thoughts on today, 6-24-2009

in the two hours between time zones.

rewrites

aren't we all just rewriting
all the time
every day?

what we know
what pills we take
how many people we've slept with
and whose number just came up
(an area code in texas. have you slept with somebody in texas? have i?)

because changing a line
one line
even the least important line
makes it all different
from that moment on.

that's the difference
between
being alive
and being a character in a play-
i can't change my lines,
they've been said and heard
and all i can do
is let them be forgotten or remembered.

but in the plays that we write
we can delete
drag and drop
we can even
give the line to somebody else
or everybody at once.
and just because you've heard it once before
doesn't mean
that it will be the same thing
the next time you hear it.

because what if i change it?

so i suppose that one reason that i write
is because i know that i cannot change the things
that i have said or done in my life
(they're not all right, but they're not all wrong, either)
but if i don't like what a character does
or the way that she says something
i can add a comma
or a moment for them to breathe
delete them from the world forever
or write in stage directions, something like this:
she lets down her hair. a hidden vial of poison falls to the floor, shatters. she presses her finger into the pool of broken glass and dark liquid. she holds her fingertip to her lips. she smiles. lights.
so we leave the theatre
wondering if we would lick our fingertips
if we were in her place-

so this was all just a pre-write
to a rewrite
in a place where there are no buses
or ladies with shopping carts filled with
empty wine bottles
or drugs drugs drugs
in everybody's systems
(but those things are beautiful, sometimes, when the sun is going down orange and blue)
(and there are drugs here, too)

rewrite.