On the walk to the sound of the baby crying:
Kyra: Do you want me to join you?
Von: When that door opens a supernova would be but a flash I thought to notice later.
The door to Zoe's quarters opens. Zoe is sitting up in bed with a baby in her arms.
Von: (to no one in particular) The image before my mind was an imagine such as I had never seen before and I speak not of mother and child but of perception. She seemed to glow, again, not the glowing of a mother holding child, but glow in the sense of solid or gas, of real or apparition. Wherever my eyes focused, the image was sharp, clear, almost hyper clear. Yet, the edges, which is to say everything else outside the point of focus, the hair for example if I were looking at her face, would be out of focus, not fading into black but haloed in high key. It were as if I were looking through a cylinder, only there was none.
On what occurred in the room:
Von: We rejoiced. We laughed. We talked. I held the baby as one holds a life preserver. And my cheeks ached from smiling. But all of that, all of it, is but as dreams are in my memory. When she pulled out the letter and told me from whence it came, to what it addressed, and when she placed it in my hand and there was that touch of flesh on paper, a touching of the present to the past, of the quotidian to the eternal, it is as if everything else fell away, as if when one expected no more, another gift was offered, a gift wished for but never imagined would come to be. In my hand was such a gift. Or so I thought.
Q. (is not seen on stage--Von speaks across a table into the darkness)
Von: I could think of nothing else. I am ashamed to admit from the moment the letter was placed in my hand and I understood what it was, my only thoughts were toward myself, not the child, not the mother, but to me. I felt the warmness of guilt flood my cavity and if I had pissed myself in the moment, my self-centeredness was so great, I would have cared no more than a groom with lipstick on his face. I was drunk with myself, with the letter and to say otherwise would be to lie by omission.
Q.
Von: Your generosity is noted and appreciated. But you didn't come here as confessor, to wallow in my self crimination. You came because you want something, just as I wanted something, to know what you don't know, to scratch the itch of curiosity as you must imagine I did. Is that true?
Q.
Von: Good. Then we shall talk and you shall know what I know but I must warn you, knowledge is not free. What you are asking has a price for what I have to offer is not hospitality but a burden, a weight, for when you know what I know, you too will be complicit in the decision, in the choice and you too will, must, share your thoughts and in the sharing of thought we will hold hands and in the holding of hands together the burden becomes our burden and not just mine. So I ask again. What say you? (Von smiles at the obvious play on the phrase)
Q.
Von: Very well. I took the letter, returned to my quarters. One would think I would have ripped it open immediately. Why I didn't is still not clear in my mind. Instead, I held it, smelled it, caressed it, held it up to the light, wanting the moment to last, to mean something, to have time to soak into my addled memory, to give the moment its proper dignity of space and time, as one does with the sacred. You understand what I'm saying?
Q.
Von: Of course. Inside the envelope, to get to the point, was not just a letter from Cerulean, although it was that, a letter such to eclipse any and all within the Book of Letters. But it was more than that. Inside that simple pocket were a key, more of a clue I would say and, as I have given to you, a warning, or perhaps, a bit of wisdom in the use of the key. You see, I had a choice. I could have my memories back, with a little luck and a lot of work I might note and no real guarantee, but, there is always a but isn't there, but I needed to know, to accept that recovery could be a mixed blessing; I needed to reflect on whether to exhume the body or let be what was so to speak. The choice would be mine. The path before me forked. So I ask of you what has been asked of me. What say you?
Q.
Von: The question speaks to many things but in my mind, above all else, creation, or one could almost say, recreation. I have been given the power to recreate my son, to replace the idea I have of him now with other ideas that may or may not be any more true or accurate than now. Imagine that. Imagine if I were to unlock these demons in my mind and what I conjure up is not the fulfillment of a dream but the unleashing of a nightmare. And would that nightmare, which is not absolute, for we can never know another absolutely, you see, we know them only in pieces, in parts, through the warped prism of our own filters, a few tiles in the greater mosaic. That is the choice. Do I add a few more tiles? What if the tiles I add create a monster in their incompleteness. Is that monster more real than the images I have now? You see, I've been warned. I've been told, presumedly by one who knows, knows more of what I seek than I do, to weigh my decision carefully.
