MJCwriting.htm

Moshe Frank steps up to the painting and reads the text: "Who are they anyway? The ones who move in to intimidate the clowns with their frowns? Those who inhabit trellises and trees; hoping to scare the birds with their share of the grief? Those who inhabit the circular dream, hoping to establish themselves as keepers of the drowned reef? Moments come and moments go; the shadowmen come, black and shimmery, believing that the dark age approaches; and that the blackfaces rule with the white woman, the blonde woman, the moon, during this nighttime; the culture coven. So they plan their revenge, the revenge of a god, on the white man. And also on the dark woman, the earth. For there is ever conflict between the white man, the sun, and the black man, the shadow man, and between the blonde woman, the moon, and the dark woman, the earth. The sun rules the day; and the moon rules the night."

"It is interesting to me," Columbo breaks in, "that this mechanism herein described, in fact, disputes claims to racism. The alliances are inter-racial. The white man and the black woman are natural mates; and the black man and the white woman are natural mates. This implies racial intermarriage is the plan of God. Clearly the extreme interpretations of both white racists and black racists, calling for racial segregation, separation, is imputed by this mechanism..."

"On the surface that is true," Oprah responds. "But you see, the conclusion is that the white race still rules everything. The white man, the sun, rules the day; and the white woman, the moon, rules the night...."

"Interesting," Columbo replies. "On the surface of things. But I think the mechanism is this: the white man, in passing through the earth, the black woman, becomes, himself, blackened, material; the black man, in passing through the moon, the white woman, becomes, himself, whitened, purified, anti-material. Such, the soul is recycled for ever, between the poles of white and black, between the poles of anti-matter and matter. Skin color is merely an illusion. White into black and black into white -- and everything in between. Whiteblack into blackwhite. Blackwhite into whiteblack. Crossmann is not really a racist. He is a spokesman for interracial marriage. This painting is proof of that. It also proves the betrayal of men and women along strictly racial lines. The white man and the white women will betray one another; and the black man and the black woman will betray one another. If this 'natural theory' is, in fact, true -- which is a whole other issue..."

"Well, we've certainly looked pretty significantly at this painting," Hedda says. "I'd like to move on the the next painting if we agree. Charlie, I'm surprised tht you have said nothing about this painting. How does this work fit into the biographical interpretation....?"

"Well, I think everyone else here explained it for me," Rose says. "This is a metaphysical world view that illuminated Michael Crossmann's view of the world. This mechanism, as Peter described it, puts the broken pieces back into a whole. We can argue about what it means, like we have -- but we must agree that the fractionated picture, the polarized dualism, is resolved, through this mechanism, back into a metaphysical or philosophical whole, a circle, tranforming alienation. Crossmann was a white man who hated white men, who hated his father, who judged his father immoral, guilty of racism, murder. He was alienated from America. He hated his own country, his own father, because it was not on the good side. But when he went into the underworld, gaining this vision from the gods, from the darkness, the Wisdom Gods, he learned to forgive his father, his country. The picture is, as Peter Falk described it so brilliantly, beyond morality. There is One Life within many forms of life. No one is for ever moral. Each side is good and bad; ultimately, each side is the same, two poles of the same unity. This knowledge allowed Crossmann to forgive his father, his family -- to, essentially, come back home. To defend his country, even if imperfect. Like Odysseus in Ulysses, Crossmann came back home; he ended his alienation by , in a figurative sense, eating from the Tree of Life -- having earlier eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil..."

"There are a lot of ideas bouncing around here tonight," Hedda says. "Are we solving anything? Mister Lyons, are we solving whether Crossmann is post-modernist or a post-post-modernist...?"

"I think we are, inch-by-inch," Reggie Lyons responds.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking again in the Russian woman's voice: "We know what elements compose the earth; we know that Air is composed of gases including Oxygen and Nitrogen; and we know that Water is compmosed of Hydrogen and Oxygen. But we don't know the essential components of Fire. We know that one glass of water will not fill up every glass on the earth; water is finite. But one flame can light every candle in the universe without being reduced in quantity. Fire is extinguishable; can become visible and invisible instantly. But fire, itself, as a quantity, is inexhaustible..."

"The next painting, the Eighteenth, the mid-point in our show, is a primordial piece in colored pencil, called the 'Night Warrior'. Charlie, do you have a theory on this...?"

"The soul is re-born as a warrior," Charlie replies. "Brahma is the first-born. He is a warrior, akin to Mars. He is born from the Moon, in the Night, by the so-called Lunar Lords who are tribal by nature. Crossmann becomes a Night Warrior. Crossmann is dark, is in the Anti-Universe, is given birth by the Moon, as the Father Principal, the bringer of Law..."

NIGHT-WARRIOR

"We have here, again, a very aboriginal drawing," Richard Baker begins. 'You will notice here, also, that this Night Warrior has a penis. We remember back to 'Castor and Pollux', the twins of Day and Night, that Pollux has a penis and Castor, the Night Twin, does not. This Night Warrior, in fact, forms the connecting link between Castor and Pollux. We can look at this Night Warrior as being the last stage of Castor or the first stage of Pollux, both of which are true -- and, in this, we see the unified nature of Castor and Pollux -- Callus, if you will; or Pollster -- as we see the unified nature of the White Man and the Black Man, the Night Warrior being the missing link, in a sense..."

"Why this obsession with the penis?" Gloria Steinem asks. "Why this obsession with a body part? Is it fear, insecurity, that makes the men in this room constantly celebrate when a penis appears in a painting. This is a form of abuse of women, of course. Singing the glory of the penis is also singing the death of the vagina, the death of feminism. We aren't blind. We know how this works. I come from the 'down there' generation. That is, those were the words -- spoken rarely and in a hushed voice -- that the women in my family used to refer to all female genitalia, internal or external. It wasn't that they were ignorant of terms like vagina, labia, vulva, or clitoris. On the contrary, they were trained to be teachers and probably had more access to information than most...."

"Really, we are discussing symbolism here?" Richard Baker replies. "The mention of the word 'penis' makes some women angry. The appearance of a penis in a painting makes some women uncomfortable. What does that tell us...?"

"If the celebration of the penis," Moshe Frank responds, "is anti-woman -- then is not the celebration of the vagina also, logically, anti-man....?"

"Castrato?" Gloria replies. "Are you calling me a castrator...?"

"Hateful bag," Camilla Paglia directs a lance at Gloria Steinem.

"Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt!" Glenn Close cries.

Brook Shields dances across the floor, holding a three-foot vibrator over her head.

Oprah Winfrey, Queen Latifah and Jane Fonda interlock arms and sway together, each throwing up their skirts in unison, showing the audience that they are wearing no underwear.

The Mayor's wife re-appears, this time wearing the Magician's magic glasses. She cries: "Vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina....!"

Gloria cries: ""It's ten o'clock at night -- Do you know where your clitoris is...?"

"Self-indulgent bitch!" Camilla Paglia replies to Gloria, putting her arm around her boy-friend, the body mechanic.

"By the time feminists were putting CUNT POWER! on buttons and T-shirts," Steinem cries, "as a way of reclaiming that devalued word, I could recognize the restoration of an ancient power. After all, the Indo-European word 'cunt' was derived from the goddess Kali's title of Kunda or Cunti, and shares the same root as kin and country. These last three decades of feminism were also marked by a deep anger as the truth of violence against the female body was revealed, whether it took the form of rape, childhood sexual abuse, anti-lesbian violence, physical abuse of women, sexual harassment, terrorism against reproductive freedom, or the international crime of female genital mutilation. Women's sanity was saved by bringing these hidden experiences into the open, naming them, and turning our rage into positive action to reduce and heal violence...."

Rosie Perez appears. She addresses the audience:

"I love my clitoris. I just appreciate its clitoral nature. There aren't really any qualities that I am aware of that make a clitoris better or worse. They are not supposed to be a certain colour or size or sensitivity; they are just good. I like that. I say clitoris like 'KLIT-o-riss,' although I know people who say 'kli-TOR-iss.' My way seems easier to say (to me) but I don't know whether either way is the decided right way to pronounce the word. I mostly use the whole word, but sometimes say 'clit,' especially when referring to piercings. 'Clit' seems hipper, but it is hard to sound uptight when willing to refer to a clitoris in the first place. I think I just like the "lit" syllable, despite the fact that with the exception of lit itself, most -lit words have weird sexual connotations (clit, slit, split...). Lately I've been finding out all kinds of clitoral anatomy, just by accident. Junior high school sex education taught me where my clitoris was (the top structure between my labia, with a little hood of pink skin over it), but only made reference to it being a small, highly sensitive nub of flesh. While reading about masturbation using vaginal muscles in an old Germaine Greer article in The Madwoman's Underclothes, I discovered that the clitoris has an extensive internal shaft that is something like 7cm (about 3 inches) long. More recently, while flipping through a book on g-spots, I found a diagram showing this internal part of the clitoris as forked. Forked! Apparently it straddles the urethral sponge tissue, which swells during arousal. As far as I know, the whole clitoris is erectile, and swells up when it is aroused. I very much like the fact that my clitoris has a head and a tiny little shaft. I have never really looked and checked this out, but the idea of such a wee thing having a shaft makes me laugh..."

Calista Flockhart appears wearing a very short yellow skirt.

Johny Carson is in the audience. He takes a long look at Calista, frolicking in her temptress garb.

Carson says: "That skirt is so short I can see....all the way to Needles; all the way to Muddy Gap; all the way to Crescent City; all the way to Sweetwater; all the way to Sugar Creek; all the way to Beaver Falls; all the way to....Sinclair..."

Ed McMahon tries to get Johnny to stop talking by covering his mouth.

Johnny punches Ed in the stomach, dropping him like a bag of dirt; Johnny Carson turns back to Calista.

But Calista now has pulled her skirt up over her waist, exposing skinny white hips with a bushy brunette triangle -- Johnny Carson stares at the magic spot like a boy watching an ice-cream truck approach, his mouth half-open in disbelief.

"Clit! Clit! Clit!" the chorust begins to shout. Then: "My vagina is angry! And it's not going to take it any more! My vagina is angry...."

"Because it has been raped!" Oprah cries.

"Because it has been abused as a child!" Jane Fonda cries.

"Because it has been forced into silence and abstinance!" Patricia Ireland cries. "Or it has been called a whore!"

"Because tampons aren't lubricated!" Queen Latifah cries.

"Because it's thought of as a sperm bank and not a personality!" Rosie Perez cries.

"Because it has been mutilated by old men and women with sharp rocks!" Alice Walker cries.

"Because it has been lynched, lynched, over and over again!" Gloria cries out. "It is the slave and the cock is the slave-driver...!"

"My vagina is angry!" the chorus cries again.

"We will have our vengeance!" Glenn Close cries out.

"We will make them pay!" Oprah cries out.

"We are the goddess and men are next to nothing!" Gloria cries.

"Dildo, Dido, dildo, Dido!" the chorus begins to shout. "Clit Notes, dildo, Clit Notes, dildo...!"

Gloria pulls a pair of scissors from her handbag and moves toward the 'Night-Warrior' painting.

"I will cut it off!" she cries. "I will bring justice to the world! I will cut that damn thing off...!"

Lola Fanti stops Gloria in her tracks, taking her down on the floor with a swift karate move, disarming her.

"Potiphar, Potiphar! Thelma, Thelma! Lorena Bobbitt! Lorena, Lorena, Lorena...!"

Lola nods to the security force. They spring into action, rounding up the angry women not wearing underpants. They move about the room, lifting the skirts all all the women. Those not wearing panties are taken into custody.

Crossmann watches closely while one of the security guards checks to see if Dana Scully is wearing panties. Her thighs are creamy. She blushes a bit when she sees that he is watching her. Her panties are a delicate light green chiffon with dark green markings on the side -- they are transparent.

Lola has Gloria in a half-Nelson; she is forcing her through the museum, through the crowd of people, down into the basement. The other women are also lead into the basement.

"We shall overcome!" Gloria yells back to the audience.

Some people applaud -- supporters who are apparently wearing undepants. Gillian Anderson is applauding. It's like she wishes she had not worn any panties. The thought excites Michael Crossmann.

The young woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume calls out to no one: "Where is Andy Warhol now! I must find Andy Warhol...!"

Then she wanders away again.

"Well," Hedda says. "It is Millenium Eve -- so I guess nothing should surprise us tonight."

"Simply put," Reggie Lyons begins, "the lesson in the shift from a modernist to a postmodernist attitude is that advocacy of creativity as such is uncritical and naive, even dangerous to mental health. Creativity is not significant in itself, at least no more than any other innate potential, but only insofar as it serves a critical purpose. In therapeutic terms, therapy has to develop critical consciousness in the patient, not release the patient’s innate creativity. Creativity can inhibit critical consciousness, especially when creativity is celebrated as the be-all and end-all of life. It is a false salvation, unlike critical consciousness, which is not innate but has to be learned, for it is reason at its most dialectically cunning...."

There is a stunned silence.

"Tell us more about the penis," Catherine Zeta-Jones says, smiling at Michael Crossmann.

Crossmann replies: "The outer foreskin layer is a continuation of the skin of the shaft of the penis. The inner foreskin layer is not properly `skin', but mucocutaneous tissue of a unique type found nowhere else on the body. The frenar band is the interface (join) between the outer and inner foreskin layers. When the penis is not erect, it tightens to narrow the foreskin opening. During erection, the frenar band forms a ridge that goes all the way around, about halfway down the shaft. The reddish or purplish glans or glans penis (head of the penis) is smooth, shiny, moist and extremely sensitive. The frenulum, or frenum, is a connecting membrane on the underside of the penis, similar to that beneath the tongue..."

Robert Bly, the poet, begins to chant: "Cock, cock, cock!'

Other men pick up the chant. Warren Beatty, Bill Clinton, Wilt Chamberlain, David Lee Roth.

"Cock, cock, cock!" they chant.

Bill Clinton chants "coke" by mistake, but catches himself. He looks around: no one heard him. Except maybe Columbo, who is still standing near the president, watching him with a cocked eye.

Mick Jagger, Charlie Rose, Donald Trump join in: "Cock, dick, prick, wang! Dip stick, ramrod, butt-tickler, sword...!"

Jagger sings a solo, in his languid British accent: "Long swinging dusty testacle scrotum swings and sways...."

"Now, doesn't that make you all feel better to be men!" Robert Bly cries out. "More communicative? Come on, everyone -- women too. Pecker, slammer, jack-hammer, cone...!"

Norman Mailer, Rod Steiger, Al Lewis cry out: "My cock is angry! Someone's going to pay!"

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! This is inappropriate!" Hedda cries.

The men all begin to laugh.

Crossmann, too, is laughing.

"Is this a locker-room or a gallery!" Hedda proclaims. "Please! Let us controll ourselves! Let us be civilized...!"

Crossmann notices, across the room, Mayor Guiliani and Reverend Farrakahn comparing their penises, pointing at their scrotums, talking animatedly about health issues....

"The penis is, in this sense," Moshe Frank replies, smiling at Catherine Zeta-Jones, "symbolic of the male principle. Light. Day. Power. Fertility. Wealth. The reign of chaotic darkness -- the Dark Ages -- represented by the Womb, the Night, Infertility, Poverty -- this reign comes to an end. In some mythologies, the erect penis raises the tent of the sky, allowing the elements to separate and create the world again. The Indian teepee was a symbol of this erect penis raising the sky...."

"We must remember that Crossmann," Charlie Rose begins, "in his book, clearly has gone through the wisdom, celibate stage, his Night, during which he turns his back on women -- his 'castrated' phase -- does not fertilize the Earth. This period is the Winter of existence. But during this Night, the mythology of the warrior returns to him. He is warned that he must get ready for war. Hence, he returns to defend his country from invasion by a foreign power. This painting is about that re-awkening of the male energy, the energy of Mars, in the deep part of night. The two forces, adversarial forces, will meet at the dawn to fight to see who will regain heaven..."

"Is the artist idealizing war?" Dana Skully asks.

"He is portraying reality," Richard Baker replies. "He is portraying a mythological reality, a world of Truth that lies deeper in the soul than the surface realm of morality..."

"Many of us believe that the level of morality is the deepest level," Fox Mulder responds.

"It is the deepest level in the mortal world," Moshe Frank replies. "But it is not the deepest level. Remember, Crossmann is in the primitive world, in the world of the aborigine..."

"Mister Crossmann," Dana Skully insists. "Do you, in this painting, and in your novel, idealize war -- rather than the brotherhood of men...?"

"My art portrays levels of reality," Crossmann says. "All levels and spheres of reality."

"Is your art amoral?" she asks.

