Dramatis Personae:

Susan

Emily

Dawn

Andrew

Julie

Richard B.
____________________________

Scene 1: Whatever you imagine a drawing room resembles. Plus two beds. Everything homespun and aromatic.

Andrew: Hot tea.

Julie: Come to bed.

Andrew: Allow me my hot tea and some Dickinson before I retire.

Julie: Very well, but Iowa is closing down soon. I heard someone over the loudspeaker.

[sound of banging trash cans; Andrew reacts, drops a thick volume to the floor [thwack] paralyzes himself in the bed, sitting up, tensed]

Andrew: Who do you think did that?

Julie: It could be Susan

[someone yells backstage "It's SUSAN, can you hear me" Andrew breaks out of his paralysis, hides the teacup under the bed
and quickly beds down, and motions for Julie to do the same. He farts loudly before becoming perfectly still. Julie punches him and he chuckles. All is quiet.
This last for 30 seconds, then the banging and commotion begins again and the audience can hear Susan, still unseen, muttering, not quite frantically, "where
are the manuscripts" A pale specter of a woman [Emily] walks in front of the bed. and then marches off stage, without being noticed.

Susan [still offstage]: Can you two tell me where the manuscripts are? Where did you last see them?

Emily [offstage as well, voice softer than Susan's]: They're asleep.

Julie: [whispering to Andy]: Iowa is busier than I thought tonight.

Andy: Don't move a muscle [lets loose another earth-shattering fart].

Susan [offstage]: [sound of papers being torn, slowly, with deliberation] These won't do.

Emily: My dress doesn't fit anymore [languor sensible in the voice.]

Susan: Are the manuscripts in there? [waits for an answer; Andrew farts]. I'm going to have
to search the house again. I'm coming in. [Andrew rushes into the other room after clothes]


Susan doesn't open the door, she sits outside it, talking, scratching the door a little bit,
about the only words you can hear in her conversation are "scrim" and "juxtaposed"

Andy reenters the room. He has pants on and is sliding into a white undershirt. He scrubs
his shirt down over his belly and groans before pulling the door open. In the doorway,
lit by porchlights, stands Susan, very determined, listening to the frame of the house. Andy motions
for her to come in. Julie lies inert, turned toward the audience, dragging her hand over the fold
where the bedsheet wraps under the mattress. As Susan steps forward, someone is revealed, standing
where her shadow was.

Andrew: Who is that?

Susan: That's Richard. He's looking for something else.

Andrew: Can you hurry it up?

Richard steps inside, and the way he shoves his first leg through the door makes him look like a stork with a large brim hat on.

Richard: The marble tea?

Andrew: No, but I have some green tea. Help yourself. It's under the bed.

Richard stoops beneath the bed and comes up with the cup of green tea. He sips it gingerly and smiles to Andrew.

Richard: Is this your wife? (while kind of hanging over her from the far side of the bed; his mustache curls into question marks)

I think I may have spilled some tea on your wife.

Andrew: Yes, thank you. That's my wife, Julie.

Richard: I may write a story about spilling tea on your wife. How does that sound?

Andrew: I don't mind, as long as it's told in third person.

Richard: I was thinking second person.

Andrew: I don't read stories.

Richard: Does your wife?

Emily appears in front of Richard, her back toward the audience. They stare at each other. Emily looks rooted,

rigid posture. Richard sips his found tea and finishes the cup.

Richard (to Emily): Where should I put this cup?

Susan: Give it to me.

Richard hands the cup to Susan without looking at her. He remains locked in his stare at Emily. Meanwhile, Susan

turns the cup over to examine the manufacturing mark. She seems fascinated by what she finds, flips a tiny notebook open

after extracting it from her backpocket and writes very slowly, possibly drawing something. Then she puts the teacup back under

the bed and exits the room through the doorway. Andrew closes the door behind her. The staring contest continues.

Richard (stammering, as if partially embarrassed): I'm sorry about all of this. Can I get you anything? How about some coffee?

Emily continues to stare at Richard, without replying to him. Everyone else seems at ease, disinterested

in the apparent confrontation looming between these two. Andy is reading a book in bed, while Julie is spraying

something into her armpits.

Susan (heard from outside): Did you forget to mention something?

Everyone on stage looks around, trying to determine who is being addressed. No response. Julie puts on her bathrobe

and ties a very elaborate knot in her sash.

[Dawn enters the backstage area]

Susan [addressing Dawn, whose shadow jabs through the window like the sail of a boat. The audience beholds
the profile of this new figure and thinks of mild conditions]

So are the ones who haven't been read.

