symbols.

Folly, that I aim to elaborate upon the simplest and densest of truths, this human understanding of nonhuman realities. The unity of all existences. And man has endeavored to do that since he first looked on the sun.

And yet the sun has looked upon me as well. Does that not give me as much license to describe it as anyone? Isn’t my vision as validated? Look upon me, for the sun hath looked upon me.

For I aim to convey my unique Understanding to others. The systems in which the divine Symbols align within my particular vision may not be immediately realized by others, but I believe that from the components of my Understanding I should be able to construct the implicit System and describe it in the Syllabus. I am yet unable to find it—though I know it exists manifested on some plane.

Shall I look into the Tunnels, the ones underground, submerged. Deep below the surface.

But for what?

Evidently, my Syllabus has descended into some unknown location, and the unknown lies above and beneath us. We cannot ascend unto their heights; so we must go down. My Pyramids have fallen, and tunnels have born through them. And tunnels are ubiquitous and lasting and run in cycles unto no end.

But why has my Syllabus descended? Why is it now underground?

Perhaps it has fallen out of distribution. T’was not profitable enough to continue printing. You know how the costs have risen and the demand declined.

Where, then, do I find those texts which have fallen out of circulation, underground?

Perhaps, where used things go. Things the public deems unnecessary. And we all know that a human understanding holds no place in our zeitgeist. Look among you; the people are profane. They no longer read or seek my Pyramids. If I wish to find that which has fallen out of fashion, that knowledge which people have sold off for monetary gain, then I shall get me to a library. There, I may find my Syllabus.

I am black body, I am collapsed. I am fallen the way way back. I have sunk inside myself. Don’t you wish to come inside me? My black ass has so much mass. I have a warm hole to hide you. No bright light can dare to find me. I am fallen and born back. No matter can stand beside me. I am hollowed, I am black.

2. The Library

I seek my Pyramids. 

— Thy Pyramids have fallen. Tunnels have borne through them.

But is a library not also a Pyramid?

— Are Pyramids not also bread?

Don’t understand.

Overstand. 

I shall get me to a bakery.

My Understanding precedes all language. What Pyramids do I seek?

A Syllabus; I seek a new Syllabus for a Human Understanding.

And yet I have no understanding of Systems. Nor of Pyramids. For I wish to summit thy peak! Get me to a bakery!

I wish to descend unto Tunnels. I know that I cannot summit ascended peaks but in tunnels I may descend to seek my Syllabus, so I will go where bread is baked and or sold. You know—a bakery.

— Thy Pyramids have fallen! Tunnels have borne through them! Thy Pyramids you seek, thy Precipice broods on deep waters.

O Time, my Pyramids have fallen. Deep under water. They are submerged beneath the known and have not surfaced. I seek thy Tunnels. I do not seek a library. Get me to a bakery.

I exit this bookstore, for it is a catacomb, and in it I’ll find only corpses. I make a right on the street and walk away. I go to the Deli at the end of the Avenue. Aaaaaaall the way downtown. There, my precipice broods on deep waters.

3. The Deli at the End of the Avenue

I seek bread in the aisle. I seek my Pyramids. I’m writing a Syllabus and I seek my Pyramids for Symbols. Someone told me that Symbols lie somewhere in Tunnels. If I can reach my Pyramids I can find the Symbols needed for my Syllabus, so I need my Pyramids for answers.

— If it’s Tunnels that you seek then you must know, there is no end. You will never reach thy Precipice. It lies forever just beyond you. If you were to reach thy Pyramids, you’d be borne immediately back. The gravity of the centre is too great. The Precipice of thy Pyramids is too close to the sun. You will surely burn before you glimpse what you seek.

It’s my Syllabus I seek. It lies in the deep. In the void. At the peak. And if it’s the peak I must reach to peek the Pyramids I seek, then that must be my destination, not the Tunnels.

The hardest part about anywhere is getting there. Once you’re there, you’re no where at one moment, and now here the next.

