Chapter 13 - Sally

Red Circle by Pablo Picasso (no blue eyelashes though)

For most of her young life, Sally Pope had been a struggling artist. She did not struggle with money, she had plenty, but with art. She knew that she wanted to be an artist but had difficulty finding a medium. She was not lazy or fickle or unfocused. It would be more accurate to say that she had a very strong, beautiful feeling in her head and she wanted only to be able to get it out, to make it physical, to substantiate it. This is probably not an uncommon phenomena. Sally herself thought she could recognize it in others. There was a rock singer whom she admired, and every album had one or two odd songs that on their own may have seemed like filler, like a B grade song. But all of them together felt like a desperate attempt to say one thing. That each of those songs might capture just a little bit of the song that is trapped in his head. She had a theory that Monet painted the same haystack over and over, not because he was experimenting with the way seasonal and daylight changes affected the scene but because each haystack painting contained something that was almost right. Unfortunately for Sally she had never had the luck of even being able to glimpse some substantiation of her idea.

This is evident in even the earliest artifacts of her childhood. There exists a collection of thirty-seven finger paintings, the powder paint flaking off, that Sally did in kindergarten, all some sort of variation of a red circle with blue "eyelashes" It is not immediately evident upon viewing these pieces that they contain the red circle with blue eyelashes because on most occasions the painting was so far away from Sally's idea of beauty that she obliterated the work with formless scribbles. They are very attractive formless scribbles, but formless none the less.

Christmas of her sixth year, she received the camera she had begged for. She had been allowed to take five pictures with the family camera on a field trip to a farm in the country. The adults praised her picture-taking skills and Sally was overcome with the hope that through photography she could find the thing that was missing. The camera was attached to her eye for three weeks before the thought occurred to her that when an adult praised a six-year-old's art, this did not mean that the art was any good or that said six-year-old had any talent, and the camera fell into disuse. When she was twenty-four, Sally came upon the five farm pictures and was surprised to find them to be of gallery quality.

The art forms progressed from there at a rate of about one per year. At seven she explored pottery; all red pots and blue handles. At eight decoupage, but she ran into copyright problems. At nine, textiles. At ten, sculpture. Eleven, dance. Twelve, music. Thirteen, poetry. Fourteen sculpture again. Fifteen, literature. Sixteen, at last, Drama.

Sally would be the first to admit her early plays were dreadful. Most of them centered around a hero or heroine who happened to be, or to be stuck inside, a red circle with blue eyelashes. This in itself was not the cause of the dreadfulness, however. Not that the plays weren't well-conceived, nor were they trite, or impossible to stage but Sally simply lacked any talent for writing dialogue. It seems likely that Sally would have given up trying to express her idea altogether at this point. It is possible, that upon realizing that she did not have an essential talent, after ten years marked by realizations that she did not have essential talents, Sally would have given up. She could have thrown herself into sports, or schoolwork or boys or romance novels. Or else she might have moved on to yet another art form, to fashion design or macramé. She, of course, did none of these things. Instead she got herself a fake I.D., quit her job at the art gallery, and enrolled in a college course entitled "The Art of Writing Dialogue." The class began with an in depth study of Plato's Dialogues, and then through all of the famous dialogues in drama, with the goal of trying to figure out what made them famous. This was not unhelpful to Sally and she felt that she was beginning to understand, and might have quite soon actually mastered the art of dialogue if the professor, suddenly called away to play Prospero on the West End, was not replaced by a young graduate student with the oddly paradoxical name of Oliver Fagin Thomas.

She fell in love with the way he lectured first. He did nothing but speak, there were no overhead projectors, no chalkboard, and no handouts. He would just stand in front of the class and speak, and not a memorized speech, or even a preplanned lesson, but he would simply tell the class things that were true and things that were memorable. Yet another amazing stroke of fortune lies in the fact that the original dialogue professor had stressed the importance to a student of dialogueology of always carrying a mini cassette recorder on his or her person. And to add to the fortune, of the thirty-six students who listened to the advice, seven of them had brought their recorders to class on Oliver's first day, two of whom had the presence of mind to record the lecture, and therefore audio of what was said on that day is available in stereo. However, being able to read a transcript of the lecture is also a valuable privilege, and therefore a selection is included here:

"You are here because you want to learn about dialogue. I know that you have studied for weeks now, and I'm sure that you can tell me a lot about dialogue, and unfortunately, being able to tell someone a lot about dialogue and actually being able to create good dialogue are almost mutually exclusive.

"Dialogue is words of course. What kind of a word is 'dialogue' though? I'll tell you this: it's a weird word. I almost could say that it is a stupid word, but not quite. 'Dialogue' is a hard word to spell, a hard word to pronounce if you haven't heard it. Those are not bad things. Most likely they're good things. If anyone ever tried to make all words easy to spell and easy to pronounce then we might as well be speaking Chinese.

That probably sounds offensive, but trust me it's not. Much can be said about the Chinese Language. Chinese would be a stupid language if it was like English, but thankfully it is not. Those of you who have taken linguistic classes are probably itching to tell me right now that there is no such thing as a stupid language, and I'll tell you that you forgot about French.

But we're talking about Chinese and how it would be stupid if it were English. By that I mean if they used a phonetic alphabet, and if they didn't have tones. The next time Chinese people are sitting next to you in the diner, listen to them. The language is not 'ching chang chong' at all. These people are singing all the time, and if they want to put a word on paper, they don’t' stick a bunch 'letters' together. Look at Chinese characters some time. Really look at them. After a few minutes they stop looking like someone tried to make waffles without enough batter and you'll realize that this is what words should look like.

Has anyone seen the Chinese character for dialogue? Someone out there learn how to draw the Chinese character for dialogue, come to class early and draw it on the board for me before next class."

Sally was that person. Actually she was one of a dozen people, but Sally got there first.

