Gone

[collisionwork]

I wanted to post something new today, but I've wound up this Labor Day with a number of jobs to do otherwise (but with very little sleep last night, and very little energy to do anything).  So in lieu of that, a short play of mine in the LJ cut below that I've been wanting to share (as always with things that are REALLY TOO LONG for a post, if short for a play)  For those of you who, like me, use Bloglines or certain other RSS readers, and will just get the whole furshlugginer thing anyway with no cut, sorry, it's the price we pay for some kinds of convienience.

I worked on this play a long time (though really in many short bursts of creativity each several years apart), and now that it's done I wonder how playable it really is.  As in, could it be memorized?  It is designed to be heard and performed live, no question about that, but I wonder if I did my job well enough as a writer in making that practically possible.  I've heard the voices of many actresses I know personally over the years doing the play (for a long time, Moira Stone as S and Debbie Troche as J, more recently Moira as J and Alyssa Simon as S, but most actresses I've known have had their voices star in it in my head at some point during the writing and are thus responsible for certain lines), and I know it works aloud, but . . . could it be done?

Also, despite my feelings that when you write in various media you write for each medium, that is, you do in theatre or prose what you can't do right in the other, I've rewritten this play slightly and made it a chapter of the novel I have that's been in the works for even longer, Worlgdinprogcess, where it fits just fine.  Maybe that's where it belongs.  But here it is below, as a play, as it was conceived.

Two women, J and S, sitting at a table.  Probably a café.  Small, round table (with umbrella?).  The two chairs they sit in.  NOTHING ELSE. 

J is the older of the two.  The age difference between the two women should increase the higher the actresses’ ages.  That is, if played by young actresses, J could be 25; S, 21.  If older, J, 45; S, 35.  Even older—J, 80; S, 60.  This last set of ages would be most preferable to the writer, but if young actresses are to play the roles they ARE NOT to play it as old women.

J has lived through a tragedy of global proportions, something the whole world knows about and which is viewed with much guilt (eg; the Holocaust; the bombing of Hiroshima; etc.).  She is a famous “survivor,” and has been interviewed much about her experiences.  She may be foreign, without a strong grasp of the language, but that’s not necessary.  She makes a living as a lecturer, and loves to hear herself speak.  She is very precise.  She has no family, just a friend, S.

S has lived through many personal tragedies that no one has ever heard of.  Her husband is dead (J was never married).  No one is particularly interested in her life.  She has worked mainly as a servant, but now has some outside form of support (which she resents).  Her family rarely speaks to her.  Quiet strength.  Physical problems that make walking painful and difficult.  Not very educated.

W is a servant of the two at this point.  If we are going to see this setting as a café, he is their waiter.  He is younger than the women.  He is good, efficient, silent and nothing else.

If we are going to see this place as a café, then it is very late in the afternoon in the late fall.  It is a good day for the time of year, after all, two physically frail women are sitting at an outdoor table (both are actually a bit cold, but certainly neither would worry about a slight chill).  They had intended to stop in for lunch and then do some shopping, but lunch became tea-time, and they kept talking, and the afternoon grew sluggish, so they never left.  Now it’s too late to do anything but walk home.  Neither is looking forward to that.

If we are not going to see this setting as “café”, this is still the mood to express.

Textual notes:  Anything that looks like a typo is not  (eg; line 2 -- “cowded” is correct; do not ‘amend’ it to “crowded”, please!).  Also, having dealt with similar text as an actor, the writer believes the best way for actors to deal with this text is NOT to ‘translate’ it directly into English sentences in their heads, but to glean a basic understanding of its moods, and let that come through in a natural tone.

 

J:         Slick.  Gabled by the burnwall, fleecing.  Come down.  Atalanta runs aleary red through breech of turnkey.  Cowded to the basens.

 

S:         Never yoube unhomed.  Four fathom five lies matter-of-factions on ivoried salt.  Press to pattern it slightly.  Dream on in a noxious film.  Felt through by the tires of Kellingsburg.  Never mind the rats, full speed avoiced.

 

J:         By crickety-peg, not never be full of mettle, by medal fields of organ play.  Burned it.  Fire of the wall come down, lost it by not losing faith in forest gnats.  If ever was to be crossed, place field amongst the tapes of plaque.  By now or felt for harmonious children in bracelet basket.

 

S:         Or tell of never blacked by bluesky mattejob on the ape, color as desired.

 

J:         If you want.  Nor felt for love in a foreign fate.  Pistolgrip leather holds never enough to satisfy, but if you can’t, go abait and astern.

 

S:         Ah, free-style in amongst the current skirts put crease in brainage teatrays.  Felt feverage couldn’t tell no man’s difference.

 

J:         Gone?

 

S:         Gone.

 

J:         Blows out the foxfields, yellow-orange quarter-to-five.  Played plain felt through, perhaps not, being bought nearly kitefaced in clearness.  Smells all of knotty figsweed.  Wanted it all, never could see all the sky for the clearness.