Dawn: I couldn't figure which terses commanded

Susan: The same problem occurred before. It was desktop as it beckoned the other sailors

Dawn: We tied him to the mast

Susan: I know and the stuff in his ears that you stuffed was that your stuff that you stuffed in his ears

Dawn: The same stuff that turned my ears those colors that you may or may not see

Susan: The time for this, Emily says, she is right over there by the way, we are downwind, so we should
be set for the next half hour

Dawn: I believe I have never seen someone grazing as she is grazing the inside of that place. Usually you are in a car for this sort of thing.

Susan: I never heard of Henrik Ibsen but I heard his car once. But someone you know is Henrik. [starts pulling up rope from the ground
with increasing rapidity] I am simulating something behind a harpoon for you Dawn. I wanted to show you

Dawn: My father brought down this kind of filet mignon before. It reminds of this dog that was named for a children's author.

Susan: I thought it was Edward, it was always Edward to me, the papers before or the papers after, didn't you see,
papers were congenial to me when I was you know what.

Dawn: Listening....

Susan [bursts with laughter] they were but there not right now, look at the weathervane, the safest indication
of what's going on in there

Dawn: I never thought I could subvert a house like this, it brothers me, the skylight was a homemade one from
what I could tell

Susan: Oh you know when it's peered through that's what it is. Shall we have a look?

Dawn: Yes [they start helping each other climb the side of the house, the noise is moderate but not overwhelming,
simply makes the volume of the conversation within the house, which has steadily carried on, get a little
louder]

The next time their voices resume outside of the house, they are much higher and pointed downwards.

Susan: Now that you see her in this light, is she homemade?

Dawn: Don't want to say that but the light creates that effect, this could be selling

Susan: It is already.

Dawn: Who are those three [invisibly pointing to Richard, Andy, and Julie]

Susan: They are a need to know set. The one is trying to consume something that I am trying to uncover.
Yet I like him. I feel that we met once on the stage. I was younger then and concerned with the curtains.

Dawn: This couple bears significance, I am going to drop some thread into her hair and see if he notices [from her
toolbelt produces a spool of red thread and begins dropping it through the skylight]

Susan: This seems a biblical procedure.

Dawn: Only because we are on the roof [Susan nods and smiles].

Below, in the house, the thread touches Julie's scalp and she seems influenced by it, but not regionally affected.

She moves in accordance with something above, and the audience senses, however vague, puppetry.

Susan: I wish that she would...

Dawn: Maneuvering through her work is like this.

Susan: What do you mean?

Dawn: I get the sense of touching someone else, that sense of self as another thing altogether

Susan: So you are casting...

Dawn: yes, if you don't mind.

Susan: Let's see if it works.

[Richard, in the middle of his conversation about toothpicks, looks up at the hole in the ceiling but doesnt

see anything. He visibly shivers and seems condensed by his look up into the skylight. He begins telling

a story about hiding in a skylight from his mother and then being left in the skylight. He reenacts the

the noise of vultures peering through the skylight waiting for him to die. Andy is entertained and slaps

himself. Julie is distracted and Richard notices.

Richard: What are you thinking about?

Chapter I.

Olaf Omenson's short hop across the stream stacked suspenders
cata cata catfish.

Mrs. Eula Bee Alford's avenue is full.

Chapter II.

Wesley Truley, solitary. Dick Touchstone delivered the goods.

Chapter III.

Willie Mae Trotty, no one named Velma Truelove.
Barge docks, dispensary.

To explain the anxiety and disaffection, the book divided into Syretha Thompson,Reaber Thompson, and Louis Tinker.

Chapter IV.

Mose Toatley. Wharf & Guards. Fotch Sockwell.

Chapter V.

Flake Smith's out at Bluebonnet Station. Calls Myrtle Spillers.

Chapter VI.

Hattle Coverson at the colored swimming pool
311 9 St S. Belmont Cluck.

Salome Inocencio with Billy Hutto

Chapter VII.

Smelting, there goes Newt Jackson

Chapter VIII.

McLeod's maple star

Chapter IX.

Rebble Curtis night numbers.

Chapter X.

Harry Day for Ray Cotton.

Chapter XI.

Merlin Lee Mitcham never killed nobody.

Chapter XII.

Queen Remmers. Bluebird–Brandhorst. Cockles.

Chapter XIII.

Colden Hux.

Fashioned:

WE represent the people of the world around here which is not much of a plague.

