Act 2. Elysian Heights & Sherwood Forest Facts
Scene I. A glen. Diana is sitting next to a panda bear, who is playing with her shield, occasionally throwing up a glance at the speaker and apparently feeling at home. No one is holding or touching it.
Diana
Well we finally got the fourth one now and this one is a female. Her name is Chin. Furthermore, I have some good news for you. All the varieties of Eucalyptus that we planted for them in advance have apparently found an amiable soil here and are growing well. I am positive, that we will one day have lots of them in their exclusive enclave here and be able to set them free, that is back into their wild habitats one day. And I hope that like all of our projects so far, this one will be a success too. Needless to say, I can never thank you enough for your praiseworthy constraint, in not influencing the behavior of any of our captive species. For not petting or domesticating them in anyway or feeding them any fancy food, something that no doubt is not much difficult for us to do, since we all love freedom, strive toward a life of harmony with mother nature and generally disdain culturally acquired dependencies. Yes all of our children, for indeed they have become our children, have so far shown no sign of cultural degradation and are capable of living a well adapted life in biotopes whose integral part and parcel they are. They are needed there equally as they need their specific biotopes. One without the other is a human fallacy, not ours!
[ A clapping of hands ]
Yes I hope that our pandas rearing and rehabilitation program will turn out be a similar success. Thank you all. And of course, special thanks to Demeter, for helping the humans to restore and fine tune the original degraded habitats back to a stage, where our children at once instinctively recognize them as their long lost home or the lost paradise. Her contributions can never be overemphasized. Thanks Demeter from us all, who share your fruits, that you bear and present to us here in this pristine spot and everywhere on this Earth.
Enter Cupid & Psyche
Cupid
Hi Everybody! Hi Diana. Look who I brought with me here? Someone who managed to throw back at me my own arrows with a force directly proportional to the product of the amour from us both multiplied by square of the intensity of the libido generated by the distance between us and which by the way is directly proportional to the square of the distance between us two!Diana
What a pleasant surprise! Psyche here! Welcome!Troupe
How absolutely gorgeous! Cheers! Heartily welcome to our abode! Watch out Cupid, she has some of her own small, nevertheless highly potent arrows up her sleeve! And she may well take care not throw them around here. We are apparently all love struck! Isn't she absolutely gorgeous!Psyche
No more potent than those from Diana or from all of you. What a party crowd. This is insane. And all that crap, I heard about you! This is is fun, girls. I am awe stricken. Nothing like I have ever seen or expected. This is a great party! And yet how peaceful!Cupid
Now fairies of the woods, you have not disappointed me in the least. Nothing less than I expected. I knew all along you would hail her welcome! Am I happy to see it. I imagined that Psyche, though very reluctant to come at first would love this place, if she saw it once for herself! That is why I more or less persuaded her to come! And I sure am happy to discover, that I had guessed right... Hey what is this? You little panda bear, stealing arrows from my quiver, but wait...I know... I know.. although you don't seem to need them, since Demeter has given you equally potent ones to call your own, I realize that you could use some more, considering the plight you are in. Keep them and don't worry about the future, you have it seems already pierced the heart of the great huntress here, with a force indirectly proportional to your mass. She will certainly help you.Diana
That is Chin. our new co-inhabitant here. Chin watch out you don't hurt yourself! They are sharp, the ones from Cupids quiver! Reluctant Cupid?Troupe
Persuaded her...?Psyche
Apologies, fairies, for that is how you appear to me now, as I see you in the dimming soft glance of Apollo and the silken caress of the Orion, that lends a dreamlike aura to your glen, utterly unknown in Olympian cloudy mansions and that lightens your faces in a, for me hitherto unknown manner. This place appears to me to reflect everything that I ever imagined to symbolize eternal youth and naturalness of things yet unspoilt by time and history and culture. How refreshing this freshness of life! Yes life, the pure Biology, still untainted by learned Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and the consumer market economy or for that matter by the clergy and the Caesar!Diana
I am, as you can see for yourself, pleasantly surprised. I must admit that I was reluctant at first and Cupid had to persuade me to accompany him here. I have had my misgivings, after all the things I have heard about you through the grapevine...