"No, it is not amoral," Crossmann replies. "It is moral -- it has a perspective in Time. There is a time when war is moral, believe it or not. We live in a very safe time now. We think that war is evil. But the struggle for survival is not immoral. A response to a physical threat is, in fact, moral. The threat of war is always very real. We pretend it is not. That is a very modern 'moral' response. But human history has rarely endured without conflict between individuals, families or nations. We should not delude ourselves into believing that Peace is the natural state of nature. There is a continual state of warfare in nature to see who will eat and who will be eaten. This state is not so different that the state of men or even the state of angels. It is nice to think that everyone gets along. But this view is a form of intoxication. This painting is very sober -- it is about a sober realization. The war against the Nazis was a moral war. And the war against communism, no matter that our generation may have idealized communism -- this too, was a moral war..."

"So, we are always on the right side?" Skully asks

"Everyone believes they are on the right side," Crossmann says. "That is the great illusion. That is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Life demands allegiance to itself. There is a deeper level than morality. The middle principle, who defeats each extreme, who is all things at once, that is the element which is closest to the truth..."

Dana Skully sighs, frustrated.

"Your skin is very lovely tonight, by the way," Crossmann adds. "I would love to paint you some time..."

"Sexist!" the woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume says under her breath, pushing past Donald Trump. "Fucking sexist! Fascist...!"

"Is she talking to me?" the Donald asks, defiant.

"No, she's talking to Lola Fanti, I think," the Donald's wife responds. "She's still mad at the way Lola is policing the museum..."

"Thank you," Dana Skully says to Crossmann. "I'd like that...."

"Fucking traitor!" the downy duck says under her breath as she slinks past Skully.

"Excuse me!" Skully replies to the duck.

"Learn some fucking manners!" Mulder snaps back at her, pulling the psychedelic fur around her neck for a moment, then letting go.

"Fuck wad," the duck reponds, pulling the fur back around her neck. "Alien-fucker...!"

"Let's move on," Hedda says. "And I would like to ask everyone to please consider your language. We are not a football crowd. I would like to ask that everyone comport themselves with decency and decorum. We are the greatest people in our society, the most sophisticated, the most educated. I do not understand this need to stoop to the gutter in order to have fun. Put a needle in your lip if you can't avoid profanity -- that's what my mother used to teach me..."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, speaking in the voice of the old Russian woman: "No Spirits except the Lipika, the Recorders, has ever crossed its forbidden line -- the circle, the ring pass not -- nor will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, or Night, or Period of Rest -- for it is the boundary which separates the finite -- however infinite it appears in man's sight -- from the truly Infinite. The Spirit referred to, therefore, as 'those who ascend and descend' are the 'Hosts' of what we loosely call 'Celestial Beings'. But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind. They are 'Entities' of the Higher Worlds in the hierarchy of Being so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and, collectively, God. To the highest order, we are taught, belong the Seven Orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies who can occasionally be seen and heard by men and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us. Your experience with Michael the Archangel, and with Michael's warrior, Metatron, is, thus, explained..."

Hedda continues: "Very well -- on to number Nineteen, a collage entitled 'The Birth of America'. Charlie, what do we see here...?"

THE BIRTH OF AMERICA

"Well, thematically," Charlie Rose replies, "we see quite clearly Crossmann's rediscovery of love for himself. He has passed into death, into the mystical side of life, the female side, darkness -- the self-judgmental, the self-hating. And, in this darkness, from out of this negativity, positivity has been born. Love for the self is, of course, also love for one's own tribe, one's own country. The tribal consciousness is the first-born male. The form of this drawing is, to my mind, very feminine. I see a very clear....I hesitate to say the word. I'm afraid I might cause some kind of paroxysm. But the shape is very clearly a vagina, an open vagina, which has given birth to something, to America is one real sense. Of course, we see the Mayflower sailing on the outside of the labia, on our right...."

"Note the female figure at the bottom right," Richard Baker comes in. "The spinner of the fates, who is spinning a spiral thread around a kind of maypole. On the left you will a naked female figure with long black hair who appears to me to be an Asian woman. Of course, next to this also, written on one of the bones in the drawing, is the word 'mortal'. The womb is giving birth to a son; and the son, of course, is mortal. The Sun will die; the light will disappear again. There also seems to be a black man being hanged from a tree in the center of the drawing. The tree is bending down. The rope is a thick white rope. The metaphysical symbol to the right, below the Santa Maria (I took this to be Columbus's ship, not the Puritans'), is a mystery of the worlds. A kind of necklace filled with meaning. A bright red Sun is behind this all -- red, of course, for Mars, or Adam, the first man. Red being the symbol of blood and the warrior. The mystical symbol is, in fact, attached to the Sun. It is an emblem of the Sun, not of the womb..."

"Interesting," Crossmann says.

"We need to view this man's art as an act of prophecy," Baker continues. "I think our friend from England, Mister Lyons, is correct is the context of his small argument regarding the nature of avant-garde art in the Twentieth Century. But I think Michael Crossmann breaks the mold. Crossmann is a renaissance man in a time that is not yet being re-born. So we don't really know where he belongs in this modern context..."

"He is an anachronism," Xavier Rubenstein replies.

Crossmann notices that Oprah Winfrey has returned to the museum, carrying a briefcase. She is taking with Jim. She opens the briefcase, showing Jim the contents. They are talking animatedly.

Hedda says: "We need to keep moving, unless there are other comments about this painting..."

Moshe Frank responds: "No one has mentioned it -- but I find it interesting to look inside the womb in the drawing, the parted lips. There is a face looking out, a large face, with two eyes. And in the forehead of this face is a second face, one with a kneeling man forming his lips. Does anyone else see that...?"

"That boy is on drugs," the Donald says.

"Yeah, I don't see it," Senator Kennedy says.

"Of course, it's there," Morgan Freeman says.

"I see two breasts with nipples coming out of their dress," Senator Kennedy responds. "It looks like Miss Zeta-Jones a bit. It probably isn't -- couldnt' be -- but there is a resemblance... Very lovely."

"Sexist pig!" the duck mumbles, walking by the senator.

"Why do you think the woman in this drawing," Hillary Clinton asks, "is portrayed only as a block of a torso. The so-called Mother has no face, no arms, no head or breasts or legs. Picasso used to enjoy tearing women's bodies apart in his work. Is Crossmann any different here? Is this not, clearly, another male chauvinist abusing women through his art...?"

"We should burn all his paintings and all his books!" the woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume screams, as she wanders, head down, at the periphery of the audience.

"This drawing is really quite organic," Richard Baker replies, defending Crossmann. "This drawing is of the organ itself, from the inside in a sense. It is not about a singular woman giving birth. It is a universal womb -- and it is not just the womb of a woman giving birth, it is the womb as an idea, the womb as a universal thought. It represents the idea of birth..."

"It is interesting that, next to the word 'mortal'," Warren Beatty responds, "are the lines of a highway. One gets a clear impression that from birth comes a journey of life, a mortal journey of life. There is no statement, here, of a return to the womb. But the road does lead two ways: away from the womb; and back toward the womb..."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, bearing a message: "Cosmically, Fohat is the 'Son of the Son,' the androgynous energy resulting from this 'Light of the Logos,' which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity -- which is LIFE. Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of the Logos, not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in

Mulaprakriti, or Matter. This light of the Logos is the link . . . between objective matter and the subjective thought of the Logos. It is called in several Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one instrument with which the Logos works..."

"The Twentieth piece is a collage with very strong political overtones," Hedda says. "This work was completed in the late 1980's -- and it is really quite frightening: 'Confronting the Bear'. There are two central figures in the drawing, one with blackened eyes, who seems like a silent partner in the drawing. The major figure is pointing to his own right; and he is holding what appears to be a bomb in his left hand. Which I take to be the atomic bomb..."

CONFRONTING THE BEAR

"They look like Russians," the Donald ventures in response.

"I see some machine guns mounted on a turret at the bottom of the drawing," Norman Mailer adds. "With an upside down Magician with a pointed black hat on the bottom right..."

Crossmann turns around and looks at the Magician, who spreads his arms outward as if to say: "I know nothing about this..."

"There are several men in the drawing; and most have their eyes covered," Dan Rather adds.

"I am wondering if this is Michael Crossmann's view of Russia?" Hedda asks. "Or if he is the one holding the bomb, confronting the Bear...?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Truman asks. He has finally left the food table to join the crowd. "He's standing right next to you..."

"Thank you, Tru'," Hedda responds. "Good idea. Michael: what was your intention...?"

"Well, I don't really remember my intention," Crossmann replies. "But the figures in the drawing seem like the mafia-types who ran Russia for so long. I think, in the mid-1980's, it became increasingly clear to the Russian government that they were losing the Cold War. They either had to act then, initiate the nuclear war they so dreaded, or for ever fall behind the West. There was very real serious consideration of fighting then -- of initiating a nuclear war with America. Gorbachev was the result of this insane dialogue. Russia knew it couldn't keep up with America if Americans were united behind Reagan. The 60's and 70's made it appear that the left was winning. Then this all came apart in the 1980's. Russia panicked. They tried to assassinate the Pope to keep a religious revolution in Poland from destroying their empire. But the pope was too strong to die. Poland's rebellion really signaled an end to the Russian empire. Gorbachev understood that this was the end. Russian either had to choose suicide through nuclear war; or they had to step back and let the empire break apart..."

"We had the same choice," Norman Mailer responds. "You said so yourself, in your book..."

"Yes, we were thinking the same thoughts," Crossmann admits. "The issues were expand or contract; life or death; Brahma or Siva. The male principle expands; the female principle contracts. Heat expands; the Cold contracts. The Universe has outward manifestation; the Anti-Universe has inward manifestation...."

"You've described Gorbachev as a manifestation of the Michael the Archangel force," Charlie Rose replies, "that you say came to the planet in the 1980's to save the planet...."

There is snickering in the audience.

"Did he have green wings and purple hair?" Gloria Steinem asks. She is back again.

"Not to my knowledge," Crossmann replies.

"That was Betty Freidan," Donald Trump whispers to his wife.

Mrs. Trump laughs with gusto.

"Did he have surrendipitous posture; or was he wearing a swastika?" JK Galbreath asks.

"That sounds like a trick question," Crossmann repsonds.

"Was he the CEO of IBM?" Ralph Nader asks, angry, his hands shaking visibly.

"Lou Gerstner was the CEO of IBM," Crossmann replies. "At least I think he was...."

"Is this some kind of sick joke?" Jane Fonda asks.

"What?" Crossmann replies.

"What?" Fonda asks.

"Is what some kind of sick joke?"

"This archangel stuff," Fonda replies. "Is this a sick joke; or is it some conspiracy involving the CIA or the FBI or perhaps the National Rifle Association...?"

"Probably the CIA," Fox Mulder implants a thought into the conversation.

"A vast right-wing conspiracy," Hillary responds.

"Yes!" Bill Clinton says emphatically. The audience turns toward the president. "Yes -- I agree with my wife," he tries to explain. "A fast right shwwwwing conspiracy...!"

Clinton is glowing. Denise Rich's friend has just picked some cookie crumbs off the front of the president's trousers.

"If I have my way, I'll make it illegal for you to use the word 'angel' in public!" a woman announces in a thick, south Texas drawl. It is Madelaine Murray-O'Hare, an overweight woman wearing a dull blue housedress and a button near his bosom showing a religious cross exed-out. "The ACLU is supporting my suit to make any use of the words 'God' or 'angel' or 'devil' or 'prayer' in public places against the law...!"

Gentleman Jim Heldbert is accompanying Madame O'Hare. He is dressed in a black tux with tails, a black top hat; and he is carrying a cane.

He cries out, in the style of a barker: "The raunchy Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are planning their 20th Anniversary party in the gay Castro district of San Francisco this coming Easter, and the catholic church is mad - again. The church seems to have forgotten that, in San Francisco, kinky is a matter of public pride. But can our local Sisters really be any kinkier than the catholic ones, who all claim to be brides of the same 2000-year old dead guy? What's kinkier than necrophiliac polygamy? The crazy catholics have fathers who aren't fathers, mothers who aren't mothers, brothers who aren't brothers, and sisters who aren't sisters. And they think it qualifies them to discuss "family values!" As if that wasn't kooky enough, they swear off sex. Abstinence - the strangest sexual perversion of all. Compared to the kooky catholics, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence seem normal. If the catholic church wants to make criticism of itself a crime, that's a clear sign that criticism is urgently needed...."

The audience laughs mildly.

"Who is that guy?" Columbo asks. "Isn't he a comedian? Haven't they seen him before -- was he on Seinfeld or Frasier...?"

"I am a Catholic," Senator Kennedy replies. "And I resent your assault on the Catholic Church and on Catholic beliefs...!"

Madonna appears in the room, dressed as Eva Peron.

Everything stops; all eyes follow her into the room.

"It's the Virgin Mary herself," Gentleman Jim invokes.

Madame O'Hare laughs heartily; but she and Jim are the only two laughing.

Hedda nods to Lola; Lola nods to the security agents.

The fat woman and the man in the top-hat are hustled away; they leave insisting that the state has no authority to take them down into the basement. All the security men have listening devices in their ears. They are taking orders from some invisible agent. They don't respond to the pleas of the two atheists.

"Michael Crossmann became a bear-hunter in a very real sense," Charlie Rose begins again. "He went to sleep, in his novel, he died, through Jacob Heimkreiter, a liberal, a friend of the Russians and a friend of communism, a strong critic of Ronald Reagan; and he woke up a conservative filled with the warrior's instinct for self-preservation, an adversary of the Communists and Russia, and an ally, a protector of Ronald Reagan. There is some profound mystery in all of this, as profound and as mysterious as the human genome..."

"With some bear-demon of his own threatening to kill him," Harold Bloom adds.

"Something akin to the transmigration of souls," Moshe Frank interjects. "His novel is about the transmigration of souls..."

"Any more comments about this piece?" Hedda asks.

Silence.

"Do it again," Bill Clinton is heard whispering to someone.

People turn to look at him. Hillary stares darts into his forehead.

Beth, the sexy blonde, is still trying to pick cookie crumbs off the president's crotch.

"Jesus, Bill," the Donald says quietly to the president. "Get a hotel room, won't you?"

"I can't control her," Clinton says to Trump, smiling his infectious smile. "She loves cookie crumbs -- what can I do...?"

"I'm not so sure those are cookie crumbs, in fact," Columbo says. "I have a feeling those cookie crumbs might just have a South American origin..."

"Let's move on to the next painting," Hedda says. "Number twenty-one, entitled -- and this is a very literary title -- 'He Confronts the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and, Choosing Re-Birth, He Saves the World from Destruction'. That's quite a title..."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, speaking again in the old woman's voice: "The seven Laya centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same sense that chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in esotericism, the scale of reckoning of differentiation begins. From the Centres -- beyond which esoteric philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the 'Seven Sons' of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers -- begins the differentiation of the elements which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. It has often been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, as he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The whole Kosmos must necessarily exist in the One Source of energy from which this light (Fohat) emanates. Just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven different conditions. So does Fohat. He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etcetera, and is the 'spirit' of ELECTRICITY, which is the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him whom the Christians call the 'Messengers' of their God (who is rather the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and whom we call the 'Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light'..."

"'The Apocalypse'," Hedda begins. "Quite an appropriate title and subject, considering what tonight is. None of us are sure whether Western Civilization as we know it will disappear at the stroke of Midnight tonight, like some dark fairy tale. Is this Y2K fear founded on reality? Does it have religious or mystical underpinnings? I'm not sure what this drawing has to say on this subject. What do you think, Charlie...?"

HE CONFRONTS THE FOUR HORSEMEN

OF THE APOCALYPSE, AND, CHOOSING

RE-BIRTH, HE SAVES THE WORLD FROM

DESTRUCTION

"Well, this is an enigmatic drawing, to be sure," Crossmann says. "Crossmann did choose re-birth, in the novel at least, under the aegis of Michael the Archangel, the Defender of the Western World.... I'm not sure how this relates to the drawing, however..."

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of course," Moshe Frank begins, "represent the four directions, the four guardian angels, as they contract toward the center of the Earth, the world navel, or the womb: Israel. Many people argue this naval is Jerusalem. Four armies come from the four directions. Meeting in the center, at the womb, to annihilate one another, and to destroy the world and, at the same time, to give birth to the next world. And the Christ child, the messiah, in this drawing, preparing to jump into the opening, into the womb, choosing re-birth rather than destruction, thereby, saving the world. The savior is born..."