Seeing quells the disformative which is not a word nor is the word we want meant

to be basket. Bicycles are outlawed and if you traipse through Heaven with certain

traces of prescriptions, like "with the lord a day" and "shrewd as snakes" Molly

came to us on the screen that is why she is here. There is a performative conjunction

of mating rituals where the birds just give up and stick their tail feathers into the washing
machine. Here is my brother....

Bresson:

Nata Nata naata naata (dances as a hippo through the waters of the Ganges, that is to say, not welcome, since the Ganges holds no hippos)

Wearing badge. This is my wearing badge and I can't say much for it. I can't say much for it. I can't wear my wearing badge much longer like this (pulling at it as if it were hot) I want to make noises in terms of its heat. but you wouldn't believe anymore than you do already, would you? There will be no finger sucking, I can promise you that after I intuited your fears.

Henry James:

I stole the papers, ha ha ha. I stole the papers from these characters. that's why they have no idiosyncratic technology, for they can no longer fashion cigarettes or badges or loin cloths without the mighty papers I now have in my possession (lifts coat out to reveal inner pocket that is not there but papers fly forth as if birds were afraid of newspaper, we are all afraid newspapers are gone real soon).

Pigeon:

Henry James, do you believe that women are divested of something when they time travel?

Henry James:

That wasn't me. Ask Robert Bresson.

Lady Catalinand:

A drink for the volunteers (splashes audience with her breasts, which become waves, large blue waves). WE are all afraid of being caught. Aren't we, you there (points to Robert bresson, then to Henry James, who is typing away furiously in front of a flat screen). I am the one that is Molly, Molly all my names are forthcoming, check the flap of the book, that is the source of my names, my names, my names, and the books I have published are Mollies, and the things I do to my teeth, which include a great many things, including blocks and rivulets. Want to Pay Malcolm? Want to settle with the dues?

(everyone marches into the library, where there is a large furnace that accepts prayers, but never prefaced by names, for these are the undirected prayers that are like self-directives, so need of names lost, you simply drop the seed of the self-directive into the furnace where it can be converted into a gas that will then split into the cast of people you know and inform their faculties)

Winter:

I have come to the furnace without repeating another character, except perhaps the one that means sleep, because the issue here is always sleep in front of this furnace. (rubs soot on her belly, which is white like a snowbird, the soot marking can take the shape of whatever chinese character is in fashion this week, check local tattoo artists for listings)

I worry about the finances. I cannot paint waterfowl well enough for my children, this is a Winter's Tale that I am constructing but don't be silly. It won't win.

Dave Elliot:

The reason I messed up was that the table broke across two pages and I assumed the paragraph headings were in order and so I read the last one not knowing the middle of table contained a later number which I now ask Henry James to fix, because he is a good countenance for me to say I do.

Winter:

Re-furbished.

Fortune telling.

Bird at the window:

THUNK!

Sculptor:

Did you see that?

Bird at the window:

Who, me?

Dave Elliot: Cabin pressure, not auxiliary power. That means the data manager is given over to idolatry, and Dassault does not cotton to idolaters.

Henry James:

Lady Catalind, what kind of automobile do you drive?

Lady Catalind:

The brand escapes me. It reminds me of a mallard.

Robert Bresson:

David, David. Diderot, Diderot, Diderot. Mouchette, Mouchette, Mouchette. Sad that a mouse can come up to the counter. Counter top mouse but after parties your guests have you left you with a great amount of food and wine. These are not bad things. I stutter, but they are not bad. Someone drives by an airforce base. Someone drives in and the alarm sounds because they are so drunk, the alarm sounds, and a wall is thrown up.

I want Winter to acknowledge me, but it never happens. All there is. A change in my metabolism, so that I eat, and eat a little more, in response to the cold. Recession of my bones.

The tapir:

Wandering through, just wandering through.

Robert Bresson:

Within the confines of French thought, the tapir cannot bear its own reflection in Larousse.

Devon:

We have to train him to do so. That was yesterday. Now on 10/18, cycling back in, stupid things, author. It's clear then. OK. So now its on the board, minimal changes, you're going to do it.

The tapir:

Intimidated, I slink back into the muck of the river, which tastes sweetly of escargot, O grave Amazon. Where is the lecture series?

Winter:

I have printed out conversations, so that you have accurate handwriting (paper tearing, quick footsteps). I've got to eat. Then this one, I'm giving you, a box, a terrier, a frame of reference that will cycle back. So you showed us the Riviera. Just keeping track of everything. Things changing, so where you want me to to put this?

The volunteers:

We asked the printer for work, but the printer gave us children instead.