Mars? Well no! Alright I should know better. Of course it is Hera! Who else? You don't have to tell me, but do let me know, what they tell about us at the Olympia?Cupid
Sorry for my meddling in or appearing to be overprotective toward Psyche, but I beg of you Diana, not to persuade her to debase herself to the mundane level of reporting the gossip from a kind of a cheap boulevard newspaper, unfortunately a favorite pastime of many of the Olympians. I notice that she is feeling overwhelmed...Diana
You are absolutely right, darling Cupid. I am sorry. I just felt a bit hurt and my curiosity knows no bounds...Psyche
Dear Diana, they talk like that about Jove even. Why not about us? They need it, as you need the light of Orion, because of the meaninglessness that their own life, their actions and personal affairs seems to reflect back upon them. Sometimes it seems they don't know why they are living, except in participating in the life of others, whose doings are consequently imbued with meaning and sensation, which the poor suckers seem to be eternally deprived of. No doubt sometimes there fertile imaginations will attain dimensions, where the depravity of the animals may appear like peanuts. But we all know, that much of it may exhibit religious and social and political needs of groups, races and nations, who will adorn their much needed and sometimes almost instinctively self-generated foes with properties out of some perverse dimensions of the universe, that feels like a slap on commonsense. But what they usually say about you folks, has I suspect to do with making an interesting small talk at show-times probably bereft of any political motive. However it is certainly not hard to imagine, that Neptune or Pluto may have their eyes on the treasures you hold here, with which they could buy the allegiance of gullible gods like Vulcan or there may be others, who may resent your alliance with Demeter, since that may set some limits on their instincts for expansion and may mean some tough resistance against their veracious imperialistic appetites, that my otherwise know no bounds. That is why I don't think it is necessarily Hera, who sets these rumors in circulation. But then of course you would like to know, what they are talking about. Anything and everything. You are cannibals, men-haters, you offer children's hearts to forest deities, indulge in cannibalistic and sexual orgies, all that and more, they might not hold back in comparing the great huntress to hyenas, who incidentally are not only scavengers but do hunt, which these passive consumers of sensations never ever bother to check. They may however admit that they are not sure...but then even Hera is not immune from such Klatsch. Someone once whispered to me, that she is almost obsessed with the male organ of Chiron the Centaur and is worshiping it, as some worship the Shiva Lingam, with the same sacred attitude. They compared her to some famous queen, whereas another compared her to Sappho. totally immune to masculine incarnations of the universe. Mind boggling, this whole boulevard crap, not worth our attention...Diana
Compare us to the wild dogs, whose pre-selected prey at an already-commenced hunt no gods can save. Who, unlike a cheetah or even a lioness at times, never give up chase.Psyche
Compare us to the hunting and not scavenging hyenas, who bring their babies into nurseries, tended by caring nannies, so they can hunt without constraints.
Compare us to the killer-whales, whose appetites are notoriously the most voracious on earth and whose hunting can be supremely coordinated and an at times awfully strategic. It has been told that a pair of killer whales (apparently sisters) once trained their kids in hunting a sea lion baby, by grabbing it on shore and letting it loose in the currents for the young killer-whales to grab. And every time the sea lion baby managed to escape the grips of the youngsters and attempted to run back, shouting and crying to its hysteric Mom on the shore, but each time the sisters brought it back into waters for the training. The training went on for a while and at the end the whales let the sea lion go free, fully spent out to its Mom!
Compare us to “high-way” robber, the frigate bird, that takes only a mouthful of the catch from the blue-footed booby and in no way hurts the booby. And watch how the parents teach the child, robbing at high altitudes in the air, it is nothing less than dramatic. Apparently out of fear of falling from the skies, as the mother frigate bird catches the booby from behind, constraining her flight, the booby regurgitates a fish or two out for the frigate bird kid, who approaches her from the side.
Compare us to the booby itself,that looks almost as awkward and helpless as a penguin, when on land, but who can streamline his body, shoot like a missile into the waters and catch, with an incredible speed and with a pre-calculated mathematical, geometrical and temporal precision and muscular coordination, a fast swimming fish deep below the surface, subsequently to emerge out of the water unscathed and fly, as if its feathers had never got wet, a fact that could put best scuba dry-suit to shame.
Compare us to the ants, who can sweep everything clean and dry, like locusts on their march for conquest, with an army of volunteers, scouts and helpers, as impeccably functional and streamlined as any fascistic regimes of the humans. We are all that but more. Certainly a part of this seemingly haphazard creation, part of the form-changing, metamorphosing elements of this universe and that way subject to all the subtleties and futilities of earthly existence and the philosophical interpretations that it may entail, but we are no less divinities. We have therefore a mission, that all these creatures are not cumbered with.
