ACT 1, SCENE 1
Very little is happening.
In fact, look around you. It’s like this every day.
Put your deodorant where you use it, not where you put it. That’s what I always say.
It’s all so consequential, always leading to something else.
It’s like this string that holds up the shower curtain, which is attached to the lighting. It’s dental floss.
And sometimes, when you shower too much, it falls off. It’s not coincidental, JOHANNES notes, that this only happens when you shower: You’re kind of jerky.
Three PATRICIANS sip from pearlescent flutes. In a surprise turn, BRAD has been dumped from the Island. The PATRICIANS reflect on the hand they have been given.
There’s a homunculus inside you. Its name is your name.
It arms and predates you. It’s a whitish and phlegmy creature.
Sometimes it intuits things that aren't there. Or that things are terribly wrong, when they aren't, everything’s fine, PATRICIA.
You know how you can hear someone breathing?
Even when you're in another room in the house?
Everything desultory. If… then…
ACT 1, SCENE 2
I know who it is.
It’s MY MOTHER. She's just woken up from a nap, jet-lagged and sleepy. Via a series of events we tread a shallow eddy in the river. Then a rectangle with cold water named after its inventor, Alfred Kneipp. We wade in that like storks.
It's MY AUNT, her elder sister.
She works in customer service and lives in a two-room apartment with wood floors. THE WHOLE FAMILY likes to visit and sleep on her high-end air mattress, which reinflates on demand.
MY MOTHER: Yuck! What did you do with the compost? Did you not throw it out?
Everything recapitulated. To glottal forces, to souring apples, to bobbing cheese in distilled vinegar, to me, taking deliberate sips beside the Main River.
MY AUNT: Everything suddenly bleak.
SOMEONE: I was chatting with an acquaintance of my boyfriend’s. This was in Frankfurt. There was a giant Euro statue not far from where we were staying.
SOMEONE: Where? When? How often? I asked, flipping my elongating hair. Well, back to the picnic table. There was a quality of filigree around the table, one that dusted all of us who sat in the sun as it set.
SOMEONE: Behind us, there was a summer fest. Unbeknownst to me, my compost festered on the countertop. I was really in for it when I got back, what with the fruit flies and all. There were people who made plans, and those who made plans after the plans. We were one of the former.
SOMEONE: We had all had lumbar problems. We also talked about our parents. When we said our goodbyes, we walked by the river. My boyfriend was hungry and climbed up a ladder to fetch a fish sandwich from a boat. We walked back to our hotel, dubbed the Niu Coin, in a nod to the European Central Bank, just a few blocks away. While we had been chatting, interest rates were being monitored and controlled.
SOMEONE: The next day, we went to a neighboring bishopric to see a brand-new baby, who mostly slept. The baby bobbed in an automated hammock as the adults talked on the balcony. We ate grilled marinated aubergine and drank beers. We laughed and laughed.
SOMEONE: We were, in fact, quite loud, but the baby slept soundly throughout. When I looked at the baby's face I could hardly believe the baby was real. I was too afraid to get up close, lest I wake the baby, who was named Leonard.
SOMEONE: When we left, Leonard kept sleeping. It was as if we were never even there.
ACT 1, SCENE X
I’m sorry, was that unclear?
I’m sorry, what is going on?
The largest collection of cork replicas is in Aschaffenburg, Germany. In the eighteenth century, cork replicas of Roman buildings were quite en vogue. In fact, ARCHEOLOGISTS use the replicas to make structural claims about Pompeiian ruins, which have since been totally destroyed. Which is to say the cork models are very precise. They were used as dinner-table displays for those of an elite class. The Coliseum was a big hit both then and now.
Sick and tired of their routine, two CODEPENDENTS decided to do something different that weekend. They attended a wedding.
I can barely taste that this isn’t ground beef, SOMEONE was overheard to have said. And: I don't need to finish this. I'm too full.
Though she did not say this loudly, and OTHERS grumbled if they hadn’t made it up.
Tensions rose.
After four glasses of wine, THEY borrowed cigarettes from THOSE AROUND THEM, toddling down the road where cigarettes could be had from a machine.
SOMEONE'S MOTHER: Do you ever see an isthmus? (This was small talk).
SOMEONE'S MOTHER: Do you ever kayak in an isthmus, and look to the side? (Here we go again).
SOMEONE'S MOTHER: It doesn’t need to be a kayak. It could be another boat, like a steamboat or a ferry. And on the side there is a monastery.
ACT 1, SCENE X
I hope you enjoy this complimentary muffin. SOMEONE'S MOTHER left last week, and before the departure was transported to the river trip they were on. On the boat, SOMEONE was so restless.
She paced on the steamboat, which was scenic
Or turned mere passage into scenery
And SHE too, SHE was scenery
To THOSE taking photos of the river.
Even on this river, which reminds one of another river, they have steamboats.
The voiceover called ALL to look at their lefts, if facing the stern, and consider that yellow sanatorium atop a hill. In that very sanatorium, some ten thousand people were killed.
EVERYONE shifts in their wooden benches.
Next stop: A beautiful castle where you can listen to string quartets.
No one has learned anything at all.
It’s precipitating. Cover your heads. Cover your fringes. Cover the seats of your benches, with your hands.
You might save a spot, but everything else will get wet.
ACT 1, SCENE X
Now listen to me for a moment.