Henry James:

This is a power outage, if you will (lights go off in the theatre, James' voice begins to relish the conditions). I have never seen so many people sit in the dark together. This is a political rally with an altogether new sensibility. Moving the loggia right along, I haven't the faintest.

The volunteers (in unision):

Credit where credit is due!

Devon:

Secret handshakes butchering well this is wondering in the file, in the folder, to strew the room with effigies. Ha, there is the Mayor. I found him first, like a little easter egg of male pattern favoritism. I painted myself gold for the holidays. I chipped myself.

Lady Catalind:

I did too (blushing, because she sees that Henry James has overheard what she said in tiny voice).

Henry James:

London London London London London me!

After wear after errata after them, after them errata!

The volunteers:

Are we the errata?

Henry James:

You are the errata [begins to shoot things, tiny metallic things, at the newly christened errata, Robert Bresson runs in front of the missiles wagging a pencil]. Oh Robert, you aren't going to read me one of your letters?

The errata:

We are saved [proceed to shake hands with Robert Bresson, who dons an eyepatch]

We are Muriel and gingivitis. We are spettle.

Lady Catalind:

Who will give me a slip?

The errata:

We will, once we learn what you mean.

Lady Catalind:

Where has Robert gone [the cast turns around and around, but no Bresson, worried faces appear, the worst is assumed, that he has rolled himself into the aquarium]

Henry James:

I suppose we should check the aquarium [exeunt].

Act II: A modern hotel room, replete with fetishes and large drawers to put pairs of pants. A bathroom with slenderine mirrors. In fact, the bathroom
should invoke the ballet, possibly the Russian ballet, and its subterranean brutalities [ toes are weapons with the very strong]. There should be
a lot of hanging towels. And an alarm clock looms in the center of the set with yellow digits that blink every 30 seconds. The lamps in the hotel room
are tall and unbearably bright.

The volunteers:

Pass us the lemon water (quickly they receive lemon water from the outstretched hand of winter but they find the water too warm upon drinking it).
This water's warm.

Winter:

I am to blame. [Robert Bresson appears. He is soaked. He pulls a small fish out of his shirt pocket and it flips around on the wood, producing a greater silence than Henry James had realized. Henry James drops his handkerchief over the fish and crosses himself, upon which the volunteers widen their eyes and then bend their knees]]

Robert Bresson:

this reminds me of the story when Christ was walking down the streets and a woman needed something, a healing, and she was described by the commentator
as having an issue of blood but no one would issue her new blood, not even the disciples. So she decided to touch something, anything, the crumbs?

Winter:

My hem line was always in Autumn [gathers the fold of her skirt and looks carefully at her big toes, which are pulling apart from the pack].
I could never get the color out of my hem line.

The volunteers:

Isolation, sheer isolation, to be had with warm water. Call someone. Andrew! Call Andrew [Henry James, stands in the corner, erect, but disappointed to be obsolete]

Andrew:

What do you want from me; do you know the barista? He and I are one. Nothing can take the beans.

Henry james:

This fellow sounds like someone I know. Who are you, where do you come from?

Andrew:
I am working out of Iowa for a multinational, but I respect other kinds of people. A bakery.

Henry James:
you bear an uncanny resemblance to someone, someone with a loud voice, a heavyset man. Who is it?
What happened to the errata? [looks over at them, masquerading as volunteers again]

The volunteers:

Sweaty.
Internal pesticide of nonsense.
Coolidge.

Andrew:
Pills I came home from work pills. My wife is still at work pills. My hand pills in my shoes.

Henry James:
Would you like to see my pillcase [reaches behind him, into rear pocket of his trousers]

Andrew: To some extent I have pills. Not a motion over them lapis lazuli

Robert Bresson: moved, existing within, a dark platitude, young man's kind, the trilogy
cinders and involutions

Andrew: dialogue what we came to the forefront of a style that is Bardt did

Bresson: no no, in the center of anthropology a shot where you might find Argentina
Argentina the economy of it clothing pairs

[Henry James produces his pillcase at last, after years of rifling through his pants]

Henry James: This proves it. I am not Marcel Proust, not even the distant American cousin.

Andrew: Who was Proust?

Bresson: The winningest greyhound. Also the sickliest.

They didn't adopt that kind back then. They left them in their kennels.