Chapter 12 - Affective Memory

Konstantin Stanislavsky as Dr. Astrov in Uncle Vanya

Cassandra sat in the alley and cried. Her costume floated atop a puddle of motor oil. The motor oil floated atop a puddle of water. Her hands rubbed the dampness into her face, smearing a mixture of makeup and tears and sweat that beaded up and ran down her neck as though her flesh was melting.

Oliver watched from a window above. His feelings we're not clear. He had warned her against the evil of affective memory. He had banned the practice from his theatre and he had believed that Cassandra, more than anyone, would be able to resist the temptation.

"I didn't mean to do it. It just happened to me." was the last thing she said before she ran offstage sobbing. The chorus girls sat frozen in their positions, one or two of them crying without moving. Oliver did not look at her or follow her or stop the rehearsal. He simply moved his eyes across the auditorium, recording the moment for his gallery of experiences.

Finally he walked away himself, out of the doors at the back of the theatre, and up to his office to watch her from above.

"You should go talk to her," said Sally who had been sitting unacknowledged at her desk. "You push her too hard."

"I never push," said Oliver. "That would be unnatural."

Chapter 11 - Act I, Scene 1

Rosetti's Proserpine

Lights are very dim and golden. A red piece of fabric, perfectly round, covers the slightly raised, square stage. In an instant, pure bright white light hits the fabric. Looking at it directly is quite difficult. The center of the fabric begins to bulge, it is being blown upward by a wind of unknown origin. The fabric seems to stretch as it takes the shape of a tower. Soon the stage is dominated by a red phallus of cotton. The wind stops and the phallus falls. The fallen fabric reveals the shape of a woman. The fabric is sliced open from the inside by a large sword, PERSEPHONE, pokes her head through the slit.

PERSEPHONE: I am Persephone, the first of the prostitutes, the inventor of fashion, and you have come here to learn from me. You men, you women, you have never seen what I can show you. You have never heard what I can tell.

A chorus of twenty young girls encircles her. Each wears a long thin cord and carries a large sheet of fabric dyed a slightly different shade of red, they drape the fabric on her, some around her waist some around her arms,

CHORUS: (singing) Teach us. Teach us. Teach us.
PERSEPHONE: Teach you I will. But all my lessons begin with weaving.
Persephone holds out her hands and golden ropes descend from the ceiling. The girls split into groups of two. One Girl from each pair holds on to a rope, the other cuts it with her sword. Soon every couple is holding onto a rope and stretching it across the stage. The first five line up their ropes in one direction, the next five line up perpendicular to that and they do a dance jumping over and crawling under ropes until they have woven a net.

PERSEPHONE: The invention of weaving is the beginning of all things. The weave is the first pattern made by man for man’s own benefit. Under over under over under over and it all becomes fabric. Before there was fabric there was not fashion, there was only skin.

Chapter 10 - A Time for Every Purpose

King Solomon and The Queen of Sheba

In bed one night, when Oliver was old, his mind was warm with the flowing liquid ideas of someone who is searching. He felt, although he could not say why, that he must justify his art, not to a court of humans, for his work had been scrutinized, venerated and even in these late times, remembered, but to some unnamed thing, some creature that stands guard at the mouth of the river of all art--a justification of Oliver’s soul to be admitted into that river.

One question bubbled to the top, burst and fell back down like a raisin in ginger ale: Did originality exist? This question was being asked by the part of his imagination that, at this moment, had become King Solomon.

Solomon stood, balanced on the edge of a blank sheet of paper, reciting Ecclesiastes. Oliver sat below, at first only watching and listening. But then in a fit of boldness, he interrupted the king.

"Everything is new,” he said.

Chapter 9 - Reinventing Fashion

A word of warning: Although I'm fairly sure my sister and cousin are the only people who read this, the following chapter contains some rather crude language. Pardon me if I bring offense, I am not a vulgar man but, I assure you, my work is.

Current U.S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall

Langley Chelmsford held a press conference when he was chosen to design the costumes for Persephone. “I am honored to have been chosen for this most difficult task. In fact, this is the most difficult costuming assignment ever: to create clothes for the inventor of fashion. Persephone’s clothing must be absolutely free of all influences. There can be no Japanese style embroidery or turtleneck collars. Even the very notions of “shirt” or “dress” have to be abandoned."

This choice was extremely controversial, especially in the world of fashion, as Langley Chelmsford was not a fashion designer at all, but a rather infamous poet.

"Only a poet would be able to unlearn enough of history--to ignore enough of influence--to be able to understand what must take place in order to create Persephone's clothes. And only a buffoonish hothead with no regard at all for human decency would be able to do the job correctly," was Oliver Fagin Thomas’s official (and only) statement on the matter.

Langley had first become famous when he read his poem "Heil To The Chief" at a presidential inauguration. He had not been invited to read this poem on this particular occasion. He had not been invited at all, although a man by the name of Boggs Henry had. Boggs Henry was the Poet Laureate of the United States that year and, like most Poets Laureate, no one knew what he looked like.

What really happened that morning will probably never be known. That Langley Chelmsford actually kidnapped Mr. Henry has not been proven, although irrefutable evidence exists that he knew of the Poet Laureate's little known weakness for gin and large-breasted women.

When the master of ceremonies introduced Boggs Henry, and Langley Chelmsford approached the microphone no one suspected a thing. Although some have said they remember thinking he seemed handsome for a poet, no one seemed to think it odd that a member of the ceremonies would chain smoke on stage either. It was not until he actually began to speak that world realized something was amiss:

Heil to the Chief

Let us tear the stars and stripes
And bend the stripes into a swastika
And pin the stars
to those tightwad kikes
those diseased fags
those brainless niggers
those lazy wetbacks
the sluts who kill their babies
and the welfare sluts who don't
and the evil a-rabs
don't forget the retards and the poor
and the kids who can't do chin-ups

Let us shred the constitution
And spread it out on the floor
To soak up the piss and shit
Of the fat southern pigs
Who use the Lord's name in vain.
And while were at it
Let us elect as our Chief a
Syphilitic with one testicle
Who rapes his sister and eats the fetus
Who keeps little boys in a wading pool
And make sure he fiddles.
Who would notice another horse in this senate?

