Dorothy, Toto, Sylvester and The Professor

Professor Marvel

Dorothy.

Dorothy, Toto, Sylvester 

and The Professor —

(Sylvester is the 

name of The Horse.)

I Need You, Brother.

 

 

" There are Women for whom we can predict few wooers and Men who are likely to have few friends. They have nothing to offer.

But almost anyone can become an Object of Affection; The Ugly, The Stupid, even The Exasperating.

There need be no apparent fitness between those whom it unites.

I have seen it felt for an imbecile not only by his parents but by his brothers. "

 

"She became The Voice for his Inner Needs, his Inner Feelings, and in some ways, that's what she becomes for all of their lives."

 

"She had a Discipline, and a Willpower that was STAGGERING.

She said to me once, "The Only Time in My Life that I cried, in his presence, when he had Polio, was when he called us into The Room, and he showed us :-- 'Look!', he said, 'Look what I can do!'

He was phobic about being caught in A Fire -- Helpless, in A Fire --

He got himself down from The Bed, and he showed them, with great Pride, he slithered on The Floor, using his elbows, to get to The Door --

And with that, Mrs. Roosevelt broke down in tears, and she fled.

And she said that that was The Only Time, she didn't control herself in front of him."

Martin Sheen on Elvis: "Nobody Knew How to Deal with Him."

Martin Sheen on Elvis : 

"Nobody knew how to deal with him."

There Was a Fine Young King.

 

There was a Fine Young King. He was vigorous, strong, and a good man in every respect. 

He loved to hunt, and one day he was hunting deer on horseback with his courtiers. 

In Indian mythology, The Call of The Inner World, The Call of The Unconscious, is often portrayed as a deer that is tantalizingly close but eludes being caught. 

The King and his courtiers were galloping along when the King saw a deer just out of bow-and-arrow range. 

He veered off and began following it, but the miraculous deer kept just outside his range. 

The King went plunging further and further into the forest, chasing the deer all day, so intent was he, in his masculine vigor, to catch this prized animal. 

By late afternoon, the King was irretrievably lost, and the deer had vanished. 

What a wonderful deer. 

He gets you where you need to go and then leaves you. 

The King was exhausted and rather frightened, as he was now separated from his courtiers. 

Being a wise young man, he got off his horse and sat down. 

If you don’t know What to Do, 

sit quietly, until your wits come back.

 

Suddenly he heard a beautiful song. A maiden was singing as he had never heard before, and he fell in love with her very voice. He got up, began to walk toward the sound, and soon came upon her. The maiden was as lovely as her voice, and the King, overwhelmed by her beauty, instantly lost his heart to her. 

 

He asked, “Are you married?” and the maiden said, “No.” The King said, “Will you be my queen?” and the maiden replied, “You must ask my father.” So he asked her to take him to her father, and she did. 

 

The father, himself a wise man, was delighted at the prospect of having a king for a son-in-law, but he didn’t let his enthusiasm appear too obvious. So he said, “You may have my daughter as your wife under one condition. She must never see water.” If you replace the word water with the wordreality, you will understand this story easily. The King agreed, and the young couple married. But there was one problem—keeping the Queen from seeing water. 

 

Avoiding Reality The King did his best to arrange for the Queen to see no water, but the task was more difficult than he anticipated. The palace was located right along the river that ran through the royal city. So the King ordered the royal laborers to build a brick wall alongside the river. Before he would take the Queen outdoors or up to the palace roof, he also had to be careful that there was no rain on the horizon. In fact, the King spent almost all his time arranging things so the Queen would not see water, and he did little else. The kingdom was going to seed, as he wasn’t per- forming most of his kingly duties. 

 

Finally, one day, the courtiers cornered him and said, “You never meet with us. You’re not managing the kingdom.” And the King said, “I have no time. Go away.” The head courtier, seeing that the kingdom was in dire straits and that there was no use asking the King again, as he was out of his mind, went to the servants and asked, “How does the palace work? What do you do?” The servants told him, “We spend all our time making sure the Queen does not see water.” 

 

What is this myth telling us? The King is in the throes of the forward-looking possibility, but his newfound love, who would fill his heart and bring him all the legitimate happiness in the world, has a condition laid upon her—that she must never be subjected to reality. Every love affair, every Stardust romance, carries this prohibition. It will work as long as you don’t subject it to reality, as long as it doesn’t come down to ordinary everydayness. If ordinary everydayness— water, in the symbolism of the story—ever douses this fallen-in-love quality, the feeling dis- solves instantly. That is the story of romantic love. 

 

The head courtier came to the King and said, “Sire, let us make a garden on the rooftop. We can plant trees and beautiful plants and put a roof over it, so that even if it rains, there will be no difficulty. You and the Queen can spend time in the gar- den and be happy.” They did, and it was a success.

 

Contact with Reality

One day the courtier asked, “Sire, are you not thirsty for the sight of water?”

 

And the King admitted, “I’m parched, but I don’t dare pursue my wish or The Queen will be in trouble.”

 

So the courtier suggested, “Your Majesty, I can build a fountain in the middle of the garden and surround it with greenery so thick that the Queen will never see it.

You can gaze upon the fountain in private and be refreshed.”

It was done. The King went regularly to the fountain and he was pleased. 

