Starting small, sometimes from nothing—
Trembling: starting tiny, tiny like tic.
Look at my face, look: tic.
[He shows a tic on his face.]
Then twitch.
[His tic becomes bigger.]
Tic becomes a twitch. And then quiver.
[His tic becomes even bigger.]
And then shudder. Shudder.
[His whole body starts to shake.]
And tremor. Tremor. Tremor.
[His body shakes more.]
And then shake, and shake, and then—
[He is still.]
And then what?
I have a fear of . . . what?
[ADNAN listens. He has a few characteristic emblematic movements, such as the way he holds his head as he listens for an earthquake, as he does now.]
It’s difficult to hear.
Like a blind person, needing to imagine colors—
Listening in the blindness.
[He listens again.]
Feeling, trembling.
Not once, but maybe twenty-five times.
Every day: earthquake.
Cataclysm . . .
It’s crisis in universe, stars, planets . . .
Crisis causing changing, of course.
So what is changing?
Changing, it’s “evolving.”
Even thinking about changing, it’s change.
MY HOUSE
My name is Adnan.
I was born in Beirut, in Lebanon,
In a big house.
Beirut, it’s an ancient city.
Lebanon, my country,
Five thousand years ago,
It was called Phoenicia.
Now I am living in Venice, California.
I have a bedroom and a kitchen.
It’s morning; I have coffee, and then breakfast:
Toast of something.
I’m eating something—it’s a muffin.
It’s “taste.” I’m amazed—
Shock.
[ADNAN listens.]
Tremor, quake—it’s shaking again.
Earth groaning again.
[ADNAN listens, then returns to normal.]
This room has only three or four things.
Simple, it’s better, it’s best.
This is my desk. It’s wood.
The desk exists longer than I am human,
Longer than my father, longer than my grandfather.
It’s from the Shakers.
These are my tapes.
Music, it’s pulse and rhythm and melody.
I see music.
My greatest pleasure, it’s music: hearing God.
Then, second, it’s colors.
I have pleasure also from shapes—like shells, from the sea.
Music, it might be shapes.
Thinking about shapes, shells.
Bodies—
Like air, like clouds . . .
For example, spiders—many legs, many arms.
Spider to galaxy, spinning . . . spiral.
Shapes . . .
[ADNAN gestures a spiral shape.]
This is my clock. It’s new.
Time—oh, yes—it’s important to me now,
It’s order.
Without clock, one second or one year—no different.
But when I leave my house,
When I go to the ocean,
When I’m looking at the sea,
I do not want a clock at all.
THE SEA
[ADNAN walks toward the “beach” area of the stage.]
Here, it’s just an ordinary place, Venice.
But—on the sea,
And you have to be living someplace.
I was living in Paris once.
I was a student, learning about the voice.
And then I was singing.
I sang concerts many times.
And then: cataclysm, expulsion:
I was struck dumb.
[ADNAN listens.]
I am obsessed about earthquake.
Some people have obsess about ice cream,
Or drugs, or sex.
With me: it’s earthquake.
[ADNAN listens.]
I am thinking about this and that—
And then, after two minutes, again—
[ADNAN listens. Then ADNAN walks.]
Many refugees come to the beach,
Many refugees come speaking French.
I was speaking French when I was three.
Refuse—refugees—
Coming to the beach like tide, waves . . .
Jean-Paul Sartre, he’s my friend.
I never met him really.
He’s short.
He’s ghost.
Before, I was never thinking about ghost at all.
But now, thinking about ghost a lot.
Thinking myself ghost.
Well, not myself,
But ghost using my voice maybe.
[ADNAN makes a ghostly sound.]
I don’t speak so well now,
So why ghost choosing my voice?
I don’t know. It’s mysterious.
Ghost, it’s funny.
[ADNAN walks.]
Walking on street to ocean every day.
Going outside, I look back at my house:
It’s yellow and gray;
It’s thin and small;
It’s not perfect.
But it’s only two blocks from the sea.
If l could have a different house,
I would live in the sea.
My room, it’s small.
The sea, it’s enormous.
Every day, walking down the street to the sea,
I pick a leaf from the same bush.
Every day.
I don’t know why.
Every day I taste the leaf.
The taste is bitter:
It’s shock to my body.
Earthquake, it’s shock to Mother Earth.
[ADNAN listens.]
Listen.
[ADNAN listens.]
I’m listening all the time.
Someone told me once:
Everything everybody ever said
Is still out there in the universe vibrating.