Henrietta Beach comes in: "This is all a bit mystical for me -- and, also, probably, for some of my colleagues, who are agnostic at best. I would like to echo something Reggie said earlier tonight, about criciticm being the truly crucial act. Our art was and has been critical. What I mean by this is that in the major works of our time - be it novels or paintings, poems or musical compositions -- and I do include Michael Crossmann's work in this discussion of course, both his writing and his painting - criticism is inseparable from creation. Let me correct myself: criticism is creative. The criticism of critique, criticism of form, criticism of time in novels or of the self in poetry, criticism of the human figure and visible reality in painting and sculpture. In Marcel Duchamp's work, for example, which stands diametrically opposed to Crossmann's, the century's denial is manifested as a criticism of passion and its phantoms. More than a portrait, his 'The Large Glass' is an X-ray picture; 'The Bride'... is a funereal and amusing construct. In Crossmann, the disfigurements are no less atrocious, though they convey a contrary feeling: passion criticizes a beloved form, and for this reason his violence and abuse bear the innocent cruelty of love. Passional criticism, bodily denial. The slits, bites, razor slashes and dismemberments he inflicts to the body are punishments, acts of vengeance, reprimands: tributes. Love, anger, impatience, jealousy: worshipping of forms that are alternately terrifying and desirable, in which life is manifest. Erotic fury in sight of the enigma of presence, and an attempt to descend to its origin, that is the grave where bones and worms become one. Crossmann does not paint reality. He paints the love of reality and the horror of being real. To him, reality is never sufficiently real; it always requires more of him. For this reason, he wounds and caresses it; he insults and kills it. For this reason he revives it. Its denial is a mortal embrace. He is a painter with no beyond, with no other world but that beyond the body, which veritably falls short of the beyond. This is where his great strength and his great limitation dwells... In his aggressions against the human figure, particularly the female figure, the drawing line always prevails. This line is like a gashing knife and a revivalist magic wand -- I think most readily of his painting 'Marital Strife'. A live and elastic line: serpent, whip, beam; a line suddenly transformed into an arching jet of water, a winding river, a poplar stem, a woman's waistline. The line runs swiftly across the canvas, and as it passes a whole world of forms springs up, as old and as contemporary as elements without a history. An ocean, a sky, a few rocks, a thicket and everyday objects, plus historical debris: broken icons, dull knifes, spoon handles, bicycle handlebars. Once again everything returns to nature, that is never motionless and that never moves. A nature that, like the painter's line, perpetually invents and eradicates its invention... Just how are future generations to regard such a rich and violent life's work made and unmade by passion and haste, genius and ease...?"

"Clearly his work arches its back like a cat in self-defense," Reggie agrees. "The coldness of the other-world experience makes us almost want to grab our coats. He takes us into places where we don't belong. It is like reading Rilke: we go in there sometimes against our will, confronting images, beings, which are not a part of us, which are a part of him, but not us. Beings who have laid a claim on his soul, on his nature; for he has unstrung something, some kind of knowledge that has put a mark on him, not the mark of Cain, but a mark nontheless. The mark of Faust. He has sought knowledge; and in being given it, he has somehow been transformed into a cat arching his back in self-defense, just before the rush of the two mad world cats begins, moving toward devourment of not only the artist, but also the artist's audience...."

"Articulate views, of course," Xavier Rubensteins congratulates his colleagues. "But we musn't forget the philology in this man runs like the Amazon through everything he explores. In everything there is a primitive memory that he alone understands. He presents it to us; but we are modern. There is something extraordinarily archaic in this man. Is it good; is it bad? I don't know. I remember Colonel Kurtz in Contrad's Heart of Darkness; and I see in Michael Crossmann some element of this man, this Colonel Kurtz, who gains some knowledge of the primitive that makes him very dangerous to modern civilization. There is something foreboding; something daemonic in these pictures. Not demonic in the Christian sense; but daemonic in the classical sense, some genius of perception that makes us quake just a little bit; a curtain of innocence he has snatched away, leaving us, like the child in this painting or drawing, standing before these giant monsters who wish to annihilate reality. The only salvation, interestingly, is for us to jump right into the drawing, to go deeper into the drawing. But to jump in also means our own annihilation. We know that -- and, so, we resist it. We know that it will destroy us by saving us; and also, in saving us, it will also destroy us..."

"Precisely," Reggie says. "The archaic pin which ties the post-modern into the modern, back near the head. A kind of hair-pin or a broach. Yes, there can be no doubt: The revolution is coming! The revolution is coming again...! Artists will be revolutionaries again, as they were in the good old days. Instead of the businessmen they are today...!"

"Artists have become businessmen today, because they no longer believe in the revolution," Ed Harris replies, dressed up as Jackson Pollock. "They understand that they are living in the best of worlds, not the best of possible worlds, but the best of actual worlds. They lost their belief in communism. So they retreated from the world of social criticism, thereby saving the world from chaos..."

"Are you suggesting that is the meaning is this 're-birth' in the painting?" Hedda asks Harris.

Reggie Lyons interrupts: "And what of the therapeutic need inherent in avant-garde art -- that of saving the drowning soul from dismemberment at the hands of the wicked, philistine, society...?"

"The drowning soul has been pulled ashore," Harris replies. "And the society has been found to be less wicked than previously believed..."

Reggie Lyons' face is red.

"The artist has gone to heaven," Harris says. "Which was the objective of avant-garde art. To help the artist get to heaven. The artist has overcome alienation. He has come home again. The energy of Michael the Archangel has brought all the broken atoms back home again..."

"It has not brought me home!" Reggie Lyons cries, a vein bulging in his neck. "The moral objective, by its very nature, is a goal, a home as you put it, which can never be reached. The moral objective is like the God of the Old Testament, the God without a name, without a face, who cannot be cognized or represented. The artist is, by definition, the Cain, the outsider, the ant-hero. Any attempt to make him less steals from him his Luciferian grandeur...!"

"Idiot's head soup!" Richard Baker grumbles under his breath. Then he catches a glimpse of Mick Jagger in the audience. He always admired the Rolling Stones.

"Watch what you say, Baker!" Reggie warns his critic.

"The critic is not the creator!" Baker replies. "You don't get it. You are always trying to deify yourself. To put yourself on the same plane with the creators. We are parasites -- don't you see? We have no life without the living -- but we stand above the living, looking down on them, telling them how they can do it better; where they succeed; and where they fail -- aggrandizing ourselves. But if they did not create art for us to declaim, we would be silent mechanisms, automobiles without petrol, waiting for some miracle to come along to free us from our atomic compound..."

"Jesus!" Columbo says, startled, turning to the president.

Beth is now on her knees in from of President Clinton, her nose pressed up against his groin, trying to sniff the white powder off this crotch into her nose.

Clinton is urging her to get up off the floor before someone else notices.

Hillary refuses to look.

"That man!" the Donald says with admiration. "Nothing stops that bastard! Nothing keeps him from getting what he wants! You got to admire that kind of insistence...!"

Martin Sheen hands President Clinton his own hotel key.

"Get her outta here, Mister President," Sheen says. "I'll cover for you here while you're gone. No one will even notice the difference. We're cut from the same cloth -- and I say that with admiration for you, Mister President -- for what you've done for the working man...."

Clinton and Beth and Denise Rich sneak away, laughing, not looking back. Heading for some kind of party...

Hillary refuses to watch them leave. Her skin is like alibaster, glowing, as swift as procelain.

"I think this piece suggests much," Hedda says. "But maybe we should let it make these suggestions -- and not try to over-analyze it. Sometimes suggestiveness is just right, the most appropriate comment of all..."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again: "The 'Monad' is the combination of the last two 'principles' in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term 'human monad' applies only to the dual soul (Atma-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle, Atma, alone. Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung like Rudra from Brahma, 'from the brain of the Father and the bosom of the Mother,' and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative electricity. He has seven sons who are his brothers; and Fohat is forced to be born time after time whenever any two of his son-brothers indulge in too

close contact -- whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he binds together and unites those of unlike nature and separates those of similar temperaments. This, of course, relates, as any one can see, to electricity generated by friction and to the law involving attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity -- and, in doing this, he becomes like Vishnu, the Preserver. The Seven "Sons-brothers," however, represent and personify the seven forms of Cosmic magnetism called in practical Occultism the 'Seven Radicals,' whose co-operative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all these as Super-sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of senses; the former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them -- the latter, our ordinary physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious CAUSES. To attempt a description of such ENTITIES would be worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the UNKNOWN SUBSTANCE, the more it approaches reality, as being removed the farther from this world of Illusion...."

"The twenty-second painting in the show is one of my favorites," Hedda begins. "The title is 'Where Venus Lives.' Charlie, do you want to let us know where this fits into the biography of the artist...?"

WHERE VENUS LIVES

"Well," Charlie Rose says, "the artist has chosen to fall, in the last drawing, thereby saving the world. Now he is interested again is physical love. He has become Earth-bound again; and Venus has power over the Earth. Venus is where love and sensuality dwell. She is the Morning-Star; she entices the man to fall, to procreate with her, to plant seeds in the Earth, so that the Earth will have fertility, wealth, abundance later in the year. Children..."

"Sex," Moshe Frank says. "This is a painting about the power of sex. We remember that the warrrior, in an earlier painting, was given his penis back. This penis is to use to fertilize the woman. By fertilizing the woman, by giving her children, the man saves the woman from chaos. Chaos is, in fact, the unfertile woman. The Unfertile Woman, the childless woman, has no future. So she becomes destructive. She has nothing to do. Venus is undressing in this painting, removing her final piece of clothing, a bracelet on her right hand. I see two men in the painting; and both are fearful. There is a man in the copper and black pattern to our right of Venus. And he is fleeing to the east. The other man, behind him, in the black and green pattern, has a look of terror on his face. Venus has two golden horns on her head; so this is not all wonderful sex. There is something behind the surface of her beauty..."

Harold Bloom says: "Venus and Lucifer are linked in Christian metaphor."

"One of the horns, on our right," Richard Baker adds, "actually becomes a serpent's head."

"So, the woman is the devil?" Hillary asks.

"Why are we not surprised by this?" Gloria Steinem asks.

"There is a duality in all of his work," Richard Baker replies. "Good and evil are indissoluably linked. Venus is good and bad. She represents the fertility of the Earth; and also the imprisonment of man in matter. Men fear sex with women; but are also drawn to it for ever. Sex enslaves them to the material life -- which is both their defilement and their salvation. Which draws them away from God -- but also draws them back to God. If you insist on seeing the world always as good or evil, then you will never understand the work of Michael Crossmann..."

"So the man is afraid of the woman?" Hillary asks, filled with pride.

"Of course, Richard Baker replies. "The woman represents the death of the man. The man is born from the woman, the son is born of the woman, and the word 'mortal' is the first word he sees upon his birth..."

"So, not only is woman evil," Hillary says, "but she represents death to the man...!"

"Life and death," Baker replies. "So, man, too, is life and death."

"There is no clarity in his vision!" Hillary cries.

"His vision is Life," Baker replies. "He has eaten from the Tree of Life. You wish for moral clarity because you want to be on the right side. That is your illusion -- that you are good. But if you are good, then the person across from you must be evil. From this illusion springs the history of warfare. Clarity is not always a friend. The clear truth today will, tomorrow, be the old truth, or falsehood. The light shines on 12 different truths in time. It is better to the be light than it is to be the truth..."

"That is nonsense," Reggie Lyons replies. "This belief is the illusion of morality is what allows immorality to flourish on the earth..."

"What is immortality?" Baker asks. "The Nazis believed the Jews immoral. The Jews understood that the Nazis were immoral. This is like Mister Lyons' two forces: the avant-garde who believe that Life is evil; and the post-avant-garde who believes that Life is good, that rebellion against Life is evil -- and, ultimately, stupid..."

"Are you calling me stupid, you little doctoral student!" Reggie Lyons cries. "I am a doctor of philosophy I will remind you. I am a member of the Royal Academy...!"

"I didn't say you were stupid, Doctor Lyons," Baker corrects. "I said you were naive -- and that you don't understand this man's work, except through the lens you've manufactured our of your own drive for political status..."

"That's it!" Reggie Lyons cries. He reaches out to grab young Baker by the collar; but Baker throws a stiff left jab that catches Doctor Lyons on the jaw, then an overhand right that strikes Lyons above the right eye. The blow knocks Doctor Lyons backward on his butt. He does not try to get up. There is a cut above his right eye. He lies down, dazed.

Lola Fanti rushes in and takes Richard Baker in a choke hold, dropping him to his knees. Her men move in and escort Baker through the crowd down to the Museum basement.

Catherine Zeta-Jones cries: "I used to be a nurse."

She hurries up to the injured Englishman, kneeling down beside him. Hedda hands her a clean white napkin -- which Catherine presses against the wound above Lyons' right eye. She bends over the injured man: "Are you alright?" she asks.

Crossmann is standing across from Ms. Zeta-Jones, looking down at her splendid figure in her beautiful blue gown. Florence Nightingale in evening dress. Her breasts are almost fully exposed as she leans over the victim, ministering aid.

Crossmann enjoys the view: two voluptuous flesh fruits, abundant, ready to be eaten.

She looks up at Crossmann, smiling knowingly.

"Are you enjoying the view?" she asks Michael Crossmann.

"As much as any I've ever seen," Crossmann replies.

"Let me up," Doctor Lyons insists. "I will not lie down here like Larry Holmes or some other of Tyson's victims. So I have blood on my white shirt. I don't care. I will fight for my ideas. I may be bloodied for my ideas. I will even die for my ideas. For I am an avant-garde critic. I am willing to die for what I know to be right. The bullies, like Mister Baker, defend a corrupt society -- and I speak for revolution against these bullies...!"

He is led away by Lola Fanti, who takes him around the corner to the administrative offices for some medical attention.

"Please, let us have calm!" Hedda cries. "Ideas seem to be wearing boxing gloves tonight. I guess one should expect nothing less on Millennium eve. We should move to the next painting, number twenty-three..."

Crossmann notices that Louis Farrakahn is talking with Jim off to the side. He is holding the Oprah's briefcase. He seems to be offering it to Jim.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, speaking again in the old Russian woman's voice: "It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another -- a child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal body...."

The audience moves on to the next painting.

"This one is entitled 'The Matador'," Hedda begins. "This painting, and the upcoming 'Marital Strife', remind me quite a bit of Picasso. This one perhaps not so much for the style, as for the subject matter. The matador is, very clearly, a masculine figure, a force of masculine activity. It is a day painting; and a day activity...."

MATADOR

"The Bull is a symbol of Taurus, also," Moshe Frank adds. "Which is the second step of the Male energy during the Day. The Springtime of the year..."

"He is a kind of hero, battling with the dualistic forces of nature," Richard Baker replies. He has re-appeared, shadowed by one of Fanti's officers. "The dualistic script, which is the shadow of the bull, is the most enduring image of this painting, at least to me. The intacacies of the interwoven psyche -- it is the black and white woven together which creates pictures, which creates stories -- is the counterpoint in the painting. One has the sense that the entire painting is, indeed, reflected in this counterpoint somewhere, somewhere off the canvas. There are many beings in this counterpoint, many creatures, which are the memories and fears of the matador himself. In the head of the bull is a main face, with a large mouth, very white lips. He is a kind of alter-ego, the non-heroic being in the matador himself, that the matdor wishes to keep away from the surface of life..."

"A kind of demonic shadow," Moshe Frank agrees. "The spirit of Discord, Rebellion, the Night -- the avant-garde Night -- which the Day God drives away, under the stampeding foot of the Minotaur..."

"The matador is a man of heart," Peter Falk adds. "That is very clearly illustrated."

"The sense I am getting from all this biography, the meaning of the sequence of pictures," Hillary says, "is that the artist thinks that the world is better with the women at home, pregnant, barefoot, taking care of the children. Is that the truth of his seemingly very reactionary vision...?"

"Mister Crossmann," Hedda asks. "Would you like to respond to that question...?"

"The bull is the Earth and the demands of the Earth," Crossmann says. "The matador plays with this bull. He wars with the bull, on the bull's own ground. He dances with the bull. .."

"But what is the implication for the women?" Hillary asks. "We have just seen Venus disrobing to have sex with the frightened men. The next image we see is the man fighting the bull. Very virile, very earthy; but there is no woman. Is the woman at home, barefoot and pregnant...?"

"Probably," Crossmann says. "To everything there is a season, in symbolism."

"The woman is pregnant," Hillary says, "and the men are free to run wild, killing bulls and all else. Where is the justice in that, I ask you...?"

"Women bearing children is no injustice," Crossmann replies. "That is Nature's rule. We try to twist that reality out of shape, because it does not fit our ideology. There is no absolute equality between the sexes. Men are created for one task; women for another. Many tasks can be shared. But because we have lost track of the main roles of men and women in our society, we have fallen into chaos and perversion. Being a mother is the highest creative act of a woman, greater, much greater than painting a painting or writing a poem. When women belittle this act, they do themselves and their society a grave injustice. What act is more noble than bearing a child, in raising a child to be a good human being...?"

"You want us in the house so you can have all the glory!" Hillary responds. "We know it! We want some of the glory too...!"

"Why do you want glory so badly?" Crossmann asks.

"Wha do you want it so badly?" Hillary asks.

"I don't want it so badly," Crossmann replies. "I know that it is another form of the cross."

"Penis envy!" Freud cries -- the ghost of Freud -- moving through the room like a cloud, a mist.