No where is where I will go then, if no where’s where the precipice of my Pyramids lie. I must know, which is the right way?

Down. I must go down. Down the aisle. The bread aisle.

I look down the shelves of bread. I glance to the floor where I notice a wooden latch door. I look at the cellar door, I bend down, open it, peer into the darkness, and go down there.

4. Bedford-Nostrand Avenues Station

I descend into Bedford-Nostrand Avenues Station and take a dead beside an old man. And the old man says to me, I have been waiting for this G train for one hundred years … You know, the G train is the bowel of Brooklyn. I mean, it’s full of shit. One of those slow, tiresome ones. You’re sitting there wondering “when will this piece of shit come down the tunnel?” Finally, after what seems like an eternity, you pinch one out—and then your toilet clogs up! We are being delayed because of train constipation. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

You seem to possess some knowledge of tunnels, I say to the old man.

I told you, he said, I have been waiting here a century for my train to take me through the tunnels. In that time I have come to understand much.

So you possess an understanding!? I seek understanding. I’ve come here in search of my Syllabus. I seek my Pyramids.

— Thy Pyramids have fallen. Tunnels have born through them.

We are fallen. Tunnels are born through here.

— You seek that which has no form. There is no Syllabus for you here. There is nothing of use to you here underground. There is only so far you can get through these tunnels. You see, the Stations you pass through will not dispel to you any answers in this form. Thus passing through the submerged Systems in search of the true Systems of Knowledge is fundamentally flawed. You will never reach thy Precipice. Thy Pyramids have fallen.

I was told that the Tunnels lead to my Pyramids. The Void around which aethers fog.

— Though the Void you seek is not physical, but beyond the physic; it is nothing. You can’t access it. You will wait in this station for a hundred years. And maybe your train will come and bear you down the borough’s bowels. But no Pyramids lies at the end of thy line. Only silent waters.

O Time, thy Pyramids, where art thou? Reveal the Syllabus I seek. I’ve traversed city corridors and monoliths of antiquated tomes—of catacombs and dusty halls; I have breathed in noxious gases. I have ventured down the Avenue in search of bread. I have descended into burrows, passed throughout their halls, and sunk the earthen floors of cellars with the treading of my soles. I have passed through tunnels like a train, a cell in the blood of city’s veins. I have passed through yonic doorways into wombs. But I will not be satisfied with shallow water. I’ve heard that thy precipice broods on deep. I will seek further through thy hollows ‘neath the cellar floors of earth. O hollowed Pyramids, thy peak, submerged deep beneath the street, thy Systems will not keep my waves at bay.

A G train burrows into the station and comes to a steaming halt. I leave the old man at the bench and board the car, the doors close, and the train makes its departure down the Tunnel.

5. Coney Island

I exit the train station, I walk to the water’s edge, and I brood on the deep, the horizon, the sunset on the water.

At length, I am approached by a bather in a swimsuit, but I continues to look into the horizon.

The bather says to me, You look silly.

What? I reply. 

Your clothes, says the bather. They’re silly. Do you know where you are? Your clothes enclose you. They block out the light of the sun. They obstruct the flow of the water. The sea cannot wash over you. The sun cannot look upon you. I presume that’s why you’re here, at this beach. And yet you merely look on the water, and stand below the sun. You do not delve into them. You do not let them come inside you.

The sun has looked upon me. The sea has come, and come inside me. From in the light I’ve touched the light. I knew the light grew mold inside me. I do not wish to bathe here, for I seek my Syllabus. I was told it peaks thy Pyramids, Pyramids which lie at the Center of Systems, Systems which are traversed by tunnels. But tunnels have brought me here to the end of the line, and emptied me at thy sea. But as I seek the sea, I see inside. O Time, thy Pyramids, to me are nothing novel; they are fallen to the bottom of the silence of the sea, and having reached the farthest East that West can bring me, I can feel the wind that rustles in dry leaves.

Fin.