Q.
Von: Think of it this way. How well did your father know you? How many events in your life, the very events that define who you are in your mind, how many of those did your father share? And if he did share them, would his view of those events be the same as yours? So ask yourself, how well, how complete, did your father really know you? Now imagine this. Lets say your father had an overall positive view of you and the things he did not know, the events in your life he had neither witnessed nor been told, that these events would change his view. Would you want him to have access to those tiles, so to speak? Knowing, of course, that any one tile, any one event, even if we could know that tile or that event in an absolute complete way, which we can't, but even if we could, would you want to put those tools, those choices, incomplete as you know them to be, in his hands? Or do you let the dogs sleep?
Kyra: Do you want me to join you?
Von: When that door opens a supernova would be but a flash I thought to notice later.
The door to Zoe's quarters opens. Zoe is sitting up in bed with a baby in her arms.
Von: (to no one in particular) The image before my mind was an imagine such as I had never seen before and I speak not of mother and child but of perception. She seemed to glow, again, not the glowing of a mother holding child, but glow in the sense of solid or gas, of real or apparition. Wherever my eyes focused, the image was sharp, clear, almost hyper clear. Yet, the edges, which is to say everything else outside the point of focus, the hair for example if I were looking at her face, would be out of focus, not fading into black but haloed in high key. It were as if I were looking through a cylinder, only there was none.
On what occurred in the room:
Von: We rejoiced. We laughed. We talked. I held the baby as one holds a life preserver. And my cheeks ached from smiling. But all of that, all of it, is but as dreams are in my memory. When she pulled out the letter and told me from whence it came, to what it addressed, and when she placed it in my hand and there was that touch of flesh on paper, a touching of the present to the past, of the quotidian to the eternal, it is as if everything else fell away, as if when one expected no more, another gift was offered, a gift wished for but never imagined would come to be. In my hand was such a gift. Or so I thought.
Q. (is not seen on stage--Von speaks across a table into the darkness)
Von: I could think of nothing else. I am ashamed to admit from the moment the letter was placed in my hand and I understood what it was, my only thoughts were toward myself, not the child, not the mother, but to me. I felt the warmness of guilt flood my cavity and if I had pissed myself in the moment, my self-centeredness was so great, I would have cared no more than a groom with lipstick on his face. I was drunk with myself, with the letter and to say otherwise would be to lie by omission.
Q.
Von: Your generosity is noted and appreciated. But you didn't come here as confessor, to wallow in my self crimination. You came because you want something, just as I wanted something, to know what you don't know, to scratch the itch of curiosity as you must imagine I did. Is that true?
Q.
Von: Good. Then we shall talk and you shall know what I know but I must warn you, knowledge is not free. What you are asking has a price for what I have to offer is not hospitality but a burden, a weight, for when you know what I know, you too will be complicit in the decision, in the choice and you too will, must, share your thoughts and in the sharing of thought we will hold hands and in the holding of hands together the burden becomes our burden and not just mine. So I ask again. What say you? (Von smiles at the obvious play on the phrase)
Q.
Von: Very well. I took the letter, returned to my quarters. One would think I would have ripped it open immediately. Why I didn't is still not clear in my mind. Instead, I held it, smelled it, caressed it, held it up to the light, wanting the moment to last, to mean something, to have time to soak into my addled memory, to give the moment its proper dignity of space and time, as one does with the sacred. You understand what I'm saying?
Q.
Von: Of course. Inside the envelope, to get to the point, was not just a letter from Cerulean, although it was that, a letter such to eclipse any and all within the Book of Letters. But it was more than that. Inside that simple pocket were a key, more of a clue I would say and, as I have given to you, a warning, or perhaps, a bit of wisdom in the use of the key. You see, I had a choice. I could have my memories back, with a little luck and a lot of work I might note and no real guarantee, but, there is always a but isn't there, but I needed to know, to accept that recovery could be a mixed blessing; I needed to reflect on whether to exhume the body or let be what was so to speak. The choice would be mine. The path before me forked. So I ask of you what has been asked of me. What say you?
