This is a play produced by some of the members of Commonwheel Artists
of Manitou Springs, Colorado, performed at Scarbourough Faire in 1976
in Bancroft Park in Colorado Springs.
The cast in that performance was:
Oregano: Rod Hubble
Parsley: Lynn Loftus
Thyme: Sloyd McAninch
Basil: Richard Elliot
Rosemary: Julia Wright
Sage: Darrell Murphy
Voice from audience: Art Knaver
This text is copyrighted
Cast of Characters
Oregano: a wealthy magnate
Parsley: his wife
Thyme: their son, a poet
Basil: Thyme's friend
Rosemary: a figment of Thyme's imagination
Sage: a wise man
A voice from the audience
( The stage is bare, the only fixture is Sage sitting cross-legged
in the center. He raises his hand,palm out, to introduce the play.)
Sage: Please do not try to understand
The play is meaningless as such
Just hold the moment in your hand
Know the feeling of its touch
A soft caress of passing time
Enter it with thoughts and mind
Lose a wisp of tomorrow
A trace of the past
For a portion of the present
As our performers present
What one would presumably phrase
A probable existence.
(Sage lowers his hand and remains seated in place until his exit
in the last scene. He is unnoticed by the actors, even though
the action often centers about him.)
Parsley: (offstage) Thyme! Thyme! (enters)
Thyme, where are you? Oregano! Oregano!
(enter Oregano)
Oregano: What is your desire, dearest Parsley?
Parsley: Oh, Oregano, no one knows where Thyme has gone.
Methinks he has grown old overnight and left us
forever. Oh, woe, what shall we do?
Oregano: We must put out an all points bulletin post haste and
notify the national networks of the possibility of a
reward. Tsk, how costly sons are these days. (He puts
his arm around her, they exit slowly) Fear not my
precious Parsley, be assured of his return (offstage)
dead or alive.
Scene Two
(enter Thyme)
Thyme: Washed out all the words and hung them up to dry
Don't they look fresh and clean for hand-me-downs?
At the rate they've been used
I'm shocked they're not all worn
Constantly pressed into poems and prose
Such ungainly episodes hampering my frontal lobes
I wish my mind was barefoot
Not galoshing through this mental mud
(Thyme sits down and draws on ground aimlessly)
Drawing lines from point to point
Hoping for a thought to bud.
(enter Basil with a newspaper)
Basil: Ho there, Thyme! Thou are so melancholy,
What ails thy spirit?
Thyme: I feel I'm lost, Basil, yet . . .
Basil: Hmmm.
Thyme: What is there to be lost from?
What is there to find?
What concern for what gets done?
What is what but mind?
I thought I ought to keep it in mind,
It being all things,
But now I find it's already there,
I wonder what it is?
Basil: Methinks I perceive your problem.
Thyme: Do you?
Basil: Thou frets thy head too much with thoughts and flights
of fancy. What thou craves are things concrete. The
answers thee needs reside inside the classifieds!
(Basil opens newspaper) How about a '74 Camaro, candy-
apple red, mag wheels, 427 V-8 with dual carbs and
chrome headers, four on the floor,
(Thyme stands and exits, disgusted)
power disc brakes, air conditioning,
and power steering, only thirty-five hundred dollars.
Wow, that would cheer anyone up! Let's see, call 534-
6937, 534-6937, 534-6937 . . . (exit Basil, looking for
a phone)
Scene Three
(enter Thyme)
Thyme: Touch mystical cold,
Fold me in your silent reasons.
The mercury hollows hold the reflection
As a moment in silver. (Thyme sits)
I'm lost in the imaginary mirror.
(enter Rosemary with flowers. Thyme does not see her)
Thyme: Tis' as a dream flows under the soil
An unreal stream beneath our daily toil
Beyond the known real burns the unknown
Banishing those who feel, burying those alone.
Scratch off the list the lost!
Bury their empty shells beneath the soil,
And come spring, a sprout will search for the sun
And find the mind.
(Rosemary sits beside Thyme and hands him a flower)
Rosemary: Where a flower will bloom and sing
Just for the joy of being!
Thyme: Who art thou?
Rosemary: A part of thee, but prithee call me Rosemary.
