Is it possible to imagine the opposite of happiness?

I suppose so

No. Think about it. This is not possible. Because the minute imagining starts happening--

You meant to say-- the minute happiness starts happening-- but you interrupted yourself

Yes I did

To correct yourself? Or to hide something.

Ah, I wanted to hide my happiness

Yes

Why?

Well, you must be superstitious

I am not. Or rather, one half of me is not.

Life will always correct things that are going wrong

By making them worse?

You tell ME

You have a little bit of happiness, but you never nurture it, you never let it flower into something even more powerful

Power corrupt

(Pause)

I’m talking about happiness power

(Pause)

I see a certain light in your eye that sends me running from this room in fear

(Pause)

Well?

(Pause)

Guess how often my imagination stands in for reality

(Goes)

One can never trust words, I suppose. Mine included. So when I make speeches about happiness? Ah. How stupid to be siezed by such ideas--

(IN)

Feel better?

Yes, I feel much better

This is for you

(package)

A dangerous weapon of some kind?

Open it and find out

(Goies to cabinet)

Look. I have one just like it

Then there’s no need to open either of them

Right!

Then let’s throw both of them out the window

Right!

(Done. One can’t breathe)

Remember-- what doesn’t destroy me, makes me stronger

Right. I remember that

You know what was in my box

Don’t tell me please

Why not

I won’t to be able to verify it byopening the box

\But you could HAVE the information, even if you can’t verify the information

That’s just it-- I’d prefer to hover in that realm of having no idea except my own guess--

Why

Don’t you remember? What doesn’t destroy you, makes you stronger.

I’m not sure that’s good for me

If I’m stronger--

You mean happy?

Certainly not

Then I can live with it

Do you have a choice?

Unless that door is suddenly locked without my knowing it, I have a choice

Try it

I’ll just imagine--

(other opens)

See?

Then YOU go

(Considers. Goes)

Now that I’, alone. Not for the first time: but each time, releasing in me very different imaginings.

Now that I’m alone. . .

I understand that what happens is always the opposite of what seems to be happening

No. It’s the opposite of what happens, not what seems to be happening. Do you appreciate the distinction?

(Pause)

What happens is always the opposite of what happens

What happened to your original what SEEMS to be happening

I lost that reference point

Here. Have some fruit

That’s what seems to be happening

IO bet you’re going to do something peculiar with fruit

Maybe I’ll select an item, and have some

That’s an imaginary procedure

(Takes apple)

Here-- you taste it to prove it’s OK

Listen. If that fruit were poisoned, I wouldn’t necessarily be the one doing the poisoning

What are the odds

Very slight

Then taste it

If it’s something of which I’m not particularly fond?

Even then

(Tastes, exits)

Now that I’m alone--

(Takes fruit, eats)

It seems OK, but I don’t like it

(Enter)

Mine was OK

So was mine

Then finish it

No

Why not

You know why not

(Back in bowl)

I don’t think people will be happy about a bowl of fruit topped by one that’s half eaten

Well, nobody else is here

On top of which-- neither of us is particularly fond of fruit

Well-- sometimes I have a taste for it

But--?

Not if it’s poisoned

Of course not

(Pause)

Think of all the other things in the world that contain equally hidden dangers

If I think about them-- I’ll be that much more vulnurable

Right. You have a way of calling attention to important issues

Maybe that’s called-- being evasive

Well, it’s a trap nobody escapes

Right

Even if I go out that door again

Right

I haven’t escaped

Right

(Goes)

Now that I’m alone. Is that an escape? I don’t think so.

The subtle is no more in this world

(Pause)

The invisible is no more in this world

That’s good isn’t it? Things available, rather than invisible, things available, rather than subtle and therefore sometimes overlooked.

Good? I don’t think so. I think a better world is a world full of subtle things-- nuances. And invisible things-- behind the things that are seen, producing density, plasticity, mystery.

Guess why you like such things

Why

Because you are a WEAKLING.

Yes. I am weak

That’s contemptable, isn’t it. To be that much of a weakling?

No. Strong people are often. . .stupid. And boring.

--And successful

Often. Yes.

Suppose. You were suddenly very successful, Isak. Would you turn your back on that

No

You’d we;

lcome that turn of events

Welcome? I’m not sure

You’d feel hapy

Yes

(Pause)

It would be another manifeststion of my weakness that I would be happy at that turn of events

I throw off the cloak of pasivity! But it doesn’t last. And again. . .my vitality hides inside the seed of a different something

Here I go again. Here I go again.

what’s the matter with me? How many books have I read all through, from the beginning to the end? Not many.

Wisdom is not useful, That’s the kind of world it’s become. Any wisdom I give you will just make you eventually in-operable. Better I should go on the attack

Ah, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger

Isn’t that Neitzche?

Probably

He went crazy, which may have been a perfect solution to life’s problems

Maybe

What’s the matter with me!

This has no enterence and no exit, and it’s called the wide wide world

Then anything should be possible

It’s not a question of possibilities, it’s about first one thing happens, then another thing happens, and then another

You mean, therefore, this world is perfect.

Yes. It is demonstrably perfect, because it is demonstrably complete

Let’s visit

What

Let’s visit the perfect world

.I no longer believe in flying saucers. I’ve lost my faith.

How often do I have bad experiences

Not too often I hope

Perhaps if I had bad experiences all the time, life would be more interesting

It depends on what you mean by bad experiences

I’d like to be fashionable

That seems like a trivial desire

It is-- plus, that could be my salvation.

What

A kind of discourse that’s unrerlated to what’s gone on before

Oh?