 

Then, one day, inevitably, the Queen happened upon the fountain. She was delighted for an instant, and then she vanished.

Our idealism, our noble motives, our loftiest intuitions perish at their first contact with reality.

The Queen disappeared, and the King was consumed with loneliness. Everything he wanted in The World, and he’d had a touch of it, was gone.

He could not eat or drink. Nothing could assuage his loneliness. 

 

The courtiers tried to cheer him up. They gave him the best of everything.

But when someone is in the throes of that kind of loneliness, he is inconsolable. Nothing anyone can do, no possessions, no amount of money, fame, or entertainment can break through that loneliness.

We have seen something that we are not yet able to encompass, and it is snatched away.

This is the cruelest loneliness of all.

 

The King was in the level of Hell that is frozen over, and no one knew what to do.

It had never happened before, and they didn’t have a cure for it.

Then one wise man observed that when The Queen vanished, a small frog had appeared in the roof garden beside the fountain.

He didn’t know what it meant, but he had seen it.

The King heard about the frog at The Fountain and went up to The Garden and smashed it flat with his own hands.

Then he declared that all the frogs in The Kingdom were to be killed.

For weeks, peasants trudged toward the palace with sacks of dead frogs to collect their bounties. Thousands and thousands of frogs were killed, and The Kingdom was spending all its time and energy killing frogs and carrying them to the royal palace.

The King had all the frogs killed because he thought the frog was, in some way, responsible for the disappearance of His Queen.

That’s a strange symptom of loneliness.

We self-perpetuate our loneliness, killing every frog we see. 

 

Finally, one day, The Frog King came to see The King,

and he said,

“Your Majesty, you are about to exterminate my entire species.

I am The Father of Your Queen.

She returned to the land of the frogs when you broke your vow.”

 

The King listened.

He liked the Frog King and made peace with him.

 

As a result, The Frog King brought his daughter, the little frog by the fountain, back to life.

Here was the Queen in all her splendor. The King embraced her and was happy again.

And the Queen was no longer compelled to stay away from water.

 

Transformation and Redemption

This Myth of the King and His Frog Queen is a story of Transformation and Redemption.

If you’re caught in the kind of loneliness that has no comfort and cannot be assuaged, and you can hear the wisdom of this story, it will help.

 

This is how to get through the second kind of loneliness.

 

If you have touched something of Heaven, something that was given to you miraculously but is not yet ready for contact with reality, when reality touches it — and inevitably it will — The Dream will vanish and your loneliness will return worse than before.

You must touch the inner world and learn to bear the sight of water without going to pieces.

When you restore your connection to the unconscious, to spirit, your beloved will come back cured of her reality phobia. 

 

Both the King and the Queen had learned to live without Water, Reality.

But the King couldn’t stand it, or maybe it was the Queen who couldn’t stand it.

No relationship can survive unless it includes Reality, Water.

Many fine, spiritually evolved people are at the tenuous stage where they’ve had a sublime vision, but if any water gets on it, it vanishes.

The King on his heroic journey, and all heroes, are the ones who suffer most. 

 

At some time in every relationship, every man or woman wonders: When did my partner turn into a frog? Whether you get through this crisis hinges on your ability to see the divine.

At first, we fail.

The King marries the Queen, and you might hope the story will end with them living happily ever after. But they can’t take it. Every marriage replays this scene, and the marriage can dissolve at this point. She turns into a frog. He turns into a boar. They are unable to sustain the heavenly vision that started it all. The frog needs water. 

 

The bliss you experience at the beginning of your marriage is true, but you can- not stand it. If you hang on and go through the dry time — without water — the glory of your first meeting will return, less fragile this time.

But you have to persist to be able to touch the bliss of Heaven and the trials of ordinary life.

 

The Nearness of God

 

The third kind of loneliness is the most subtle and difficult.

It is the loneliness of being dangerously close to God.

The proximity of God is always registered first as extreme pain.

To be near it yet unable to touch the thing you want most is unendurable.

A medieval proverb says, “The only cure for loneliness is aloneness.”

 

In the Western world, loneliness has reached its peak.

The old ways that used to protect us have worn thin.

We’re at the point where The King has killed the frog, and we feel perpetual, incurable loneliness.

When we’re in this kind of pain, we cry out to be freed from our suffering.

But when our understanding deepens, we go off somewhere, sit still, and determine not to move until the dilemma is resolved.

For some time, the journey is hellish.

I don’t know whether it’s possible for us to get through this stage more quickly or if it is a set path we have to traverse at its own pace, not ours. 

 

When we are able to move from solitude to vision, redemption takes place and loneliness vanishes — not because it gets filled, but because it was illusory in the first place.

It could never be filled.

A new kind of consciousness arises that does not find the immanence of God unendurable. There never was anywhere to go outwardly. But there is a lot to do inwardly.

The change of consciousness that turns Loneliness into Solitude is genius.

Each time the handless maiden comes to a crisis, she goes to The Forest in Solitude.

This is especially powerful in a woman’s way. It is the feminine spirit.

 

Solitude and Community

As an intuitive introvert, I rarely feel lonely when I’m alone.

When I was in my early twenties, I took a job in a lookout tower, fire-watching in the forest. I was alone on a mountain peak for four months, and I never felt lonely.

Reality didn’t catch me there. I was not in danger of my Queen leaving me.

