TuchMyBlog

Monday, May 10, 2004

a love play
BALLAD OF THE BLUE WORM
A Love Play
The Beginning An apartment building.
An old city A new time.
Daytime, dark, steamy, dank.
The sunlight lights like candles or small lamps.
Water drips from something into something else and back again. Doink. Doink. Doink. Doink. Doink. Doink. Doink. Doink. A music box plays a tinkling, Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle. Stops. Then plays again. Then stops. More dripping.

THE MECHANIC: Sits at a card table below.
DIEGO: Sits across from THE MECHANIC.

Above them the clock on the wall has all sevens.

DIEGO: Stands on the table to read the clock. He is a dwarf.
THE MECHANIC: Reads his manual, paces, reads, paces.
DIEGO: Trying to repair his favorite music box that won't play a real song. He loves his music box. He is still a dwarf.
THE SMOKING LADY: Sits in her apartment, smoking, staring into her large mirror. She wears white gloves and an evening gown. She smokes all of the time. She puts on makeup.
THE HAIR LADY: Sits in an enormous chair in a tiny apartment. She is also tiny, but her hairdo is very, very big and shaped like the chair. She is very old and has a large choker of pearls on her narrow neck and blue, blue eyeshadow on her moist cloudy eyes. A fly buzzes by her hairdo. She is dressed in a style of days gone by. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
THE LOVER: Cooks in her kitchen. She is expecting a visitor or a customer. She regrets never having said she's sorry. She doesn't have the right ingredients for her pie.
THE HAIR LADY: SLAPS at the fly. SLAP
EVERYBODY: Looks toward the slap. LOOK
THE MONKEY LADY: Paces on the top floor. Her television buzzes and lights the room. She shakes her finger at it, then paces some more. She has a blonde wig, high heeled shoes and is naked from the waist up. She is old. Where are the monkeys?
THE BLUE WORM: Far below, sews a new blue jacket. It is made of blue felt and has no arms and big, blue buttons all up the front. It is very long and will fit him snugly from the floor to above his head when he puts it on. He listens to a radio from the early 1950's. (“Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky, stormy weather…) He hums, tunes the radio, hums, tunes the radio, sews his jacket. He is an actual worm and not a person so it is remarkable that he can sew. In the sky, there are two moons. One is large and one is small, both round, both cheese, both full.
HAIR LADY: My hair is enormous.
SMOKING LADY: Big moonlight.
WORM: Sewing. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmmmm.
HAIR LADY: My style is my style.
DIEGO: Music box music. Music box music.
LOVER: Big Moonlight. Big Moonlight.
THE MECHANIC: Drip. Drip.
HAIR LADY: So I said, "Winston, you know I don't like my lamb without mint jelly! Why would you serve it to me like that when you know full well that I have never had lamb without mint jelly? Who in their right mind would eat lamb without mint jelly! All civilized peoples have mint jelly with their lamb." Then we had a laugh and he went off to collect my jelly from the pantry. Ohhh.
SMOKING LADY: Gazing into her mirror. There are so many things I wish I had done. There are so many things I wish I had done.
SMOKING LADY: Smokes.
SMOKING LADY: Smokes.
MONKEY LADY: Small moonlight.
MECHANIC: Drip. WORM: Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.
WORM: Sews jacket.
MECHANIC: Remarkable.
HAIR LADY: So I said, so I said, he said, she said.
MONKEY LADY: Running. Quentin? Petey? Where's mommie's cream crepe bed jacket? Petey? Quentin? DIEGO: The Music box tinkles.
HAIR LADY: A fly buzzes by her hairdo. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
MECHANIC: SLAMS his hand down on the table./ HAIR LADY: SLAPS at the fly SLAM/SLAP EVERYONE: Looks toward the SLAP
DIEGO: The music stops abruptly.
DIEGO: Squeezes his music box.
MECHANIC: Drip. MECHANIC: Drip.
HAIR LADY: I hadn't been out there for years and years but we often had laughs. So I said, "Winston, Lamb and mint jelly is comfort food, and a lady needs to be comforted in the fashion to which she is accustomed or it simply isn't comforting." He was wearing a grey tie that evening.
MECHANIC: Tick, tock
DIEGO. Tick tock. Tiiiiiimes a wastin.
DIEGO: Tick, tock.
HAIR LADY: One reason why the hair has to be teased at all is to give it lift and volume. Without that my hair would just lie flat on my head.
WORM: Mmmm. Sews.
MONKEY LADY: They always bring me flowers. He loves me, he loves me not.
LOVER: Plucking petals from a dead daisy…
