Ismael

What is your name, traveller?

Speak up, I didn’t hear you!

Ben

Ah, Ben is it? Well Ben, we don’t take ticketless travellers on this ship. If you wish to stay, you have to pay for your voyage.

Or what, you make us walk the plank?

Nothing so brutal, are we not all civilised people here? At least not so much walking at any rate.

Well we have no food, and our gasoline was taken by the last group, before we had the ‘good fortune’ to be rescued by you. And I assume you’re not talking about money, as that has no currency, if ever it did.

Ah, a philosopher, and a funny one at that. Everyone becomes a philosopher these Days, it is like an endless supply of education which, like your money, has no value here. You see I don’t even want your woman, no nothing so barbaric or sexist. I prefer a good tight cul anyway. Get his panties boys.

[Ben shouts and tries to protest, but the Filipino clamps his hand over his mouth, and pulls him back by the hair, while the chef begins to undo his trousers]

This is how we pay our passage on my ship. But don’t worry although I am captain, I see this as somewhat of a co-operative. Once you are an official member of my crew, you can have your turn with whom you like. Now stop fighting, I think you are protesting too much.

Are we not all civilised here? hahahahha hha haa… Strictly speaking, civilisation is defined as a highly developed human society with structured division of labour, and advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions. In simple terms, civilisation means acting in a civil manner towards other people, which implies cooperation in the furtherance of community goals and the upliftment of the individuals within the civilisation. So in a way this vessel is a microcosm of civilisation and community. ahhahaha……

Perhaps a game of chance MORUE MORUE MORUE…. to make it seem like you have a hand in your own fate? Well? Dice it is then. Ho boys, let him up so that he can roll for the sanctity of his hole. SON TROU…. HAHAHHA like we all did , when it all went down and the whole came tumbling around us, and the Lord of this world abdicated his throne. AVEC LES ÉTOILES TOUT MORUE…

Can you walk on water? Like the fishermen of Euskadi, defending the hearths of their fathers from the wolves ready to prey on the unwary. By bringing back salted whale meat, and then Gadus Morua, Bacalao, Baccala, Saltfish to pimp their wares. The great almighty cod of this New found land, like some holy destination prepared by the good man John Cabot, not John of the Cross.

Come let me bear witness, all you unwashed and unbelievers and roll for what is left of your dignity. Such a precious commodity, holy holy holy, and the only one left to trade. Haha holy are they and what choice did the whales have. All those great beasts of burden from before the first flood. Did they know their mammalian origins would be their undoing? If they hadn’t needed to come up for air, they would never have been such easy prey for man. holy are you and we hunted them by God! SHUFFERINGANDSHMILING…… BADABA BABA BA…… BA DADA DA DA DA DADA – THERE IS NO GOD BUT YOU

[cut to Ben rolling the dice]

Come let me desalinate you, you grande morue!

And if only we had known that it was more than mere myth, but the very underpinning of the firmament! In their millions, the myriad of bodies of Leviathan were the pilings on which this, our world stood. BA DA BA BA….. BADA BA BA….. BA DADA DA DA DADA. As we pillaged and raped the seas, we pillaged and raped our own humanity, and the selfsame humanity that we held so dear, was a corrupted thing. Unresolved and violent, a violence turned outwards against all the other species the Creator had fashioned before us. SHUFFERING, SHIVERING AND YET SMILING WE COME ON….. WE COME ON. And with what hubris did we claim our place at the Centre of Creation. No wonder the angels in heaven rebelled. Our Creator tried to turn back the tide with flood and destruction, but we were a tough breed. OH YEAH…. OH YEAH…. OH YEAH…. HOLY ARE YOU…. NO MORE NO MORE NO MORUE…. BADA BA BA BA BABA. And we didn’t stop till we laid low not just the creatures – creatura, MY BABY CREATOR but the very terrarium itself. And only then faced with the horror of what had been perpetrated did the Creator HAIL HOLY FATHER AND MOTHER OF CREATION magnify the sun to turn us against ourselves. Like a million rodent Icaruses, our very wings becoming our undoing. BORN TO BE FREE, BUT REALLY WERE WE BORN TO BE FREE?

MORUE MORUE OHYEAH…. OHYEAH. MORUE MORUE OHYEAH!

And so we crashed, leaving only the strongest and most calculating of mind! Ha! What hubris, we are all mad, and doomed. The spectre of things gone before, who continue to follow their drives, like a school of right whales searching for phytoplankton. But last year’s feeding grounds have become barren. There are no 3-footers any more… So here we are. NO MORE NO MORE

My name is Ismael, for I am like the patriarch of a lost tribe, wandering atop the oceans as if they were deserts. Israel, where now are your brothers?

Actually my name was Georges, but I was ready to throw off the yoke of Imperial majesties, whether French or African. I had not been a good man, but neither had I been a bad man. Now I was born again, in the wilderness as a leader of men and women. Like the good man Hassan Al Sabbah, I too saw the world turned upside down. The poles heat up, and the icebergs fall away like driftwood. And all those Arctic whales let loose upon the face of the Earth, or should that be water. For we all floated on top of our own watery grave, the vast ocean tomb of the living. For what was ours at best but a half-life. OHYEAH OHYEAH OHYEAH…… LETME SUFFERSUFFER SSUFFER NOMORUE. Give me instead this life after death, we could wander as shades on the currents of disdain, and as shades of our former selves, we could be free from the shackles of matter, even as we gave in to our imperious urges. We were as shadows, more real than we had ever been as men and women. A lost tribe indeed. Like the cold, bottom-dwelling cod, with our leathery backs running down to our britches.