To punctuate the ending, he drop-kicked the microphone into the crowd and thumped off stage. Although the incident was the focus almost the entire world's attention for the rest of the day, the news did not break until the next morning that the author and performer of Heil to the Chief was not Boggs Henry at all and another three days went by before the real poet was located and identified.

Chelmsford made his next public appearance on a television talk show where spoke passionately about the country needing to be exposed to poetry again, and how the president was coddled prince who didn't know anything about the real world except how to spend money and destroy things. He refused to read any more poetry saying the world wasn't done digesting the first one yet, but he didn't seem to mind when three weeks later his first collection of poems, The Maiden with the Golden Cunt Hair became the top selling book of poetry that century.

Like most things having to do with Langley Chelmsford there are a lot of theories about how he became connected to Oliver Fagin Thomas, and eventually Persephone. It is widely assumed Thomas, like the rest of the world, first heard of Chelmsford the night of "Heil to the Chief" and was so impressed that he had to have the poet in his staff. Anyone who does even the smallest amount of research into the subject, however, will find a large number of coincidences, including that the two were in the same third grade class, and that Chelmsford spent at least two summers in Moscow while Oliver was living there.

A book, Secret Friendship: Langley Chelmsford and Oliver Fagin Thomas was published around the time the two men were turning sixty. The book has a lot of interesting anecdotes, such as Thomas spent considerable energies trying to cheer Chelmsford out of a severe childhood depression, and that Oliver had shown his friend early drafts of the Persephone. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the book also puts forth the preposterous notion that a connection of a sexual nature existed between the two, and now no one even remembers who wrote it.

Chapter 8 - Flight

How many attention spans do you have?

Oliver was on a plane for the first time in his life. He was disappointed in the way all of the passengers and airline employees seemed to take flying for granted. He wanted to stand up on his seat and shout to everyone: “Put down your magazines. Put down your cheap thrillers. Turn off your computers. We are flying. We, who seemed bound to the Earth, are flying. Gravity has no power,” but Oliver had not yet gained the courage to shout at strangers.

When the stewardess asked that everyone close the shutters on their windows, Oliver left his open a few centimeters. He pressed his eye to the crack, covering his head with his blanket so as not to disturb the movie. He used both of his attention spans as he imagined Persephone, a giantess, marching along the clouds, winning back the rights of women.

Chapter 7 - Selling In

Fresh out of college, Cassandra decided to do a favor for a friend and star in a commercial. She sat up late the night before studying the roll of toilet paper she was going to advertise until she felt she could describe every sheet.

The commercial’s director, who was only doing the job for the opportunity to make a music video, was a little impatient when Cassandra asked for a moment of silence before the camera rolled, but other than that the commercial shoot was boring as usual.

Two months later the commercial aired and everyone watching that particular channel at that particular time, stopped what they were doing and just stared for the thirty second duration. The next morning, “that girl on TV” was the number one office and schoolyard conversation topic. At first the toilet paper company was ecstatic, planning an entire series of Cassandra ads, but when the focus group surveys were turned in, not a single person had noticed what brand of toilet paper was being advertised. More than half of the respondents believed the commercial was for hair dye. At this point none of these statistics even mattered, for Cassandra was way beyond the possibility of ever doing a commercial again.

Finding the right vehicle to launch her career was a difficult task. Most people involved in the film industry were afraid that she would take the focus away from everything but her presence. One ambitious producer even tried to get Cassandra to tour the country just appearing in theatres and holding toilet paper. Actually meeting her changed his mind. “People don't want to see me,” she said. “Not the physical presence of just normal Cassandra Calo but her stage persona. That's not something I can just turn on and sell. That would be immoral.” She didn’t have that ability to do that anyway.

Chapter 6 - Conversationalism

Jean Piaget, Developmental Psychologist

John C. Calhoun Elementary School had adopted the philosophy that social skills were equally, if not more, important in a child’s education and, as a consequence, Oliver Fagin Thomas was cause for concern. Oliver’s teachers could not help but feel there was something wrong although his behaviors did not fit any of the “social learning disorders” defined by Dr. Partee’s influential book, The Adolescent Socialite. He excelled at sports, especially those that required gymnastics or rope climbing. He was good looking for his age, neither to thin nor too fat. He dressed well and was never seen picking his nose.
Perhaps if Dr. Partee had met Oliver at age eleven or twelve he would have added a new chapter to his book entitled “nobody likes a ten year old cultural elitist” but the famous Brooklyn child psychologist was too busy peddling his system to American school districts to do much actual field research these days.

This is not to say that Oliver was a snob, for one of his distinguishing characteristics, even at this developmental stage, was the ability to see great social significance in even the most common forms of entertainment. Oliver was notorious for giving reports to the class on the myth-basis and morality of the current fad cartoon or explaining the exact reasons for the current Top 40 single’s seemingly unparalleled catchiness. Had his classmates actually been willing to enjoy the things that were popular instead of just acquiring them, then perhaps Oliver would have been of use to them, but alas, this was not so.

During the forced random pairings of “conversationalism lessons,” Oliver was often reported to be doing nothing to encourage his conversation partner to speak. In reality the other children had made a pact never to actually listen to anything he said, ever.

Six months of teacher's worries led to a conference with Oliver, his father and the school psychologist. Oliver sat in a red leather chair in the corner. The two adults looked silly to him, neither saying what they meant, trying to find etiquette-approved routes to their desired destinations.

“I think that he may be acting out in an effort to replace his absent mother,” said the Psychologist.

“I don’t think I would quite call that acting out, seems to me more like he’s not doing anything.”

“Yes, yes, I see your point. Still, when was the last time he saw his mother?”

