To the Ends of the Earth (361 hits)
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Submitted by SpikeGoddess (View user info) at 2005-07-19 02:03:29 EDT
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To the Ends of the Earth: A Play in One Act
1: OCEAN
(Lights up on a sparsely furnished apartment, suggested with minimal furnishings but a lavish supply of belongings---magazines, cosmetics, a piano, papers piled high on the desk, unlit candles, a general disarray of girlie items. It is charmingly messy rather than dirty, a likeable, inviting space. The kitchen is perfectly clean with a feeling of sterility that is in sharp contrast to the fertile blooming supply of girlie stuff in the main room. It looks like another world entirely from the rest of the apartment, which is a single room serving as sitting room/bedroom. The largest and most important piece of the set is a huge unframed mirror. It is as large as the stage will accommodate, dwarfing the furniture. Though it not 'invisible' to the characters, it is not a part of the space. Enter WOMAN, a blond twentysomething wearing jeans and a pink top. She rushes through the door, drops her purse, and fights to kick off her high pink stilettos and switches on the CD player. We hear the opening of Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know" but she advances the CD and Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" comes on. She lets it play and begins tearing around the apartment getting ready. She pulls out another blouse from the closet, fixes her hair, sprays perfume---all manner of 'getting ready' activities. She sings off-key to the music but with great enthusiasm and doesn't seem to care when she misses a note or forgets words or messes it up. Her energy is delicious, contagious happiness. The music fades and her frantic activities slow down into a surreal, dream-like pace. She speaks the following monologue as she moves in slow motion, continuing to dress, make herself look pretty, "get girled up". She is speaking off the top of her head, so he words should not sound rehearsed or memorized as if she were reading from a real letter.)
WOMAN:
Dear Sebastian,
For some odd reason, the last email that I sent you, which was an
expansive treatise on a spiritual revelation I had at the ocean and
news about all sorts of things---got messed up in the sending. I know these words won't make it to your ears, but it feels good to speak improptu letter to you like this. I can pretend that there's some intimacy anyway.
(She continues getting ready, primping, etc..)
Anyway, yes the beginning part was answering your thoughts about John's political beliefs etc, and though it's so comparatively unimportant in light of the rest of what I wish to tell you I don't think that his views are reason to discount him. He does disagree with the war in Iraq, though he claims to understand the rationale for it. The thing I really disliked that he
said was this concept that the US doesn't owe any explanations for our
foreign policy, particularly when we choose and do not choose to become
militarily involved in other nations' affairs. I disagree. When bodies
are being piled outside our embassy with pleas for help and we do
nothing, I think the least we can do is explain. When we invade someone
against their will and replace their democracy with a totalitarian
regime, OR replace their totalitarian regime with the promise of
democracy, we owe an explanation. Other than that, his views were
reasonable, though different from mine. Who cares though. I have way
more important things to think about. Haha...sometimes doesn't it feel like we're living in the end days? I know that all cultures always thing that they're living in the end days...but damnit, my culture's RIGHT this time!
(Sings, a la "Red Hot Chili Peppers")
"It's the end of the world, as we know it....and I feeeeel fine!" (laughs)
But now, for the truly earth-shattering news----I am writing a play! My first.
I've not told anyone until now because
though images have been pouring into my head and though the character
has come to me (there is a very intimate way that some characters come
to me...it's from the inside rather than from logic....like in the
movie Ghost when spirits enter Whoppi Goldberg's body and she knows
them from the *inside*...not really like that, but similar---anyway,
that's how the first character of the play came to me. I was driving
and all of a sudden she was there. I was picking up carry-out
for my family and I just stayed as 'her' when I went into the
restaurant and for the whole drive home because it would have been too
jarring to come back to 'me'.) This, along with the amazing way that my
social life has opened up seemingly in a moment AND the relief of some
of the financial pressure that I was fearing AND an incredible increase
in my creative confidence and output, has confirmed the spiritual
message that I received at the ocean.
