scruta

[Ferret sits in a crowded, noisy bar on a Saturday night. There is a live band of mostly percussionists playing a herky-jerky, world music voodoo vibe. The singer chants over and over: “我的身体没有问题。我的精神没有问题。我的健康没有问题。没有问题。My body has no problems. My mind has no problems. My health has no problems. No problems.'” Ferret begins to write in his notebook, taking in the vibe. A Peacock next to him sees him and asks:]

Peacock

What are you writing? A story?

Ferret

It’s all kinds of things. Notes on all kinds of stuff. Poems, ideas, words, names of medicines.

Peacock

Do you write in the circle or out of the circle?

Ferret

Umm…

Peacock

You know? Like write outside the circle?

Ferret

I don’t know what you mean.

Peacock

Like outside of everything that you know, like what people know.

Ferret

Well, writers always try to go outside what is known into negative spaces. That’s the point of–

Peacock

No. I mean, like God took us and gave us only elementary school. We didn’t get anything else man. There’s so much we don’t know. We’re just animals, man. Only animals!

Ferret

Well, that might be true in some sense, but–

Peacock

We’ve got to get to the high school! Or the college! We’re just stick here in this circle man. We can’t get to God. We’ve got to get out of the circle.

Ferret

Well, I think that it’s important to realize that we are more than just–

Peacock

Now you’re just taking it too far, man!

[The song has finished. Peacock gets out of his chair and yells at the singer in the band in Chinese, and asks him to play with him. The singer says he isn’t done yet. Peacock storms off. The band starts up again, and Ferret begins to write:]

The truth is that you talk in circles – this is I suppose the way all insights begin, as a sickness, a thing that builds and feeds on itself. Then – there is the moment that you break out – and you see the circle for what it is in its delinquency. That is the art of overcoming, the defining part of man – the thing that makes him more than an animal and less than a god – these circles that revolve one after the other, on and on, on and on, on and on…