Listen.
It’s ghosts’ voices vibrating:
Ghosts shuddering, moving, hovering.
[ADNAN walks.]
Every day, on the street,
I meet a dog.
I’m looking into her eyes.
She’s looking at me.
[ADNAN looks as if at a dog.]
She’s cute: a thousand curlies, her hair.
It’s golden and it’s brown,
Like cashew, the nut.
She’s not my dog really, but almost.
Her name is Cashew.
Not really, but I love the name “Cashew.”
Cashew’s happy to see me.
[ADNAN is greeting the dog.]
Hello. Hi, Cashew, hi.
She’s jumping, she’s happy.
But animals not thinking.
Cashew, she’s smart.
And she’s graceful.
Like a ballet dancer,
But she’s not thinking at all.
Animals do not drink tea, or coffee, like humans.
Animals are different.
Thinking, it’s humans’ . . .
Humans’ what?
What is thinking?
No answer.
What is endless . . . endless . . . endless
?
Eternity—what is it?
No answer.
When body is finished,
What happens to soul?
No answer.
Is something continuing?
What is it?
No answer.
Does Cashew have a soul also?
No answer.
Before, I didn’t know I had a soul.
Now that I know, what to do?
What to do with my soul?
I am like: “Man struck dumb after writing letter to God.”
Writing: “Dear God, I’m tired of my life.
Please send me something new.”
So God strikes him dumb.
It’s dangerous, writing a letter to God.
You sometimes get what you want.
People in Venice don’t work much.
Everybody’s bum, or retired.
My name is Adnan.
I was born in Beirut, in Lebanon.
Once I was a singer.
Now myself, I could be—what?
Orchestra conductor?
Guide to Zoo?
Prince of Wales?
Astronomer?
Deep-sea diver?
Dope dealer?
Weatherman?
Foster father?
Actually, I am now a philosopher.
It does not pay well.
I am a philosopher, but I have no answers.
You must live without answers.
I want to know things clearly.
The questions must be clear.
But I must live without answers.
[ADNAN walks.]
Walking on sand,
Just thinking, touching on things:
Where land meets water—it’s boundary.
The poor and the rich,
Everybody walks on the beach.
There is more sea than land.
Myself, I’m mostly water, like the ocean.
Myself, I’m a mammal.
If I am slippery in this lifetime—
I could be reborn a whale.
Maybe myself already born many times whale,
Living in ocean, my home.
[ADNAN touches the water.]
Water.
This is cold water touching my hand. It’s shock.
[A placard comes in quickly on a pulley, accompanied by a loud grinding sound.]
Water!
Ocean spilling,
Earth, it’s splitting, it’s cracking,
Ocean, it’s spilling,
Earth’s face, it’s splitting,
Earth brain, it’s cracking open.
[ADNAN breathes hard. Then he is back to normal.]
The sea is like mother.
French word “mother,” sounds the same as the word for sea:
Mer, it’s sea, and mother—
It’s deep, the ocean.
Nobody knows exactly what’s down there.
PRACTICING WORDS
[ADNAN goes back to his desk. He turns on the tape machine, leans back in his chair, listening to classical music. We watch him listen. When the music is over, he reaches for his word cards on his desk.]
I am practicing words.
“Sugar and salt”—it’s flowers and metal.
“Astonishing”: it’s a word, an explosion.
“My,” it’s a funny word:
“My” clock. “My” house. “My” word.
And “meaning.”
“Meaning,” it’s a huge word.
To choose a word—it’s a choice.
Turning this way, that.
Repetition, repetition: “life,” “living,” “live,” “SHOCK.”
And another word: “conscious.”
“Unconscious” and “conscious.”
And “mysterious.”
Anything to do with speech, it’s work. “Abandon”: it’s a word.
I want to abandon it.
And “evolving”:
It’s another word for dying.
“Evolving”: it happens.
And word “ghost,” it’s like “guest,” and “goats.”
Other words: “extreme,” “hate,”
“Jealous,” “curse,” “vengeance,” “anguish,”
“Terror,” “mourning,” and then: “rapture.”
And then “galaxies!” Oh.
So my face is my words.
[ADNAN looks at the audience.]
Look my face. Here it is.
[He shrugs.]
THE LETTER
[ADNAN holds a letter.]
I have a friend.
Before, I didn’t know her well.
But since we are both struck by lightning,
She’s family to me.
Her name is Diane.
She’s ’phasic, like me.