The first night that I went down to the water
by myself I sat alone on the sand and just let myself have time to
think and breathe and just be by myself. I had the sense that there was
some reason I needed to be there, something that I was waiting for. As
I watched the water the overwhelming femaleness of the ocean began to
affect me deeply, and my mind started to rift on the saltiness of my
blood, the tides of my insides, and inevitably, the imagery turned to
the womb's watery darkness. I started to hear a song in my head and
become more and more entrenched in thoughts of fertility, the moon,
womanhood---all in images and feelings that included words but also
transcended them. The thoughts all bled together and I started
to "think" about pregnancy, the full understanding of just how secret a
process it is came to me for the first time. The darkness of that water
conceals more life and creation than our minds can fathom and as I was thinking of pregnancy and of how children form in the darkness of the womb where they cannot be seen, cannot be known, have a
perfectly unique face and tiny limbs and tiny hands that their mothers can only
imagine my inner critic barked at me, "well it's not like YOU'RE
pregnant or anything!" and I started fighting
with myself about it. Then I rolled up my jeans and walked toward the
water. As soon as my feet touched I heard the voice, the same voice
that spoke to me in the meditation at the conference that I told you
about ("I will never leave you, I could never leave you, you and I are
one") and she said,
(She locates a little black journal and goes to the proper page. Reads:)
"Yes. You are pregnant. You are pregnant with the great work of your
life. The secrets of this work as it forms in you are just as the
secrets of a child forming in the womb. Unseen. No form or face to
recognize and only faint kickings, an uncomfortable bulge, draining of
resources. Just as you wish your mother had patiently waited for you to
form, discovering you along the way, so you must be with your life,
with your greatest works. Nourish them, feed them, but let them pass
through you and don't hold too tight, mold too strictly, or judge too
soon. Let them breathe, grow and evolve. Set them free. Do for yourself
what you wish she had done for you."
(Closes book gently. She sits quietly just breathing for a moment and takes off her earrings. She looks at them.)
I hadn't told anyone of this though I have known the truth of it from
the first moment, it just seemed that it was not time yet to tell
anyone the details of the message. Now I see the manifestation beginning
to unfurl though it has been manifesting all along---bulges, kicks,
discomfort----but I was holding and trying to make create a verb and me
the subject of the sentence rather than create being the force acting
upon me, rather than being the vessel.
(She walks over to the mirror, kicking off her shoes as she goes.)
The supreme physical creative
act requires only that we get out of the way and that is my lesson----
get the hell out of the way and let it all work secretly, let whatever
it is that I am to do be natural and give, give, GIVE myself to it
rather than trying to exploit "my" creations to serve my own ego.
(She removes her blouse)
It is so far from being about me.
(She stares in the mirror, scrutinizing her breasts.)
This is the prime problem that keeps me from acting well too. I must stop trying to observe the creation so that "I" can form it better. There is something deeper within my soul than "I" that has an eye for truth that "I" cannot access through logic and my senses and even the most astute gifts that I have been lucky to receive.
(She walks away from the mirror)
The play is so exciting---and that's not a judgment of its content,
which I will just let be, but a description of the feeling that I have
now as it begins to flow into being, as its awkward little limbs and
its eye buds and the vestigial tail that will be lopped off before long
all start to grow and divide... (She returns to the mirror and removes the rest of her clothing. She is now poking and prodding her flesh, checking her body from every angle, pinching the skin to see how much fat there is...)
Sebastian, I hope that your day has had a fraction of the beauty that I have
felt today, that I am still feeling. If I could give you a taste of
what this feels like, I am quite sure that I would go to extreme
lengths to do so. I wish with so much of my power that you could know
this side of life as intimately as you know its opposite.
