<\/p>\n
You write your name a hundred It’s how I spend time, sometimes, when I’m bored. Time to re-invent my You look over the sheet of paper and the century of names, and they are all The paper crumples between your two hands, your unique fingerprints crystallized, whose features are not refined or even formed. It’s like buying a But it does, somehow, come to mean you. This bodiless twin you were born with, your I’m standing on a stage saying my lines. In this play I am an ex-priest, a We are at the time when we must juggle our whole lives, keeping a careful eye And through it all\u2014your name. You think it’s the only thing you really own, but Burn all photographs! Recall all love letters! Shred all records! Delete the I’m on the stage, and in this play I die, I get poisoned by my former lover,
\ntimes on a single sheet of paper, three equidistant columns of thirty-three
\nlines each, and once, very large, in the empty space at the top, and then you
\nwrite on top of these hundred, bolder, the name driven farther into the pulp of
\nthe paper, the ink getting shiny with depth and breadth. You write your name a
\nthousand times until the tip of your pen tears through the paper, disrupting
\none of your capital letters. And what or where does this get you? You are no
\ncloser to self-knowledge or claiming an identity, yet it seems a productive way
\nto spend your time.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsignature, make it more of a reflection of how I am. Less shaky, maybe,
\neliminate these needless curves, something that looks flashy yet refined.
\nPerhaps even more economical. I’ll leave a few letters out this time, or
\ninsinuate them with a dot or line. I do this during play rehearsal when my
\nscene’s not up. Rehearsal is tiring and repetitive motion helps restore
\nconfidence and focus. Rehearsal is tiring because you’re shifting continuously,
\nin and out of your character, between the ex-priest and his past, building up a
\nwall so that the character is unaware of blocking, correct inflection, or how
\nthere are no walls in his friend’s house, just rows of chairs filled with
\nspectators then arduously climbing up the wall minutes later to hear the notes
\nfrom my director. Rehearsal even seems an inadequate word for what I am
\ndoing…I’m still struggling to firmly pin the character down, make his decisions
\nfor him. It changes every day with new information and discovery; it could even
\nchange on stage, depending on the night, the itchiness of the costume sweater
\nvest, the intensity of the pace the cast decides upon unconsciously. It wears
\nme out, and I write my name down.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nalike, but nowhere near identical. What shifts from name to name? Is it the
\npulse, an effect of the heart? Or is it in the nerves, stimulus and response, a
\npsychological deterrent against uniformity? Then the names become days or
\nhours, your shifting moods and ideas anchored to the constant of your face,
\nyour wardrobe, your saw tooth smile and nodding eyes.<\/p>\n
\nhalf-retained on its wrinkled surface, and it is thrown away…What is it like to
\nname your baby? It seems like it should be a source of paranoia or at least
\ndeep concern: the words attached to a person whose personality hasn’t yet<\/p>\n
\ngift for the host of a party you are going to without knowing anything about
\nthem. How could it possibly be apt and eternally worthwhile?<\/p>\n
\nname<\/em>. Through the years it shapes you by hearing it said, the inflections
\nand emotions friends and strangers give it, from your mother’s scolding to your
\nlover’s pounding chants.<\/p>\n
\nfriend of the family, and a former lover of one of the leads. It’s a
\ncomplicated role. I don’t really look the part, but the director believes in
\nme. It’s a student play anyway, the cast and audience all made up of
\ntwenty-somethings, and those of us in this unified age group, this third decade
\nof our lives, have the ability\u2014or maybe even the need\u2014to translate what we see
\ninto something relevant to ourselves, our point in time. The twenty-somethings
\nof the cast are seen as the fifty-somethings of the play’s world, not just in
\nthe sense of suspended disbelief, but also in the sense of prophecy and
\nself-image.<\/p>\n
\non whatever stage is in the perilous position of mid-air. We must pick and
\nchoose from our past, our childhood, taking what is valuable and rejecting that
\nwhich is either painful or obsolete. We must stay in the present because that
\nis what is expected of us as the trend-setters for the trend-starved portion of
\nthe population. We must enjoy our bodies while they last, stretching, flexing,
\nreaching out one hand for another, rolling in bed in unison while still
\nthrusting away, moving as if cameras are always zooming in. From here on out
\nyou only get fatter, hairier, spongier, blind, deaf, and dumb\u2014for the sake of
\nthe eyes watching you from both ahead and behind, use your body’s prime! Cue
\nthe kiss, drive your knuckles through some fucker’s forehead, come on her face
\nwith well-timed accuracy, the perfect moment for the perfect image. Motivate
\nyour elders’ fantasies; live a life the teen queens will want to usurp, because
\nafter this, it’s all downhill, brother. Your term is over, there’s new blood,
\nankle biters and Persians rising up in the east, or you’ve become a father,
\nmade partner, lost a limb, and life has seized the reins from your eager hands
\nand is now taking you<\/em> for a ride. So we prepare, throwing the bones of
\nculture on the ground and trying to read what it will be like, what to know,
\nhow to act like a fifty-something, what to fear and regret or how to avoid
\nthose things altogether.<\/p>\n
\nis it? It’s more like something on a screen, a designation, a part with eternal
\nsignificance played by several actors with different faces, different voices.
\nWhen are you really you? You sit in the tub with an overturned glass of juice
\non the tiles next to you, and, startled, you think, “Jesus, did it just happen
\nagain? Did someone else just take over?” You wonder if maturity or
\nsomething like it pays that much attention to timetables; isn’t it more like
\nplates shifting underneath the earth? So that, in mid-afternoon, your fault
\nlines shudder and you suddenly realize you don’t like that song anymore, in
\nfact, you hate it, despise it, want to publish manifestoes against it. Your
\nlover is no longer attractive to you either in her familiarity or her fa\u00e7ade;
\nthe apartment suddenly has a smell and that’s when you put your finger on
\nit\u2014that smells like the old me. Open the windows! Then, in the midst of your
\nfurious scrubbing and cleansing the phone rings\u2014Are you there? “Yes, yes!
\nSpeaking…”\u2014and things seem somewhat stable. The new House has assumed control,
\nand it’s time to secure the borders.<\/p>\n
\npoems from the hard drive! Masquerading as a private investigator you call
\npeople up from your past and future to find out what they know, what they
\nremember about you. We’ll see if it all checks out or if there are kinks,
\ninconsistencies, conflicts with what you hope to become, what you irrevocably
\nare now. Murder the ones who know too much; sweet-talk and bribe the others so
\nthat their story jives with the facts you’ve written down on your little spiral
\nnotebook.<\/p>\n
\nand I remain on stage, sitting at the kitchen table, dead as disco. Each time
\nthe play is performed my mind drifts somewhere else. I don’t listen to the
\nother actors arguing through the climax and crying during the resolution\u2014limbo.
\nI’m unaware of the audience even, just concentrating on errands I have to run
\ntomorrow or revising an intro paragraph for a research paper, writing it in my
\nhead then mentally going over it in ink so that it sticks. The play ends and I
\nrise from the kitchen table and take the few steps to the proscenium where I
\nshed the ex-priest character (that’s really all he is, an ex-priest) with a bow
\nand become me, actor, viewer, pussy-ass bitch, stand-up guy, irresponsible
\ndrinker, straight-A student, clueless hipster, feverish and healthy, an object
\nof applause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,353],"class_list":["post-2498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}