 

S:         Sand by gravel felt grass in glass cleaned through follow bit by shoulder bit.  If you couldn’t, unpleasant feel through nose of cougher.

 

J:         Being felt into night.  Stars were not to anything but the sky, then.  Killed for blood of nos tamos largos, finished window held secrets to the air, care if we couldn’t feel it.

 

S:         I not for fly bent, kelled soilsooted rockbase.  Felled forward marching dead crass wasn’t belief in booknown wordcase-aplexy. Tired of killing your oaksmelled blackness.  Tired of poison amongst the leather. Tired of vanished grand feeling into woodgrained drinkups of the kindness fences.

 

J:         Forgotten-to about the smiled gigs, the wrist claims, the butter crains?  No abortic criss-towards the lines, the paragrins, the hop-tee-blends, the boughs of the good manners come for times of tell and hard-nots?  Oh, not for please to you help the priest in something by change.

 

S:         Oh that you lived unlike the past, the fined grandions, the basic worldcrews, the neared bloked fantasticries!  Calls not to tray fish of the bellpull in my castle! Beds of pained sportsflashed in the night and empties in the day.  Loved to feel doted but hated the patron’s looks.  Never was a time for the entrechat, not in the chute or the laundry!  Neither the kids of the home or the terrace paid mind to the seasons, the change of dark into light into tan into future!  Loved?  I should wrist for the crains if wanted the peridence!

 

J:         (apologetic) If plus to minus has come between, sorry.  Sorry.  Meant for past to light, not burn.  Incidental.  Neither.  Nor. 

 

S:         (accepting, but testy) Oh, if felt through the beingvide of callsport, thought felt the time or place for the ridefinds!  You wanted the minor labor matron menemorics, no interprosital of the look or with the holidays.  No fault.  Fault?  I should subvisical into mun oldster listest cream.  Be it by the brier, oh.  Green flows the liar, menemoristical yearnlings in the trytlon tines.

 

J:         Eat full, lovely.  Hold.  Feel.  Neither-nor.  Just a kellitol.  Celebrace the piecemeal.  Follow.  Be into the fiest.  The bult-in-cameree. 

 

S:         Well.  Trooleguff.  Spool of hollandaisies thyme and tarry-gones in the aspects.  Home jig is housebound and baking bred.  Been the blindside called from work to workday drudge.   Been too bare the bustooks me into the turn o’place.  “Farang!” a call to order, order the positical movement of open lights and closed tongues.

 

J:         See all the running evervescous shorter-lightings!

 

S:         Gone?

 

J:         Gone.

 

W enters, serves them each a cup of tea.  He looks to see if all is well.  They do not notice him.  They drink.  He leaves.

 

S:         Helden swordholds the bootlace.  Strapped into lifetie’s fernal interluck.  Ring.  Rang.  Three rungs and a laddle bullt.  Lifeties?  Hah!  All famouse squealed away.

 

J:         Not all.  Not only.

 

S:         No, but the mast vajornilly.  Engress me hardy to the fast asheets.  Extrance me into the firest coalsters ofar the constabulations to cluster.  Repeat as necessary.  Nought for done.  Auto at beast let some into my cage of flesh.  Did when the world was young, but the time fugets away as the mematies fall. 

 

J:         Nature of the least.  As we weeks into the furrow the necessities of the flesh become somewhat of a torchore.

 

S:         I miss the kiss. 

 

J:         Yes, all we can do is blink.

 

S:         At first a scream.  The night of virginny taken in the bottle.  Fight to stay yourself when losing to the grand.  Inviolate betwhen the sleet of might.  Hated the entrance.  Start of something digged.

 

J:         (sympathetic)  Darling. . .

 

S:         Oh, alright in the end, hah!  Years of reproduction of a moments, thousands of hims in the swims.  Any way to wipe out the first.  The way of fun the most fishful.

 

J:         Fishful drinking.

 

S:         Well, fun while it lasted, betimes.

 

Pause.

 

J:         He was a type of the field.  Old World into the young.  Scarred by the moment, even to all the hope of the creosant.  Blooming thread the tie of blinds.  Dan de Leon on top of my arbration.  Never could ree me, you know? 

 

S snorts a laugh.

 

J:         Well, water the stick of tries.  Redwode power of the first and utmost.  Love bedsides the question.  One was the most, not the least.

 

S:         Often looked, never sighted.

 

J:         Must have been a special?

 

S:         At times felt so, but not in the length.  Never.  Aspiration in the chest, but far from the head.  All fall down. 

 

J:         You were bound.

 

S:         No more than any other. 

 

J:         Not to be said now.

 

S:         Then when?  Matters of the last without current meanlings.  All that was wanted and never received.  Once tasted the acid, but now run in the stream.  Can you aspy to such paradisastical terms?  Forget the disease but love the hospital?  Once I held and was holden.  Now the time spent seems a dream of an instant.  Tried more later, with out and with him and with him.  Turning and burning.  Oh the tide of the cost.  The same is not.  Dished. 