But the moment I returned to civilization, loneliness descended on me like a landslide.

How could I be so happy on the mountaintop and then rubbed so raw when I came back down?

I didn’t want to live my whole life on a mountaintop — I’m not a Hermit.

I had to go back and forth, as the King did, until the visionary life could finally stand the impact of The Water of Reality.

 

The Queen in me had to learn to withstand the water. It’s a process. I believe that everyone who has touched the realm of spirit has had to go through this antechamber. 

 

If you’re honest and perceptive, you can tell the difference between regressive loneliness, the first kind, and the ineffable second and third types of loneliness, where you sense and then see what you cannot yet have.

The second and third types of loneliness are nearly indistinguishable.

If you can say exactly what you are lonely for, it will reveal a lot.

Do you want to go back where you came from, to the good old days?

Or have you seen a vision you can’t live without?

They’re as different as backward and forward. 

 

Dr. Jung said that every person who came into his consulting room was either twenty-one or forty-five, no matter their chronological age.

The twenty-one-year-old is looking backward and must conquer it.

The forty-five-year-old is being touched by something he cannot yet endure.

These are the only two subjects of therapy. 

 

Solitude 

 

The Garden of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem are the same place, depending on whether you are looking backward or forward.

A person touched by loneliness is a holy person.

He is caught in the development of individuation.

Whether it’s a development or a regression depends on what he does with it. Loneliness can destroy you, or it can fire you up for a Dante-like journey through Hell and Purgatory to find paradise.

 

St. John of the Cross called this The Dark Night of the Soul. 

 

The worst suffering I’ve ever experienced has been loneliness, the kind that feels as though it has no cure, that nothing can touch it.

 

One day, at the midpoint in my life — a little like Dante — I got so exhausted from it that I went into my bedroom, lay face down on my bed, and said, “I’m not going to move until this is resolved.”

I stayed a long time, and the loneliness did ease a little.

Dante fell out of Hell, shimmied down the hairy leg of the Devil,

went through The Center of The World, and started up the other side, which was Purgatory.

I felt better, but as soon as I got up and began to do anything, my loneliness returned.

I made many round trips until gradually an indescribable quality began to suffuse my life, and loneliness loosened its grip.

Nothing outside changed. The change was entirely inside. 

 

Thomas Merton wrote a beautiful treatise on solitude :

 

He said that certain individuals are obliged to bear The Solitude of God.

Solitude is loneliness evolved to the next level of reality. He who is obliged to bear the solitude of God should not be asked to do anything else; it’s such a difficult task.

For monastics, solitude was one of the early descriptions of God. If you can transform your loneliness into solitude, you’re one step away from the most precious of all experiences. 

 

This is The Cure for Loneliness.

There Was a Fine Young King.

There was a Fine Young King. He was vigorous, strong, and a good man in every respect. 

He loved to hunt, and one day he was hunting deer on horseback with his courtiers. 

In Indian mythology, The Call of The Inner World, The Call of The Unconscious, is often portrayed as a deer that is tantalizingly close but eludes being caught. 

The King and his courtiers were galloping along when the King saw a deer just out of bow-and-arrow range. 

He veered off and began following it, but the miraculous deer kept just outside his range. 

The King went plunging further and further into the forest, chasing the deer all day, so intent was he, in his masculine vigor, to catch this prized animal. 

By late afternoon, the King was irretrievably lost, and the deer had vanished. 

What a wonderful deer. 

He gets you where you need to go and then leaves you. 

The King was exhausted and rather frightened, as he was now separated from his courtiers. 

Being a wise young man, he got off his horse and sat down. 

If you don’t know What to Do, 

sit quietly, until your wits come back.

Suddenly he heard a beautiful song. A maiden was singing as he had never heard before, and he fell in love with her very voice. He got up, began to walk toward the sound, and soon came upon her. The maiden was as lovely as her voice, and the King, overwhelmed by her beauty, instantly lost his heart to her. 

He asked, “Are you married?” and the maiden said, “No.” The King said, “Will you be my queen?” and the maiden replied, “You must ask my father.” So he asked her to take him to her father, and she did. 

The father, himself a wise man, was delighted at the prospect of having a king for a son-in-law, but he didn’t let his enthusiasm appear too obvious. So he said, “You may have my daughter as your wife under one condition. She must never see water.” If you replace the word water with the wordreality, you will understand this story easily. The King agreed, and the young couple married. But there was one problem—keeping the Queen from seeing water. 

Avoiding Reality The King did his best to arrange for the Queen to see no water, but the task was more difficult than he anticipated. The palace was located right along the river that ran through the royal city. So the King ordered the royal laborers to build a brick wall alongside the river. Before he would take the Queen outdoors or up to the palace roof, he also had to be careful that there was no rain on the horizon. In fact, the King spent almost all his time arranging things so the Queen would not see water, and he did little else. The kingdom was going to seed, as he wasn’t per- forming most of his kingly duties. 

Finally, one day, the courtiers cornered him and said, “You never meet with us. You’re not managing the kingdom.” And the King said, “I have no time. Go away.” The head courtier, seeing that the kingdom was in dire straits and that there was no use asking the King again, as he was out of his mind, went to the servants and asked, “How does the palace work? What do you do?” The servants told him, “We spend all our time making sure the Queen does not see water.” 

