A bedtime story/conversation in a little tent town out in the salt flats.
Reptile
If I tell you one thing that I remember, you will think I’m an idiot for remembering only one thing. This is one thing that makes theater different from real conversation. If I provide you with several of my most esteemed memories, you will probably believe there are more where those came from, and I will have earned your respect. This will make theater a little more like real conversation.
Pelican
I have a job and it is virtually all I can think about; however, I think this: memory is nothing but words stored up in an inefficient computer. What you will remember of this conversation will be nothing like what went into its construction. Such understanding promotes success in business. I know that people want to see the tip of the iceberg only. Business is like a successful cabaret.
Fish
I had suffered for a long time from the illusion that remembering inhibited one’s experience. Now the illusion is almost my only memory— and that I am cold and that I have been cold for a long time and that this coldness was brought on gradually by an illusion. Yet, it is likely that I will not be cold later. Then, I will remember something else and not this. I will have forgotten the story to which I currently refer. Each person has her own theater. I propose this as an exhibit or a symptom of my personal stage.
Reptile
Who is the bully?
Pelican
The spitting image of continental drift.
Fish
Envy is the disease of the 90’s as opposed to …
Pelican
… the person, it must be sellable, it must be way up there, but it must not make the normal consumer feel small, it must be way out there but something like what the regular kind of person sees in himself, something that can expand.
Fish
You must be a toy inventor. The image on the outside of the box is hot and fierce; inside, the toy itself is gray and cold. From this we learn that toys are the souls of aggressors.
Reptile
Who is the bully?
Pelican
The thing you want to buy. The thing I want to sell. Something to play with!
Reptile
I think I remember who it is: a man slept here. He was going through the roof in his thought, he was saying this is driving me through the roof in my sleep, this is waking me up. The sky buzzed in the dim field. The pleasing buzz muted displaced events acting out their insane melodramas: women in large groups going upstairs to apartments leaving solitary males below imitating the habits of lizards, then the women reappearing, laughing or biting with an overtone of repulsive sincerity, but the distant buzzing distracts him from this center stage event, and he enjoys himself …