Can Goddesses afford to relax? Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Well, Lesson #1 is that being a goddess is Counterintuitive. Other people rush away from the burning building – planning on being EVEN MORE SCARED the next time. Well, we are going to master our fear. We are going in.
Everybody Panics – I had a panic attack at age 5 (I got lost outside a movie theatre) and another at age 11 when I descended deep, deep, deep into a cave. (I think the guide was deliberately trying to scare us.) I didn’t know at the time what these episodes were – my parents and sisters saw them as embarrassing annoyances – but looking back it’s clear what was happening to me physically as a result of what was happening to me mentally.
Relaxation In the Face of Panic – Learning to tolerate psychic dissonance, to be interested in it and challenged by it is what we’re all about. It’s a sign that we’re in the presence of the Deep Stuff – the things that galvanize our deep subconscious and if we can just seize control of that, we’ll access our true power.
Learn Relaxation Techniques – There are so many and you should experiment with all of them! Learn what works for you and – key – what you enjoy. You will find yourselves using these techniques all the time. To get to sleep, to get through difficult experiences or just to access your subconscious when you have a question.
Breathe Deeply – The very first thing is mastering control of the breath. Pregnant women learn all kinds of helpful breathing techniques in Lamaze; panting, counting; deliberately slowing down and speeding up your breathing. In yoga you will learn Lion Breaths to make you feel powerful. They are very similar to the gasps and shouts in martial arts and will affect your opponents. Watch the Maori war dance on YouTube.
Get Out Your Training Journal – write down the techniques and your reactions. Appoint a time to practice these every day. Your breath connects you to the universe and all living things.
Models & Mentors: “The first thing to learn is the breath.” –Confucius
‘Breathe In. Let Go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure, and give thanks for that.”
– Oprah Winfrey
‘Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor” –
Cutter Farrell – older male – Chase’s mean, scary cold-eyed dad
Bex – male youth – Jazz’s scary biker ex
SCENE I –WAITING ROOM (i.e. circle of chairs) outside DREAM RESEARCH LAB. Visible DOOR to one side. Students – edgy, impressionable JAZZ , angry suspicious, punked out wrestler CHASE, King-of-the-World jock business major ZANE, RAD (Black, light-sprung guy with ornate dreads and gay overtones) SOLIZ (pretty, smoky, hot, ethnic, resentful) KOO (tiny blond cheerleader, very anxious alternately sprawl and rock on uncomfortable “waiting room” chairs)
JAZZ
(Fanning)
God, it’s hot in here. I’mmelting.
CHASE
(Offering a hand)
And I’m Chase.
JAZZ
(Blushing – takes his hand)
I mean, I’m Jazz. Hi.
SOLIZ
(A tad hostile)
Who’s named Jazz?
JAZZ
(shrugs)
Short for Jasmyn. Mothers – Disney – what can you do?
RAD
You got that right. My parents call me Grady. Grady Borden! Get a brother killed on the street. I go by Rad. Or G-Rad.
(He and Zane trade complicated fist bumps & bicep grabs)
SOLIZ
Shouldn’t it be“Raid”?
CHASE
Let people have the nickname they want. And you are?
SOLIZ
Soliz. I should be a third year but I transferred so I’m only a sophomore. That’s all the credits they would give me – and I graduated junior college.
RAD
Hey, I’m a transfer too! They turned me down straight outta high school. I mean, is this place a snob factory or what?
CHASE
I just assumed we’d all be psych majors but I don’t recognize anyone.
(Points)
ZANE
Zane. Business major.
(He waves)
KOO
I’m Koo. Like koo–kool. I was a communications major but they gave me such a bad internship I really couldn’t hack it. Now I’m uncommitted. I don’t know what to do. Everything available you hear bad things about.
RAD
(Points toKOO)
I know I’ve seen you. Top of the pyramid, right?
KOO
(Shrugs – happy at the perks of fame)
I’m the flier. My feet never touch ground.
RAD
You’re the one goes with that quarterback? Am I correct?
KOO
Bo Boyd. Yes.
RAD
Woo-hoo! Humptious!