Oliver remembered last seeing her on television the week before. She was marching in the May Day parade. Oliver always looked for news from Russia; he had a notebook in his bedroom where every night before bed he recorded the average daily temperatures for New York, Moscow, and (just for comparison) Athens, Georgia. If on a particular day, New York and Moscow had the same temperature, he was happy to know that he could share something with his mother even on the other side of the Earth. He brought in the notebook one day when the class was learning about graphs. Oliver had gone home one night and charted all of his weather data. He showed the notebook to the teacher, who praised his neatness but explained that he should not show the book to the whole class because complicated line graphs like Oliver’s weren’t taught until at least the sixth grade.

Oliver’s spare attention span had been so taken up by this memory that he had stopped listening to the conversation in front of him. He was still reliving the teacher’s rejection when he felt his Father tap him on the shoulder. Oliver stood up and looked at his Dad. His Dad smiled down at him and said, “Well, what do you think? I’m sure you’ll enjoy the trip, and maybe you’ll make some new friends.” Oliver smiled back and nodded. Three weeks later, alone and on a plane to Moscow, Oliver vowed that he would never let himself get caught up in reliving a memory again.

Chapter 5 - Ally Ally Sauerkraut

a playbill

Allison Sauer, or Ally Ally Sauerkraut, as she was sometimes known, was famous for being the biggest Persephone fan at Jimmy Carter Elementary. Allison's father, Peter Sauer, had served in the navy with some of the sailors who served as stage hands in Because it is There and because of that connection, Allison was taken to see Persephone at an age that caused several other parents on the block to gossip.

Allison had heard that the show was for adults and the idea of seeing it made her slightly nervous. She had once seen an R rated movie in which a young woman died of cancer and it had made her cry for hours. She also remembered, when she was very young, going to see a cartoon about a mouse that gets separated from its parents. The movie had made most of the children in the packed theatre cry but not Ally, she just thought that they were stupid. That is what she was afraid would happen to her. She was afraid that she would cry and everyone in the theatre would think she was stupid. The fears of course were groundless. Although there are parts of Persephone that are undeniably sad, Oliver Fagin Thomas would never abide by members of the audience actually crying. It was just a play after all.

Though, perhaps to Ally, Persephone was a bit more than just a play. Perhaps, the experience was more of a transformation, although a transformation that took some time. The day after she saw the play, she brought the program into school, ostensibly so she could read it over during lunch. She carried the playbill around the building in such a way that everyone could see, without looking like she was doing so on purpose.

The first person to notice, noticed on the bus. Simone Jefferson, with whom Ally shared an assigned seat, said that her Mother had seen the play and had said she might take Simone for her birthday. "You'll love it," Ally said and letting her hold the program. The situation was repeated throughout the day; someone would recognize the logo on the front of the program and would ask her if she had seen the play. She would tell them yes, and that it was wonderful--the first time she had given a standing ovation.

The last period of the day, her Science teacher, Mr. Braundy, saw the program on her desk. He told her that once he had been to see the Royal Scottish Tattoo and that it was quite a spectacle. She told him she was sure it must have been, and kept the program in her bag until she got home.

After that, Allison's obsession with Persephone grew more subtly. After a few days, the initial excitement wore down and a true appreciation of the play developed. She would be performing a task that had once seemed mundane, and suddenly see how the task related to Persephone. Soon she was mentioning these connections in class, perhaps sometimes too often, but by the second semester everyone had grown used to Allison's zeal.

As a sixth grader and therefore an important role model, Allison had established a following of younger girls who tried to impress her with their knowledge of obscure Persephonia. And Allison, being both easily influenced and a girl of some integrity practiced the moral tenets of the play in all her life, and therefore, accepted even the most pathetic wannabe into her circle.

Convincing an elementary school to adopt the first of the prostitutes into the pantheon of acceptable subjects was not an easy task, but Allison fought strongly while still in fourth grade for the permission to wear Persephone’s fashion wardrobe in the classroom. The principal, having recently returned from a conference stressing the importance of conditioning young children to persuasive writing was himself persuaded to allow the children to present their arguments on Persephone’s educational merit with a mandatory three-page essay.

Allison’s essay was so convincing that she was asked to give a reading at a school-wide assembly. Her oration resulted in subsequent sightings of teachers in Persephone gear and of the dubbing of the aforementioned sauerkraut name by some of the boys who had trouble understanding their true feelings.

Chapter 4 - The Exercise

Oliver mounted his first play at age seventeen. He openly admitted that this was not a serious piece but an exercise, a way to find out how things worked before he began to make the play. “Because it is there” was already controversial before there had even been a rehearsal.

Oliver insisted in hiring only experienced sailors for his technical crew. Members of the local stagehands' union circulated rumors that Oliver was only interested in the sailor’s uniforms and as a consequence no one answered help wanted ad. But Oliver was not discouraged. He went down to the shipyard and recruited his stage hands personally. He talked to them about the revolutionary nature of the play in his mind. He openly criticized modern theatre as being in the hands of social misfits with nothing to say to real people. He said he wanted to start anew with true craftsmen. He told them about the history of sailors working in the theatre and showed them the complicated schematic of ropeworks he would need them to operate. Most effectively he emphasized how cool it was to hoist set pieces around the stage. It also helped that he paid the sailors more than the actors.

"Because it is there," has three acts but runs only forty three minutes. The action follows five acquaintances on a mountain climbing expedition. Early on, the characters get separated in such a way that each thinks he or she is the only one missing from the group. The characters spend most of the play climbing alone and philosophizing about whether to act as a group is better than acting individually until the end when they are all reunited at the mountain's summit and lament that they have no more mountains to climb.

The set consists entirely of twenty platforms of various dimensions, suspended from the fly space above the stage. Each of these platforms can be raised and lowered into different configurations by a complicated series of ropes, weights and pulleys. At least one platform is moving during any moment in the play and there are two occasions when all of them are moving at the same time. This precise choreography was achieved (after a lot of practice) in this manner: Each sailor was given a radio with headphones and a "script" for his particular platform. A series of ten ascending notes in equal time intervals was played over all of the headphones simultaneously and the script for each platform listed a level (indicated by a letter between A and J) for the platform at each interval.