[We see day and night pass. A myriad of seascapes pass by, and Ben is brought in….images and time passes…and Ben is brought in. Each time rolling again as is his right]

Why do you keep coming back Benjamin, the righteous son of Jacob? The thirteenth son to the Captain of the thirteenth tribe? Is this love, is this love, is this love that I’m feeling?

Tell me ‘Ben’, what is the true motivation of a human being? Is it friendship, power or belief? holy are you, there is no god but you do you know the story of Omar Khayyam and Hasan Al Sabbah? These two: the great Persian poet and the founder of the Assassins, were so the story goes, students of (the) LAW together with Nizam Al Mulk, who would become the vizier of the invading empire of the Seljuq Turks.

According to legend, the three of them made a pact that whoever would succeed would help the other two. Rather than accept a court position Omar Khayyam asked for and received an astronomical observatory, so that he could watch the HEAVENS, while Hassan rebelled and created his impregnable fortress of Alamut, before extending his power and dominion further into Rudbar and Quhistan.

He won many converts to his cause by taking the unprecedented step of replacing Arabic with the Persian language for religious purposes. HOLY ARE YOU BORN TO BE FREE What action, you might ask, was taken against this interloper? Well his old friend Nizam dispatched major expeditions against Rudbar and Quhistan in the year of our LORD 1092, but was himself dispatched by assassins the same year. SO tell me ‘Ben’ which one of these men chose the correct path, and more importantly which one are you? Are you a cod or the man who cuts the salt cod?

HAHAHAHA…… BORN TO BE FREE…… OH YEAH OH YEAH OH YEAH…. BORN TO BE FREE…HEEHEEHE

Where is your woman? Or do you not take her as a wife, knowing that on this ship all are wives of the Captain? Dutch Wives!!! Hahahahahahaha ohyeah born to be slaves, born to be slave!

SHH SHH SHUFFER NO MORE……. OH BABY SHMILING AND EATING AND LOVING….. OH YEAH OHYEAH OHYEAH!

[The crew are dancing in the galley with strobes, all half-naked and wild].

Amongst our company were Belugas, Grampus, Narwhals and Spermaceti, but no room for right whales any more….. ha, ha, ha! To be right, to be right, to be right seems a laughable and mortal preoccupation, and those torsk were the first fools to die, by their own hands or by ours. For moral humankind was no more, we were free at last, cursed and wandering in the absence of our maker and gatekeeper. No bird-head, baldhead holding us to account for our shortcomings. Just the jagged rocks and the water on which to lunge at our own self-appointed time. WHERE ARE THEE NOW?

[Ben sits at table facing Ismael in the captain’s cabin, no dice are seen, and instead they are talking].

So my friend, are you happy here?

Ben – After a fashion.

It is good to have a sense of community. We are community.

Ben – I don’t…We don’t wish to be part of your pack anymore, Georges.

DO not fucking call me Georges! Georges was my white man’s name, now I am Ismael.

Ben – Yes oh great leader of the thirteenth tribe. Floating like carrion on your fucking barge. You still think in colonial archetypes man, you think we’re fucking Stanley and Livingstone? We’re more like Laurel and Hardy.

I think we make a more handsome couple. Nubia and Egypt were one and the same civilisation after all….

Ben – Whatever. The question is what are we going to do next?

It’s quite hard to repopulate the earth through sodomy. Me I’m quite happy on my boat. But you are free to leave anytime you want…

Ben – We are?

Yes, the only thing keeping you here was yourself. You paid your passage long ago. This is not a dictatorship, but an association of free men and women. Like your man Hobbes, the beast Leviathan is dead, and you are free to choose your own destiny, wherever you choose to make it. There are no borders any more, just a lack of vision. And for that may we all be cursed as a bunch of idle miscreants. Like Lazarus, raised from the dead, but for what?

Ben – Not my man Hobbes, but anyway captain I thank you for your hospitality and your caresses. Rough as they were.

They were only as rough as you wanted them to be. Go in peace my brother.

Like our mammalian cousins below us, we were creatures out of time, without the illusion of a legacy to provide fodder for ambition. And this was freedom, freedom from the unquenchable thirst to be somebody, anybody other than ourselves. So my friends frolic, and freak out, and make merry intimacy, for who cares? You are abandoned. Abbadon, Abednego, Shadrach, Meshac and Metatron……all the overseers are dead and gone, if ever they were.

ABADON. ABADOON. ABBADEE, DOO DOO DOON, ABBADA, ABBADON. BORN TO BE FREE. I SAY WE WERE TO BE FREE. MYANANANA. NAUWANAWANA. BORN TO BE FREE….. SHUFFER SUFFER NO MORE…

We rode astride our great Bowhead, like some roused ancient god, behemoth of the deep, thawing Arctic. Like an Old Testament battering-ram, we careened from one place to the next. Whither we were going, who could say? For who ultimately goes against God’s will. HAILE I HYMN. Like great Leviathan, who was sent to swallow up Jonah, we fed on the carrion atop this now dying planet. Or should I say, rather that it was humanity that was dying (if ever it existed), and that passed PAST like so much krill through the baleen of our intolerance! And so we fed, and fed again, EATING rising up like the primordial force of the original chaos, subsuming all that came before us. For were we not free people? Freebooters and free booty, and life while we clung to it, was ours! In whatever dark recesses of the mind, whichever holes and crevasses of our inner life, in which we lived it.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!