You know, “aphasia”?
It’s another word.
It’s Greek.
Tragedy.
And some comic.
I like to laugh.
Laughing, it’s “infectious.”
Listen.
It’s a letter.
It’s a letter to me.
[ADNAN reads the letter.]
“My dear friend. You ask me to tell you what happened to me twelve years ago. It’s a long time, twelve years. Since my accident. I remember being hit by a car—feeling it bounce off me. Then it was coma. It was coma for five weeks. They were not sure I’d wake up. I don’t remember anything. You know coma, coma—it’s nothing—it’s just a hole. Before I was a model, about pictures. I was a famous model. Isn’t that strange? One day: an accident, and I woke up part of the aphasia family.”
[He stops reading.]
It’s true.
Diane, she’s family.
Rest of world—it’s abstract to me, it’s chaos.
It’s Greek again: “chaos.”
Universe starting from chaos.
Beginning everything, it’s chaos,
Coming from water,
Coming to civilization.
Greek: it’s islands, from earthquake.
Aphasia, it’s chaos again.
Chaos, it’s changing direction suddenly.
From nowhere, left becoming right,
Right becoming left:
Switching—confusion suddenly.
It’s chaos?
It’s civilization?
Which?
Listen, my mind, I have a question.
What is real—
Universe or stage?
Now thinking about planets and earth.
And now: especially theater.
So here we are.
[ADNAN looks at the audience.]
I’m listening.
Now I’m going to tell a story about ghosts.
[At his desk, his face is lit eerily by the monitor from which he reads the text.]
I’m haunted by ghosts.
Ghost has nothing to do with time.
We have different time from ghost.
Ghost has no substance.
Ghost trembles.
Ghost vibrates fast.
Ghost disappears.
It comes,
It goes.
Maybe it’s reborn.
Ghost lives in this world
Because there is only this world.
But maybe ghost goes to other planets.
It’s mysterious . . .
Ghosts hovering . . .
A ghost doesn’t need to dwell in a house.
A ghost is hovering.
If a ghost speaks inside your
head,
Do you obey that ghost?
I am rebellious.
I argue with the ghost.
Jean-Paul Sartre, he says to me:
“Adnan, whooo, whooo,
Keep your mind on the ball.
Stop dreaming, whooo, whooo.
Adnan, stake your life to something, whooo, whooo.
Commit yourself, Adnan, whooo, whooo.”
“To what, Jean-Paul?
To what should I stake my life?”
But Jean-Paul, he just says, “Whooo, whooo . . .”
And then, he flies away.
He’s funny, Jean-Paul.
One ghost—she’s a woman I knew thirty years ago—her name is Susan Dye.
She died from a brain tumor.
Surgeons put dye right in her brain.
I don’t understand that.
Her brain, it turned red.
She had so much pain.
Sometimes, Susan Dye, the ghost,
Talks to me through the pain in my neck.
I’m thinking about the neck.
When a wolf loses a fight with another wolf,
He exposes his neck.
It’s vulnerable, the neck.
[ADNAN stretches his neck, approaching it with his hand as if with a knife.]
One touch, and that’s it.
THE MALL
[Slightly comical, simple music as ADNAN walks to the “mall” part of the stage.]
Every afternoon walking Santa Monica, the mall.
What’s meaning, the word “mall”?
It’s street?
On the street—I’m looking at everyone’s face.
[ADNAN examines the audience.]
It’s incredible, faces.
[ADNAN sees the violinist.]
One guy, he’s playing music.
It’s violent—no, it’s violin.
“Violin” and “violent,” it’s similar.
You see, I can’t talk well—
He’s wanting money in cup.
He’s flat in the key of violin.
But later I find myself walking back,
And giving him two dollars.
I don’t know why.
It was Mozart.
[ADNAN walks.]
California, really, it’s funny.
One person is talking, talking, talking,
Babble, babble, babble,
And the other person is answering, always “Hmm.”
[He nods his head, as if responding.]
“Hmm.”
“Babble, babble . . . ”
“Hmm. Hmm. Great, great.”
“Babble, babble.”
“Hmm. Hmm. Great, great.”
“Babble, babble.”
“Hmm. Great, great.”
[ADNAN shrugs.]
It’s funny.
[ADNAN points.]
She her, see her over there?
She’s young.
She’s not beautiful, but almost: pretty.
One day a guy, rich, maybe banker,
Best Monologues from the Best American Short Plays, Volume Three Page 12