 

J:         Why?  You mitalgrate onto the unmalled.  No points.  Hold.  Be there.  Mount lets all feeling buried, cloamb the best for the highest.  All the pieces hold the crust and the magna.  Feel for the epiletts.  Not the sword.

 

S:         Not so easy.  Life twisted the lies.  Held hymns into the miceface.  Boxes of the bytimes.

 

J:         Gone?

 

S:         Gone.

 

J:         Beauty of the firstborn.  Chilled.  Want not from the land of spacelife.  Forward the firmness of specific crimelines.

S:         Crime stopped in an severnted power.

 

J:         Not of together, but to never.  Hold fast and firm.  All that stays.

 

S:         To hold is to kill.

 

J:         (firmly) To hold is to fill.  All that stays.  Last it.  For a moment, forever.  Brick burn.  Flesh fall.  Grass ground.  Smart lasts.  Road to for fro into carveground of the sweetmeats.  Breaded.  Ground.  Ground it.  Jerk it.  Make it.  Full.

 

S:         What matter in the kitchen?  Art’s a pattern of spices on stickypaper.  Hats off and caps on.  Cape on.  Cups on.  Capon.  Fix all.  All there is to reality.  Stop fateful desolation.  View of what isn’t in what is.  Tune to the build to of that come in what be.  Now full.  All present and prevent arms to the noontime lunch.

 

J:         We create these things of our selves.  No more but a landfilled love tray.  Noun loss.  Forward makes a move to the twist of tries.  When it’s a promise, we flush the face of history.

 

S:         Where is the ruddy cheek in the runon week?  Kept on.  Clapped to a style of love from a breeding biologic bind.  Two, three, four, or what ever the average you choose, in the end it’s times of tread and millet-stone soup.

 

J:         Feel blessed for the broth.  If ingratitude melds to your mindset, bless the curses.  An interruption of flow is the interregnum of experience.  Readsail the rextextseas.  The lines that continue continute the new to the import.  In the ports, the lines become the veins that immigration us two ways home from abroad.  Family.  One can cook to the “spice” stuck in your idea of truth, but well wheel will wend such spans as twust grey to crimson cells.  Feel sad for what you had in the stead of what you’ve not?  Won’t hear vinegar as such!  Fool if fell in line with out of line.  I want to shake a stand of stoked tales in your fuel of forgotten formuli.

 

S:         (surprised) Neither.  Nor.  At a time the only crasp is complainance.  All some fekes to fold witherns!  Jing fomads to johns feuers.  Jewel a style frought to fix trimmed trawl of all one might crespelated to the vernal fright.  True falls in a fever of trusted liquids.

 

J:         Know better to no bettor.  Shells avant basid disabelt.  Dicatote vote nemisties towards eras for a true-to-wife explarience.  What we could, we would into the wend of expansionist tusting.  Curled chustingly felt pinkness held tooth of tingling.  From this came the pain.  Intra foregont at a block.  Roll izenglans struck chort for the market value.  Tone pulls toes to the spark of what matters.

 

S:         Supposining.  Can’t help the feeling.  Hug the flowered face in fermentited guesswork, then lost pedaled change to the trice insubelction.  Safety mounts a removal of control.  Want the white garage door back.

 

J:         Release is exactly the opposite.  A loss of rented space.  And in a soul the ether fills with the set of flats judicions as held, a belief in the mistake forgoing the give-let-misgiving.  We come to cross the crawl.  Natural.

 

S:         For fugnats sake . . . preased cut the charlie-time.  Twenty feel the time full fitnish fixket.  Haven’t had vert pyrite yewniquicies hewn to hand by a loss of sportflux in some time.  Chilledless in will than fire fine first among a once-fervant litibidons.

 

J:         Requethists finery dont ile sac au sacreventicies.  Twelve wints werd monstraquous guild de arbit.  Hastn’t wand never playgwed kyukweft.

 

S:         Haunt fill.  Naught in trans feel fluventist flinship.  Loan for lack of companyship proprieties.  Isn’t for much that the certain dance over the solitary.  Clap hands to slightness of breast.  Number fix is a friend to repetitional discourse.  When trust calls the fillent frorm too buttrerested hunt, try a cintrest o’trinizence.  Winna tert dring pustule tronglebes . . . or, in such snituatitionays, a true treat grusts forever lacklisten or brot hustle.

 

J:         Freak snow.  Tell a liebettle in transit of tyrite tinitulabilations.  Vinter vex chose up grist lean schwartzes chewtime.

 

S:         Field win dram tired to take defenditable hardinskape.

 

J:         Oh, chun.  Willent frintted way tillered quorumsoy gunnerious trixod.  Spierunt travaille aboyo truth to wello fled wire wownd drop.  Intruthsment land sellious bidnest avecseeon push the newling to the nuisance.  In transitorital nothings, you deep the debtpush actionist by letness in yowlingson tumeriscent humgrer.

 

Short beat.

 

S:         (without looking at J, and without real anger, but with absolute sincerity and resignation) Fuck you.

 

Pause.

TOO LONG FOR ONE POST -- CONTINUED in PART 2 next