For example, from the script for platform seven:
Platform 7
Start at I.
Wait six beats.
Move to H.
Wait sixteen beats.
Move to F.
Wait one hundred and sixteen beats.
And so On.

Being an actor in the play was slightly more complicated. To be in "Because it is there" one had to be able not only to act on a platform that moves up and down but to have such precise timing so that his or her movements coincided with the placement of the platforms.

It is probably not necessary to say that opening night was a disaster. The fault did not belong to any one person. Everyone involved was just a little bit nervous and the combination of twenty-six people being just slightly off with their timing led to quite a bit of falling. Luckily no one was hurt. Less luckily, though perhaps deservedly, the play received a reputation for being impossible to mount and only a small number of people were able to actually witness the stunning profundity of the work. Of course the play comes nowhere near the stunning profundity of Persephone but then nothing does.

Chapter 3 - Cassandra

Patti LuPone as Nancy in a 1984 Production of Oliver (age 35)

Cassandra Calo was a stage name. A little bit too obviously a stage name was the opinion of the other theatre students but Cassandra did not care. “Theatre is artifice,” she would say. “People don’t really want to see real people on the stage, they want to see actors--actors with pleasing alliterative names.” She was good enough at acting that she was allowed to call herself whatever she wanted.

Even at nineteen years old, Cassandra brought something to the stage that was different. The origins of her style were often debated and the opinions can be divided into two major schools, the first saying she had taken the naïve staginess of 17th century pantomime, added the gracefulness of the Balinese Topeng theatre and then toned everything down to where the style seemed almost natural. The other argued that she had copied the style from a maid in an obscure sit-com that ran for only three episodes in 1964. Cassandra herself always insisted that something just happened when people were watching her. Whatever it was, watching Cassandra act was like hearing that special effect that they do on that Cher song. The quality of the song is questionable but you listen in anticipation of that fascinating sound.

Although, just a freshman, Cassandra was given the role of Nancy in “Oliver!” The part fit her well, as she looked to be seventeen but had the voice of a woman much older. The mix of maturity and innocence in her presence meant that the production could forgo the usual practice of casting Nancy as woman in her early thirties, and there by sticking to the novel’s concept of the character, who was both less and more shocking than the one in the play.

The Character Nancy was brought up in an acting class discussion a few weeks before opening night. The girl who played Bette, a rather jealous senior, opined that Cassandra should be able to justify Nancy and her actions in a post-feminist world. Despite the professor’s suggestion that such a justification is really up to the author, Cassandra walked to the front of the classroom, proceeded to sit down on the professor’s table, crossed her legs, rested one elbow on her knee and propped her head up with her hand. She then established flippant eye contact with Bette and began to speak.

“Nancy has two tragedies. The first is that she is abused by Bill, the second is that she is abused by class-ism. Neither of these, in my mind have much to do with feminism at all. In fact, her song ‘as long as he needs me’ is really just a rehash of Julie’s “My Bill” from Showboat, or perhaps, a prelude to the song. The point is, is that in order to understand these songs, you must really understand acting.

“The song is essentially a soliloquy, a woman talking right to the audience, and in this case, Nancy is telling the audience a lie. She is saying that she will stay with Bill because he needs her. She is saying that staying with Bill is a selfless act. The real question is will the audience believe her. If they do, the actress has not done her job. This song should not be applauded, it should be booed.”

The audience did boo. People who witnessed the performance have said that they had to continually remind themselves that they were watching a play in order to keep from leaping on to the stage to set the poor brainwashed girl straight.

Chapter 2 - Maria - Part 2

That week Maria had to take the bus across town to get to church from the hospital. On the bus, she wrote a long letter to Sister Agnes, explaining the story and asking for prayer that her youngest son would survive the burns. He was the only child she had left, but she wanted God to help him and not her. She felt so sad and helpless but she knew that God could help her son.

She gave the letter to the Sister Agnes who read it immediately. Sister Agnes gasped then shook her head and looked sad. She told Maria that she would show the letter to Pastor Ralph and the elders immediately.

Pastor Ralph directed his entire sermon at Maria and her story. He said that faith in God and the Holy Spirit could save her son and that if Maria had any faith, even the size of a mustard seed, that her son would be completely healed. He asked Maria to come up to the front of the church and even though she was afraid she went. They had Maria kneel down and the elders put hands on her shoulders and they prayed loud and long that Maria would have enough faith to save her son. They said that fire happened because God was angry with Maria but that he spared her son as a chance for Maria to be saved.

Maria wept and chanted and sang. She begged for the Holy Spirit to give her faith. She begged earnestly and with all of the passion she could muster. She begged and shouted until her throat was soar and her voice was raspy. Then the whole church hugged her and prayed for her again.

After Maria had gone back on the bus, Sister Agnes said to the Pastor Ralph that it was wonderful to see someone so taken up in the spirit and that she just knew that God would save her son. Pastor Ralph made that serious eye contact that they must teach in seminary. He told the Sister Agnes that he sincerely hoped Maria had enough faith for God to save her son, but he was afraid that she might not have the spirit because she had not spoken in tongues.

Maria called Sister Agnes on Thursday to tell her about the final funeral arrangements. Sister Agnes told her she was sorry but the church was very offended that Maria had gone up to the front of the church and pretend to want the Holy Spirit. That she must have been faking or her son would have recovered and that she was no longer welcome at the church services.

Chapter 2 - Maria - Part 1

Maria Escalante was not Spanish. She did not even look Spanish, though she had when she was a child. It was recently discovered that her father was a gypsy and her mother was Jewish but Maria, having been raised in no less than thirty-seven foster homes and knowing nothing about her heritage, had always just assumed that she was Spanish. The name had been assigned to her by a state agency when she was two, and she never had any problems with it.

