(Two men sitting at a picnic spread in a park with trees, etc. No building seen. They’re in a clearing, with a view that sweeps up from the horizon high in the air. But the foreground they occupy is solidly the ground.)

H

ere we are, at a picnic. Us two alone, and the ants as luncheon guests. I’m hefting a stone (does so:) in the palm of my hand. A stone, whose home is the in the land.

But I have a higher awareness. My contemplation is on that cloud over there.

That’s the sky for you! It’s always marred by clouds.

I don’t regard clouds as blotches or impediments, or as negations of a pure sky’s clarity. I regard them as positive ornaments, things-in-themselves.

How high-fallutin can you get? A stone (hefting it:) has more solid merit, any day!

It may seem real, here: but a cloud is real, there.

You’re a dreamer, is what you are! Your head is where the clouds are. But I’d rather palm this stone. (Palms it.)

You think I’m balmy? You’re merely palmy. If you need weight for assurance, any stone will do. A stone is merely the slave of gravity. And gravity’s kingdom, democratically unselective, lacks the taste of discrimination. Whereas a cloud is a real connoisseur’s delight! It makes us soar above our station. It raises us out of the dust. We’re with it. But a stone—a stone, like a parasite, is only with us.

A stone clings to us. But a cloud’s above such petty dependency. Truly, we may call it liberated. Its destiny is unlimited. A stone is only what it is.

That’s a lot of hot air! Your vapor rises and dissolves in meaningless spirals of inconsequential ascent. Your words drift. And I’ve lost the drift of them.

A stone’s destiny is in its density. Compare what’s merely a stone’s-throw away, with what (gazes high, deep, far:) surpasses forever, in its lonely day.

The spirit is a puncturable balloon. But it takes some doing (admiringly:) to split a stone!

Splitting a stone merely divides it into halves, a bigger half and a smaller half, but they weigh the same as before, (And what’s weight?—it’s merely dross.) But a split cloud will multiply!, and feed our dreams eternally.

You’ve got your atoms all wrong. You’ve got to start with elements/ Now, take a stone (admiringly:) for solidity!

Solidity?! it crushes me with its weight. A cloud vessels our travelling infinitely, and skips us lightly on the sun’s multidirectional ray.

Our argument finds us too opposed to go anywhere. I’m really earthbound, and you’re high-up-there!

We can reconcile these two factors of our dispute, by regarding a stone as a puny symbol for a cloud, a dormant cloud that hasn’t gotten off the ground yet and by considering a cloud to be a graduated, liberated stone, having shaken off its earth-captivity and been promoted to the deep reward of a metamorphosis and transcendental uplift. It has sloughed its earthly skin, and found heaven pragmatically laden with welcome, and nearer to reach than supposed. Nature is the lowest layer in a hierarchy astronomically monumental. A stone is a puny thing. It’s only stage one. It doesn’t move until pushed, or scooped up to be hurled. A cloud’s momentum is its own. Its soft sibilants caress the gods in language.

Pretty words! But they’re not worth a stone! They sit dreaming on the air! What do ideas matter? Matter is the best idea!

Your matter-of-fact materialism is finitely bound to one dimension. And it gets you nowhere.

Everything I need is only a stone’s-throw away. I’m content.

That brave declaration is insincere. Aspirations give our minds airy room, where talent is free to be marvelous.

Is your talking nonsense?—Or is your nonsense talk? I fail to grip the difference.

You needn’t grip anything. Trust the clouds.

I wouldn’t trust them within an inch of my life! All they do is rain on me.

(Solemnly:) Clouds reign an imperial dynasty. Each cloud is an idea’s materialization, and ideas are our spirit.

(Rudely:) What good will all your sublime visions get you? If you’re such a visionary, why ain’t you rich?

My mental wealth is jewelled infinite. Clouds rove with their treasures. An angel’s economy requires no more than wings.

You’re violating the simplicity of this (showing it:) stone. Your language inflates all the non-stones, whereas modesty should give you the stone’s-measure of proportion, in restraint of your exaggeration. Your mind runs wild. It’s a child of irresponsibility, in its unbroken course.

Which is better than being coarse! Cloud-dwelling is an imponderable refinement, and diets our coarse thickness in rarity and aesthetics. If you were asked to locate beauty, then you must raise your eyes.

No; to praise the stone, is to show concrete beauty. Concrete beauty is the only beauty we know.

There’s no hope for you. I dwell (eyes skyward:) on the blue!

You bore me, with no sign of fatigue. Your wonders have no value, for you ponder the intangible. The precious will soon evaporate. The enduring is hard, like this (shows it:) stone.

Oh, go stone yourself! We dwell apart—obviously.

So do these tokens of our championing: here, the stone (shows it, looking down), and (searching up, in vain:)—where’s the cloud!?

(With composure and serenity:) It’ll be back. It’s roamed elsewhere. Is the earth so sacred, or so exclusive, that it must confine itself there? No: its voyages transparently vacate space, with outward-bound excursions into the inner mind. Clouds are poetry’s source. Stones are what buildings are raised from. In poetic myth, our souls dwell. The buildings only physically house us. Our priorities are separate. You can have the earth. But my soul’s growth has no flimsy stone in it: its satisfaction has less definition. (With finality:) Go. I stay.

As a stone will stay. Hard put to do otherwise. But wither blows the soul’s companion-in-one, the cloud? No knowing goal can trace it. Myths are not what you can pin facts on, or hang stones from as a beady necklace. God reserves a cloud for His visit. Stones are for humans to touch. I think a stone is a punished cloud, having fallen into disgrace. But the sentenced angel resolves to rise again. He’s jailed for a term in the hard stone’s core. He learns how not to err, that way. Earth is very practical, with him.

(Stonelover remains sitting, with tailor’s crossed knees, contemplating his precious stone. Cloudlover roves away, with a light indeterminateness of direction, on a slightly rising angle. A stone curtain falls. A cloud curtain rises. They embracingly meet in tender caressing, then push on past each other. Between them, they’ve covered the total stage. All is symbolically accounted for: nothing is left over.)