What is this myth telling us? The King is in the throes of the forward-looking possibility, but his newfound love, who would fill his heart and bring him all the legitimate happiness in the world, has a condition laid upon her—that she must never be subjected to reality. Every love affair, every Stardust romance, carries this prohibition. It will work as long as you don’t subject it to reality, as long as it doesn’t come down to ordinary everydayness. If ordinary everydayness— water, in the symbolism of the story—ever douses this fallen-in-love quality, the feeling dis- solves instantly. That is the story of romantic love. 

The head courtier came to the King and said, “Sire, let us make a garden on the rooftop. We can plant trees and beautiful plants and put a roof over it, so that even if it rains, there will be no difficulty. You and the Queen can spend time in the gar- den and be happy.” They did, and it was a success. Contact with Reality One day the courtier asked, “Sire, are you not thirsty for the sight of water?” And the King admitted, “I’m parched, but I don’t dare pursue my wish or the Queen will be in trouble.” So the courtier suggested, “Your Majesty, I can build a fountain in the middle of the garden and surround it with greenery so thick that the Queen will never see it. You can gaze upon the fountain in private and be refreshed.” It was done. The King went regularly to the fountain and he was pleased. 

Then, one day, inevitably, the Queen happened upon the fountain. She was de- lighted for an instant, and then she vanished. Our idealism, our noble motives, our loftiest intuitions perish at their first contact with reality. The Queen disappeared, and the King was consumed with loneliness. Everything he wanted in the world, and he’d had a touch of it, was gone. He could not eat or drink. Nothing could assuage his loneliness. 

The courtiers tried to cheer him up. They gave him the best of everything. But when someone is in the throes of that kind of loneliness, he is inconsolable. Noth- ing anyone can do, no possessions, no amount of money, fame, or entertainment can break through that loneliness. We have seen something that we are not yet able to encompass, and it is snatched away. This is the cruelest loneliness of all. The King was in the level of Hell that is frozen over, and no one knew what to do. It had never happened before, and they didn’t have a cure for it. Then one wise man observed that when the Queen vanished, a small frog had appeared in the roof garden beside the fountain. He didn’t know what it meant, but he had seen it. The King heard about the frog at the fountain and went up to the garden and smashed it flat with his own hands. Then he declared that all the frogs in the king- dom were to be killed. For weeks, peasants trudged toward the palace with sacks of dead frogs to collect their bounties. Thousands and thousands of frogs were killed, and the kingdom was spending all its time and energy killing frogs and carrying them to the royal palace. The King had all the frogs killed because he thought the frog was, in some way, responsible for the disappearance of his queen. That’s a strange symptom of loneliness. We self-perpetuate our loneliness, killing every frog we see. 

Finally, one day, the Frog King came to see the King, and he said, “Your Majesty, you are about to exterminate my entire species. I am the father of your queen. She returned to the land of the frogs when you broke your vow.” The King listened. He liked the Frog King and made peace with him. As a result, the Frog King brought his daughter, the little frog by the fountain, back to life. Here was the Queen in all her splendor. The King embraced her and was happy again. And the Queen was no longer compelled to stay away from water. Transformation and Redemption This myth of the King and his Frog Queen is a story of transformation and redemp- tion. If you’re caught in the kind of loneliness that has no comfort and cannot be assuaged, and you can hear the wisdom of this story, it will help. This is how to get through the second kind of loneliness. If you have touched something of Heaven, something that was given to you miraculously but is not yet ready for contact with reality, when reality touches it—and inevitably it will—the dream will vanish and your loneliness will return worse than before. You must touch the inner world and learn to bear the sight of water without going to pieces. When you restore your connection to the unconscious, to spirit, your beloved will come back cured of her reality phobia. 

Both the King and the Queen had learned to live without water, reality. But the King couldn’t stand it, or maybe it was the Queen who couldn’t stand it. No rela- tionship can survive unless it includes reality, water. Many fine, spiritually evolved people are at the tenuous stage where they’ve had a sublime vision, but if any water gets on it, it vanishes. The King on his heroic journey, and all heroes, are the ones who suffer most. 

At some time in every relationship, every man or woman wonders: When did my partner turn into a frog? Whether you get through this crisis hinges on your ability to see the divine. At first, we fail. The King marries the Queen, and you might hope the story will end with them living happily ever after. But they can’t take it. Every marriage replays this scene, and the marriage can dissolve at this point. She turns into a frog. He turns into a boar. They are unable to sustain the heavenly vision that started it all. The frog needs water. 

The bliss you experience at the beginning of your marriage is true, but you can- not stand it. If you hang on and go through the dry time— without water— the glory of your first meeting will return, less fragile this time. But you have to persist to be able to touch the bliss of Heaven andthe trials of ordinary life. The Nearness of God The third kind of loneliness is the most subtle and difficult. It is the loneliness of being dangerously close to God. The proximity of God is always registered first as extreme pain. To be near it yet unable to touch the thing you want most is unen- durable. A medieval proverb says, “The only cure for loneliness is aloneness.” In the Western world, loneliness has reached its peak. The old ways that used to protect us have worn thin. We’re at the point where the King has killed the frog, and we feel perpetual, incurable loneliness. When we’re in this kind of pain, we cry out to be freed from our suffering. But when our understanding deepens, we go off somewhere, sit still, and determine not to move until the dilemma is resolved. For some time, the journey is hellish. I don’t know whether it’s possible for us to get through this stage more quickly or if it is a set path we have to traverse at its own pace, not ours. 