Oh! How blessed are those, who have a sense of purpose, yes a mission in their lives! It is but natural that their motivation can not be crippled by rejections, outright oppositions, adversity, hardships, loneliness, self-doubts, lack of support from others or their laughter into the bargain or through the realization that one is left untouched by the currently predominant social consens, that undeniably more often than not revolves around things trivial, exhibiting a myopic vision, a hazy depth of field and focused only a few meters in space and a few days in time. And the more feeling of purpose and sense of justification in one’s chosen path, the more the loneliness.Diana
Gosh! I didn’t expect such opinions from you sweetheart, and that too at such a young age compared to us all here. Besides such awareness is not given freely to one born with a silver spoon, which we naturally thought you were, although I do know, how much you suffered, watching your father getting older and worrying about you ever finding a mortal man to match your beauty and how you had to endure the scheming of Cupid’s mom Venus.Cupid
Woman! As ever and always!Psyche
A silver spoon, of course it was. I was Dad’s favorite, an apple of his eye. It was his unhappiness at my fate, that was more hard to bear than the fact of being without a husband and being constantly pestered by admirers. I was willing to face the monster for his sake only.Diana
Poor girl you really believed that?Psyche
Venus, my mother in law, has so often asked me for my forgiveness, that I really can’t talk about it in the same way, I used to. It is also now all forgotten and I may consider myself to have come out much happier in the end.Diana
True indeed. You do emanate that rare quality, evident in souls that have found themselves. Anyway, I think you should therefore have a good time with us. Tonight we are all going to David’s beach party. David is a human being, and has received from Janus almost all of the north-eastern territories adjacent to ours, for his global festival, that will start in October this year. Actually they invited me to Tina’s birthday party, that they are planning to celebrate with their host, Janus and some of his citizens, including probably also Saturn. Janus seems to be quite impressed by Tina’s work so far and accepted the invitation, where they hope to discuss about the coming festivities a bit, thinking I presume, that in such an atmosphere, one may be able to talk about things not discussed so far. Janus is moreover gradually getting to know more and more people from David’s staff, who are directly involved with David in planning of the festival. I offered them my beach for the occasion, and they all readily consented. I also had this feeling they want to ask me, if they could make use of some of the places here, for the festival. Tina asked me, if I wanted any one else from David’s staff coming or for that matter any one from the artists, who are already there. I told her, she ought to decide that, it being after all her birthday, but she wanted me to decide about it, I assume, so as not to bring anyone here uninvited or because they might otherwise have to invite all and the sundry, I guess. The Beach is sure, big enough to hold the lot of them, but we did want to have a sort of an easy going discussion between my girls here, the citizens of Janus and David and a few of his staff from the planning section about the festival. This however would be almost impossible, if we had a big party. Time for that in October. Therefore I suggested some song writers for an easy going evening, ones who are already wandering through my realms. Joni, JamesT and Cat, they all feel already at home here, the latter two even asked me if they could build a cabin here in the woods, where some children could play during the festivities. And the big Bear, who was last week rolling on our grounds, his voice hitchhiking through our trails. And of course Eric, who is already here helping David and has made a couple excursions through our domains. Well there will be some mellow tunes floating in the air and I am sure you will love it and my beach. Besides a few more gods gracing this gathering with their presence, especially by those, who symbolize love, will be the right ingredient for this party. David will be happy to make your acquaintance, a loving man too, he is our David. Moreover you could … sorry I must laugh! Yes what was it? Yes you could discover for yourself, if the things that you heard about us through the grapevine are fact or fiction. I can’t help laughing! Hey orgies they said? Heart Eating Cannibal Orgies! That sucks! There we go to the dirty boulevard! I am a Voodoo Child!Chorus (all, laughing)
To the dirty boulevard, yes we are going! To the dirty boulevard! 'cause we are Voodoo Children! Voodoo Chile! Voodoo Child!Joana from the Troupe
I am staying with Chin, don’t worry Psyche. Maybe I will be there the next time, and who knows with Bryan there too? You will love Bryan, I bet! Nothing but heartaches and jealousies! And David plays and sings too! Don’t look at this small bear ruefully, once you will see the big bear singing the blues out there, you will forget this one! Have a good time! Hope to see you soon here Psyche! Please do!Psyche
You bet!