I asked you not to be a stranger because I have recently felt something
in you distancing itself from me. Perhaps I wrongfully interpreted the
perception by attaching it to you rather than to myself, as I am the
far more distant of the two of us in many ways, but nevertheless, that
is why I said it. The fact that it seemed jarring to you makes me
suspect that there was some truth to my interpretation though. If there
wasn't, perhaps you'd have thought it a simple clichéd goodbye...
(She steps farther back from the mirror. She begins to tear up and a little bit of heaving starts to happen in her chest. She remains standing straight.)
2: THE MIRROR DANCE:
(Lights up on a different apartment. Very messy, obviously belonged to an elderly woman. WOMAN has been cleaning and wears a handkerchief over her hair, though she is naked. At the end of the mirror dance she puts on a pair of ripped jeans and a t-shirt.)
WOMAN:
The hand in that mirror is not my hand.
(Woman sees herself in the mirror. Breathes in and out slowly. Breathes in and out slowly. )
(Raises one hand to the mirror)
(Then to her mouth)
(Pulls up her shirt and takes hold of her stomach)
(Pinches the skin, scrutinizing for fat)
(Folds over her stomach, the folding transforms into a deep bow)
That hand in the mirror is not my hand.
(Looks back at mirror)
Woman: Yes. Yes. Yes.
(Raises one hand to her mouth)
(Pulls up her skirt and runs hand over her thigh, buttock)
Woman: Yes. I understand.
(Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.)
But the hand in the mirror is not my hand.
WOMAN: (she is holding the handprint mirror as she talks) You know, I found something funny when I was cleaning out Mom's house. She'd saved all this stuff from when we were kids that I'd forgotten about...a whole box for each of us. You should really see it, Kate. Unintelligible finger-paintings that were so crisp I knew she'd treated them like Georgia O'Keefe's...perfect attendance certificates, Mr. Fluffy was in mine! Yours has that lipgloss you smeared all over your face that one Christmas...it's wild the stuff she saved. And there was this whole collection of handprint art. It's amazing what elementary school teachers can make out of kids' handprints, I'm telling you. There must be a six credit course for education majors solely devoted to handprint craft making. There were Thanksgiving turkeys made of multicolored construction paper handprints fanning out like feathers, fingerpaint handprints, handprints etched into scratch-off paper, handprints pressed into plaster, little ants with their bodies made of fingerprints—pinkie for the head, middle finger for the thorax, thumb for the abdomen...There was this reindeer with a footprint face and handprint antlers. The handprint stuff really took up the majority of the box...well, my box, anyway; I didn't look through yours too much...Anyway, all the way at the bottom was this mirror. It had pipecleaners crisscrossing over it to look like those separator things in windows, whatever they're called, and there was my little gray handprint smudged into it. At the bottom it says "You won't wipe this one away." It was so weird...(she traces the hand in the mirror) That hand in the mirror is not my hand.
When you were a little girl, did you used to look at pictures of women our age and think how beautiful they were? I used to wonder what I'd be like...
(She looks at the handprint mirror. Breathes in, breathes out. Touches her stomach. It is a mini mirror dance. As soon as it is over she goes right back into the conversation as if nothing happened)
WOMAN: Yes. I understand.
WOMAN: It was so strange, Kate. Yes, I know. I know it's ok to be sad. But this really wasn't about Mom, that's the thing. It was about the owner of that handprint. I feel sorry for that little girl. It doesn't even feel right to call her "me." She didn't know who she'd become. I feel sorry for Mom for saving it. For trying to hold on... That hand, that girl...hell, even Mom. We're gone. (She lingers over the objects for a few moments, taking them all in, remembering what they all meant at one time and how distant that time seems now, all at once.) Well, it's not the end of the earth. Life goes on.