Hillary tries to strike him as he floats past her, above her head.

Gloria Steinem throws her shoe at him.

"Fascist!" the woman in the chartreuse downy duck suit cries wildly, looking at nothing. "You and Andy Warhol are to blame for our current state of desperation...!"

"Crossmann is not so bad," Jerry Fallwell calls out. "He wants the women back in the home...!"

"Everything in its season," Crossmann says. "Even rebellion, when the Night gets to rule. Even rebellion, when the knife-wielding wife, with her illegitimate lover, strikes her husband down..."

"Murder?" Fallwell cries. "No, we can't tolerate murder! Not in our mythology...!"

Fallwell turns to Jim Baker: "He's against queers -- did you hear that, Jimmy Boy! He's against the dirty queers...!"

But Jim Baker does not celebrate.

"Prison has taught me to be more humble," Jim Baker responds.

"Hell, prison turned you into a queer yourself!" Fallwell says. "I had heard that about you. I didn't believe it until now...!"

Fallwell turns to Jimmy Swagart: "Jimmy, Crossmann's against the queers and the perverts! Did you hear that...?"

"I'm a sinner, Jerry," Swagart confesses. "I have sinned with...!"

"Not with boys! Not you too...! Not like that damned Baker...!"

"No, with....women of ill repute!" Swagart confesses.

"Oh, hell, Jimmy. Hide a corn cob in a dark place at night," Fallwell replies. "That never really hurt anyone. Into your niece late at night when the family is asleep; or into the Mexican gardener's youngest daughter when she's working in the house when the family has gone to the beach house. Hell, it never hurt anyone. As long as it's not a little boy's butt that is. Go on tv; say you've sinned; say you're sorry. Ask to be forgiven. Take a page from our friend Clinton's book. Ask them to send you money. Hell, everything'll be ok. Crossmann is against the queers! I think I can forgive him for being an occultist -- as long as he's against the queers...!"

"Are you against homosexuals?" Elton John asks Crossmann.

"The crooked become straight," Crossmann replies. "And the straight then become crooked. That is the Law. Homosexuals are trapped in a box of rebellion. They fight against their fathers. When they forgive themselves, they forgive their fathers. And, when they forgive their fathers, they are released from the box...."

"Then you hate perversions? Is that correct, Crossmann?" Fallwell asks.

"To hate is also a perversion," Crossmann replies.

"To hate evil is no perversion!" Fallwell cries.

"Jesus forgave even perversions," Crossmann replies.

"He did not counsel perversion -- he forgave it," Fallwell responds. "But the father does not counsel or forgive perversion..."

"And when the son becomes the father, all perversion disappears from the world," Crossmann says. "And the world, again, has saved itself from destruction..."

"You are like a moving target," Fallwell cries. "You have no beliefs. You are like a shadow. You are like the shadow of the matador, moving always, avoiding the bull..."

"Avoiding your bull," Richard Baker says.

The audience laughs.

"You are like the ghost of Freud, Crossmann!" Jerry Fallwell cries. "You have no substance. You are like the wind, with no morality, with no bone or body..."

Fallwell picks up Goria Steinem's shoe from the floor and throws it at Crossmann.

The Magician catches it before it strikes Crossmann.

"Let he who has not sinned cast the first shoe," Crossmann says.

"Slippery devil!" Fallwell mutters under his breath.

Fallwell turns to Jimmy Swagart: "We can't let him come to power! He will ruin us surely. We have a good thing now. We have made a very lucrative business out of this religion thing. If he comes to power, he'll ruin it for us. Let's go have a talk with these Blue Men..."

He points to the four skinheads standing at the end of the audience.

Count Ricard and Countess Ursula Heidrich, from Stuttgart, motion to Lola. They are interested in bidding on the painting 'Matador'. They are standing with two other Europeans, Ingrid Thule, an heiress from Oslo, and Maurice Levoissier, a leading collector from Paris. They all stand in a silent circle of refinement, pale and stiff, motionless and cured -- as if they have mastered the art of living without breathing.

"This piece is exquisite," Levoissier says. "This first really great work in America since de Kooning. I think you are making an excellent choice, Ricard."

"We will move on unless we have other comments," Hedda says.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, handing him Gloria Steinem's shoe. A black shoe. Cinderella. Crossmann smells the shoe. The crowd shudders in horror.

Crossmann flips the shoe through the air back to Gloria Steinem. Ted Kennedy catches it in the air; and hands the shoe back to Ms. Steinem.

The Magician says: "When Fohat is said to produce 'Seven Laya Centres,' it means that for formative or creative purposes, the GREAT LAW (Theists may call it God) stops, or rather modifies its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the manifested Universe. 'The great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya to cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara.' We have said that Laya is what science may call the Zero-point or line; the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the NOUMENON of the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognise as 'Force'; or again the Noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object to finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and subjectivity too; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning if we attempt to imagine a neutral centre -- the dream of those who would discover perpetual motion. A 'neutral centre' is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter as already formed; each of these corresponding to an appropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of (say) the lower in their transformation upwards, these will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception into nothing -- or rather it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special and not readily discoverable properties. Such 'Seven Neutral Centres,' then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it -- 'Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build'. . . -- quickens matter into activity and evolution...."

"The twenty-fourth painging is, in fact, a very sad work," Hedda says. "It is entitled 'Saying Goodbye'. It is rather sparse..."

"I want this painting," Elton John cries out. "It is an emblem of the AIDS crisis. Two homosexual lovers are saying goodbye to one another...!"

SAYING GOODBYE

Fallwell calls from the back of the room: "AIDS is a plague brought upon man because of Homosexuals...!"

"In terms of biography," Charlie Rose comes in, "this painting is about the separation of the two brothers, Michael and William Crossmann, who had lived so close for so many years. Michael and William were like twins, were like Castor and Pollux of the earlier painting. But Michael Crossmann has been re-born, has entered again the arena of sex. He wishes to marry. He meets again a woman he knew in college, Irene Carlyle. They had been lovers; in fact, they had ..."

"They murdered a baby together!" Oprah Winfrey calls from the back row, near Reverend Farrakahn. "He murdered the baby! She merely flushed a foetus out of here system since she was not prepared emotionally or financially to be a mother at that time..."

"Well, yes," Rose says. "They did have an abortion together. At which event Michael Crossmann passed out on the clinic floor..."

"Fucking wimp!" the woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume says, glaring up at Crossmann. "Matador my ass. It they would have thrown a bloody fetus at him, he would have fainted away like the Andy Warhol he is or is pretending not to be...!"

Crossmann notices that Jerry Fallwell has an open briefcase he is showing to the four skinheads in the back of the Museum. He turns and points to Michael Crossmann.

"He will marry Irene Carlyle soon after," Rose continues. "They will have a daughter. The two brothers will part company at this point, Michael Crossmann remaining in Oregon, and William Crossmann proceeding to the small town of Belt, Montana..."

"I think it's about death and AIDS," Elton John insists.

The ghost of Freddie Mercury moves through the room, trying to sing but coughing instead.

The ghost of Rock Hudson also appears in the room, moving up behind Gloria Steinem, pinching her on the ass.

"My God!" Steinem recoils. She turns to strike her molester.

"Loosen up, babe!" Hudson says. "You've got a nice ass, a cute smile. Why don't you learn to live a little! I pity the poor boy who has to grow up a son under your regime! You're as bad as Stalin! No wonder so many boys turn up queer. Mothers like you cut their balls until they believe they have no balls. Turn them in to asshole bandits. Little girls looking for a friend. Look at me. I know what I'm saying. I lived it, baby! I know what it's like...!"

He floats out of the room.

Elton John gets down on his knees and begins to pray to the two ghosts who leave the room holding hands.

A group of middle-aged women appear in the museum, carrying a large picture of John Lennon. They are all dressed in white. And they are singing: "Imagine there's no country; it isn't hard to do; nothing to kill or die for; no religion too...!"

"Lennonites," Peter Falk whispers to Michael Douglas. "A new religious order founded on the songs of John Lennon. They believe Lennon was the second coming of Jesus...!"

The ghost of John Lennon follows behind the singing vestals. He is dressed in a long flowing white robe, with long brown hair, a beard, and a white tampax on his head. He tries to take a glass of champaign from the tray of a passing waitress; but she pulls away from him, startled by his pale countenance.

"Give me that glass, damn it! Do you know who I am!" Lennon commands.

"You're an asshole with a kotex on your head!" the waitress responds, walking away without giving him a glass.

Everyone in the room genuflects as John Lennon's ghost passes through the room, then down into the msueum basement, looking for alcohol.

Crossmann notices an Asian woman, very pretty, moving behind Lennon's ghost. It looks like Yoko Ono from one angle; but when she turns to face Crossmann she becomes Hoa-Lan Tran, the woman Crossmann remembers from the Millionaire show.

She follows Lennon down into the basement.

"I think this piece is one of the strongest in the show," Woody Allen says. "For the power of its feeling. Cearly, it is the end of something. It has a very strong emotion in it."

"Then comes Crossmann's marriage," Charlie Rose announces, looking ahead to the next painting.

Crossmann notices that the fourth skinhead is no longer the Governor of Minnesota -- but he has become the bald man from the dark building, the one who tried to steal the election for Gore. He smiles at Crossmann, winks, and raises his right hand, pretending it a gun. He squeezes the trigger.

"Shall we move on to 'Wedding Night'?" Hedda asks.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, and says, in the voice of Jim, Crossmann's friend: "There are enemies here, Michael. Enemies who want you dead. Enemies with money who are trying to buy your dissolution. Beware both friends and those who say they are friends! Beware the enemies most whose enemy you have yet to be declared...!"

"'Wedding Night' is the twentieth-fifth piece in the show," Hedda says. "It is colored pencil on black paper. It is a humorous illustration of two ducks having a kind of engineered intercourse. I must say that this is a strangely unromatic impression of the lovemaking at a honeymoon...."

WEDDING NIGHT

"It is more like a sculpture," Reggie Lyons says, having returned from the first-aid room, two bandaids pinching closed the wound above his left eye. The eye is swollen and discolored. "I believe it could be buillt in three dimensions and be, really, quite striking..."

Lola has a burly sergeant stand between Lyons and Richard Baker. He forces them to shake hands.

"Does anyone feel insulted by this rendering of lovemaking in such a mechanical construction?" Hedda asks.

"Well, I feel insulted by most of the show," Hillary Clinton says. "The treatment of women and non-whites in this exhibit is really quite insulting to all of us who are sensitive to those issues. This painting is a slap in the face of women generally. The woman is nothing but a sex machine, attached to the man by some constructed element. It is a huge penis going in to her private part. That must really hurt. I hope he was good enough to lubricate the woody before he put it in her.... That marital duty can be quite painful for those wives who are not in the mood whenever the fancy stirkes a husband to...make sparks..."

"It is humorous," Warren Beatty responds. "It is playful. I think its quite fun, really enjoyable..."

"Women are always on the bottom," Jane Fonda says. "In Crossmann's work, women are always on the bottom..."

"That is not true," Richard Baker replies. "In his novel at least, women are on top half of the time..."

"But it is the time of trouble," Gloria Steinem says. "Women on top is a signal of trouble, a signal of chaos..."

"Night is a time of rest," Baker replies. "The women are in power during that rest. Only prior to waking does the rest become troubled. As the man prepares to rise and take command, again, of the world..."

"Look at the next painting!" Gloria says. "Male chauvinist pig...!"

"Are we ready to move on to the next painting?" Hedda asks.

No response.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking in the old woman's voice again: "'The Seed appears and disappears continuously.' Here 'Seed' stands for 'the World-germ,' viewed by Science as material particles in a highly attenuated condition, but in Occult physics as 'Spiritual particles,' i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval differentiation. In theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later on a celestial being, a God. In the 'beginning,' that which is called in mystic phraseology 'Cosmic Desire' evolves into absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be absolute light -- in other words, absolute darkness -- as physical science seeks to prove. That shadow appears under the form of primordial matter, allegorized -- if one likes -- in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, science chooses to see in this the primordial Fire-Mist, it is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the other, whether Fohat or the famous FORCE of Science, nameless, and as difficult of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something 'caused the Universe to move with circular motion,' as Plato has it; or, as the Occult teaching expresses it: The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach each other and aggregate.' (Book of Dzyan) . . . . . 'Being scattered in Space, without order or system, the world-germs come into frequent collision until their final aggregation, after which they become wanderers (Comets). Then the battles and struggles begin. The older (bodies) attract the younger, while others repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that escape become worlds.'

"The next painting, number 26,is the portrait of, judging from the title, the 'Self-Made Man'," Hedda says.

"He is the symbol of what is wrong with the world," Gloria Steinem says. "Greed, the patriarchy, white racism, the Individual against the collective. Capitalism. Everything that is wrong with the West..."

"He is the enemy?" Donald Trump asks. "Is that what you are saying?"

"Yes, he is the enemy!" Gloria says.

"He is the man you want to castrate?" Ted Kennedy asks.

"If she doesn't, I do!" Hillary Clinton cries.

"The strong man frightens you?" the Donald asks. "You need to have your man weak, like a little boy...? You want your sons to be gay, so you can control them, rule them...!"

"This painting clearly alienates many women," Hedda says. "Even to myself. This painting is a bit overwhelming..."

"It seems to me," Morgan Freeman responds, "that this man is not a white man at all. This man has a dark face. Has no one noticed this...?"

SELF-MADE MAN

"This represents Crossmann's atonement with money," Charlie Rose says. "Crossmann, for quite some time, after his so-called 're-birth' and his marriage and fatherhood -- Crossmann spent quite a bit of time investing money and trying to develop computer software to time trading in stocks. This is Crossmann in his father role. He is attempting to gain money, to build a better life for his family. It is clearly his capitalist phase, as he had a communist phase. We note the background in this collage painting are a series of stock tables and charts taken from the newspaper. He is clearly now in the universe, as he was, before, in the anti-universe. The anti-universe is, by defintion, anti-materialistic...."

"I hate this painting, " Jane Fonda cries. "It is so arrogant. So self-satisfied...!"

"It is too strong for women who like to rule their men," Norman Mailer replies.

"Do any men find this painting offensive?" Hedda asks.

No respond in the affirmative.

Suddenly, the young woman in the chartreuse down duck costume appears near the painting and begins hurling what looks like an umber-colored mud at the painting. A large clump of the mud lands on the wall next to the painting.

"Oh!" the crowd gasps. The mud has a yellow, rotten stench.

"I believe that's elephant dung," Mailer says. "I remember it from my safaris in Africa."

"Elephant dung!" Hedda cries. "Lola!"

But Lola has already snapped into action. She has the chartreuse duck in a half-nelson; and she is wrestling her to the ground.

"Where in hell would she find elephant dung in New York?" Hedda asks. But then she remembers....

Madelaine Murray-O'Hare and her friend, Gentleman Jim, reappear in the gallery, off to the left side of the room, near a side door.

"Welcome to the Rocky Horror side of the MOMA tonight," Gentlemen Jim announces. "Step one, step all, to the real artist's exhibit tonight -- come in, come in. We have surgical gloves and buckets of elephant dung. This is a pro-active installation, political, yes, but also therapeutically regenerative, to those who have the courage to enter..."

"Enter for more Catholic-Bashing," the Madame O'Hare calls out. "Watch Pachyderm Poo and St. Mary of the Intact Hymen do battle on our show tonight," she says, mimiching Ed Sullivan, arching her mouth into a long void, stretching the word 'show' so that it sounds like 'shoe'...

The audience wanders into the room off to the side, following Gentleman Jim and the obest women like they were hypnotists in command of the world.

Crossmann follows them, curious about this new disturbance.

It is a long room, perhaps one hundred feet deep, but narrow. There is a painting at the end of the room; it is hung on a single column. White painting tarps have been spread below the painting and on the walls behind the painting.

Crossmann tries to focus on the painting. It is a painting of the Virgin Mary. She is a broad-featured black woman wearing a blue dress shaped like a leaf. In the painting, also, swarming around the Virgin Mary like flies, are small pornographic pictures the artist has cut out of magazines and glued to the canvas. The Virgin Mary's left breast is not a breast at all -- but a round splattering of elephant dung. There are other small clungs of dung in the painting. The artist is an African man from England. He is smiling, welcoming the audience in the room.

"This is insulting!" Madonna cries. "Have you no respect for a people's religious beliefs...!"

Madonna leaves the room.

Gentleman Jim is laughing wildly. He cries: "The painting is not finished, of course. Put on a glove; get a ball of dung; let it fly. Join the artist in celebrating the millenium...!"

"Who is that woman?" Senator Kennedy asks.

"That is the Virgin Mary," the artist replies.

"My God, man, are you insulting the Catholic church?" Kennedy cries.

"This is not an insult," the artist replies. "Dung is good. Elephant dung is perhaps the best dung of all..."