Maria went to Stirring Water Christian Fellowship every Sunday. She had chosen a charismatic church because she enoyed watching excited people screaming and hollering more than the sedate catholic masses she was forced to attend while living in foster home numbers six, seventeen, twenty-four and twenty-eight. She was too shy to actually take part in any of the revelry and if anyone had ever asked her, and she was answering honestly, she would have said that the she thought they were all pretending, but she loved to watch the congregation dancing and waving flags and weeping. To Maria, these services were a wonderful pageant about what God could do to you if you let him.

The other members of the church paid little attention to Maria who always sat in the back and would blush and shake her head if asked a direct question. In the first three years she attended Living Water Christian Fellowship she was only mentioned at a church meeting on one occasion. An elder's wife, who had seven children, expressed the opinion that Maria was a homeless woman who just came in for the coffee and bagels and said if she wasn’t going to participate in The Spirit then someone should ask her to leave. The pastor portested that Maria was not hurting anything and pointed out that, even if she wasn’t all together sane, after years and years of witnessing the power of The Lord, The Spirit might one day fill her and she would be saved. The other church members felt that the Pastor was right and they agreed to leave the matter to God.

Maria’s favorite part of the church occurred about two thirds through the service, after the sermon and before the prophecy, when one of the church ladies would take up prayer requests. Sometimes this woman would call up one of the church members who was having a problem and she would put one hand on his or her shoulder, point the other toward the ceiling and would pray out loud for The Lord to provide a solution. Once Maria had seen the lady pray for a young man who had cancer and the next week the man stood up and said that he did not have cancer anymore. Maria did not think that her problems were important enough to have someone tell God about them so she kept them to herself, but she always prayed earnestly for the other people during the service and each night before she went to bed.

Then one day Maria’s life fell apart. She had gone to the grocery store around the corner because upon starting to make Macaroni and Cheese for her three children she had discovered that they were out of milk. She left her oldest son in charge. He was thirteen years old and trustworthy having watched his younger brothers and sisters on several occasions before without incident.

The trip should have taken less than ten minutes but the man in front of Maria's grocery line made a rude comment to the checkout girl and she called the manager. The rude man got very angry and the manager and two stock boys had to drag him out of the store. All of this took some time and then Maria remembered that she had left the stove on. When she called her son from the pay phone, no one answered.

Chapter 1 - "The Thomas Family" - Part 2

Shani Wallis as Nancy in the 1968 Film Version of Oliver!

Oliver proved, to his mother’s disappointment, to be a decidedly normal infant. He was quiet and well behaved, attending his mother’s lectures, concerts, poetry readings and foreign films, with a benign passivity if not the keen interest she had hoped for. At first, with her husband’s encouragement, Eleanor adopted the philosophy that Oliver’s infant brain was still in the process of congealing and that all she had exposed him to would soon become a part of his mind 'like the vodka in a jell-o shot.' But on his third birthday Oliver had still not spoken his first word and Eleanor took a position as head archivist at the Stanislavski Library in Moscow. She left her son and husband in America.

John Thomas, quickly enrolled his boy in the day care center at the television studio where he worked. Each day John went to work, Oliver was put in front of a television for 8 hours of child-psychologist-endorsed children’s programming. By the end of the first week he was speaking in complete sentences.

At nights and on weekends, John Thomas, who had a tendency to be an optimist, devoted himself to the role of the loving single father. He tried to make up for Oliver’s unusual beginning by engaging him in what he considered traditional childhood activities such as visits to the zoo, puppet shows and cartoon-themed pizza restaurants. Every evening, father and son enjoyed friendly chats in front of the television and once a week, they wrote a letter to Eleanor explaining how they missed her, but not to worry they were getting along fine without her.

Nothing else worth noting happened to Oliver between his mother’s departure and the fifteenth of April, 1986. That day, the teacher, a Mrs. Hermann was explaining the significance of April fifteenth as tax day and she brought in copies of her tax forms to be passed around in class.

“See that very small number at the bottom of form w-2? That is how much money I made last year,” was what Mrs. German was saying at the precise moment that form w-2 was passed to Oliver. He stared at the number, wondering if anyone had ever counted that high. Right then, Oliver felt an urge to attempt the feat himself and he began to count silently in his head. He counted all through the lesson, through lunch, recess, the history unit, the story on the carpet, the bus ride home, dinner, prime time television, while he slept and so on.

In the end it took him two and half days to count from one to a second tier elementary school teacher’s salary. He might have finished sooner had he not taken the time to visualize each bill as he counted. When Oliver imagined himself placing the last of the dollar bills on top of the pile, he happened to be on a class field trip to a community college production of the musical Oliver!

Somewhere in the middle of the song “Who Will Buy,” Oliver realized that he was special. Not because we was able to count to five figures or even because he could accurately imagine what that many dollar bills looked like, but because he was able to do all of this and still concentrate on his other daily activities. Oliver realized that he possessed what amounted to two attention spans. He could devote all of his attention to two different tasks individually with no loss of concentration on either. As he realized this, his other attention span was discovering that he was in love with the young woman on stage playing the role of Nancy.

Somehow Oliver made it through all of the events of his childhood with a practical mind a even though he was six, he decided right then that he must take full advantage of his gift. He made two (simultaneous) promises to himself. One, to devote one of his attention spans to writing the most popular play ever written, and two, to one day marry that beautiful young woman. That he was only able to accomplish one of these tasks does not make his life any less remarkable.

Chapter 1 - "The Thomas Family" - Part 1

I wonder how many blog posts begin with "I haven't posted in a while?" I won't do that, I will just say that I am endeavoring to serialize the "novel" I've been working on for several years now in hopes that it will get me to think about it more concretely and eventually, if all goes well, get me serious enough about it to come up with an ending. Some of the chapters are long so I'll split those up and some are small so they will stay intact. Also it doesn't really have a title. I usually refer to it by its nickname "Persephone," though it was originally called "What Was Once Abuse" and I've been thinking lately of calling it "And Not We Ourselves."

I hope to add an installment every Friday.