Thyme: Please, jest not to a broken heart.
Rosemary: Tis' true, I am but an aspect or figment of thy
personality. (Thyme touches her)
Thyme: Yet so solid, so tangible.
Rosemary: (laughs) Could I be but thee when all perceived you
believe is elsewhere? If thee did not see me, I
would not be. So what you see is you, and me.
Thyme: To that I'll agree.
Rosemary: Thee believes! And in so it must be so,
For belief is the basis of being.
Thyme: I believe, yet I feel such sorrow to know not my fate,
my fortune, or my future morrow.
I'm mesmerized by time, by moments touching past
A present so soft, by comparison fades,
now is oh so faded.
While thoughts are ever so warm and tepid,
spun so sweet.
Compressed; have no substance,
solid space made of spaces.
Holes that are not empty, always filled with nothing,
A world of vacuums, mirages, and two car garages.
I long to be the speechless.
I wait for the silence.
I enter nothing.
Rosemary: But nothing isn't everything.
Thyme: I know and it brings me sadness.
Rosemary: (laughs) It's so silly the lawn laughs its grass off,
The trees titter and the earth giggles,
but you're bitter.
Is that anyway to spend a life?
Thyme: What should I do?
Rosemary: Put a mountain in a toaster, and watch for it to pop
With some glasses, a soda fountain, and a mop.
You need ice tongs as it sizzles, it's very hot.
Melting colors, catch the drizzles in a cup
And when it cools, drink it up.
(Rosemary hands Thyme an imaginary cup, he drinks it)
All cast: (backstage) BANG! (Thyme jumps up)
Thyme: Sensation and many mirrors, good news!
Saturate the birds in baths, swamped into life
Spin in soft sand, stuck in full bore,
Holed up in the all, a bomb with no fuse,
I am exploding, the same size!
(Thyme spins and runs off stage)
Rosemary: (stands) I wonder where the reflection goes when the
mirror stays behind? (wanders off dropping flowers)
Scene Four
(enter Parsley in mourning)
Parsley: Oregano! Oregano! How could you do it?
Why did you push that button and end it all?
What good is your precious economy in an atomic
wasteland?
It just gave them something to print in the papers,
Which gave us all something to relate to,
No wonder we act like an atomic wasteland.
It was understanding that laid you to waste, Oregano.
An understanding you could not comprehend,
A comprehension you can not understand.
Knowing the unknown is frightening,
When you read it on the front page
Day after day, it becomes unbearable.
Beaten beneath your senses, it became unseen.
Buried beneath your being, it ceased to exist,
For it never began existence,
And left you blind in a darkness you couldn't see.
To not know you have eyes to open,
To not know you have ears to hear,
You can't know the hollowness I hold in my mind
When I open my eyes and stare out them blind.
In a silent darkness you could hear me screaming
In an empty universe that isn't there.
But you never heard the sound I never aired
In a realm that never was.
I suspect you won't be listening.
You are scattered atoms,
You are radiant energy,
You are radioactive matter.
(enter Thyme)
Parsley: Oh, Oregano, you are dead!
Thyme: My father is dead?
Parsley: Yes.
Thyme: What were the circumstances?
Parsley: He was tyrannically dictating a small country he had
bought, and he declared war on a neighboring kingdom.
It was annihilation, Armageddon, a nuclear holocaust.
(Parsley is overcome with grief - Thyme kneel and prays)
Thyme: Mysterious non, hold us close to confusion,
On the edge of misunderstanding,
At the brink of chaos in the world of none.
Forget the fog-hearted mist in the past,
Sorrow in the forgotten field of ferns.
Walk us dazed through the cities,
Sit us motionless in the sun,
Your tiger-eye gleam catching us full force.
Blindly staring, deafly heard,
Unknowingly memorized and silently recited
The dissipation theory and practice of loss.
(voice from the audience shouts)
Voice: AMEN!
Parsley: He left you half his estate and the brokers are
wondering how you wish to invest it?
Thyme: Tell them to cash in the stocks and bonds, sell all
the real estate, liquidate my assets, buy a barge,
load all the money upon it, tow it out to the
center of the sea and sink it!
