We're one week away from the playday. Yes, it's happening in Chicago but that doesn't mean if you're not in Chicago you can't participate. The props we're going to play with in the workshop next Wednesday are what is in my notebook and whatever is on this blog (including ideas hidden within simple words and images. So now's the time to fill up the hat with those rolled up scraps of thoughts and shards of images, moments, people, sounds, dreams, experiences. Help me both condense what we already have growing here as well as add new complementary personal ingredients to the mix so that our recipe can be complete (and collaborative) for us to try out in the first workshop.
Ingredients for the virtual play:
(feel free to list or ramble)
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13 comments:
1. "I woke up. Or I'm waking up, trying desperately to wake up from this dream I’ve been having for the last eighteen years, a dream that someone else wrote. ... And if that is reality, then I don't want to be a part of it. I want something else even if it means that I -- me, the person who's standing here right now -- might not get to exist like this. I'll find another existence. I want something else and I'll take my chances that it's out there."
(from a scene i wrote for this play but haven't posted)
2. Dandelions
(GRETCHEN is on her computer in her room. JUSTIN enters. He is hiding something behind his back.)
GRETCHEN
Hey… Shouldn’t you be…?
JUSTIN
Shhh…. I have something for you.
GRETCHEN
Oh yeah?
JUSTIN
Close your eyes.
GRETCHEN
Okay…
(He places an enormous bouquet of dandelions in her hands.)
JUSTIN
Open!
GRETCHEN
Oh wow… dandelions…
JUSTIN
Aren’t they the brightest ones you’ve ever seen?
GRETCHEN
I don’t know… they’re pretty bright. And there’s a ton of them.
JUSTIN
Two hundred. Give or take a few.
GRETCHEN
You counted them?
JUSTIN
I was only going to get to a hundred but then I did and it still didn’t do them justice so I kept picking.
GRETCHEN
You picked all of these yourself?
JUSTIN
How else do you think I got them? It’s not like they sell dandelions. Everyone just thinks they’re weeds and mows them down, but I found this patch of grass over behind the museum that must have been forgotten about it. The whole thing was yellow. You could barely see any grass at all. I thought about taking a photo and picture messaging you but I knew it’d diminish them, so I just started picking. I wanted you to see them. They’ll probably turn to pollen in few days.
GRETCHEN
Which museum?
JUSTIN
Science and Industry.
GRETCHEN
Were you doing a project there or something?
JUSTIN
No.
GRETCHEN
Why were you over there? It’s like a million blocks away.
JUSTIN
I wasn’t sure why first, something just told me to get on the bus and when that one stopped to get on another and then I saw the museum and I realized I’d never actually been inside so I got off and head over there, but then I saw these and I started picking and realized that the entire purpose of my mission. I haven’t had such a fulfilling morning in a long time.
GRETCHEN
Were your classes cancelled today or something?
JUSTIN
No. (holds the dandelions closer to her face) Just look at what you’re holding. Seriously, look. Stare at them until your entire field of vision is filled with that amazing yellow. Doesn’t it make you feel… alive?
GRETCHEN looks up.
GRETCHEN
It makes me dizzy. (sets the flowers down). What’s going on? Why didn’t you go to your classes?
JUSTIN
Why was I going (to those classes) in the first place?
GRETCHEN
Uh… because you’re in college? Because you want to get a degree? And a job? Because you don’t want to be homeless someday.
JUSTIN
Maybe I do.
GRETCHEN
Justin!
