play-play

Father Mapple Moab Adzu III presents

the intake nurse

A Short Play, in segments

Setting: Sometime in the distant future or past.

Characters: I and Ø. In the vicinity of present-day earth.

[1]

I: I got the feeling that it wasn’t going to happen.

Ø: Let it go.

I: No, because you were saying that it wasn’t the money, it wasn’t the glamorous lifestyle. . . .

Ø: [sigh]

I: No, you’re seeking the truth.

Ø: Let it go, you two-faced—

I: —I know what you’re thinking.

Ø: How could you know?

I: I’m just saying that it’s not entirely impossible that you are mistaken in your enthusiasm for your cause.

Ø: What do you think my cause is, selling crap to people on the street?

I: What are you saying?

Ø: I am saying that beings are predisposed to know themselves first, above all other things.

I: Exactly, and don’t you think that is easier when it is coupled with a dichotomy of some sort? You can’t have one without the other, and so forth. . .

Ø: Yes, but if you have the power to just make up what the other is like, what information can you cull about your own development?

I: You don’t determine what the outcomes are; you just create the conditions in which the results will eventually follow.

Ø: Right, but you create the conditions in which this new thing will define itself.

I: That’s right. And you thereby put something other than yourself out there.

Ø: Right, but where does understanding occur?

I: What do you mean?

Ø: Awareness of the other. Compassion for the other. Empathy maybe.

I: That happens when it becomes more like me, or you. When it becomes more like us.

Ø: And until then?

I: We wait.

Ø: For what?

I: Recognition.

Ø: How will they know us?

I: Maybe they never will. I take that back. Can I take it back?

Ø: I think you are still eligible for redemption, yes.

I: Very funny. As I said, I got the sense that this wasn’t going to happen. The truth is lonely. . . and so forth. . . . What I mean to say is that they will probably perceive us. But they won’t know what we are.

Ø: How could that be good?

I: At the very least, it will be interesting to see how they progress.

Ø: What will they think of us?

I: Who knows?

Ø: How can we trust their perceptions of themselves when we are dancing around in the past, distracting them?

I: Well, if they are anything like us, they will be so caught up in defining who they are, that we’ll remain hidden. Sort of an invisible but omnipresent guide.

Ø: A trickster in their lives.

I: A question to be asked.

Ø: And never answered.

I: Not never.

Ø: When do they get to know?

I: Whenever we say so. Christ, you’re starting to sound like a doubter.

Ø: Whenever they become like us.

I: Maybe.

Ø: Crazy and insecure.

I: Interested and interesting.

Ø: self-absorbed to the point of making up things to get excited about. For the sake of amusement.

I: Well. . .

Ø: Can’t argue with progress.

I: F— off.