MONKEY LADY: He loves me, he loves me not…
SMOKING LADY: Lights another cigarette. Lights another cigarette. You made me love you. You did it. You.
MONKEY LADY: Daisy's are my favorite. They keep for years and years. Oh, I love the theatre! The lights, the costumes!
WORM: Mmm. Pricks himself. RAAAAAGH!
MONKEY LADY: Petey? Quentin?
HAIR LADY: A woman's hair is her crowning glory.
THE LOVER: Love? What is love?
MONKEY LADY: I found a bad magazine under the bedsheets! Dirty little monkeys. Mommy is going to put you to bed without any supper. But how can she make supper without her spangly shoes? What was I looking for? There. Bad, bad monkey I see you.
DIEGO: Two single notes sound from the music box. TINKLE TINKLE
THE MECHANIC: Stares at DIEGO. DIEGO: Tinkle tinkle.
THE MECHANIC: Drip. Drip. Clang.
WORM: Puts on jacket. Rolls on the floor. Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue!
THE LOVER: If I had only made him stay home that day. There's NEVER enough sugar. How can there be a pie?
SMOKING LADY: There are so many things I wish I had said.
MONKEY LADY: I never would have had children if I had known about the sacrifices. My life on a silver platter. Layed out for the world to see. Consumed like cheese, like water, like… my daisies are out of water. Hey boys, would you like to come upstairs?
THE LOVER: Never sugar never sugar never sugar.
SMOKING LADY: There are so many things I wish I had said.
MONKEY LADY: I am a real chanteuse!
WORM: Blue! Blue! Mmmmmm.
HAIR LADY: I have seen women looking like that in public - and, well, and it is a shameful thing. Sometimes I have a mind to tell them. I want to say "lift your hair and lift your spirits!" But I don't. A woman's hair is her crowning glory. Well said.
DIEGO: Music box tinkles three notes.
MECHANIC: Always at the wrong moment. Clang. Begoing. Begang gang. Drip drip.
DIEGO: It was a fatal error. A mishap with the microtweezers.
MONKEY LADY: Mommy found her cream crepe bedjacket so she can lie forever in bed and look like a queen!
THE LOVER: Was there anyone down there in the rubble? Did they have any sugar? I could never ask that in public.
SMOKING LADY: Big moonshine.
HAIR LADY: Small moonshine.
WORM: Puts on his long blue coat.
MONKEY LADY: Satin crepe is soft and smooth on mommy's happy skin.
SMOKING LADY: Lights a cigarette. There are so many things I whish I had done.
SMOKING LADY: Big moonshine.
HAIR LADY: So I said, "Winston, you are making that up!" He had a habit of pulling my leg.
WORM: Mmmm. Admires his blue felt suit with his movement.
SMOKING LADY: Smokes. Smokes. Smokes.
MECHANIC: Drip. Drip. Drip.
LOVER: They said there was a Jew hiding in the rubble. That’s why they took him away. That’s why they took him away.
DIEGO: Tinkle tinkle. Ping ping.
LOVER: Turns on the sink faucet.
MECHANIC: Drip drip.
LOVER: Mostly I like them young. I can admit that. I can admit I can feel something for the young ones. A sugarless pie is all I can make do with now. Hello? Hello? Did someone knock? It's alright I'll be here later. Waiting for the bread to rise.
HAIR LADY: Once upon a time I became angry. "Stop the car," I said, "Stop the car. We are going much much too fast and I don't like it." And you better believe he stopped that car.
LOVER: We left the meeting together but by the time I arrived home I was alone. HAIR LADY: Winston? Yes of course that’s who I mean. He was, in fact, my driver.
SMOKING LADY: Lonliness is next to is next to is next to… smokes.
HAIR LADY: I had a perfect life. My children slept in my hair right where I could keep an eye on them. WORM: Mmm. Bluuuuuuuuuuuue. Bluuuuuuuuuuuue. Moves toward the stairs.
HAIR LADY: SLAPS at the fly. SLAP
EVERYBODY: Looks toward the slap.
DIEGO: Tinkle. Tinkle. Oh, box, play. My little box.
MONKEY LADY: Come babies! Time for telly! Time for the flower show. Roses are red.
LOVER: I should have known that I would never see him again. Just sent him away. They said someone saw him, though. At the jail. The supplies delivery. Too risky. Oh, what is love when a lover is alone? Turn on the gas. I have beads I bought in Switzerland in the early days. Between the boards. Before the rations. WORM: Has reached SMOKING LADY'S apartment.
SMOKING LADY: Moves toward the window and looks out.
WORM: Moves very close behind her.
SMOKING LADY: Smokes. Looks out the window.
WORM: Mmmmm.
SMOKING LADY: There are so many things I wish I had said.
LOVER: I didn't want to do it.
HAIR LADY: I’m the luckiest woman alive.
MONKEY LADY: Come on up and see me sometime.
EVERYONE: Big moonshine. Small moonshine. Big moonshine.