"What if someone threw dung at your mother," Senator Kennedy asks. "Would that be a compliment...?"

"Calm down, Senator," Hillary counsels. "The artist has the right to say what he wants. This is a free country. At least it was the last time I checked...!"

"Step up!" Gentleman Jim calls out. He dips his hand in a tall kitchen bucket containing the dung. He comes up with a handfull -- and flings it at the painting. A PLOP hits near the Virgin Mother's face.

"Oh!" he and Madelaine cry out.

The artist seems to appreciate it too.

"Audience involvement," he says shyly.

The dung has a sharp stench; and people begin spilling out of the room.

"Disgusting!"

"That's not art!"

"Appalling!"

Then, inexplicably, the dung begins to fly at everyone, at those leaving the room, at those still in the room. Before long, many people are involved -- hurling handfulls of dung at anything that moves. That is, until Lola Fanti's police arrive, and begin steering the two atheists and the African artist out of the room, down into the basement.

The Mayor wanders into the room -- and he is livid.

"What is this? Hedda, what is this! This is a desecration! What is the meaning of this! It's ok to throw shit at the mother of Jesus -- is that the message? I'll shut this place down! I'll make you pay for this insult to all Catholics in the world...!"

The Mayor is gone.

The news media is outside the room, with cameras.

A pretty newswoman is interviewing people coming out of the room. The light above the cameraman is glaring. "We are here with New York City celebrities coming out of the show at the MOMA that has the whole town talking -- the painting of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung. We're asking them what they think..."

"Kartha Pollitt, what did you think of the show?" the pretty newswoman, Angela Luckman, asks.

Kartha replies: "The Virgin Mary wasn't Catholic -- she isn't even a uniquely Catholic symbol. To me, the painting suggests the cheerful mother goddess of an imaginary folk religion-an infinitely happier image of female strength and sexuality than the pallid plaster virgins and Raphael copies on display wherever you look..."

"Are you saying that this artist is a greater artist than Raphael, the Italian master?" Angela asks.

"Yes, well he is more lively, to be sure," Kartha replies. "Look, it's not great art -- but we have a European bias. Why should all our art be European anyway? Why not African art? Why not irreverent art too? Does all our art have to be white art...?"

"Camille Paglia, what do you think of this show?" Angela asks.

"Why are a Jewish collector and a Jewish museum director openly sponsoring anti-Catholic art?" Camille Paglia asks.

"Tasteless," Donald Trump responds. "Simply tasteless."

"Why don't they just have a show down in the men's lavatory?" Norman Mailer asks.

"James Cameron, director of Titanic, what do you think of this exhibit?" Angela asks. "The Mayor wants this show out of the museum. It was sponsored with city funds -- and he says the city won't pay the museum for this kind of disgrace. Do you agree with the major...?

James Cameron says: "Ah, yes. Censorship. Whether it be in the form of music, art or reading material. Whereas I don't always agree with the content, we do have the right to express ourselves as long as it does not interfere with someone else's rights. In the specific case you mention in your question about 'a painting of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung', I may not like it, but it is the artists right to make it, same as it is my right to write lyrics about whatever topic I see fit. The problem with the "Censorship" part of this is two-fold. First, the more it is sensationalized, the more people will want to see it because of the controversy. Second, to censor it is taking away my rights as an adult to choose what I find offensive. My main feeling is that I don't want a politician, religious fanatic, Philly fanatic or any other person telling me I can't read, listen to or enjoy a video, book, music style or any other thing that is my personal choice to do. Usually the person doing the "offensive" project is found to be doing it to gain publicity anyway, such as in the case of Marilyn Manson, Twisted Sister, Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, as well as many others..."

"Art Critic for the New York Times, Peter Schjeldahl, what do you think?" Angela asks.

"I think its' a gorgeous, sweet and respectful treatment of the subject," Schjeldahl responds, "rendering her as a sternly hieratic African personage in petal-like blue robes. Much of the painting's surface shimmers ecstatically with glitter in yellow resin. Tiny collaged cutouts of bare bottoms from porn magazines evoke putti, and allude to the element of fertility in Mary's symbology, which this artist did not invent. As for the pachyderm product, it is one smallish, attached lump, capped with what appears to be black-and-white beadwork (in reality pushpin heads) in a design of concentric circles. Elephant poop turns out to be innocuous-looking stuff, not unpleasant in color and almost decorative in texture (lots of straw)..."

"That, of course, was before the shit-throwing contest began," Angela adds.

"Well, yes. But you have to understand the meaning of the art -- and the participation desired by the artist," the critic answers. "It is not art as much as it is life. Life is different than art -- as the bumpersticker says, 'Shit Happens'. Well, that's the way it is with Art sometimes. Sometimes Art Happens too. I think it's a great show. I think he's a major artist...!"

Sandra Bernstein passes by.

"It's too intelligent for the mass of people," Sandra says. "I mean, it's...it has an ethereal meaning, which most people just don't get...!"

"You have some dung in your hair, Sandra," Angela tells her.

"Where?"

"There," Angela points, "near your collar."

"Oh, shit," Sandra Bernstein replies, "I just had this coat dry-cleaned. Fucking moron. Whose fucking idea was it to start throwing that shit....."

"It's because the artist is black-skinned," Jane Fonda says, "that's why there is such an issue about this. If it was a white-skinned Italian, this would not be an issue..."

"Italians are mostly olive-skinned," Sylvester Stallone reponds. "Italians aren't white. Norwegians are white. Italians have olive-colored skin. The show is a disaster. The so-called artist ought to be taken out in the alley and shot. This is a disgrace..."

Francis Ford Coppola: "I'm sickened. I'm glad my mother wasn't there to see that. It probably would have killed her. The museum made a major mistake with this. As an Italian, I'm shocked..."

"The Mayor hates black people," Al Sharpton says. "He always has. And he always will. He just hates seeing a black woman up on the wall with her breast exposed..."

"That wasn't her breast, Al," Angela points out. "That was elephant dung..."

"Elephant what?"

"Elephant dung."

"Jesus Christ. Who put that crap on a painting of a black woman? Did the Mayor do that...?"

"Woody Allen? What did you think of the exhibit...?" Angela asks.

"Well, at least no one tried to eat the elephant dung," Woody replies. "I guess it could have been worse...?"

"President Clinton, what did you think?" Angela asks.

"They were cookie crumbs," Clinton says. "She just likes cookies -- that's all..."

"Marlon Brando -- what do you think?" Angela asks.

"Pig shit thrown on the wall is not art," Brando says.

"It was elephant dung," Angela points out.

"Oh, so that makes it better...?"

Brando has a big splotch of elephant dung on the back of his tuxedo. Angela doesn't say anything to him. He's already mad enough...

"Jerry Seinfeld," Angela says. "Jerry, what do you think...?"

"This place is a madhouse," Seinfeld replies. "Kramer got hit in the side of the face with a big wad of that stuff..."

"Do you think the artist has a right to express his opinion in that way...?"

"Is that what he was doing -- expressing an opinion?" Jerry asks. "Sure, I guess. Everyone has their opinion. I think that kind of opinion should be expressed in a private toilet instead of in a public gallery however..."

Joan Rivers comes by: "What do I think? Anything covered in excrement has a good chance of offending the majority especially when it deliberately desecrates something which is considered to be 'holy' to a large group of people. Obviously the thing smells pretty bad too. 'Artwork' like this is juvenile at best - the artist should give it to his mother to put on her fridge alongside his finger paintings from kindergarten ... or perhaps this is the artist's attempt to reconcile his love/hate relationship with his mother ... maybe he sees his mother as 'the mother of God', which would make him deity, which would mean he can do whatever he likes ... at least until he is snapped out of his delusion on Judgment Day when he has to explain his actions to 'the real deal' ...."

"Paul Newman," Angela says. "What do you think of this art...?"

"Art, is that what it is?" Newman replies. "Quite simply, beyond an attempt to see how far boundaries can be pushed, I see little or no value in calling something like this painting 'art'. My question is not whether they should continue to fund this with tax-payers money, or evict it, but more pointedly, who is responsible for deciding who is, and who is not, worthy of display? This isn't social commentary, nor is it (in probability) a commentary on religious or moral issues. It is someone trying for a quick shock - and getting it -- and in my mind this in no way qualifies it as significant enough for such exposure. I'm both disappointed in the government for considering censorship, and the museum and those who call themselves proponents of 'the arts', supporting this particular piece in the first place...."

"Tamara Evans, Columbia University Professor of Art History," Angela asks, "what is your take on this exhibit and the subsequent public reaction..."

"The public is largely unschooled in the nature of sophisticated modern art," Tamara replies.

"Some people think modern art is elitist," Angelas answers. "What do you say to that...?"

"Elitist or not," Tamara replies. "You have to be educated to understand anything. You can't reach a French novel until you learn the French language. You can't understand art until you have studied art. This artist is brilliant. His work is meaningful. His work is a criticism of the white patriarchal domination of the earth. It is the white man who has thrown elephant dung on the Virgin Mary. Now they are blaming it on this black man. But his hurling of dung at the Virgina Mary is an indictment of the white man's abuse of the black community for so many generations..."

"So, the artist is not responsible for the art work because he is black?" Angela asks.

"That's not the point," Tamara Evans replies. "The work is a satire. It's a satire of the rape of the world by white men, the rape of the religious spirit, the true religious spirit by capitalism.... Anyway, I liked it. I think it's great. It's good multi-cultural stuff. That's what art is supposed to do: it's supposed to stir people up and make them think..."

"The only thing that this art makes people think about," Jack Nicholson says over Tamara's shoulder, "is where they might find the nearest toilet so they can puke and get it over with...!"

"Mayor Giuliani," Angela asks, "there is a lot of controversy over this show. What are your feelings about this show...?"

"This is a disgrace," the Mayor responds. "This work is openly anti-Catholic, desecrating an image that is sacred to millions of people worldwide. And this show is being funded, at least partially, by state funds. I will see that state funding is pulled on this show, and from this gallery unless the art directors here begin to show better judgment about the content of their exhibits and show some respect for the moral values of the decent members of the American public..."

"Bill Cosby," Angela asks. "What is your take on this controversial exhibit...?"

"Three words: Demeaning, degrading and offensive," Cosby replies. "If words such as these enter your mind for even a second, then it is clearly unacceptable to support these self proclaimed 'artists'. Shock factor doesn't equate to talent. Common decency and respect is crucial to the peaceful coexistence of the human race. Don't they get it? Or do they even care...?"

Allen Ginsberg, the dusty traveler, is laughing madly in the background, laughing uncontrollably, watching people emerge from the room with specks and wads and welts of elephant dung on their evening attire and in their hair and on their faces and hands. He breaks into song, accompanied by Tom Waits doing scats in the background, and Leon Redbone playing the throat tromnet:

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate

the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar

the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb

and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but

sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden

threads of the craftsman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of

beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-

dle and fell off the bed, and continued along

the floor and down the hall and ended fainting

on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and

come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling

in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning

but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun

rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked

in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad

stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these

poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy

to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls

in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'

rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with

gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-

ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station

solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in

dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and

picked themselves up out of basements hung

over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third

Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-

ment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on

the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the

East River to open to a room full of steamheat

and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment

cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime

blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall

be crowned with laurel in oblivion...

They file back into the main part of the gallery.

Madelaine Murray-O'Hare and Gentleman Jim are seen, again, being led away by Fanti's police force, taken back down into the basement, this time both begging for mercy. The elephant dung stench carries over into the main gallery space.

"We are going to try to regain our footing after this interruption," Hedda says. "I apologize for this disturbance. Let's move on to the twenty-seventh piece in this show. We have put in an order for some gas masks in case the stench next door gets too great. We hope you will stay with us; and forgive us for this...miscalculation...."

The magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking again in the old woman's voice: "Appearing with every Manvantara as Narayan, or Swayambhuva (the Self-Existent), and penetrating into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the divine incubation as Brahma or Prajapati, a progenitor of the future Universe into which he expands. He is Purusha (spirit), but he is also Prakriti (matter). Therefore it is only after separating himself into two halves -- Brahma-Vach (the female) and Brahma-Viraj (the male), that the Prajapati becomes the male Brahma. Brahma separating his body into male and female, the latter the female Vach, in whom he creates Viraj. It is purely astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical: the Male element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj, or Brahma; Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an immaculate source, personified by the 'Mother'; because that Male having a Mother cannot have a 'Father' -- the abstract Deity being sexless, and not even a Being but Be-ness, or Life itself...."

"Battling the smell of elephant dung is not easy, I know," Hedda says. "But it should get better as we move to this end of the museum. This is Michael Crossmann's twenty-seventh piece in the show; and it is entitled 'The Young Girl'. It is a colored pencil drawing on black paper. And it is, again, primitive in tone, but complex in execution...."

Some of Lola's lieutenants are now passing our small clear plastic breathing mechanisms to the guests. People put the gas masks on fairly quickly, plastic hood over the mouth and nose, oxygen generator attached to the belt.

Hedda puts her mask in place, then moves it down around her neck when she wishes to speak.

"I think this oeuvre is delightful, in fact," Hedda continues. "I see in it, a young girl who is much more than that: a girl, a woman, an animal; her dress, with its wonderful patchwork, seems to have hidden in it the face of a man who is also a bull. Do you see the bull's horns coming out of the dress? The young girl has elements of both the bull and the cow in her own face; and she has elements of the bull in her dress..."

THE YOUNG GIRL

"I believe it is the father's face in the dress, wearing the horns," Charlie Rose opines. "Michael Crossmann is very aware of the archetypal love tension inherent in the Oedipus and Electra complexes well known to modern psychiatry. There is an undeniable sexual awakening in the young girl -- note the coquetry of her feet. I'm sure this is Crossmann's daughter, Christina...."

Charlie Rose has turned down the gas mask.

"You don't want a gas mask, Charlie?" Geraldo Rivera calls out.

"No, If I have to sniff....excrement for the sake of art," Charlie responds, "I'm willing to do it...."

The audience applauds.

A few others take their gas masks off: Rod Steiger, Martin Sheen, Norman Mailer. Ted Kennedy takes his off, but then puts it right back on, fighting off a rush of offal air.

"Are you saying Crossmann abused his daughter?" Sally Jessie Raphael calls from the audience, lowering her gas mask for a moment, then raising it up again.

"I'm speaking of archetypes," Charlie Rose responds. "His artwork is, in fact, about archetypes. Crossmann is married; he makes love with his wife; he establishes himself as a man of means for his family; his daughter is born..."

"But you suggested he molested his daughter," Jerry Springer seconds Sally Jesse. "We would like to hear more about this. Whether he molested her in fact or just in his mind -- the public has a right to know everything the man has thought. And since an artist is fool enough to show us everything he thinks, everything he desires, I believe his artwork is part of the public record..."

Springer puts his gas mask back up.

"This drawing is about Crossmann's love for his daughter," Rose says, "and also about his attraction to young girls, who are innocent and fresh..."

"We know about his illicit love for a young girl that should have landed him in prison," Gloria Steinem calls out, lowring her gas mask. "And here she is, in the flesh..."

Standing next to Gloria Steinem is a sexy young brunette in a yellow dress. He hair is pulled back, exposing her proud forehead and her plump rouge lips.

"Isn't this drawing also about this young woman?" Oprah cries out, claiming victory in her tone.

"Not directly," Crossmann replies. "It is not a portrait of Sophie."

"Symbolically, I mean?" Oprah responds.

"Perhaps. Symbolically it is about all beautiful young girls and what a temptation they are to older men," Crossmann replies.

Sophie points to a whitish stain on the left shoulder of her dress.

"We are going to get a dna test done ont his dress," Oprah cries out. "If we prove it is yours, you will be sent up for fifteen years for statutory rape...!"

Columbo moves over to Sophie Tucker. He looks at the stain.

He lowers his gas mask. "That stains pretty old," Columbo says. "It looks like cocaine to me. I'm not sure what cocaine would be doing on a young girl's shoulder..."

"It's not cocaine, you idiot!" Jane Fonda cries. "I'm semen. He forced this young girl to perform oral sex on him. He said he was going to fail her if she did not...!"

"No, he didn't," Sophie says. "I wanted to do it. I liked doing it. It tasted good...!"

"We want that dress!" Oprah cries.

"It's my dress!" Sophie replies. "It's not his semen, anyway. I had it dry cleaned. This semen belongs to John Preston...!"

"She's covering for him!" Jane Fonda cries. "Get the dress...!"

Oprah and Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem grab at Sophie, trying to rip off her dress. Everyone else just watches, shocked. Sophies fights them off, pulling down their gas masks. They have to stop fighting Sophie in order to get the gas masks back in place. The smell is awful. Finally, the tear the dress off the young girl's body. She is standing in the museum, under the ambient lighting in a yellow brain and yellow panties, dark nylons and yellow-tan pumps. She has a beautiful teenage body, tight in the stomach, breasts pulsing out of the brasierre; her public hair is slightly visible through the transparent yellow panties. The men in the audience, and many of the women also, admire Sophie's beauty, all remembering when they too were young.

