Monday, May 23, 2011

I don't have answers, and neither do you

So here it is. And here I am.

There is something that needs to be said and I need to find out what it is, or else forfeit all sleep tonight. Now what could it be?

Hermeneutic studies. Phenomenological research. That is what I'm leaning towards. We read a play in theatre a few weeks ago from a phenomenological book my teacher was reading for his doctorate class. Wow. I'd forgotten what it feels like to be affected like that. I've been thinking about it all the time and that is what has spurred me to create a monologue for our project on change. I like to credit myself with the birth of this project, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it is called "The Elements". Each person in our class is going to do something, either in a group or alone (or both), that is a tableau and statement about where they are in their lives right now. Then we fit them into an element and create this fluid creature that changes with us and moves in the direction we push it. It is a project unlike any other, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I chose to do a monologue of my own 'creation'. They aren't my words, I took them from the Fantasticks and Under Milkwood, but I wish they were. They say what I wish I could. But here it is, a statement on my position in life right now and on what I'm experiencing and wish to share:

You wonder how these things begin. It begins with a season, which, for want of a better word, we might as well call: September. Listen, it is night. Try to see it, not with your eyes for they are wise. But see it with your ears: the cool, green breathing of the leaves and hear it with the inside of your hand the soundless sound of shadows flicking light. Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind. It is the grass growing, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds. Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come closer now. Only you can hear and see the movements and countries and mazes and colors and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams. Celebrate sensation. Recall that secret place, you've been there, you remember. That special place where once, just once, in your crowded sunlit lifetime you hid away from the tyranny of time. That spot beside the clover, where someone's hand held your hand, where love was sweeter than the berries or the honey or the stinging taste of mint. Where instead of reading textbooks, tried to memorize the moon. The sleep of birds, drift through the live dusk of this place of love. It was September before a rain fall, a perfect time to be in love. There is Heaven on Earth, a green-leaved sermon on the innocence of men.


So there it is, and on that note I bid thee farewell.

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