Sunday, May 9, 2004

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
So I wanted to write about this film but I cannot remember if I have seen it.
1:03 am edt

Sunday, April 11, 2004

premises
A woman.

A man.

A marble sculpture.

A renaissance sculptor stands alone in his cold studio.

Standing, a woman looses her way.

On a reconnaissance mission above the Patagonian wilderness, a WW II fighter pilot gazes down in wonder at the earth below.

A woman, cold as marble.

Photoelectric Effect.

Affected by a sculpture, a woman opens her mouth but cannot speak.

While searching through her stocking drawer, a nun in Calcutta suddenly discovers she has no soul.

A man sees a photograph of himself.

A woman takes a photograph of a man.

Due to the miracle of flight and the theory of transmigration, two barn swallows land on the arm of a renaissance sculpture in a Florentine Piazza.

Moved by fear, a woman turns her arm away from a man.

Moved by a woman, a man turns.

A single man moves.

Driven by a man, a car.

Lacking singularity, a woman combs her hair before a mirror in her bedroom and memorizes her own face.

After reading a poem by the goddess Sappho, inexplicably and without warning, a middle-aged man decides he no longer likes fishing and donates his gear to charity.

Due to navigational malfunction and genetic theory, a WW II fighter pilot crashes his plane on a beach in the south of France and discovers a drawing in the sand.

Cellular memory.

Quantum mechanics.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A woman, desperate and hungry, cries in the dark and resolves to communicate only by means of photography.

Distracted from his work by the sound of flapping wings, a renaissance sculptor falls in love with his statue.

The half-life of plutonium is twenty four thousand, four hundred years.

The life of a fruit fly is twenty-four hours.

On a beach in the south of France, a stranded WW II pilot tries his radio but can only hear the cooing of barn swallows.

Driven by guilt, a man tells a woman he will marry her.

Driven by shame, a former gang member has his tattoos removed by a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who practices raja yoga.

Overwhelmed by the madness of human emotion, a woman contemplates the redshift of a quasar and discovers inconsequence.

A woman watches a man.

After a meal of pate de fois gras and due to the miracle of plastic surgery, a woman sees her reflection in a store window and does not recognize herself.

A man sees a man he once knew.

A nuclear physicist is discouraged when he repeats the same experiment expecting different results.

One day after receiving a mysterious letter written in renaissance Italian, suddenly and without provocation a man turns the wheel of his speeding car and drives off the side of a cliff.

A Brahmin priest, having mastered the ancient art of Kapalabhati Pranayama, discovers a drawer full of black stockings at the bottom of the stairs leading to his lovely but humble home in Kerala, India.

Cultivating silence, a telepathic pilot suddenly understands the renaissance mind and is driven to adventure.

Unwatched, a man watches where he is going.

A woman dreams and watches a beautiful sculptor.

After suffering 245 rescue missions, an Air Force flight nurse admits her pathological fear of flying over biscotti and Pernod.

While on vacation in Florence, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon gazes at the sculpture of a beautiful woman and is certain he saw her lips move.

Midair, a suicidal man suddenly finds the will to live.

On the other side of the world, unwatched, an isolated group of old world Colobus monkeys spontaneously and without example or provocation begin to wash yams in the surf and discover a box of fishing tackle.

Having suffered a botched rhinoplasty and several spiritual awakenings, a lost woman draws a picture of herself in the sand and discovers it to be a map of the ancient Moroccan city of Fez.

Due to the miracle of carbon dating, a woman returns to her former life as a meter maid in the Bavarian city of Garmisch Parten-Kirschen and studies to become a pilot.

Exhausted from the madness of the world, a renaissance sculptor looses his desire to live and becomes obsessed with the motion of objects in the sky.

A watch.

Rolling over in an empty bed, a man remembers the joy of collecting trains.

Startled by a pang of guilt, a dying man looks out the window of his flying car and sees a barn swallow pass by.

According to Red Shift phenomenon, the presence of longer red-spectrum wavelengths of light such as those observed in distant stars is a result of the rapid motion of these galaxies moving away from each other.

A WW II flight nurse, on the ground, opens her first wedding gift, quickly moves her hands away and says, "My favorite color is red!"

In an act of pronounced loneliness, a renaissance sculptor develops a neurotic fear of marble, moves quickly away from his statue and writes a long mysterious letter to his estranged brother in Patagonia.

After deciding to marry, a man and a woman move to different countries.

A theoretical sculpture and an artistic nurse take a walk on the beach in the south of France and declare their mutual affection for monkeys who eat yams.