Columbo steps forward, wrapping the trembling young woman in his old trench-coat. He leads her out of the museum.

Oprah and Jane Fonda pass the yellow dress off to a runner who sprints with the prize out of the museum, apparently toward a local lab for identification of dna.

"This will be your swan song, Crossmann!" Jane Fonda cries. "You will no longer be allowed to seduce the American public! We know what you really are: a molestor, a seducer, a traitor to the struggle...!"

Jane Fonda gives a power salute, a clenched right hand lifted into the sky. A few more go up. The Mayor's wife; Callista Flockhart; Angela Davis; Joan Baez.

"Anachronisms!" a man in a three-piece business suit says, shaking his head. It is Jerry Rubin.

"Sell out!" Angela Davis cries at Rubin.

"Commie fraud!" Rubin responds.

"The capitalistic system has ground the black man down, ground him in to the dust!" Angela Davis cries out.

"Right on!" Jane Fonda cries.

"The capitalistic system is racist and concentrates power in thee hands of the few, to the detriment of the proletariat which struggles for justice in a bourgeois...."

But Angela can't finish. She puts her gas mask back over her mouth and gulps for clear air.

Everyone starts to laugh.

"Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar," the young woman in the chaertreuse downy duck costume begins to sing. But then she has to put up her gas mask too.

"Did he or did he not molest his child?" Jerry Springer asks.

"We are all guilty of molesting our daughters," Bill Moyers says. "Where there is one daughter in the world who has been molested by her father, then every father is guilty of the crime. Until we make the world safe for every daughter in this world, then, yes, we are all guilty, Michael Crossmann is guilty of this crime; I am guilty too..."

"By that logic," Woody Allen reponds, pulling down his gas mask, "Bill Clinton is guity of molesting Chelsea..."

"You're a fine one to talk!" Bill Moyers reponds.

"No one is really to blame," Ralph Nader comes in, between gulps for fresh air. "Except for the chemical companies, Dow Chemical, Dupont, which afflict the world populace with poisonous chemicals, all for the sake of profit, uisng us as their guinea pigs which distort our values and turn all men into potential daughter-molesters...."

"Down With Dow, Down With Dupont!" a group of Green Party members begin chanting. "They molest their daughters for profit! Confiscate their property and redistribte it to the masses...!"

"Mister Crossmann, did you have sex with your daughter?" Montel Williams demands.

"We have the results to an interesting poll we have taken tonight, in the last ten minutes, in fact," Dan Rather comes in, lowering his mask. "A poll of American taken tonight -- 2,000 responses, with an error-quotient of 4-6% -- 34% of Americans believe Michael Crossmann did molest his daughter. Now 73% of women polled believed this. And of those 73%, 94% of the women said they watched daytime talk shows every day of the week. Of the same group, 93% of the women polled said they trusted talk show hosts more than their doctors, their priests or minister, or even their own husbands. Interestingly, of the 34% who responded they believed Michael Crossman had molested his dauther, only 13% of these felt this disqualified Mister Crossmann from being voted the next messiah -- most believed that all men molested their daughters, so this was not a true criteria by which to judge a man's ability to serve the public..."

"We're more powerful than Jesus," Phil Donahue says with a quaint smile. "We really govern America now. We govern America's belief system -- we create Ameerica's belief system. Perhaps we are the next messiah -- one of us: Geraldo, Oprah or Rosie...."

Morgan Freeman: "The girl in this painting reminds me of a young African girl. There is something in this man's art that is definitely connected to the aboriginal, whether it be in America, the American Indians, the Aborigines in Australia, or the black Africans in Africa. He is a primordial nature, inside of that white German skin....

"He probably supports the circumcision of the young African women," Alice Walker says. "That is probably what this drawing is about. His support of clitoral mutilation is also well-known...."

The audience grows silent.

"We see, from the juxtaposition of this painting and the next painting, that there is trouble in the Crossmann household," Charlie Rose says. "I believe, in terms of the sequence of works in this show, the biography of this show -- I believe this painting represents both Crossmann's love for his own daughter and his experience with the teenage girl at work, Sophie Tucker. Because the next painting, 'The Diamond-Thief', I think is symbolic of a force stealing from the Crossmann household the love that holds the family together -- the diamon-thief is not literal, but figureative..."

Hedda lowers her mask.

"Any other comments?" she asks. "Well, then let's move on to the next work, number twenty-eight, entitled: 'The Diamond-Thief'..."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, saying in an old woman's voice: "Fohat runs the Manus' (or Dhyan-Chohans') errands, and causes the ideal prototypes to expand from within without -- that is, to cross gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes from the noumenon to the lowest phenomenon, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity -- the acme of illusion, or the grossest matter...."

"This work is a watercolor collage on white paper," Hedda begins. "Richard, can you take over for me? I believe the stench is making me ill..."

Hedda leaves and rushes to the restroom.

"The family depicted in this painting," Richard Baker begins, "is an archetypal family, not the Crossmann family per se. We see on the ground floor, the father with his son; and the son, who is black and white, caught up in the duality, is drinking from a long straw an intoxicating drink. The father -- who has a war churning in his stomach -- and the son are arguing about the son's drinking problem; upstairs we have the mother, in black and white also -- there is some kind of alliance here between the mother and the son, in their rebellion against the father -- and the mother is sleeping. Notice the three blue 'z's' circling in her room, cartoon imagery of a person sleeping. She is dreaming of herself as a ballerina, apparently a dream of what she wanted to become when she was younger. The ballerina forms below the dreamer -- hence, 'falling' asleep -- in a distinctive red blackground. Across the hall, in another upstairs room, is a red pear. The pear is a symbol of the womb of course; the womb is pear-shaped. But it is also a symbol of the human heart, especially a red pear. It is also connected, etymologically, to the word 'pyre,' funeral fire. Also upstairs we have a blue ghost moving in the hallway, passing by an open door, two your daughters near the top of the stairs, one of whom is naked. And the diamond-thief, himself, who has one diamond in his backpack, has his right hand on the second diamond, and is approaching the third. The diamonds are large 'X' forms, similar to Crossmann's Figure 8 symbol that appear in his novel as the symbol of the universe, one side of which is white, the other side being dense with white and black script. Each diamond alternates in its structure, with the white side being, first, at the top, then at the bottom, then back up at the top.... There is a hole, or vortex, in the middle of the drawing from which a thick black line is either appearing or being drawn back, like water through a bathtub drain. It is impossible to tell whether the thick black line is expanding or contracting..."

THE DIAMOND-THIEF

"It says all that?" Michael Douglas responds.

"Why diamonds?"

"The diamond governs the birthsign of Taurus -- the Bull, again," Baker replies. "And we see in all of this obsession with the Bull, from the Matador on, and Venus -- Venus rules the zodiacal house of Taurus -- we see in all of this Michael Crossmann's obsessive love, very personal love, of Leslie Rhoades, the married woman he love and lost back in the mid-1970's.... Leslie Rhoades is the diamond he lost, the diamond some thief (Time? or Custom?) stole from him and ruined his life, sending him into a spiral of despair that resulted in his psychic death and abandoment in an internal Hades from which he emerged a fighting angel..."

"Do you agree with this analysis, Charlie?" Lola asks, having taken over for Hedda.

"I believe, at some level, this is more a painting of Leslie Rhoades' house, than it is a painting of Michael Crossmann's," Charlie Rose agrees. "Leslie Rhoades had ambitions to be a ballerina. Michael Crossmann even watched her dance in a ballet in Eugene. So, yes -- I had not thought of this before. But, now, it seems quite reasonable. The diamonds being stolen are the memories Leslie Rhoades has of her love affair with Michael Crossmann. Time is stealing them from her perhaps. This is, in fact, a pretty elusive painting, and one of my favorites in the show..."

Crossmann's face seems to drop.

"It is pretty clear to me that Michael Crossmann still loves Leslie Rhoades," Doctor Joyce Brothers proclaims, putting her gas mask up; then she takes it down again after a strong inhalation. "That's why he's such a sad man, and so alone today."

Shocked silence in the museum.

Oprah says: "Oh, my God. The man is suffering for love. He has a broken heart. This changes everything...!"

"He was psychotic because of love," Doctor Brothers reasons. "Like the great romantic poets, he was wounded -- like Dante by his Beatrice. He could not go on. He longed for death. And, so, he sank into the deepest gloom. Romantic gloom -- for his love was foresaken. He was abandoned..!"

A deep sigh runs through the room.

"We finally see the true Michael Crossmann," Maury Povich says, trying not to breathe.

"Let's keep moving," Lola says. "We moved to painting number twenty-nine, 'Marital Strife' -- a painting very reminscent to Picasso..."

Lola doesn't have and doesn't need a gas mask. She is tough. A former marine.

The Magician sidles down to Crossmann again, leaning over to him, saying: "Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life. The spark that hangs from the flame by the finest thread of Fohat. It journeys through the Seven Worlds of Maya. It stops in the first, and is a metal and a stone; it passes into the second, and, behold -- a plant; the plant whirls through seven changes and becomes a sacred animal. From the combined attributes of these, Manu, the thinker, is formed. Who forms him? The Seven Lives, and the One Life. Who completes him? The Five-Fold Lha or Spirit. And who perfects the last body? Fish, Sin and Soma..."

"Charlie Rose," Lola says, "you're one of the few people in this room who is not wearing an excrement screen -- so you are clearly willing to talk. Tell me about this painting. We have a lot of people bidding on this painting. And the bids are skyrocketing, in fact. Many European collectors consider this the finest piece in the show. It is gouache with India ink on white paper. What is your take on this...?"

MARITAL STRIFE

"Well, this is the woman-as-tyrant painting in the show," Charlie says. "This is a fight between Michael Crossmann and his wife. And the wife is winning. She has just torn the arm off her husband; and it lies at her feet. The husband is bending over in supplication; and who wouldn't -- she has just torn his arm off. The husband is dressed in green, a green shirt -- and there is a green bird flying past the window. Clearly, there is identification here: the husband would like to be as free as the bird. There is also an upside-down man which forms the wife's nose. One reading of this is that this is the man with whom Michael Crossmann's wife had a long love affair, throughout the entire time Michael and Irene knew one another, before marriage and after, apparently even currently -- Marshall Fenton. Another theory is that this is Michael Crossmann's brother, William, about whom Irene and Michael Crossmann fought regularly. She apparently hated Michael Crossmann's brother...."

"This is Lilith , in action," Moshe Frank responds.

"You describe the wife as Lilith," Gloria Steinem responds. "That is meant to be a negative judgment. But many of us in the Women's Movement admire Lilith..."

"You know nothing about Lilith!" Moshe Frank replies, angry.

"You call any strong woman Lilith," Gloria says. "Any woman who is sexually independent, you call Lilith..."

"Lilith is the night monster, the screech owl," Moshe says. "She is Adam's first wife; and she is the mother of all demons. She collects semen discarded in masturbation or wet dreams, scraping the semen off unoccupied sheets; she has sex with men while they dream, seeking to give birth to demons...."

There is silence in the room.

Heavy breathing inside gas masks. The audience is aghast.

The lights in the room flicker -- then go off.

Screaming in the room.

The lights come back on again.

"You are a child," Moshe Frank says to Gloria Steinem. "You know nothing about evil. Lilith is a succubus. From the hour in which Cain killed Abel, Adam separated himself from his wife, [and] two female spirits came and copulated with him, and he begot spirits and demons which roam in the world. And this should not be difficult for you to understand, for when a man dreams, female spirits come and play with him and get hot from him and thereafter bear those demons which are called the Plagues of Mankind. And they turn into a likeness of men, but they have no hair on their head.... And, in a similar manner, male spirits come to the women of this world who become pregnant from them and give birth to spirits and all of them are called Plagues of Mankind. After 130 years Adam clothed himself in zeal and had union with his wife and begot a son and called his name Seth..."

"Lilith is the black moon," Steinem cries. "The independent, sexual woman, the one men fear."

"Vagina, Vagina, Vagina," the female chorus again sings: Flockhart, Fonda and Betty Freidan.

"She who murders children," Moshe Frank cries. "She who is the mother of the demons...!"

The lights flicker off and on again.

"Crazy Jew!" Reverend Farrakahn says. "You know the Jews were behind the slave trade in Africa. Yes, that is a fact...!"

"There was slavery in Africa before the Jews arrived there," Woody Allen replies.

"What? You shut up, shorty!" Reverend Farrakahn replies.

"Even today, children and young women are being sold as slaves out of Benin to work as domestic or plantation workers in Gabon in West Africa," Allen continues.

"That's the white man's fault," Reverend Farrakahn responds. "Everything is the white man's fault. The slaughter of the Tutsi's by the Hutus -- that was the white man's fault also. Because the white man came to Africa. If the white man never would have come to Africa, there would have been no slaughter in Rwanda. The white devil is to blame for everything..!"

"That makes it pretty good for you," Allen says. "If you succeed it's because of your talent. If you fail, it's someone else's fault..."

Farrakahn pushes Allen out of the way, and pulls his gas mask back up around his mouth. One of Farrakahn's lieutenants puts Allen in a half-nelson, and pushes him toward the basement. Armed black men in black paramilitary costume arrive in the museum, standing guard in each direction, rifles crossed on their chests.

"The white devils listen to the Jew devils and the world turns to evil," Farrakahn continues. "Listen to this woman, this Lilith, who stands before you, who tells you about the men whose materialism has brought a plague on the Earth..."

"I am Lilith!" Gloria Steinem says, lowering her gas mask, stepping forward. "Lilith am I. Lilith creates a voice where there was silence; it saves what is good within the patriarchy while transforming what is destructive; it offers scholarship for argument and women's voices for enlightenment; and it does all of this with anger and delight, good writing and good humor...."

"Screech owl!" Moshe Frank replies.

He makes a sign of the cross toward Lilith -- but she laughs at his ineffectual deliverance.

A small man dressed in medieval clothing carrying an old dusty book appears, opening the book with a flourish, dust flying. He lowers his gas mask and speaks: "I have compiled the astrological data pertaining to the position of Lilith in the charts of 14 women who I judged to display a 'Lillith character.' This includes women whose powerful sexuality has become a hallmark of their public image, or whose defiance of male hegemony in the personal and public spheres is well known. They are primarily writers, entertainers, feminists, and sex workers. These women were selected from a large database of famous persons for whom reliable birth data were available. In none of the cases was the position of Lilith known to me before selecting the chart for inclusion in the study.An effort to find an equivalent number of charts of women without a 'Lilith character' for comparison was largely unsuccessful. This may attest to the fact that in order to find success and notoriety, women over the last 200 years have had to 'buck the system' in some way. The very fame and notoriety achieved by women in history may be an indication that they do not fit the compliant, dutiful stereotype of Adam’s second wife. No one seems to be terribly interested in recording the birth data for Doris Day or June Lockhart, who are two of the few famous women that the author would consider to not have a Lilith character in some sense. This bias, and the failure to find non-Lilith charts should be kept in mind in the following review. Lilith, as an astrological body, Lilith is rather slow moving, traversing only about 40 degrees of the zodiac per year. Its motion is always direct, so it makes one circuit of the zodiac every 9 years or so, and spends about 9 months in each sign. The number nine is appropriate, considering that the astrological Lilith is one of the foci of the Moon’s orbit around the earth. By tabulating the data relevant to the Lilith positions of the women included in this study, we can see where there might be commonalities and patterns that are suggestive of a strong Lilith. One of the factors that emerges that is quite remarkable is that none of the women selected have Lilith in a mutable sign. This alone almost places the sample far enough from the statistical distribution of the general population (where we have every reason to expect that Lilith will be represented in each Quadruplicity with equal frequency over the span of time from which the charts were selected) to achieve statistical significance. One can see how the bold, proactive energy associated with the Cardinal signs and the persistent, determined energy of the Fixed signs might contribute to a much stronger expression of the revolutionary Lilith attributes than if Lilith were placed in one of the Mutable signs, the energy of which is usually considered to be of a more vacillating, dissipating kind. An analogous situation is seen with Mars in one of the Mutable signs, where there is always a risk of dissipation of Mars’s energy in trivialities, fantasies, or emotional turmoil...."

The Astrologer pauses and inhales deeply from his gas mask.