JUSTIN
What? I’ve been talking to a few homeless guys. One guy, Charlie, he isn’t much older than me. He didn’t smell bad and he wasn’t hungry. He looked right at me when we talked. No one does that anymore, Gretch, but this guy, Charlie, he does because he’s not thinking about 10million other things. He’s just thinking about what you’re saying, taking it all in, exactly for what it is. You know what he does every day? In the morning he rides the el and picks up the newspapers people leave on the seats and then he stands in front of the train station and offers the papers to people, most of which give him some change and when he gets enough money for a cup of coffee and a bagel, he goes to Dunnkin Doughnuts. Then he goes to the Art Institute and sits on the steps with his coffee and reads whatever paper he has left. And when his coffee is finished, you know what he does? He holds out his empty cup and waits for people to put change in it. And when he has enough, he gets up and wanders somewhere else in the city until dark when he pulls out his sleeping bag and sets up camp under a tree in a park. A few times a week, he goes to the YMCA and gets a shower and if it’s raining or cold, he goes to a friend’s or a shelter. What’s so wrong with that? The guy is happy.
GRETCHEN
He’s homeless. I’m sure he didn’t choose to be.
JUSTIN
I think he did. I think he chose it because he knows the rest of society is just a big machine whose only function is to keep itself running and keep everyone in order.
GRETCHEN
Oh my god. Who are you and what did you do with my boyfriend?
(from a scene i haven't posted)
you know what's really weird? in all the time i've been checking out second life, i haven't once run into someone else there unless we planned to meet. i've seen other people, but only from far away. we've never interacted. i guess everyone's just clumped together in a few places. it's like it's more about being seen than seeing what's out there. you create a space, get a bunch of people there and then you all move on the next new place for which the possibilities are endless. there certainly are unending resources (is cyber space infinite? does infinite even exist?) but talk about lack of sustainability. it's worse than our life. although i'm not sure what the consequences are. no air to pollute there.
(from my notebook)
4."Have you ever noticed when you're walking down the street that it's only the bums who say hello?"
(quote from my friend, Lenin)
5. Thoughts on the surreality of babysitting... Seeing the inside of a family's life and assisting them in it in more ways than the obvious. Lying in someone else's bed with their child. Gossippin with them in their kitchen while doing their dishes. Taking out their garbage when it stinks. Drinking their coffee. Listening. Giving opinions and knowing when not to give them. Being a character in someone else's play.
(thoughts for either Beth or Gretchen who is babysitting a 9 year old girl whose mother is pregnant, tired and a little lonely).
What is real?
And why is it reality seems less and less real? Sometimes I wish it would just disappear altogether but I haven't figured out how to manage that yet.
(thoughts)
Justin sounds kind of high in that scene but I like it. I know of a guy like that, who kind of chooses homelessness. He's a wacky kid, but not a bad one. I can't deny that I've thought about leaving to just "walk the earth".
So what's ingredient #6 going to be?
I hope it's from someone other than me...
I like that Gretchen never manages to interrupt Justin's tangent.
And I would contribute, if I knew just how. Sorry. Should we be excavating the blog for the choicest material?
You most certainly could!
Two people kiss while a third is holding a picture frame in front of their faces. The frame is then moved down the body of the male figure until we can see (in the frame) that he is crossing his fingers behind his back.
from Kristin (who can't access blogger and emailed this to me)
this is inspired by janis's comment about mental
health ads:
i have a philosophy professor who told us about this
feeling of unhomeliness--it's also called the uncanny.
it's those moments where we don't feel at home in our
bodies, in the world we've constructed for ourselves,
etc. and he went on to talk about the people who never
feel at home in society, and they're the ones we throw
into psychoanalysis or hospitals or prisons--we
ostracize them. and it really struck a nerve because
i've always had this really acute feeling not-being at
home. i didn't feel at home in western springs, i
don't feel at home in lincoln park, or in my body or
even my mind...does that make me crazy? probably a
little. i find moments of home in the people i love,
in being with them those moments of seemingly
super-cosmic connections more powerful than the bonds
that hold atoms together, but those moments are always
fleeting.
what is my home?
I am finally in a position where I feel like I can really succeed and possibly make something of my life. As this has become a reality, a growing desire to run off to a foreign country has consumed me. I went to a pub in Milwaukee last week and as I was leaving I thought to myself "If I got a job at a little shop or something, made enough cash to rent out a humble apartment, and went to the pub every night with friends to listen to Irish music and have a few pints, I would be satisfied with my life". Why don't I do it then?
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