Like radiation, matter continues to decrease in density after the first explosion.

Seeking solitude in the middle of a mad city, a charitable dermatologist realizes that he is uncomfortable in his own skin.

At a famous bookshop in Renaissance Italy, a young woman admits her attraction to marble and slips an unrequited love letter between the pages of a book about garden vegetables.

The fruit fly Drosophilae Melanogaster, widely used in genetic research, has only four pairs of chromosomes.

Unwatched, a woman dies.

A seventy-year-old city planner in the south of London receives a heart transplant from an anonymous donor and develops a sudden desire to study barn swallows and draw maps in the sand.

Unloved, a marble statue of a beautiful woman steps off its pedestal and walks into the crowded city but discovers that she cannot speak the language.

Driven by silence and anonymity, a woman swallows a bottle of sleeping pills.

A lost cartographer photographing fruit flies suddenly remembers exactly where he was when John Lennon was shot.

After a sad turn of events, a former nun receives in-vitro fertilization.

Full of joy, monkeys eat yams in a German zoo.

A car, driven by a man.

Driven to the edge, a man foresees his own death.

Driven by love, a woman draws a map.

A car, driven by a man, passes a renaissance sculpture and slows down as the man realizes he has never really been alone.

Alone and unwatched, a woman knows she has loved herself all along.

Having understood madness all along, time passes unwatched in a curve and all things are connected in a straight line.

Sunday, April 4, 2004

On the banks in the dark fold of the second turn in the river Tree, I remembered again the sleepy vineyard below the town and the tiny monks as they paced in a neat row around the mountain, humming and creaking in their sandals on the broken stones in the road. This vision will haunt me even though I swim. Even though I row. So I sat up from my wet root-bed and watched the brown humming of their moving mantra, following them to the impossibility of sound. It was a fold that caught us the first time, and another that would remind us, and bring us back. ... I realize that I am not alone.

Later, we pass the Abbazia di San Pietro and sing through the pine needle path by the woods and the groomed row of tiny eaten-chocolate caves and birds, and sit where the tiny man sat, look where the tiny man looked and breathe where the tiny man breathed. Every cave has a nut floor and a gate, a tiny desk, a feather pen and a blanket of antler moss and woven carpet grass. The first cave is wide enough for a person to hope and tall enough for a person to believe. No more, no less. Over by the road, outside the frame, happy Japanese tourists line up and offer travel advice to a lonely photographer. With a lens we burned sun-holes in leaves and made our mouths move like the tourists as they chattered, having double and triple-speak.

Beyond the chatter and leaf-holes, a wedding cake sits in a crease behind the mountain of little men. A well dressed cake baker's assistant with red lips and a huge gold and amythest ring takes tickets at the door, and tells us the story of Hemingway's cats as he fishes for our change. After the Germinians have gone past, we are led in one by one in single file through the sugary cake maze, ducking through sticky sugar doors, slipping by long corridors of white frosting fresias and lily petals... They say it fell one day from a party hosted by egrets living higher up the mountain. They tell up this was once a real house cake made for men living alone and one-by-one, and the egrets lost it forever. It is the only one of it's kind still standing after ther rain. So we climbed along, after, on the paved road, full of sugar ourselves. Our luches spoiled. That was before we reached the city. After we passed through the cake's Romanish antechamber - we saw him, there he was - the little monk on the ridge, waving us forward, hair trimmed in a neat rim-bowl, toward the cliff of bridges where we would have to make our last and final approach. This is not the end, we sang... la, la, la. This is not the end.
1:55 am est

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

re: kitchen monikers
Dear General Cakery, Being that you are at your ranch on holiday, the girls and I would like to reserve further inquiry till you are further less disposed-of-ish and become alongside. I have photellographs of mesopotamiss! Please wanda tell the president that we wish him expertise no doubt, and have Mark ring us about the situation and mnemonics. Your group has touched a nerve regarding the "window seat" and as we all well know now there is no president for alongsides. Just leave the jonsez, doubtless, and tell the crew to move quickly to the nearest " ." (I cannot resolve the fighting thieves.) Sincerely, Trades Manager, Assembly and Engineering ps - it IS possible to bake without pain.
2:04 am est

Theres some sun
and it's fall and there's a stream.

Now listen to that.

You look down into the stream
and the water is moving over the rock.

Now feel your hand on the rock.

Now feel your hand on the rock.

Now watch yourself with some sun in the woods
and a noisy stream with your hand on the rock.

Keep watching.

You were there beside me
I can picture that.

You were there in front of me
I can remember that.

You were all around me
I can feel that.

You will always be with me
I can imagine that.