A new kind of sexual intensity

OH?

This is OK. My experiences

This is a new kind of experience

I think this is a sexual experience

Yes, but this is a new kind of sexual experience

Tell me.

Be quiet and I can tell you, but not quiet-- and no information is available

Why not

Because

Why not

(Pause)

Whatever I can tell you about this new kind of sexual experience, or, vice versa, whatever you can experience about this new kind of sexual experience-- is not relevent to the fact

That’s why I agree to be quiet about such things

I just want one thing that burns me more and more and more. Just-- the intensity of one thing. The contemplation of one thing that gets brighter and brighter and brighter, until it’s unendurable.

I think I’m better at mystical experience than anybody else.

Not me. I’m not good at that

This is strange. For no reason at all--

There are always reasons

Maybe. But other people don’t always understand reasons

I bet they do

I don’t

I bet you do

(Pause)

I don’t understand why, under the circumstances, one experiences stage fright

That’s what I mean

Say it for me

Stage fright

See? This is strange-- why, under the circumstances, do you experience syage fright?

(Pause)

Stage fright! Stage fright! Stage fright!

________

You have to admit it’s strange that you want to say things that are in bad taste

I didn’t say I wanted to upset you

I know you don’t want to upset me-- that makes it even more peculiar. Nobody in their right mind wants disturbing things said. Things that cut into them like knives-- why should I collaborate in that?

You know why

But why do you need to experience that kind of mental pressure

I don’t think you should ask me that question

OK. I just have to decide whether I want to participate in such a situation

I say yes to that

How much money is involved

If I said a lot-- what would you consider a lot

I’ll have to think about this.

strange, but I do not have the energyh to do what I want to do.

If I acquire energy-- that energy leads me where I do not want to be led.

But if I try to go-- mentally-- where I want to go-- I then no longer have the energy. Strange

Where do you want to go for which you have not the energy

Going there-- beginning to go there-- my energy -- lessens

Where is that, what direction is that, in which you energy lessens

(Pause)

Let me try it this way. When you gain energy, where are you headed then?

(Pause)

Here’s what I need. I need another center of consciousness to be open to my center of consciousness. To interpenetrate, if I may say so, my own center of consciousness. Is that-- potenitally-- acceptable?

Tryt it out

How?

Make it happen.

OK. I’m in the process of expanding my own center of consciousness

I don’t feel anything special

OK. It didn’t work

(exit)

The complete and total idiot

What did you call me?

I wasn’t necessarily talking to you. I could very well have been talking about myself

I doubt that.

(Pause)

Here’s a predicition. By the end of the week-- we’ll be sharing the same bed.

Am I invested with my own energy? Or somebody else’s energy

Don’t ask for explinations

Of course not. Energy superceeds explinations

Hey-- what does energy superceed?

Explinations

But-- isn’t that energy?

Everything is energy

Oh great psychotic person-- do you reach energy levels denied the rest of us?

No. These energy levels are denied to no one-- it is myself howevere, exclusively, who choses to access those energy levels

(Pause)

Oh great psychotic-- I have nothing to say to you

Join me

I can’t

Oh? That proves you have something to say to me

Discover it inside me

It’s discovered

Oh? Didsovered inside me, yet hidden from me>?

Our thoughts are hidden from us, yes

Not all thoughts, certainly--

Then invert the image-- they are constituted in the real world as hidden things. OK>

When you say OK

--Yes, when I say OK, the world thinks-- it’s the great psychotic who says OK, so OK means something out of the ordinary, when OK comes from that source!

I do know that behind this door, people very important to me-- are on the verge of verrifying the fact of my own consciousness.

If I knock-- I will frighten them and they will turn elsewhere.

So, I must not knock.

I am alone, therefore-- for a long long time, which makes me very unhappy

Energy? Don’t tell me that I have no right to energy wherever I can find it.

If the sources of your energy are perverse--?

And how do you define that!

Is there a story that could possibly interest me? I don’t think so. It’s over and done with in the realm of stories

I have no story to tell

Thank God

(Pause)

Is it truly over and done with in the realm of stories?

I do think so

Sad or not sad

Not sad

(Pause)

Well-- behavior is still available to human beings

No. Behavior is no longer available

Then we’ve reaces an impass

Lert’s jump a head and say that consciousness also, is no longer available. We’re on automatic piolet, as it were

Ah, something else is at work

Yes!

We’re on automatic piolet

Yes!

(Pause)

Am I still allowed, possibly, to be interested in happiness?

Isn’t that irrelevent?

I hope not

You have no way of registering whether or not you are participating in happuiness

That’s true

Are you participating in happiness

I seem to be in the midddle between happiness and not happiness

That’s not happiness

No. I suppose it isn’t Can I go?

Yes

A new kind of life experience that has nothing to do with happiness

Let me see this

It’s not with the eyes such a discovery is made

Yes, I know, happiness is experienced with the entire body

But I said this wasn’t about happiness.

Sometimes, happiness is experienced only with the brain

If your brain is powerful enough

No, not powerful-- but useable in a different way than normal

This is no mountain for me to climb like I normally do climb mountains

Outside what I do know, there is lots I don’t know, admittedly. But can this develop iunto somehing-- two hands on something. I don’t know. Sometimes I think what’s best about me, I bettef keep to myself, you know why? Because you can TAKE from me, you can take things from me and I never get them back.

So while I have to be careful about lots of things, I want to be not so careful, and the risks involved, let’s just turn them into advantages beause when I hurt-- of my body, the mind cells are even MORE active