Here goes nothing,

Ian

Chapter 1
The Thomas Family

Stanislavsky as Gaev in The Cherry Orchard

Few people remember that Eleanor Thomas was famous of her own right even before she gave birth to the most important playwright since Shakespeare. A self-improvement book she had written entitled, “Your life in Art” appeared on a few best seller lists and led to a number of talk show appearances. The book, “an insightful, even ingenious plan for living a well-ordered and inspired life,” according to the London Review of Books, was based on the writings of the great Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Eleanor’s method, however, had very little to do with acting. Instead she drew on Stanislavsky’s ideas about inspiration, relaxation and “lines of action” to create a philosophy from which, she claimed, “all people, through concentration and discipline can become commanding players on the world stage.”

Mrs. Thomas’ opponents criticized her ideas as overly simplistic and “advocating phonyism,” but the open-minded reader will find much about the book worthwhile, even when considered separately (impossible as that is) from the life and works for her son. Some of the stronger ideas in the work are Mrs. Thomas’ assertion that if a person desires a change in his or her personality he or she must behave as if this change has already happened and through discipline and practice this change will become an first an emotional truth then, shortly after, a truth in reality as well. The book also puts a great deal of emphasis on setting an ultimate goal and then defining a clear path in which everything one does moves one forward toward that goal. The most inspired chapter of “Your Life in Art,” however, is the section on inspiration itself. “We cannot control inspiration,” she wrote. “It is a force not unlike the weather. But anyone who cares at all about the great benefits of an inspired state will do well to be prepared for inspiration when it does decide to rain down upon us.” I would go so far as to say that anyone who cares at all about Oliver Fagin Thomas will do well understand this philosophy; at least as much as it pertains to his infancy and early childhood.

Eleanor Thomas’ first and only pregnancy occurred at a time of a harsh critical backlash against her book and it seems that she viewed her unborn child as the perfect proving ground for her theories. Eleanor spent most of the first trimester devising a system for giving birth to the most inspired child possible and over the final six months of gestation, she exposed the growing fetus to as much culture as possible. Some of this was achieved by the more obvious methods of reading and playing music into her belly but she also did a great deal of traveling specifically with the intent of breathing a variety of types of air. Some who knew her at the time have noted that the expectant mother could very often be seen simply describing out loud everything she could see in minute detail.

Eleanor knew early on that she was going to have a boy and, after careful deliberation, decided she would name him Oliver Fagin Thomas. Naming her son after the hero and villain of her favorite book, she thought, would create a child who could understand contrast and conflict--two ideas that in combination often lead to inspiration. She was often asked if the brutally evil Bill Sikes would have been a better choice of a middle name, as Bill was nothing but a negative character while one could feel sympathy for the crafty Fagin. “I would never associate my son with that horrible killer,” she would reply and hear nothing else of the argument.

The moment of birth was planned out in intricate detail. Oliver was to be born at home and a small party was arranged to welcome him into the world. A brass band was hired to play a welcome march and a group of fifteen friends were invited to attend. Noisemakers were to be distributed as the guests drank champagne and ate from a buffet table stocked with the finest delicacies of international cuisine. Although Oliver would not be able to eat any of these things, he could at least begin his life smelling them.

The room was absolutely dark when Oliver arrived. The doctor delivered him into a wading pool of warmed saline solution and the baby was allowed to float, still receiving oxygen from the umbilical cord, in absolute darkened silence for nearly five minutes as the band and the guests and the buffet were brought into the room.

Then, on Eleanor’s signal, the baby was lifted out and the strobe light turned on. The noise of the band, the cheers, the popping of corks and the fireworks drowned out his first cry.

Anytime Minutes

Lisa makes sure that her cell phone plan has plenty of anytime minutes because, she told me, most of the time she is unhappy with the people of the present.

Last Tuesday she thought it would be a good idea to call her grandmother's Great Aunt Ida, who lived on a farm in 1863. Lisa had first heard about Aunt Ida in bedtime stories and she showed such fascination with the ancestor that she was presented with Ida’s diary on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. Aunt Ida had been the first woman elected to city council in the state of Wyoming. Even though women could not vote in 1863, there was no law prohibiting them from running for office, and also no law prohibiting women from refusing to sleep with their husbands if they did not vote for Mrs. Ida Mae Hopkins. Unfortunately the telephone was not invented until 1873 and poor Aunt Ida had to spend a week in bed because of the horrible ringing in her ears. Lisa stopped calling when she read about this in the diary.

Over the weekend she called her great grand daughter's best friend. Her name will be Lupita and, in the year 2102, she will be 12 years old. Lisa, not wanting Lupita to know she was from the past, pretended to be doing a survey about drug use in twenty-second century adolescents. It sounded like Lisa's great granddaughter will already be smoking a half a pack a day by the time she is thirteen. This worried Lisa for most of the afternoon but at dinner she decided that if cigarettes are still around one hundred years in the future then they must have found a cure for cancer.

Last night Lisa called the Lisa she had been when she was in high school. The phone contract had strict warnings against calling one's past, but Lisa knew that the sixteen-year-old Lisa, who aspired to be a state representative, would never recognize the soap-opera-addicted, furniture-polishing, wife of a youth-pastor-who-did-not-believe-in-birth-control and consequently mother of six, she would become. Old Lisa did not talk to young Lisa very long. Not wanting to risk changing history she tried the drug survey act again, and was surprised to discover that she had been a terrible liar.

This morning, Lisa called me. I am actually a caveman named Pelto. A few years before I wrote this, I found a rock that was making a ringing noise. A noise I would later learn was a ringtone of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from the musical Showboat. I picked up the rock and when I put it up to my ears I heard someone speaking a language that I would also later learn was English. I know that may be hard to believe, but I have a lot of spare time as my wife does most of the hunting. Anyways, I first started talking to Lisa a few weeks back. She called me by accident, (This happens a lot--my phone number is 3.) but we hit it off. She calls me now almost every day, tells me about her life, and keeps me up to date on all of my favorite soap operas. Yesterday she told me about a doctor on a talk show who stressed the importance of keeping a journal and I thought I'd try it. This is my first journal entry. Come to think of it, it's probably the first journal entry. I promise to write in it every day.