Parsley: Ah, if it could be so simple. The hoards of dollars
are pounding at your door for entrance, and it grieves
me to find you are not the man to handle your father's
fortune.
Thyme: Twas' his misfortune, it only brought his end.
Parsley: My son, how you've altered in your absence.
Thyme: No one caught me being crazy, dancing in the dark,
Screaming words of silence with my mouth shut tight.
No one caught me and now it's over, now I'm here,
Immutable, a varied place to be,
Just different, just beyond.
Parsley: What of your responsibilities?
Thyme: I've told you of my wishes.
It matters not to me to be a wealthy man,
Just to be human; compassionate and understanding.
Parsley: If only you could be like Basil
(enter Basil)
Basil: Did someone speak my name?
Parsley: Oh, Basil, speak some sense to this son of mine.
He seeks to destroy his father's fortune.
Basil: Indubitably, it would not be fitting for me to
force my friend to possess unnecessarily. (to Thyme)
Suffice it to say if thou wishes to be rid of thy
wealth, this humble soul will gladly consume it for
you.
Thyme: (angered) Any standard bushing fits your emotions,
They're all metric extensions of your mind.
"I am" you claim with wheels clicking
And the existence escarpment keeps on ticking.
Blind to your senses,
Totally blind to the senseless machine you are;
Meandering toward a distant star
Alight with understanding,
As your life keeps on ticking away.
Slide into your panther wheels,
Corvette Stingray wild in the streets,
Or fly the way a bird feels, Turbo-prop mind aroar.
What need to see the real world?
There's an eye in a box that sees all;
But you don't have a choice, really.
What are you? You crazy robot!
Your kidneys are squeaking, your thyroids are leaking.
You're a machine, that's what!
You claim to have a body, but it's in need of repair.
Your oil's black as goo, your spark plugs gutted,
All your tires bare and your metal's rusted through.
Broken on the run, escaping from the beginning,
Turn your life up louder, but beyond the sound
Of your quadrophonic screaming
Ticks the end of dreaming!
Sage: May I inject a note of sanity into this scene?
Basil: Certainly.
Parsley: Where did you come from?
Sage: I have been sitting here unnoticed enjoying your roles.
Thyme: Our roles?
Sage: All of you are but actors on a stage,
The words you mouth but lines in a script,
The parts you play but spices on a rack.
Confrontations between yourselves are meaningless,
When you don't perceive your true environment.
Basil: Nonsense!
Thyme: What is our true environment?
Sage: A world of endless possibilities.
One need only choose one's actions,
Rather than submit to another's dictates.
Look about you, the world is much more than you
believe it to be.
Basil: Ah, it seems the semblance of a stage.
(Basil steps into the audience and looks back)
It is a stage!
Why should I be an actor when I can be real?
(Basil exits running toward the back of the audience)
Parsley: All those years I spent raising Thyme and now I find
in reality he's not my son at all. Oh, well.
(Parsley speaks to Sage as he stands)
You seem to be the sage in these parts, so please
Tell me more of these endless possibilities.
(Parsley slips her arm into Sage's)
Sage: As Shakespeare once said: "All the world's a stage,
All the men and women merely players."
So it is simplicity itself to be free,
Be the author of your own script.
(exit Parsley and Sage)
Thyme: Blizzards of sweet and sticky sauces,
Crystals of cronons built of points
To prick and bleed a spoonful of time.
Sliding down a corridor so ever long and wide,
Turned in lathe-like patterns,
Sliced from the selection of sequences
Brought from bushels of blinks into spires
Seeking a sky of undercast and patient grays
So low the feather arms of smoky giants
Grasp the pinnacles with the soft caress
Of a moment in love.
(enter Rosemary - She takes Thyme's hand)
Thyme: Wander where the reflection goes
When the mirror stays behind.
Rosemary: The wander bearers take to asking fantasies.
Thyme: Apple trees aren't enough fruit for the asking.
Rosemary: Final exactitude transforms the emotions
From specters of smoke to an ocean of stone.
Thyme: Isn't necessary to listen to reasons
When actions the only voice to speak.
Rosemary: Transparent indifference is the world's understanding.
Both: (in unison) So what difference does it make to bloom?
(Thyme and Rosemary exit together, laughing)
The End