Andrew: Happened to me that a family whether it was a biological one or not dropped me into
state of living that was not decisive that is the violence associated with early
childhood constantly pokes out, even among the homeless they shove me
around I see weapons among them, and I cut a snake in half once with my brother's
sword and when I ran over a cat, it went bad

Bresson: rumors that a certain female poet was illegitimate of a certain world famed playwright
certain irish gestures and wrinkles and sharpness of face and half-squib

Andrew: radio the name of the radio what was that my mother the radio the name honeysuckle
not on the radio Come to my room for a second

{bresson and andrew disappear from the stage, making loud footsteps}

Winter: What the hell were you going to do otherwise, rent, not going to get done, women
women, not going to get done, women not going to get done or you are be going
to pay the difference, don't thin out

[Andrew comes back alone]

Winter: What happened to Robert?

Andrew: He wanted to get some reading in.

Winter: Lady Catalind shall miss him.

Andrew: What about you and Henry James?

Henry James: I never cared much.

Winter: Out of turn. What if I came in early and you came in after, what if I constantly delayed
the inevitable, which I do, because the inevitable must be delayed, for it to be said
you are doing a great job, the inevitable allows

Henry James: My sentences are inevitable.

Andrew: Do you write much?

Henry James: Winter never writes. It's only in the cold of spring that the novel gets released.

Andrew: Have you ever met a person who never read a novel?

Henry James: I wrote a novella for my spouse. It was called something else and written by someone
else but it was written by me initially for someone to learn from

Andrew: I write a novel in my thinking but I never think while I write my novel that I am thinking
about certain men in certain periods of time with narrow interests that is my novel
and some of the more sensual moments are when I find pictures of these men
to show people who visit my house, the hose is outside. The squirrel was above
but inside. Had the hose been inside, I would have mastered the squirrel. One job
was to set rat traps in my employer's house, in the attic and all around and to lay out
poison, incredulous poisons not even I would suspect my boss his wife was part of
her problem [rubs one of his lenses and strokes his beard]

Henry james: it was commonly believed that fat men were powerful. Do you know what I look like?

Andrew: No idea of what my original appearance there

Winter: Stop! I want my balcony back! [all players drop to their knees, end of act II]

Act Three:

Dave Elliot:

We have to restore what was there in the previous version. Holly ought farm
sequential somber deck fords

Winter:
Has anyone seen Robert or is he not coming back to town?

Dave Elliot:
The company that built our roads might have something to do with them

Winter:
These days I feel such pressure Dave. Such grave pressure on my bowels.

Dave Elliot: In the sixteenth, I will take something out. That is how far...

Henry James: When I tapped the couple, shouldn't either of them look away or is it the norm

I twizzle with an umbrella, which is particular to that object, some actions are, some of them

Dave Elliot: So it is wonders

Winter: the faction particular to myself that is why I am always binding my children or something

but where are they? the ones before, the bigger ones they said we needed to keep an eye on?

The volunteers:

no one of our hours. didn't matter. didn't. didn't. they collapsed didn't and even if we
had been asked to account, which is dreadful, which we dread, which we all, the account
coming down, or being on top of us, and left wriggling, under, account shelves

Winter: I agree they were ovals and no one could see for so many that is the problem
their proliferation weren't we getting this weren't we getting it before

Henry James: I still say that memory is primitive hasn't noticed that the elocution or the arctic circles
our sayings hasn't noticed them, bunt Henry, bunt

The volunteers:
stepping toes, stepping silly over them, stepping them to, stepping them to form
toes residual, toes reside, toes retake or resume, yes we will say resume the toes
resume their form even stepping stepping on them, and stepping on them all over

Winter: fallen on the bridge again (intently reading a paper that may or may not be newsprint)

Henry james: I am afraid my toes are too long for you (motions to the volunteers, restrained by
sense of shame)

Winter: burridge. I have a burridge to debone. (motions to the volunteers) Will you do the honors?

(the volunteers accept without saying anything. they take something elongate from Winter's hands

and hoist it but are so unsure of what they are hoisting that they fiddle, they fuss, they truss

The other weekend I was in a group discussion centered on HD's "The Walls Do Not Fall." There were some objections raised to how abrupt the entrance of sociological language is (as a set, go-to). I took that question into reading DaDaDa. How speed can break a reading off pretty fast if the reader isn't up for it / prepared / willing.

What I found myself doing to argue for those moments where HD screws things up (accelerates through another set of words, infusion) is thinking of relative speeds in different book forms, like diaries. That diaries are allowed to be slow / plodding because the promise is something being exposed, however circuitously. There is the promise of a payoff in that way. So this accounts for the reader hanging in there, through clumsy expositions.

So thinking about this, I immediately began to focus on the H.D.'s head over that page and if she was positioning herself as a diarist or a journaler or a scribbler or

9/17

I have been pulling out a lot.