When we are able to move from solitude to vision, redemption takes place and loneliness vanishes—not because it gets filled, but because it was illusory in the first place. It could never be filled. A new kind of consciousness arises that does not find the immanence of God unendurable. There never was anywhere to go outwardly. But there is a lot to do inwardly. The change of consciousness that turns loneliness into solitude is genius. Each time the handless maiden comes to a crisis, she goes to the forest in solitude. This is especially powerful in a woman’s way. It is the feminine spirit. Solitude and Community As an intuitive introvert, I rarely feel lonely when I’m alone. When I was in my early twenties, I took a job in a lookout tower, fire-watching in the forest. I was alone on a mountain peak for four months, and I never felt lonely. Reality didn’t catch me there. I was not in danger of my Queen leaving me. But the moment I returned to civilization, loneliness descended on me like a landslide. How could I be so happy on the mountaintop and then rubbed so raw when I came back down? I didn’t want to live my whole life on a mountaintop—I’m not a hermit. I had to go back and forth, as the King did, until the visionary life could finally stand the impact of the water of reality. The Queen in me had to learn to withstand the water. It’s a process. I believe that everyone who has touched the realm of spirit has had to go through this antechamber. 

If you’re honest and perceptive, you can tell the difference between regressive loneliness, the first kind, and the ineffable second and third types of loneliness, where you sense and then see what you cannot yet have. The second and third types of loneliness are nearly indistinguishable. If you can say exactly what you are lonely for, it will reveal a lot. Do you want to go back where you came from, to the good old days? Or have you seen a vision you can’t live without? They’re as different as backward and forward. 

Dr. Jung said that every person who came into his consulting room was either twenty-one or forty-five, no matter their chronological age. The twenty-one-year-old is looking backward and must conquer it. The forty-five-year-old is being touched by something he cannot yet endure. These are the only two subjects of therapy. 

Solitude 

The Garden of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem are the same place, depending on whether you are looking backward or forward. A person touched by loneliness is a holy person. He is caught in the development of individuation. Whether it’s a development or a regression depends on what he does with it. Loneliness can destroy you, or it can fire you up for a Dante-like journey through Hell and Purgatory to find paradise. St. John of the Cross called this the Dark Night of the Soul. 

The worst suffering I’ve ever experienced has been loneliness, the kind that feels as though it has no cure, that nothing can touch it. One day, at the midpoint in my life—a little like Dante—I got so exhausted from it that I went into my bed- room, lay face down on my bed, and said, “I’m not going to move until this is re- solved.” I stayed a long time, and the loneliness did ease a little. Dante fell out of Hell, shimmied down the hairy leg of the Devil, went through the center of the world, and started up the other side, which was Purgatory. I felt better, but as soon as I got up and began to do anything, my loneliness returned. I made many round trips until gradually an indescribable quality began to suffuse my life, and lone- liness loosened its grip. Nothing outside changed. The change was entirely inside. 

Thomas Merton wrote a beautiful treatise on solitude. He said that certain individuals are obliged to bear the solitude of God. Solitude is loneliness evolved to the next level of reality. He who is obliged to bear the solitude of God should not be asked to do anything else; it’s such a difficult task. For monastics, solitude was one of the early descriptions of God. If you can transform your loneliness into solitude, you’re one step away from the most precious of all experiences. 

This is The Cure for Loneliness.

The King Has Cause to Call Upon Extraordinary Grace

The King is rehearsing His Speech, over-coming his stage fright, standing alone side-on to a full-length mirror in a White House anteroom to The Oval Office, awaiting admission to his audience with The Leader of The Free World

“It's an honor, Mr. President."

"Mr. President, I can't tell you what a great honor..."

“Hello, Mr. President, the honor...”

Momentarily crestfallen, he composes himself, turns to face his reflection , and Speaks into The Mirror

 

 

Did you know I had a Twin Brother, Mr. President?

Identical.

Jesse Garon Presley.

He was born 35 minutes before me. Stillborn.

And they... They put him in a box on the kitchen table

while Momma kept on going trying to push me out.

 Sometimes I wonder about that, you know.

What that 35 minutes must have been like for her.

The Happiest Moment and The Saddest Moment Life could possibly throw at you.

Sometimes I think, God felt guilty for her, so he gave me the luck that was meant for Two People.

Makes you think, you know.

“Dear President Nixon,

First, I would like to introduce myself — I am Elvis Presley, and I admire you, and have great respect for your office.

I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for Our Country. 

The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it The Establishment. 

I call it America and I love it. 

Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help The Country out. 

I have no concern or motives other than helping The Country out.”

THE KING :

Mr. President — This is my little angel.

Lisa Marie. She's two years old.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, she is a beautiful little girl.

THE KING :

Yes, sir. She's my pride and joy.

And this is my beautiful wife, Cilla.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, she is very charming.

BUD KROEG :

Mr. President.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Bud.

BUD KROEG :

Mr. Presley.

THE KING :

These M&Ms are great.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Good to hear, Mr. Presley.

THE KING :

You got some good fellas working for you, Mr. President.

My guys are outside.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Thank you.

So, as I really do need to be going we should probably get to what you want to...