It is possible to feel your heart beat against your will.
You are in the heart of a region that makes analogies like appendages, which all behave in cohesion. Tee hee hee.
Thump thump thump.
Now inflect this with the memory of ALL those you have wronged.
No time to apologize: Move on.
When there is a problem, like back pain, it is often referred to as “localized pain.” That is, it is pointed at by another part of the body, making a regional distinction between here and there.
LOCALS (indicating): Not me! Look next door! That’s who you’re looking for!
That's how it went.
Or how it’s going, rather.
In order to survive, WE need: FOOD, SHELTER, and WATER.
SOMEONE hugs her LOVED ONES. She holds them close. Unequivocally, she is crying. There is quite a bit of mucus involved. Luckily, her local pharmacy gives her tissues with every purchase. She reaches into her purse.
ACT 2, SCENE X
YOUR MOTHER has long since left the country but HER MEMORY presides.
IVAN rides his bicycle down the path, dictating into his phone on behalf of SOMEONE. His neck hurts.
The very next week, he was unable to carry his head.
The next week after that, IVAN and SOMEONE were in Trieste, Italy.
They loved it, but the neck was so bad, IVAN sometimes had difficulty sleeping at night.
THEY walked around the citadel. It was irregularly-shaped.
I’m the vision of health these days.
Please, take a picture. Here’s my good side.
You’re so cute.
Firearms exploit the expansion of a gas: That's what it says in the armory. I never thought about it that way, SOMEONE says.
The next day, they went to a giant cave. An underground river eroded the limestone, and then, hollowed, it built it up, pancakes of limestone, a soft rock that dissolves in water, and is carried in water.
Kestrels and jackdaws populate the cliff.
Holm, oak, laurel, and mock privet vegetate the cliff.
We come into the world one way: Helpless. That is the shared denominator of us all. At what moment, do you think, can we be helped?
ACT 2, SCENE X
You are not an impenetrable egg. Indeed you have various orifices.
Bad things, meaning things that can harm you, can enter you.
And through a series of tubes make you sick.
WOMAN Help! My friend has collapsed!
UNIFORMED OFFICERS perform a "wellness check."
Please, make an appointment. I’m available these days from these times
ACT 2, SCENE X
You may not need one thing to progress to another.
Just look at the feudal system. And now – voila – we’re here.
The Napoleonic Wars taught them one thing about warfare.
The PERGAMON PANORAMA was an absolute sensation. Tens of thousands of VIEWERS came to view it. For that reason, it became permanent.
You wear something until it falls apart. You take its shreds. You patch them up, and shred your body. You’re shredded!
Then you take the intercity train, which stops abruptly in a village. It’s literal, like the fireplace, which THE NEIGHBOR likes to stoke.
Via a series of events you are in a free state and slap your thighs.
You consider wearing woolen socks that do not cover your feet but warm the shins.
It’s tradition. This really happened.
MY MOTHER They had no money for the building – that’s where the devil came in.
ACT 2, SCENE X
I am not Catholic but I appreciate the occasional reprimand.
Like all things, I see the progression of time as a gentle bulge.
In fact, I pertain to a system of x and y axes. That's my moral calculus, if you'll pardon the expression.
And cells in which I contain information. Once, MY COUSIN dropped a pin in the bedroom. I stepped on it and wailed. MY UNCLE stormed out of the bathroom in a towel. He had been showering.
I went to the hospital. I’ve never seen him so scared.
In the living room, on the burgundy chair, MY GRANDFATHER poked the dell in my sole and said: oh no, she’s fine.
FRANCIS OF ASSISI, the hospital’s eponym, was the animal lover of all the saints.
INSURANCE told us: We'll contact you. They never did.
Water bores through limestone to create passages and chambers. Sometimes, these chambers are safe to pass.
ACT 2, SCENE X
Well, isn’t that a fertile source of bitterness?
Why don’t we let sleeping dogs lie?
Well, there’s my dog FRITZI. She was put to sleep.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a dog on a beach.
I am fishing for compliments in the bottom of the Pacific.
That's right, scene change. I am peripatetic and taking deep breaths. I am moving, deliberately, into optical flow. The ocean is something amazing.
In low tide. These fluvial zones, they’re like sediment.
I do not believe in God but I do in the sentiment.
It makes little deltas with it.
Confessions proliferated across the country. FRITZI began to leap with joy. I’ve never seen joy like that! The rock formations looked suspiciously like human faces. But you were not the first to think that – not at all.
I thought of my violin teacher. Convinced me.
I go to sleep and trip on something and wince.
ACT 2, SCENE X
To each their own, THE TOLERANT ONE says, tolerating the annoyance for the foreseeable future.
Behind the barn, there were marks from where COLONIZERS hitched their wagons to the trees.
Then, the barn itself.
How is material provenanced? A METALLURGIST asks.
Stonehenge isn't just any old place you can drive past.
Behind the barn, there was a crick, and in it, MY FATHER waded his feet.
ACT 2, SCENE X
My brain can be redressed through play. Cute outfit.
I mistrust the X in lieu of the Y.
I lie, I admit, with astonishing frequency. Even to me.
The original issue, it appears, was indulgences.
Red yellow orange blue green violet.
In an act of protest, perhaps the most radical one, THE REFORMER presided over a decadent meal of sausages.