Pooh Sticks - an attempt at a poem

Pooh Sticks

The equidistant pines are
more conjured than those
of the second growth.
Rows for running down
and proof of endlessness
while tennis shoes, red that year
or black, not quite touching
the needle sponge.

And the hill. What grass
would be if we let it
and always wet. Tumbles taken
here and here and back
in the woods. Abrasions
often showing under the hems
or as bridges over tan lines
will be gone by September

Then where the horse bridge was
but isn't now but still where
where a girl, haircut crooked,
crooked teeth, father
with a forest beard and the son
who will not describe himself
dropped sticks into the river
and watched them come out on the other side.

Thrive - Part 10

INT. CAFETERIA - DAY

Bill sits at a table by himself. He has a newspaper and a plate with scrambled eggs, toast and a slice of cantaloupe.

The headline of the newspaper says: "Hospital Director Resigns."

Bill looks down to his plate and picks up the cantaloupe. He takes a bite.
The headline of the newspaper now reads: "CDC: "Aluminum not responsible for memory loss."

Bill is holding a honeydew, there is a bite taken out of it. He takes another.
The headline of the newspaper says: "Bill Janus indicted in hospital scandal."

Bill puts down the paper and uses a knife and fork to cut his steak. Someone coughs behind him. He turns his head and June is standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. She wipes the back of her hand on a dish towel.

Bill picks up the copy of Gray's Anatomy he has been reading. He looks at a picture of the liver.

Bill cuts the liver and onions on his plate. The sound of people clicking knives on water glasses makes him look over.

Janice sits next to him, she is wearing a wedding dress, he is wearing a tuxedo, he leans over and kisses her. He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he is kissing June, she is wearing a negligee.

Bill is in bed with June, he is wearing purple satin pajama bottoms. June is asleep. Bill gets out of bed and sits down on the floor Indian-style.

Bill plays with legos wearing purple flannel pajamas on the floor of the hospital room. A very old man sits on the bed watching him.

OLD MAN: Do you love me Solomon?
BILL: Is that my name?

Bill looks at the old man for a response. The old man looks confused, he is trying to find words to say.

OLD MAN: Well...um...ummm.

The left side of the screen starts to turn blue in an irregular moving patch. The patch consumes the old man and becomes a vaguely human shaped patch of blue.

BILL: Is that my name?
PATCH OF BLUE: Do you love me Bill?
BILL: Do you love me Solomon?

The patch of blue is now green.

PATCH OF GREEN: Kilimanjaro

Bill sits next to Solomon, everything else is white.

BILL AND SOLOMON: (simultaneously) It's hyphenated.

The patch is now a circle, the color shifts from blue to green and changes in diameter.

CIRCLE: Willy-um-Janus. Solly-mun-Janus

Solomon's face is very big. His lips don't move, his eyes blink rapidly.

SOLOMON: Butler-Janus. It's hyphenated.
CIRCLE: Solly-um-but-ler-willy-mun.

Bill and Solomon's heads are fused together at the back, Bill's face on the right, Solomon's on the left.

BILL AND SOLOMON: Janus.

Absolute Chaos. Several bits of the film overlapping each other, in increasing states of digital decay. Sounds from before, sometimes lines said by the wrong people, nothing disctinctly audible though. Everything progresses toward absolute white which is achieved about thirty seconds before absolute silence.
Credits come out of the white in a neutral gray and scroll to both sides of the frame from the center.

THE END

Thrive - Part 9

INT. BILL AND JUNE'S KITCHEN - DAY

JANUS: Happy Anniversary.
JUNE: What?
JANUS: Thirteen years right?
JUNE: Thirteen years?
JANUS: January 17th.
JUNE: Thirteen years since what, Bill?
JANUS: Since we've been married.
JUNE: Two years, Bill. Three next June.

Thrive - Part 8

INT. JANICE AND BILL'S BEDROOM - DAY

Janice and Bill come into the bedroom, it's nine o'clock in the morning and they have just returned from staying up all night in the hospital. Janice goes to the closet and starts to undress. Bill stands in the doorway and looks at her.

JANUS: I can't do this anymore.
JANICE: I know how you feel. It seems impossible that this is happening.
JANUS: No, you don't. You don't know how I feel. This isn't an expression of frustration. I seriously cannot do this any more.
JANICE: What choice do we have?
JANUS: There are some people who are able to do things like this, there are people who can suffer through tragedy and feel like it makes them stronger. I'm not one of them.
JANICE: How do you know? How have you suffered before this?
JANUS: You, I think, are one of those people. You can be the hero in this, the patient one, the longsuffering one. I'm the villain here, I know it. I am designed to be the asshole.
JANICE: You need to go to sleep Bill, we have to go back in four hours.
JANUS: I am the weak one, the one to hate. The one that had to be lost. You can be the one who was somehow able to make it. The woman who's only son is in the hospital, who's husband left her, just when she needed him--
JANICE: What?
JANUS: Who's husband left when things started to look bad, he just dropped her, left everything there his son, his house, and found another life, another woman to live with.
JANICE: Stop it. Bill. Stop it.
JANUS: Who never saw him again.

Janice picks up a shoe from the ground and throws it at him.

JANICE: Quit it right now. How can you say those things?
JANUS: Who fought against him, begged him to stay but he wouldn't listen. When she held onto his feet when she punched him as hard as she could-- which is not very hard, she's a small woman--he pushed her away, he ran, he literally ran out the door, slammed the car door as she stood on the steps crying until she collapsed.
JANICE: Why are you doing this to me now. Stop. Please stop, I can't take this.
JANUS: You can. It's me who can't take it-- and he backed out of the driveway looking her in the eyes the whole time. You see he never had a soul, never really loved her, or his son, and he had to get out.
JANICE: Get out!