THE KING :

These are some of my closest associates.

And contrary to what you may have heard, Mr. President, they are not part of any mafia.

That is just a crazy rumor started by nasty journalists.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

They love to make it up, don't they?

Last month, Look magazine made up some cockamamie drivel about how I broke into the Dean's office while I was at Duke.

You know, you give a man enough money and he'll say anything, you know.

 

They'll just ruin a man's reputation.

They don't give a good goddamn.

THE KING :

They just write what they want.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Hear, hear to that.

Everyone has a badge.

THE KING :

Mr. President, I've shown you these photos because I am deeply concerned about the direction our great nation is taking.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Yes, of course.

Now, I'm gonna need an autograph for my Julie.

THE KING :

That's your family there?

Those are some good looking kids.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, they really take after their mother.

THE KING :

Well, it takes two good lookin' folks to make a good lookin' baby, Mr. President.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Are you...

You're saying, as a gentleman, I'm good looking too?

THE KING :

Well, of course, Mr. President.

Everybody knows that.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, I...

THE KING :

Now, plainly speaking, sir, I want to get people to respect our country.

To respect our flag.

 

Because that's what's getting lost in our nation.

It bothers me to see young people burning flags and smoking dope.

 

And just because I don't smoke dope or grow a beard does that make me a straight? Or a square?

Because if it does, heck, I'll take being a straight or a square any day of the week.

 

The kids today are being brainwashed, Mr. President.

It's what they are listenin' to and what they are watchin'.

That's what's doing it to them.

 

Take that Woodstock for example.

What the heck was that?

 

I'll tell you what it was, it was an excuse to get naked, get high and roll around in the mud.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, I'm with you there.

KROEG :

Four, three, two, one... Mr. President, you have your meet and greet.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

No, not right now. Thank you.

KROEG :

But it's with the delegation...

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

I said it's fine.

KROEG :

But it's with the donors...

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

I said it can wait.

And Krogh, make sure that we get a picture with Mr. Presley and me.

Ollie's outside, he's ready for you.

THE KING :

No pictures.

KROEG :

Mr. Presley, it's standard for us.

THE KING :

I understand. But not today.

Now, if you don't mind...

May I continue?

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

By all means.

THE KING :

Thank you. I have it on very good authority that many of the so-called underground groups have been infiltrated by communists.

 

Yes, sir. And I find it downright anti-American.

Just like The Beatles.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

The Beatles. Well, I don't like them.

THE KING :

They are anti-American, possibly with communist leanings.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, just look at them.

THE KING :

Let's look at the facts, Mr. President.

After coming here and making all that money, they split back to England, start saying all this anti-American stuff, speaking against us in the press.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, some people think they can say anything.

THE KING :

Specifically about our policies in Southeast Asia, sir.

Did you know that?

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

I did not know that.

THE KING :

It was Lennon.

The kids think he's some kind of prophet.

And well... What I'm trying to say is, sir, they may not actually be in the employ of the communists, but if encouraging Revolution doesn't sound like subversive propaganda, I don't know what is.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, right. Yes.

THE KING :

See, I've been studying communist brainwashing techniques for over 10 years now.

And the drug culture, too, Mr. President.

And it's my belief that if we don't do something to handle this situation very quickly, it could very easily get outta hand.

Well, you wanna know why the hell the communists are so against drugs?

It's because they love the booze.

 

Especially the Russians. I've seen it.

You talk about "out of hand."

 

And that's why communists and the left-wingers are clinging to one another, because they're trying to destroy us, Elvis.

THE KING :

I know, sir. Good, honest Americans.

They hate it.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

They don't hate us, Elvis — they hate what we stand for.

I mean, you and me, we rose from nothing.

My pa worked in a grocery store.

Your father was a sharecropper, yes?

THE KING :

A whole slew of things, sir.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, I think we were both somewhat loners.

 

And look where I am today.

And look where you are.

 

Well, a lefty sees that, and instead of wanting to walk in our footsteps, why, they get jealous.

 

It brings all their failures up bubbling right in front of their faces and, well, so, of course they react like caged animals.

 

Because that's what they are.

Just animals.

THE KING :

I know, sir.

And I want to help to stop it.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well, I think that is just great.

Absolutely.

 

So, my boys were telling me something like a concert.

A telethon. A television special.

THE KING :

No, sir.

I want to go undercover.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Undercover?

THE KING :

Yes.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

You want to be an actual...

I'm sorry, you want to what?

THE KING :

I want to be an agent-at-large.

 

You see, if I can get a Federal Narcotics badge it is my belief that I could protect this nation from sliding into anarchy.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Well... I...

THE KING :

Let's say I could infiltrate a band or a hippie commune, as a spy or a double agent, something like that, only disguising myself as one of them, hiding my own true feelings.

THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD :

Yeah, I'm not sure how...

THE KING :

Let's say The Rolling Stones,  or the Grateful Dead or maybe even the Black Panthers.

Heck, I could probably slip from one group to the other without even being detected.

 

And then, just when they let their guard down, I'd bust 'em.

I'd bust 'em all.

 

Of course, I would have to be so deep undercover so that no one would know it was me.

 

But in order for that to happen, nobody...

I mean nobody, can know about this on the outside.

Just a select few.

You, of course, Mr. President...

And maybe Mr. Hoover.