Then he continues: "Even more remarkable than the lack of Mutable Lilith placements in the charts under consideration is the fact that the placement in Cardinal and Fixed signs is largely linked to whether Lilith is diurnal or nocturnal. In 11 of the 14 cases, when Lilith is below the horizon, she is found in a Fixed sign, and when she is above the horizon, she is found in a Cardinal sign. One problem with looking at a large collection of charts all at once is that it is difficult to interpret the patterns one finds without more detailed analysis of the lives of the people that the charts have been drawn for. I can detect no certain relationship between the Nocturnal/Fixed and Diurnal/Cardinal condition of Lilith and the personalities of the people involved. It may be significant that in two of the three charts that do not fit the pattern, Lilith does not follow the condition of the sun; that is, she is above the horizon while the sun is below the horizon or vice versa. This is only true in one of the 11 cases that do fit the pattern (Gloria Steinem). Unfortunately, a sample of three is too limited to deduce any generalities. In the other 11 charts, Lilith is found in the same nocturnal or diurnal condition as the sun, which may indicate another condition of her strength. In any case, it seems clear that Lilith is stronger in a Fixed sign when she is also below the horizon and stronger in a Cardinal sign when she is also above the horizon...."

He pauses to breathe again in his gas mask; then continues: "Another frequent occurrence in these charts is an aspect between Lilith and Mars. Contacts with Mars, even when they are stress aspects (squares or oppositions), often indicate that a great deal of energy is available to the native for expression of the planet that receives the aspect. Stress aspects between Lilith and Mars, as the planet that most clearly expresses masculine power, may also indicate that a woman’s independence and sovereignty will more often meet opposition by men, or by male hegemony. Lilith is also often disposited by Mars, that is, in a sign that Mars rules, or in a sign where Mars is exalted. In the case of George Sand, who also has a square between Mars and Lilith, this can be seen in her adoption of male dress and habits, as well as her adoption of a male name (her given name was Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin). Marlene Dietrich is also famous for occasionally donning men’s formal dress, and for kissing a woman while dressed as a man in the film Morocco (in 1930). It is a little known fact that this scene was suggested by Dietrich herself, and that she artfully managed to keep the scene from being cut by censors. Like George Sand, Dietrich’s Lilith is disposited by Mars, but she has a sextile between Mars and Lilith rather than a square. Of course, Dietrich garnered much less calumny from her gender-blurring behavior than Sand did. Women have often found it useful to appropriate masculine symbols of power as a provocative gesture of defiance of the status quo (although in Sand’s case, it was also initially because it increased her chances of selling her literary works to have a male pen name). As with any "negative" aspect, Mars squares will often serve to facilitate one’s growth and progress rather than hinder it. It is interesting to note that all three women who work in the sex trade in some capacity (the last three listed) have aspects between Lilith and Venus, the planet most clearly linked with sexual passion. This is also true of George Sand, who, although not a sex worker, gained a reputation for her daringly explicit portrayal of women’s sexuality in her novels Valentine (1832) and Leila (1833). Rose Kelley, who was of course instrumental in Crowley’s reception of the Book of the Law, has Lilith disposited by Venus, in Libra, conjunct the Ascendant (Rose Kelley’s birth time is rather uncertain, but I have cast it for noon on her day of birth). This may be an important indicator of her office as the first Scarlet Woman, since Libra and its associated Tarot Trump, Adjustment or Justice, is very closely linked with the idea of 'love under will'. The Lilith archetype can also quite satisfactorily be correlated with Babalon, as demonstrated in an excellent essay by Jeffrey Smith..."

He sucks into his gas mask again.

The audience is beginning to fidget -- but Farrakahn's honor guard show their weapons to the crowd and they grow rigidly alert again, attentive.

The Astrologer continues: "The chart of Xaviera Hollander deserves special mention, as it amply illustrates the power of a strongly-placed Lilith. Ms. Hollander is well known as author of the novel The Happy Hooker , and star of the movie 'Pleasure is My Business' (the running time of which is 93 minutes, oddly enough). Ms. Hollander also writes a widely read sex advice column for Penthouse magazine. Ms. Hollander’s Lilith is placed in Leo in the first house. Leo is a sign frequently associated with sexuality, as is the corresponding fifth house. Lilith’s placement in the first house indicates that Lilith energy is a major component of the native’s personality and basic identity. Ms. Hollander’s propensity for expressing her Lilith nature in writing is seen in the disposition of Lilith by the Sun, which is placed in Mercury-ruled Gemini, a sign often concerned with communication and teaching. The clearly sexual nature of this Lilith placement is enhanced by Lilith’s conjunction with Venus (to which Mars in Aries is in trine, another indication of powerful and energetic sexuality). Furthermore, Lilith is conjunct both Jupiter, giving the native’s Lilith qualities an expansive and flamboyant quality, and Pluto, the planet of revolutionary social change. Jupiter rules the 6th and 9th houses, and combined with Lilith indicates a desire to educate the public about sexual health and social issues related to sexuality. Pluto in conjunction with Lilith indicates a desire to cast off and revolutionize outmoded sexual mores, but also a strong sexual presence and a secure command of the power inherent in feminine sexuality. While Lilith is not necessarily always an indicator of sexual qualities (although I hope I have made the case that Lilith is an inherently sexual archetype), its influence on the sexual nature of Xaviera Hollander’s works is considerable....

"A detailed analysis of the remainder of the charts in the table is beyond the scope of this event. As with any form of astrological delineation, the greatest value will be derived by the native who takes the time to meditate on the archetypes and symbols contained in their own birth chart rather than relying on standard formulations in books. Those who are interested in studying Lilith in their own birth chart should obtain a copy of the astrological calculation program Astrolog. Astrolog, which was written by Walter Pullen is not only one of the most versatile and useful astrology programs available, but it is also free. Astrolog will calculate the position of Lilith as long as the program is set to use ephemeris files rather than its own calculation algorithm. Those who are interesting in investigating charts earlier in this century or before should therefore also download the additional ephemeris files available at Walter’s website. From ancient Jewish folklore to modern astrological practice, the Lilith archetype, by its very durability, has proven its value in helping us understand our own inner landscapes. One of the lessons that Lilith teaches is that what we reject or see as ugly in ourselves is much less daunting when we have the courage and will to examine it in the light of day. Just as Lilith has been transformed historically from the child-slaughtering demoness of the Alphabet of Ben-Sira into an image of affirmation, we have the ability to transform our inner demons into images of power...."

"This age has learned to transform child murder into a positive," Moshe Frank cries -- "hence, abortion, too, is considered good by the followers of Lilith...!"

"Shut that Jew up!" Farrakahn commands.

The military guards move to silence Moshe Frank.

"Wait!" Jerry Falwell calls to the Astrologer: "Tell us the names of these 14 women." Falwell has a notepad in his hand and he is ready to take down names.

"Well, these are 14 women I found, but there are many more," the Astrologer replies: "George Sand, Rose Kelly, Mae West, Marlene Deitrich, Anais Nin, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Gloria Steinem, Sophia Loren..."

"No! Not Sophia Loren!" Falwell moans.

"Germaine Greer, Madonna Ciccone, Content Love Knowles, Magdalene Matrix, and Xavier Hollander."

Falwell turns to Tammy Baker: "Who the hell is Content Love Knowles and Magdalene Matrix...?"

"I bbbobbbbia," Tammy replies, painting her fingernails, breathing heavily into her gas mask.

"What did you say?" Jerry asks.

She lowers her gas mask: "I have no idea."

Jerry turns away from Tammy, to Jesse Helms.

"Get the faggots ready!" Falwell says,

"Faggots? In here?" Helms asks. "Who?"

"No! Fire! Pyres...!" Falwell explains.

"Pears?" Helms asks. "Pies? What kind of pies...?"

"Pyre! Fire! Light the stakes, you idiot! Bonfire for the witches!" Jerry explains.

Jesse Helms doesn't get it.

Falwell laughs a bit.

Falwell turns to Jack Van Impe and his wife, the cute blonde with the speech impediment: "We have the names! Let's start the fire! It's gonna be hotter than a witch's tit -- please excuse my French...!"

Van Impe's wife, Rexella, is laughing. She loves Jerry Falwell's sense of humor.

Jerry looks her down too. Looking at her breasts in her white silk blouse.

His look makes her feel all yummy inside.

"Alright. All Jews in this room are under house arrest!" Reverend Farrakahn shouts. "We start with the little heimy standing up there by Crossmann...!"

"Crossmann is a Jew too!" the woman wearing the chartreuse downy duck costume cries out.

The crowd goes silent.

"Crossmann! Are you a Jew?" Farrakahn asks. "I thought he was from Wyoming...!"

"Lilith is a Jew!" Moshe Frank calls.

"What?" Farrakahn is aghast. "No, she can't be! She's on our side! Are you a Jew, Lilith...?"

"No, I am not," Lilith says. Confused. Lowering her eyes.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, saying in his own voice: "This is only one of your nightmares, friend. When I clap my hands, they will all be gone."

The Magician claps his hands.

The lights go off for almost a minute; then they come back on again.

Everything has changed.

Farrakahn is gone. The men in the black uniforms carrying machine guns are gone. The gas masks are gone. The smell of elephant dung is gone.

Dominic Rosetti signals Lola a bid for 'Marital Strife'. Florian Trummer tops that bid. Bill Gates tops that bid.

"Merde!" says Olivia Hussey, who is bidding for an unknown French collector. "Where the hell does he come from! We can't keep up with him...!"

A man standing next to her is talking in French on a cellular phone, apparently to the collector in Paris.

Rosetti decides to compete. He riases his bid.

Sergei Volkov joins the bidding. He is a tough-looking Russian in a long-black coat with a fur collar.

Angela Salm, bidding for another European collector.

Bill Gates again.

Jacob Fritz, bidding for an anonymous American collector, reputed to be Ted Turner.

Jane Fonda is infuriated seeing Jacob Fritz bidding on the work.

She makes a call on her own cellular phone, trying to reach Ted Turner. He is not available.

"Other bidders," Hedda asks.

Abdullah Nasser's agent, Roscoe Tulley, bids.

Bill Gates again.

The bidding goes on.

Crossmann notices another young woman dressed as a downy duck -- but this one is blue. And another, carrying a guitary, dressed in a copper downy duck costume.

Crossmann looks across the room. His eyes meet Allen Ginsburg.

Ginsburg smiles; he nods to Waits and Mister Thromnet.

Ginsburg creates a background noise of white Jewish-beat rap:

"who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested

the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their

pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the

bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned

with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded

by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty

incantations which in the yellow morning were

stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht

& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot

for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks

fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-

fully, gave up and were forced to open antique

stores where they thought they were growing

old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits

on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse

& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments

of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the

fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-

ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the

drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality..."

The woman in the copper-colored downy duck costume, the one carrying a guitar, breaks into song:

"Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother

And the tears she cried, she cried for none other

Than her little boy lost in a little world he hated

And that dared to drag him down -- her little boy courageous.

Who chose his words from mouths of babes who got lost in the wood.

Hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts,

They spoke through you.

Hey Jack, now for the tricky part,

When you were the brightest star who were the shadows?

Of the San Francisco beat boys you were the favorite.

Now they sit and rattle their bones and think of their blood-stoned days.

You chose your words from mouths of babes who got lost in the wood.

The hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts,

In Chinatown, howling at night.

Allen baby, why so jaded?

Have the boys all grown up -- and their beauty faded?

Billy, what a saint they've made you,

Just like Mary down in Mexico on All Souls' Day.

You chose your words from mouths of babes who got lost in the wood.

Cool junk booting madmen, street-minded girls

In Harlem howling at night.

What a tear stained shock of the world,

You've gone away without saying goodbye...."

Crossmann watches the blue duck wander away.

Natalie Merchant. He admires her talent. She must be a Catholic girl. There is something about her -- something very Catholic.

He turns to Hedda.

The bidding continues.

Masanori Yamada has joined the bidding.

"How high is Gates willing to go?" Trump asks Mailer.

"Well, no one can stay with him if he decides he really wants it," Mailer replies.

Douglas Cramer the collector from Los Angeles, bids.

Bill Gates counters. Gates, of course, does his own bidding.

Lola Fanti is hideous with glee. She turns to Crossmann and whispers: "An empire! We are building you an empire...!"

David Geffen makes a bid.

Yamada counters.

The woman in the blue downy duck costume sidles up to Jerry Falwell and whispers in his ear: "Penis, penis, penis, penis, cocksucker. Oops. Even my spellchecker doesn't recognize cocksucker - I guess it's not in Microsoft Word's internal dictionary. It should be in there, because cocksucking is here to stay. It's a whole lot of fun and when done right, gives great pleasure to all parties involved. I love to suck cock. And so do many of the adults I know - and some of the ones who aren't so sure if they want to give mouth massage to another's diamond rod are happy to be on the receiving end. If they're not a cocksucker, then perhaps they're a yoni nibbler. Or a vulva licker. Or maybe just an expert kisser...."

She smiles at Reverend Falwell; then she wanders away, shaking her happy tail.

"That's her," Monica Lewinsky says. She has just moved in to the crowd, with her date, Mickey Rooney. They have been watching everything from the back of the room.

"Who?" Falwell asks.

"The one you asked about: Courtney Love," Monica says.

"No, not Courtney Love," Mickey Rooney corrects her. "One of the Liliths: Content Love Knowles..."

"Oh, that's right," Monica agrees.

"Did you hear what she was saying to me?" Falwell asks Mickey Rooney.

"Well, it's a sick society now, reverend. What can I say," Rooney says. "Everyone's trying to shock the middle-class. It's a kind of game. Queers and transvestites and transexuals and all. Child-molestors. Buggers. Muff-divers. You have to be weird to get on tv today. And the weirder the better. The news wants weird. That's what sells shows. Murder, rape, fear, perversion. That's what sells. Plus, in college now, the women are taught that they have to hate men, that men are the oppressors; and that it's a war out there, between men and women. That's what they teach my granddaughter. She comes home from college hating men..."

"Men have been pretty rotten to women, Mickey!" Monica says. "You've got to admit that! Women are treated like second-class citizens. Men are rapists; and what about the glass ceiling. Women are treated like the black men. They have been a man's property for many centuries. We're just not taking it any longer...!"

"Ok, calm down, dear," Mickey says.

He turns to Falwell. "I don't want to upset her tonight. I'm hoping to get some Millennium Candy after midnight...."

Trummer bids again, touching his nose.

Geffen bids, touching his pen.

Gates touches the temples of his glasses.

Volkov.

Angela Salm.

Charles Saatchi's man, Edwin Carver, signal's Saatchi's bid.

Geffen.

Gates.

Lola touches her breasts in ecstacy, running her left hand over her right breast, hoping no one is watching.

Dana Scully is watching. Her mouth opens a bit.

Crossmann notices the moisture on her upper lip. The lip almost twitches.

Geffen.

Gates.

Ted Kennedy scratches his crotch unconsciously.

"Was that a bid, Senator?" Hedda asks.

"No, I'm sorry. No."

"I want it!" Gates says quietly. "My wife wants it for our house."

Saatchi bids.

Geffen folds.

Gates ups the bid.

Edwin Carver is talking on his cell phone.

Saatchi bids.

Gates bids again.

Carver puts away his phone.

The painting belongs to Bill Gates.

Lola lets out a deep-throated war hoop, throwing her right fist in the air. Then she smiles, and hurries off to the right, a look of urgency in her eye.

"I need to use the ladies' room," Scully tells Mulder, hurrying off to the right, following Lola.

Mulder grabs Scully by the arm. He whispers to her: "Don't forget to wear a mouth-condom. There's a lot of bacteria baking in warm places these days..."

No one else hears Fox Mulder.

Everyone is applauding the major sale.

"Excellent," Hedda says. "Excellent. You've made a wonderful purchase, Mister Gates."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking in the voice of the old Russian woman: "Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in esoteric Cosmogony, should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian Cosmogony, differing widely from the later mythology, Eros is the third person in the primeval trinity: Chaos, Gaea, Eros -- answering to the Kabalistic En-Soph (for Chaos is SPACE, "void") the Boundless ALL, Shekinah and the Ancient of Days, or the Holy Ghost. So Fohat is one thing in the yet unmanifested Universe and another in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first impulse which becomes in time law. But in the unmanifested Universe, Fohat is no more this than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or LOVE. Fohat has naught to do with Kosmos yet, since Kosmos is not born, and the gods still sleep in the bosom of 'Father-Mother'. He is an abstract philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet by himself; he is simply that potential creative power in virtue of whose action the NOUMENON of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative ray. When the "Divine 'Son' breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the ONE to become TWO and THREE -- on the Cosmic plane of manifestation. The triple One differentiates into the many, and then Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this primeval teaching in early Greek mythology. Erebos and Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the action of Eros, give birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the light of the superior and the light of the inferior or terrestrial regions. Darkness generates light. See in the Puranas Brahma's 'Will' or desire to create; and in the Phoenician Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon the doctrine that Desire, [pothos], is the principle of creation...."

"I think we should move on to number thirty," Hedda says. "We don't want to lose momentum. The next painting, in many ways, is a come-down for me. From the Picasso-like masterpiece, 'Marital Strife', we now face a grim piece that seems unfinished, in fact. I realize it is not unfinished. But it is a bit austere -- again, anti-modern: primal. The title is 'The Grim Reaper'. Charlie, tell us what this is all about..."