INTERLUDE: STALKING
(Woman stalks through the space, she has transformed into a leopard. Her movements are slow and seductive at first, a hushed catlike whisper... but gradually building in need and intensity until she is begging and until her voice sounds raw, like the words are coming from the core of her deepest self and she suddenly looks terrifying. predatory. like she could maul the first person near her. The urgency in the final pass is apocalyptic, she must find what she needs or she WILL be destroyed, she will cease to exist.)
love me love me love me
love love love
love me love me love me love love
come come my turtle dove and give me
love love
love me love
love me love me love me
love love love
love me love me love me love love
come come my turtle dove and give me
love love
love me love
love me won't you say you love me
just love me a little love
love me love me I'll be pretty
come come my turtle dove just
come my turtle dove just just give me
love
(She curls into a fetal position and lets out a primal scream. Blackout. When the lights come back up a new woman stands in the center of a bare stage. She is a smartly dressed brunette standing behind a podium. She looks like she is about to deliver a very important speech.)
MUSHROOMS FOR PROM:
WOMAN: When I was sixteen my strongest conviction was that nobody understood me. Other kids didn't think much of me one way or the other—I wasn't one of the girls who got asked out, or who played sports, or who got the best grades. Suzanne Davis called me her 'best friend' but I think she just needed to be able to say that she had one. Mostly, I was alone. The most important player in my life was (and always had been) my father, whose utter lack of comprehension was surely threatening to ruin my life.
My father was a scientist, a mycologist. (Mycology is the study of mushrooms, my father's greatest passion. He loved mushrooms so much that he sometimes appeared to be morphing into one—tall with stalk-like legs and a large head capped with bulbous hair.) Above all things, he believed in curiosity and saw to it that my childhood was a freewheeling blur of weekend bird-watching excursions, exploding chemical concoctions, and pets that I was allowed to keep only if I made notes about their behavior and designed experiments testing their intelligence or color preference. The only television in the house had been disassembled when I was six as my father attempted to explain what cathode rays were. Babysitters were given books of experiments to cook up in the kitchen---exploding volcanoes that launched frothing 'lava' all over the counter, swabbing the house and the yard with Q-tips to obtain samples for examination under my very own microscope, and hatching tadpoles that began to give off fishy smells (all foul odours were met by pontification from my father about the 'sweet stench of life', a rant that I desperately tried to avoid by learning never to comment on farts, mildew, dog breath, or perfume exhaled by the peonies in the garden).
It was two weeks before Prom when he announced the Final Solution of how to eliminate any chances of a social life for me. He positively GLOWED when he proclaimed over breakfast that he wanted to take me on "the expedition of my lifetime" in two weeks. "Dad, Prom's in two weeks," I said, but he didn't listen. He was probably crunching on fucking grapenuts or something.
I did everything I could to get a date. I stuffed by bra with socks and wore the lowest cut tops I could. I read Seventeen magazine like the bible and learned all the makeup tricks, all the diet secrets---everything from the "Everything You Need to Know to Score Your Dream Date Guide". I guess Seventeen didn't take into account that my dream date would have to get through my somnambulant father...sleepwalking right through my childhood, right through this huge right of passage that he'd have no pictures of, nothing to look back on, nothing to recognize that I was becoming a WOMAN now... I was still his little girl going on an expedition in the forest. The other girls in my grade were getting their hair tied up into complicated styles and plotting how to hide stashes of alcohol or condoms from their parents. Cameras would be flashing at them all afternoon so that when they were old they could look back and think about how high school was 'the time of their life'. I would be following my father's bright yellow poncho through brambles and trees in pursuit of a fungus.
(She impersonates her father here, large arm gestures, big steps like walking through wet mud, and a grandiose voice)
"Amanita, the thing you don't understand about fungi is that they are all around us!! Every time you step you step on them. They spread their fibers out over every inch of your skin and create this web over the whole world, feeding on all of the death that makes life possible. They clean the world of death. They make life out of death. They are not animals and they are not plants....they are the resurrection!!!!"