Aaron

Aaron is the name of The Patriarch, 

who gets everything wrong.

God made him 

A Priest

Pharaoh :

It's True, The Hittite Army has 16,000 troops camped outside Kadesh. 

What's less clear is why. 

Prince Rameses :

The Hittites are trying 

to cross The Border. 

Obviously. What else would They be doing? 

Anticipating an invasion by us, according to our information. 

They think we are... 

preparing an attack, 

which we are not. 

What I don't want to do, 

and won't do, is sit here... 

And wait until we're 

fighting Hittite armies 

outside the palace walls. 

Come.

What do the entrails say? 

They don't "say" anything. 

They imply. 

And that's open to interpretation. 

So, interpret them —

We'll Win or We Won't, 

in a preemptive attack? 

It's a Yes or a No. 

And it's not clear. 

But Something Else is —

In The Battle, 

A Leader will be Saved, 

and His Saviour 

will someday lead. 

Then the entrails should also say that we will abandon reason, 

and be guided by omens. 

Great Sekhmet, 

Pharaoh Drinks in Your Name, 

and Prays for Victory 

over The Hittites at Kadesh. 

Your first order of business when the time comes, you retire her. 

I will. I don't know why my father hasn't. 

But, just in case - 

If you see me in any real danger out there, ride the other way. 

I'm serious. 

When I look at you, I still see the two boys who grew up together, close as brothers. 

If, for any reason you ever forget that... 

Let these remind you. 

Long enough to be effective from horseback, 

not so long that you trip over them.

This is his. 

You've got mine. 

That's right. That's how I want it. 

You have each other's, to keep each other safe. 

Promise me you'll do that... always. 

 

Treat me like a fool...

Elvis' Dead Twin Brother was Aaron Presley.

Vernon and Gladys named their surviving son Elvis Aron Presley, so that their son would always remember the duties and responsibility placed upon him to live TWO Lives for the Second Soul he was born into This World.

The King has TWO SOULS - See Richard II

The King took up residence in Memphis, building his Palace upon a Land of Grace.

[The Palace of GRACE] 

The Elder:

Whoops.
 

The Elder: 

You've landed on my chair!
 

Our Lady: 

Sorry.
 

The Elder :

You've broke my chair!
 

Our Lady : 

Well, if you will leave chairs around the place.
 

The Elder : 

This is my front room!

 

Our Lady : 

Where's your kitchen? 

I just need to get some eggs 
to check the protein alignments in the goo.
 

(Graham points, and the doorbell rings.)

Our Lady : 

Oh! Is that your intruder alert or mine?
 

Orion : 

It's the doorbell.

Our Lady : 

Oh yeah. Sorry.

(Graham opens the front door.)

The Elder : 

No.

(And shuts it again.)

Orion : 

Who was it?

GRAHAM: 

Wrong number.

(Doorbell.)

Our Lady:

 Intruder alert again?

The Elder: 

It's a doorbell.

Orion : 

I'll go tell 'em to go away.

The Elder : 

No, Ryan. Oh.

The Damesel: 

Is everything all right?

The Elder : 

Not really, Yaz, no.

(Ryan opens the front door, then comes into the front room, followed by an older man.)

The Damsel : 

Ryan, you okay?
 

Orion: 

This is Yaz and The Doctor.
 

AARON,
The Patriarch Who Gets Everything Wrong : 

Hi.

Orion: 

This is me Dad.

Our Lady + The Damsel : 

Oh.
 

AARON: 

Graham.
 

Our Lady : 

Hi, Ryan's Dad.
 

AARON,
The Patriarch Who Gets Everything Wrong : 

Aaron.

(He holds out his hand.)

Our Lady : 

You weren't at Grace's funeral.

AARON,

The Patriarch Who Gets Everything Wrong :

No.

Our Lady : 

Ryan waited for you. 

You let him down.
(Long pause.)

AARON,

The Patriarch Who Gets Everything Wrong :
I was thinking maybe we could grab a coffee.

Orion: 
Er, yeah, right. Er, sure. 
Er, is it all right if we er...? 
We're just gonna go... 
(to Graham) Is that okay if er...?

The Damsel: 
If you're needing somewhere to go, 
café around the corner's open.

Orion : 
Yeah. Yeah, good shout, good shout. 
I'll just get me coat.

The Elder:
Aaron, can I have a word?

(Graham and Aaron follow Ryan out of the room.)
 
Our Lady : 
Ryan's Dad.

The Damsel: 
It's complicated.

Our Lady : 
Yeah. Dads are, so I've heard.
(In the hallway.)

The Elder : 

So, why are you here?

AARON : 

New Year's Day. 

Turning over a new leaf.

The Elder : 

Right, well, er, be gentle. 

He's been through a lot.
 

AARON : 

I know.

The Elder : 

No, You Don't.

 You have no idea.

AARON: 

I just want me and him to be family again.

The Elder : 

Family isn't just about DNA, Aaron, or a name. 

It's about what you do. 

And you haven't done enough.

Orion : 

We off, then? 

See you later, Gramps.

AARON: 

Gramps?

GRAHAM: 

See you later, Son.



[Café]

(Aaron is trying to sell a Matsoki microwave to the owner, and Ryan is fed up.)

AARON: 

But this one's a combination. 

Microwave and full oven. 