THE GRIM REAPER

"I'm not sure it's going to be easy to follow that last scene," Charlie responds. "This is the second appearance of death in this exhibit. The first, of course, was 'Mister Death' -- which, I surmise, represented, at least in this exhibit, the death of Michael Crossmann's father, Jake -- and his subsequent descent into depreseeion and chaos, death. This second apperance death represents, in the life of Michael Crossmann, the incident at Southwest Eugene High School, where three teenage boys assaulted the school, killing fellow studeents and teachers, wounding many others. Michael Crossman, himself, is the grim reaper in this painting..."

"Your insistence on biography to approach a painting I believe to be a fallacy," Reggie Lyons replies. "There is much more to this painting than merely biography...."

"Such as?" Rose asks.

"Color, line, contour, meaning -- and meaning in the context of the work, not in the context of this show," Reggie insists.

"I believe Charlie understands that," Hedda says. "But he has mad a very unique understanding -- he has made a viable -- what I consider viable -- understanding of the unique construction Michael Crossmann has given this show. Crossmann has built this show, thematically, into a story -- a story of his life. I have asked Charlie to elucidate this structure. I have never heard Charlie claim that this is the only reading of this show sich is viable..."

"We haven't heard the complete story about that day in the boiler room," Oprah says. "I, for one, would like to hear the truth about what happened down there."

"This man has been exonerated by a jury of his peers," Charlie Rose defends Crossmann.

"Yes -- but I would like to know what really happened," Oprah insists.

Crossmann notices that the four skinheads have become four faces he recognizes: John Preston, Mike Grubb, David McCulloch and Ted Lawson.

They smile at Crossmann.

Preston yells to Crossmann: "You'd better pass out now -- so they can't hold your responsible for this...!"

The other three skinheads begin to laugh.

Before long, everyone in the room is laughing, everyone except Oprah -- who is livid.

"I knew it! I knew you were guilty!" Oprah cries. "You murdered those...children...!"

"Those murderers, you mean!" Donald Trump says.

"Those racist murderers!" Alice Walker adds. "He's a hero for doing that, as far as I'm concerned...!"

"We're getting off-track here," Hedda cries. "Reggie, you began to talk about line and color..."

"Color is a racist conception!" a voice comes out of the audience. Another British accent.

"Excuse me!" Hedda replies.

"If you read his novel, you'd see that racism is implied in the structure of color," the man continues.

"And you are?" Hedda asks.

"My name is David Batchelor," the man replies. "I am an artist; and an author of the book, Chromophobia, which is a meditation on the racism inherent in the color-structure..."

"Is that 'Chromophobia' as in 'homophobia'?" Hedda asks.

"Yes," Mister Batchelor replies. "And the two words are clearly connected. In the male-dominated philosophy behind Western civilization, color is associated with being foreign, feminine, oriental, primitive, infantile, vulgar, queer, irrational, even pathological. Our view is that white is purity; and color is a corruption of that purity. Crossmann suggested this in his novel, too -- with his color tree, the hierarchy of values. He suggests that there is white light at the top of the tree. From this pure light are born the three primary, pure colors. But after this comes the corrupted shades, the secondaries, formed from two colors, and then the tertiaries, formed from three. Then, of course, black, formed from all the colors..."

"And your point is?" Hedda asks.

"Crossmann talks about the color tree, which is inherently racist," Batchelor says. "But the color wheel tells us a different story. The color wheel is a circle; it is more...generous, more democratic. There is no such thing as a hierarchy of color -- there are only random color events. All colors are, in fact, equal...."

No one knows how to respond.

"There is a kind of white," Batchelor continues, "that is more than white. There is a kind of white that repels everything that is inferior to it -- and that is almost everything.... There is a kind of white that is not created by bleach, but is itself bleach. This white is an aggressive white, doing its work on everything around it; and nothing escapes...."

"Are you saying white is only for reactionaries, supremacists?" the Donald asks.

"Yes. White is for the rich; color is for the rest of us, the real people," Batchelor replies.

"I have a white house," Trump replies.

"Yes, the White House -- with a white interior, I'd bet!" Batchelor accuses.

"Yes, in fact."

"I knew it!" Batchelor says. "Rich autocrat! Very high maintenance, this white...!"

"Yes, in some ways," Donald Trump admits.

"In a lot of ways," the Donald's wife adds, laughing.

"Another voice from the anti-universe," Richard Baker intones to Crossmann.

"I have read your book, with much admiration," Truman addresses Batchelor, stepping forward into the light. "But I did have one problem with your assertion that there is no name for the color between green and yellow. Of course there is: it's chartreuse. I have seen a mad young woman here tonight, wandering about in, of all things, a downy chartreuse duck costume. You should have a look a this young man. She is wearing your color: chartreuse..."

The audience laughs nervously.

"Well," Hedda says, "are we back to this painting yet?"

"I'm not sure what the implications of this color theory, this man's commentary, are, in terms of Michael Crossmann's painting -- for he uses white very rarely," Xavier Rubenstein questions. "Is this man saying that Michael Crossmann is a racist, because he uses white in his paintings? Because, in fact, he uses white very rarely.... He seems to have a love affair with color -- Crossmann does..."

"I agree with this," Morgan Freeman. "If you had brought me here to this exhibit -- and had allowed me to skip the elephant dung tossing contest next door, and the phtography exhibit on the first floor showing children in naked postures -- and I had not known who Michael Crossmann was before I came: I would say that Michael Crossmann, judging from the work alone, was probably black or at least part black..."

There is a hard silence.

"Could you explain why?" Hedda asks.

"The words 'primordial' and 'aboriginal' have come up over and over again tonight," Freeman replies. "Primordial and aboriginal each speaks about the origins of the race. Crossmann is obsessed about the origins of the race, the human race. 'First Family, 'Night Warrior, 'Lovers', 'Young Girl', 'Old Man Reflecting on His Youth' -- these feel, to me, African in origin, ab-original. With all this screaming about race, race, race: my view of this exhibit is that this exhibit is about the entire history of the human race. There are people in this exhibit of every color. I believe Crossmann probably has some black blood. How could he create these kinds of pictures and not have some black blood...?"

"What are you saying, Morgan?" Oprah asks. "This man..."

"His whole novel is about being Everyman," Freeman replies. "This exhibit is about Everyman. You distrust him because he's not a liberal -- not because he's white. You have more white friends that black friends, Oprah. White people love you as much as black people do. You hate him for political reasons, not racial reasons. And he probably doesn't trust you for the same reasons...."

"What are you saying?" Oprah asks.

"Some whites are liberal and some are conservative," Morgan Freeman responds. "Some Asians are liberal and some are conservative. Some Mexicans are liberal and some are conservative. Why are American blacks the only group which is not allowed to be both conservative and liberal? Because the only issue we think about is race. We don't have a spectrum of concerns. The only way we define ourselves as black people against or oppressed by whites. That's why we wanted to persecute Clarence Thomas in public. That's why we accuse him of being white. Anyone who's not the same political persuasion is a traitor. But life is more complex than this...."

"It's because of our history in this country," Oprah explains.

"Partly, yes. But is every liberal white person really a black person?" Freeman asks. "Are conservative black people really white -- or just conservatives with a black skin...?"

"I don't understand where this is going?" Oprah asks. "You said he was really a black person -- Crossmann. Are you standing by that...?"

"I don't know," Freeman replies. "When I look at a few of his paintings, I think he might be.... The human genome map tells us that there is almost no difference between any of us, physically -- less than one-half of one percent. We all come from the same root -- the primordial, ab-original root. It is clear to me that Michael Crossmann is, in fact, seeking a common root. There is no doubt that his book, with all its struggles, and with its resultant nationalism and embrace of his own people -- the book is, in fact, a map of the common root. It is a paradox: it embraces the common root and it embraces the uncommon root at the same time. And so do his paintings, in my humble opinion..."

"Is he saying Crossmann's black," Donald Trump asks.

"I don't buy that," Alice Walker says.

"Is there any proof of this?" Doctor Himmelmann aks.

Crossmann is shocked to see Doctor Himmelmann in public.

"Well, I don't have any proof," Freeman says. "Just a hunch, a feeling."

"None of us know about our past really," Woody Allen says. "I mean, there are woodpiles everywhere, all over the globe. Who's to say that our own ancestors didn't spend quite a bit of time in a woodshed -- or that our mom's may have had an occasion to carry some wood back to the house on a cold night..."

"Do you hear that," one of the skinhead says to his friends. "Crossmann's a nigger. Crossmann's a nigger...!"

"I don't understand what all this has to do with the way the man develops line and contour," Reggie Lyons says. "You Americans, with your obsession with race -- what is it all about, I wonder..."

"We're not going to solve this tonight," Hedda says. "Unless Michael Crossmann has something to tell us that we're not expecting. Charlie, you say this drawing is..."

"I say it 'represents', in this story he has constructed thematically tonight, the shooting at the high school," Charlie Rose corrects Hedda. "It sin't about that experience. The drawing isn't about that experience..."

"So, what comes next then?" Hedda asks. "We have the murders, the executions, the trial. That brings us pretty much up to the present..."

"Exactly," Charlie Rose agrees. "This is where it gets really interesting..."

The Magician sidles down to Crossmann. He is dressed in a black shawl, like the old Russian woman. He says: "She got tired. She had to go home."

Crossmann laughs at this. "Mussorgsky," Crossmann says.

"Steps on the floor," the Magician replies.

"Is there music in your shoes?" Crossmann asks.

"Hypothetical music," the Magician replies.

"This one, number thirty-one, is 'New Year's Celebration'," Hedda says. "Like tonight."

"Precisely," Charlie Rose says. "Precisely. This painting, or drawing, whatever you want to call it -- it brings us up to the present."

NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION

"I don't get it," Senator Kennedy says.

"Note the androgynous face," Moshe Frank replies.

"Also note the flaccid penis on the end of the celebration instrument," Gloria Steinem notes.

"This is tonight -- yes!" Columbo says. He is back. Wearing his trenchcoat again. "I think I can follow all that..."

"See the strong white presence in this piece," David Batchelor calls out.

Reggie Lyons is checking the band-aid over his eye, trying to see if the wound is still bleeding.

"It looks like some kind of musical instrument, with a trumpet on one end," Doctor Brothers suggests.

Xavier Rubenstein looks at his watch.

"I need to go over to my show," Jerry Springer announces. "I'll see you over at the studio, Mister Crossmann...!"

Allen Ginsburg bounds through the room enjoying the moment of silence -- and cries:

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge -- this actually hap-

pened -- and walked away unknown and forgotten

into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley

ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of

the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-

saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,

danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed

phonograph records of nostalgic European

1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and

threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans

in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles

The woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume appears next to Ginsburg, frightening him. He hurries away.

"Warhol! Is that you?" she yells at Crossmann.

"Not recently," Michael Crossmann replies.

She wanders away, muttering to herself.

"Any more comments on this piece?" Hedda asks.

"This would be nice in lacquer," Henrietta Beach adds.

"Let's move on then, in to the future, if you will," Hedda says.

The crowd is beginning to thin out.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, dressed all in red now, mimicking Mae West. She says: "Are you going to tell us about the 32 steps...?"

"The Hitchcock movie?" Crossmann asks.

"No. The mystical letters and numbers," the Magician replies. "And youf friend, Moshe, is here to help you.

"The next painting, number thirty-two, is entitled 'Hailing a Taxi at Night'," Hedda says. "Charlie, what do you make of this...?"

HAILING A TAXI AT NIGHT

"I think it has something to do with me," a voice comes from the back of the audience.

It is a taxi-cab driver, the one with the mohawk haircut -- Henry Krinkle.

"He took a ride with me earlier tonight," Krinkle says. "I took him uptown earlier. This weird painting, according to what old Charlie has been saying, this painting is probably about that taxi ride tonight..."

"This is insane," Reggie Lyons responds. "You Americans! This experience has the intellectual foundation of a mud wrestling contest...!"

"Put a cork in it, Reggie," Richard Baker warns threateningly.

"So, what comes next, Charlie?" Hedda asks.

"Well, I don't know," Charlie Rose responds.

"We are moving back into the mystical," Pete Hamil says. "The future is, well, the future. We don't really know anymore..."

The crowd is thinning even more.

"Number thirty-three is entitled..." Hedda begins.

"The Scourging at the Pillar," the Magician cries.

Crossmann notices the woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume again, moving in and out of the audience.

"Let's move on to number thirty-three then," Hedda says.

THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR

"Charlie, or anyone for that matter," Hedda says. "Who wants to handle this one...?"

The collectors have all left the museum.

"This reminds me, in one sense at least," Morgan Freeman begins, "of the drawing 'The Re-Birth of America'. That drawing showed an experience emanating out of an organ, a womb. This drawing shows an experience emanating within, in a sense, another organ -- a heart..."

"A sacred heart," Natalie Merchant suggests.

"This is the scourging of Christ," Jerry Falwell cries out. "Crossmann clearly sees himself as Christ. It's blasphemous -- but it's pretty obvious. In his book, he claims...!"

"Yes, we know!" Hedda snaps. "We want to know the implications for this man's future....!"

"I don't think it holds any implications for his future!" Falwell snaps back. "The man is loony tunes, he's a cracked melon, he's a broken record...!"

"This is some kind of image of crucifixion and resurrection," Charlie Rose responds. "Resurrection, because of the bird, a symbol of Easter..."

"I don't know if I'm the only one seeing this," Senator Kennedy says, "But, while I do see the human heart in the drawing, I also see a woman's breast -- the mother's breast. Does anyone else see it..?"

"Yeah, I see it," the Donald replies.

"Is Mister Crossmann going to be crucified?" Hedda asks Charlie Rose.

"I would have to speculate on that possibility," Charlie replies. "No, of course not. Who would do such a thing...?"

"Let's move on to number thirty-four," Hedda says. "This one is an interesting..."

More members of the audience begin to drift away.

"Tell us why this exhibit was divided into 36 steps," Jerry Falwell demands.

"Pardon me?" Hedda replies.

"Why 36 pieces? There must be a reason that 36 pieces were chosen," Falwell continues.

"There was no reason," Hedda replies. "The artist selected these pieces."

"Oh, everything has some mystical meaning for him," Reverend Falwell replies. "Let him answer for himself...!"

"The 36 Paths of Wisdom represent the 26 letters of the English alphabet and the 10 letters," Moshe Frank replies.

"Oh, Kabbala ruballa," Reverend Falwell responds. "We want the truth...!"

The four skinheads are standing behind Falwell, as a kind of army of his word.

"I don't understand this question," Hedda responds. "What is this all about...?"

"I don't think I know either," Crossmann replies.

"It's about demonism!" Falwell cries. "Continuing demonism! We know Crossmann's the Beast, the Anti-Christ! If you add the numbers 1-36 together, you arrive at the number 666, the number of the Anti-Christ. His allengiance to the number 36 tells us something, doesn't it...!"

Stunned silence.

"Is that true?" Hedda asks.

"1 plus 2 is 3 and 3 plus three is 6 and 4 plus 6 is ten..." Lola begins, showing off her love of numbers.

"Take our word for it!" shouts one of the skinheads, the one who looks like John Preston. "We've done the math...!"

"There are 36 images in a set of Tarot cards," Shirley McClain comes in. She is standing next to her brother, Warren. "Could it be that this exhibit is, itself, a circle of Tarot...?"

People in the audience begin to snicker.

"36 is 9 times 4," Richard Baker proffers.

"36 is 12 times 3," the Magician cries out.

"In the Fourth Order, the World of Spheres, 36 represents Jupiter," Moshe Frank interjects.

Reggie Lyons throws up his hands in disgust; and then he leaves, looking for his coat.

"36," Moshe says again: "The soul guides beyond the body. Malkuth within Geburrah: History is invented."

Richard Baker steps up: " In the earlier discussion regarding Three-Dimensional Reality, It was broken down, or rather built up, into 27 components. This number 27 was found tobe the sum of 3 x 9. This new number 36 is the sum of 4 x 9. The difference between these two numbers is 9. This can be seen symbolically as the definition of reality added to the definers of reality in the nine digits. As was shown previously though, one of the 27 has the value of zero. Rather than 27 + 9 equaling 36, it should be 26 + 10. While the zero is not really a number, it does have a definite value and place in the system. For the purpose of this part of the work though, we will try to first analyze more of the values of nine: 9, 18, 27, and 36....

"In the chapter concerning Revelation, we work with a numberline of seven places. Let us go back to that line and look at some of the other things it reveals. The first digit and the last digit are the numbers 1 and 7. These two total the sum of 8. The second pair of digits is 2 and 6, which also total 8. 3 and 5 are next, also totaling 8. Since this numberline has an Odd number of digits, as seven is an odd number, there are no more pairs left. The number 4 is left alone in the middle. 4 is half of 8, so the place