Needless to say, I did not find a date to the Prom. Girls, Seventeen is overrated, let me tell you that right now—save yourselves a couple of bucks. Invest 'em in the stock market or something and make yourself feel powerful. That would be sexy. Anyway, so I had to go into the woods with my dad in pursuit of some crazy mushroom that he just couldn't wait to show me. After a very long day of driving and walking, he finally spotted it and swooped down over the spot like a diving gull. I trudged toward him, my feet feeling heavier and heavier. The wet ground sucked on my boots.
He plucked one up from its root and pushed his arm toward me as he cradled the mushroom in his palm. Eyes widening, he watched me expectantly for a reaction and I felt hot tears starting to swell up. Images of kissing couples and corsages and limousines filled with laughing and illicit drinking and dresses that swooshed as you danced went through my head. At that moment I would have given ANYTHING to be somewhere else. It was one of those teenage moments where you sincerely feel like your life is ending over some petty upset.
I looked back at him and finally got up the nerve to ask him what it was, why it was so special.
(impersonates dad)
"This, my dear, is the Amanita Pantherina...your namesake! I first fell in love with her when---"
I thought I would just crawl into the ground and die! YOU NAMED ME FOR A FUCKING MUSHROOM!?!?!?!?! I couldn't believe it. I didn't say anything, but I know that my dad could read the anger all over my face. He took my arm in the gentle way he had and we leaned up against a huge tree.
"I know you're probably mad that I named you for a mushroom---you probably think that I really have 'no life' right? But this isn't just any mushroom, sweetie. The Amanita has the ability to open human consciousness. Do you understand what I'm telling you? This mushroom is the gateway between life, death, resurrection, and the secrets of human consciousness. Plus, it's a pretty name."
I softened a little, but I was pretty incredulous. Was my dad offering to get me high on shrooms? On a shroom I was NAMED after? For the first time I understood how Moon Unit Zappa must feel.
"Amanita," he said, "the end of the world is not a matter of dates, historical events, even of environmental deterioration. The ends of the earth knit together in every cell, every atom, every thought and emotion that passes through you. This mushroom is the physical manifestation of that reality. This mushroom is the microcosm of the universe. And if you're ready, today you're going to have an initiation into womanhood that will surely outdo anything that they've got going on at that high school."
We drove home in silence and I considered all that had happened, and when we got back my father led me up to his study. He had converted it into what looked a lot like a Morroccan lounge---pillows on the floor, candles... It looked beautiful. He said I needed a safe place to journey if I was going to give it a try. He said he'd stay with me until I asked him to leave.
I ate the mushroom, the flesh he always calls carne de los muertos--- Spanish for "flesh of the dead". It did have a mellow meaty taste, sweeter than mushrooms from the supermarket. A few minutes later I felt a sickening warm feeling in my belly, then a little nasueas. I closed my eyes and laid down on a pillow and suddenly it was as if I was floating out in the middle of an ocean though I knew I was still in the room. Everything became one vast connected ring of energy---there was no separation between me and the pillow and the floor and the air and the ceiling and even my father's crazy yellow poncho. There was no separation between me and the man who had never understood, who had denied me my Prom and the chance to spend my childhood parked in front of a TV. My body felt like it was dying, like my cells were saying "no, thanks" but I didn't care. The world was ending, dissolving around me like when the play ends and the lights come up
(house lights come up, stage lights off)
and the set comes down
(techies begin to dismantle the set, taking her podium first, then a makeup crew comes in and takes off her brunette wig, revealing the blond we saw at the beginning of the play, removes her makeup, and begins to undress her as she continues speaking)
and all the pretty actresses take off their makeup and they look surprisingly normal when you see them backstage after the show and you're disappointed that it was only such a pretty lie and now it's over and the truth is that we're all pretty much the same when you get right down to it but then you revel in what I'm seeing now. The ends of the earth knit together in every cell, between every body.
I have never left you. I could never leave you. You and I are one.
(Blackout)
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Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (user info) at 2005-10-30 05:33:47 EST (#)
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