Both functions are the best quality you can get. 

I swear, this is the best you can have.

MAN: 
Sorry, not for me, mate.

(Aaron and his box return to the table.)

Orion: 
This is a new thing you're doing?

AARON: 
Only so long a man can work offshore.

RYAN: Given up being on the rigs?

AARON: 
Let's just say I've been examining my life choices lately. I'm not sure if this is the answer.

Orion: 
Get them online, can't you?

AARON: 
Yeah. Yes. Yes, except for this one. It's actually really good. 
A mate of mine makes it. 
I helped him with some of the specs. It's the best working oven you can get. 
But I make it sound like a con, so maybe I'm not cut out for that. 
Maybe it's back to engineering. 

We'll see. 

So, how you been doing?
 

RYAN: 

Seriously? 

That's where you start?
 

AARON: 

What?
 

Orion : 

That's all you got? 

How do you think I'm doing?
 

AARON: 

I know it's been hard for both of us.
 

Orion: 

Okay, stop. I don't care how it's been for you. This ain't about us commiserating with each other. This is about you making things right.
 

AARON: 

This how you talk to your dad?
 

Orion : 

I don't know cos he ain't been around. 

So don't come walking back in demanding respect, cos that ain't where we are.
 

AARON: 

What do you need me to say, hmm? Because I want to say it.
 

RYAN: 

Okay. You say, 

Ryan,  I'm sorry. 

I've messed up. 

I haven't been good enough. 

I've let you down a lot. 

And I know that's made life hard for you. 

And if it meant that over the years, you ever felt lonely or abandoned or didn't know where to turn or who to talk to or how to be. 

Then I'm sorry. Cos... 

'Cos you mustn't ever think that you didn't deserve my love.
 

AARON: 

You didn't ever think that..? 

Yeah. Why wouldn't you? 

Okay, listen. Here's what you find out when you get older. 

There are things you've done in your life to others, the decisions you've made maybe when things were difficult, and you get it wrong. 

But by the time you realise you got it wrong, it's too late. 

You can't fix it because the damage is done. 

And so you run cos you're too ashamed to make it right. 

That's what I did.
 

RYAN: 

No. You hid when I needed you. First Mum, then Nan.
 

AARON: 

I'm not hiding any more.



[Graham's home]

(Ryan and Aaron are back, with the microwave.)
RYAN: Hello? It's us.
AARON: I need to use the... you know.
RYAN: Dad, you know you can say toilet, you know.



[Graham's home]

(Graham returns with a jar of Sainsbury' peanut butter.)
 

GRAHAM: 

Where'd they go?
 

AARON: 

Did they take the cabinet?
 

GRAHAM: 

They've gone without me.




[Graham's home]

(Graham carries in a plastic storage box, not a Really Useful one, I have to say.)

GRAHAM: 

Since you're here.
 

AARON: 

What's this?

GRAHAM: 

Have a look.
 

(Child's paintings, toys.)
 

GRAHAM: 

When my mum died, my dad got rid of all her things super quick. 

He couldn't bear to have it in the house. 

She's gone now and that's the end of it, that's what he said. 

Funny old bloke, my dad. 

Course, now I realise that was his way of dealing with it. 

When your mum died, I had to go through all her stuff.
 

AARON: 

But this is all mine.

GRAHAM: 

Yeah, I know. She kept it all. 

She once said to me, if anyone ever asks about me after I'm gone, you tell them I was lucky. 

Tell them 

I gave someone life, 

and I watched 'em grow, and I was proud.

Why didn't you come, Aaron? 

Not for your mum or for Ryan, but for yourself.

AARON: 

I don't know. Maybe I thought if I wasn't there, she wasn't gone. I wish I was better at life, Graham.

GRAHAM: 

Well, there's still time.


[TARDIS]

Our Lady : 

Oh, huge heat signal, and a non-terrestrial form moving away from it fast. 

I'm on its tail. 

Sorry, The TARDIS isn't designed for these short hops.

(A jolt makes a certain cardboard box slide across the floor.)

Our Lady : 

A microwave? 

Who brought a microwave with them?
 

AARON: 

It's actually an oven and a microwave.

Our Lady : 

Nice.

AARON: 

What is this place?

RYAN: 

This is where I've been since Nan died. 

Travelling the universe with these guys.

YASMIN: 

Even if we track this Dalek thing, how do we stop it?

Our Lady :

 I'm still working on that.

MITCH: The Custodians managed it. If we take the same approach as those drawings.

LIN: 

Those documents aren't reliable, Mitch.

MITCH: 

Except all the rumours have proved to be true. It's shown here.

RYAN: 

Short version. 

Alien psychopath, in its own tank, trying to bring loads more to Earth. 

I guess this is how they attacked it last time.
 

AARON: 

What's it made of?

Our Lady : 

Remnants of its original shell, patched up with all sorts of spare parts. Mainly metal.

AARON: 

We can use my oven.
 

RYAN:

 It's not going to fit in there.

AARON: 

That's not what I meant. Help me break it up.

(An alarm sounds.)

Our Lady : 

That Dalek's moving fast but where's it going?

AARON: 

Ryan, help me get the element out.

RYAN: 

Why?

AARON: 

It's metal.

Our Lady : 

Oh, you're good, Ryan's Dad. 

You're almost making up for your parenting deficit.