Q.
Von: The question speaks to many things but in my mind, above all else, creation, or one could almost say, recreation. I have been given the power to recreate my son, to replace the idea I have of him now with other ideas that may or may not be any more true or accurate than now. Imagine that. Imagine if I were to unlock these demons in my mind and what I conjure up is not the fulfillment of a dream but the unleashing of a nightmare. And would that nightmare, which is not absolute, for we can never know another absolutely, you see, we know them only in pieces, in parts, through the warped prism of our own filters, a few tiles in the greater mosaic. That is the choice. Do I add a few more tiles? What if the tiles I add create a monster in their incompleteness. Is that monster more real than the images I have now? You see, I've been warned. I've been told, presumedly by one who knows, knows more of what I seek than I do, to weigh my decision carefully.
Q.
Von: Think of it this way. How well did your father know you? How many events in your life, the very events that define who you are in your mind, how many of those did your father share? And if he did share them, would his view of those events be the same as yours? So ask yourself, how well, how complete, did your father really know you? Now imagine this. Lets say your father had an overall positive view of you and the things he did not know, the events in your life he had neither witnessed nor been told, that these events would change his view. Would you want him to have access to those tiles, so to speak? Knowing, of course, that any one tile, any one event, even if we could know that tile or that event in an absolute complete way, which we can't, but even if we could, would you want to put those tools, those choices, incomplete as you know them to be, in his hands? Or do you let the dogs sleep?
4 comments:
Yet again the interview technique is so well executed and what I like particularly about how you do this is that the questions are not worded and they are indeed surplus to requirements so to speak given the manner in which the answers are written. The answers are all that matter and thus that this is all that is written is a very nice trait of this method.
That incomprehensible sentence, mine, of the other day had to do, if my guess is correct, with what happens here. What wasn't dared hoped for has happened. Von was given the opportunity to spend some time with his grandchild, with Zoe. Wonderfully descriptive writing from the image of Zoe to the feelings of guilt, always the master of the metaphor, there are some great examples within of how well these work to give an idea that would require a much longer description otherwise, in short, you write in images and your images talk fast and clear.
A letter to eclipse every letter in the Book of Letters, if we never see it, there is a very firm idea of just how effecting Ceru's words must have been. I can understand that everything is interpretation, that having all the facts will still leave him with only his own translation of them, that what he has now is more than winning and that perhaps we shouldn't know everything about another. The fear that he may lose the idea that he now has is as understandable as it is real and it would have been rather more easy to give an opinion on were it not for the sentence to replace the idea I have of him now with other ideas that may or may not be any more true or accurate than now which theoretically could suggest that his current view of Ceru is shaded with rose, but rather more than that, and the reason why one might imagine, at least initially, that the idea of a monster is probably needless, it seems to pertain more to what he continues with when he speaks of tiles. Initially spoken of in that when one considers the possibilities of what might come to light, the very short distance that imagination travels easily, Ceru's thoughts and feelings in regards to his father's actions, regardless of what he might have said, later concluded or felt in most part, could very well be what Von fears were true. Wouldn't one want every truth that was possible to gain access to. Good or bad. This is an outtake comment. More to come.
You touch upon a very important point, which has not been mentioned by Von yet, but, in time, will be. If, and I must emphasis 'if,' he can get the memories back, it would, I think, be similar to having false teeth. Yes, you have teeth again, but they are not your real teeth and as such do not feel the same, are not the same. So, another fly in the ointment. Another factor to consider on getting the memories back, assuming he can. What Say You. Can you begin to see how these three words haunt him, torture him? Can you begin to see the cruel parallel taunting, past and present, of these three words? Again, he is confronted, only this time, the voice is in his head. Again he is faced with a choice, a choice that cannot exist outside of a fertile emotional landscape that goes decades deep. :-)
Killing me softly with his song killing me softly...with his song...
That last paragraph hit home with me. Especially the part about would he view those events the same way you did.
You just have no idea how touched I was with that paragraph.
Excellent Tree.
Thanks Jen. The idea of memory and of what we know and don't know seems to occupy my mind quite a bit. Glad to see Von carrying some of the load now. :-D
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