(Fanning)
Hells YES it’s hot in here!
(Takes off his bomber jacket stunned byKOO’s hotness)
CHASE
It would be just like Dr. Corso turning up the heat to make us squirm.
(Waves up at presumably unseen camera)
Hi, doc!
ZANE
That’s a sprinkler, dog.
CHASE
You better believe there’s a camera in here someplace. He needs to collect his little trophies. Bargaining chips. His little icons.
RAD
So he turns up the heat till we boil? Like frogs in the experiment?
KOO
What frogs?
RAD
The frogs that were too stupid to get out of the hot water. ‘Cause it happened so slowly.
SOLIZ
Those frogs were in search of a paycheck.
ZANE
They never boiled any frogs! That’s for sure an urban legend!
CHASE
Listen to the marketing major! Always first with the non-facts.
ZANE
Well at least we know we’re not going to get boiled.
CHASE
Did you read what you signed? He can do any goddam thing he wants to us.
KOO
Well he can boil me if he pays me. You should see my VISA bill.
RAD
(Sycophantically trying – and failing – to be ZANE’s best buddy)
Like there’s a difference between psychology and marketing. Am I right? Everyone’s trying to sell you something.
JAZZ
Am I the only freshman?
CHASE
You’re a freshman?
JAZZ
I’m an old freshman. Took me awhile to get here.
KOO
If you’re a freshman you must live in Hadleigh!
JAZZ
Is that bad?
KOO
It’s pathetic is what it is! Hadleigh has sick building syndrome. And the girls are at the top where the bad air collects and it’s like the worst.
CHASE
All the poor little freshmen jumping out their windows!
JAZZ
Those windows don’t even open!
ZANE
They don’t open now because of all the suicides.
KOO
Because of the sick building syndrome!
(BEX – big, mean, long haired, motorcycle jacket & boots, appears on the opposite side of the door and starts hammering)
BEX
Jazz! Jazz! Jazz!
(Embarrassed JAZZ slides out the door and closes it carefullyafter her. BEX grabs her immediately)
JAZZ
Omigod, Bex, what are you doing here? You have to go!
BEX
Don’t answer my texts, don’t answer my emails – You’re forcing me to stalk you. Your choice, babe. MY LIFE.
(JAZZtries to detach)
JAZZ
You’ve GOT a life. You need to get back to it. We broke up, remember?
BEX
So that’s it? Kicking me to the curb?
JAZZ
You knew I wanted to go to college. I was lucky to get this scholarship.
BEX
So now you’re too good for me, is that it? Now you’re hanging out with that old guy who looks like your granddad!
JAZZ
(Pushing him away)
He’s my advisor. So stop with the paparazzi scheme, Bex, stop spying on me and posting the pictures. Scram. Go home.
(Manages to get behind the door – slams it in his face – barricadesit shut.BEXmarches offstage with a look of determination – like – he’s not quitting)
RAD
(Clueless)
Thought you were making a break for it.
CHASE
Need help with that?
JAZZ
Nah. No.
(She sits down but nervous glance at door)
RAD
It’s crunch time, am I right? Better get out now! More for us!
ZANE
Did you hear we all have alternates?
RAD
No. No way!
ZANE
Way. These are juicy gigs. Paid research jobs – I mean, it neverhappens.
CHASE
Makes you wonder what he’s up to.
ZANE
Just making sure we show, is all.
CHASE
And here we are. Why did you show up?
(points atJAZZ)
JAZZ
I’m sort of hoping it’s true. The soulmate thing.
RAD
The wha-?
JAZZ
Skydancers. Dakinis, they call them. Dreampower.
KOO
Didn’t you read the book? You were supposed to read the book. Soulmates can soultravel. Like, everywhere.
RAD
There’s an urban legend right there for sure.
ZANE
It’s the remote viewing thing that I want. Weapon of the future. Business of a lifetime. Defense contractors throw mad money at that stuff.
RAD
Mad money!
(High fives withZANE.)
SOLIZ
Astral projection? Out of body experiences? Impossible. I hopeit doesn’t work because I need the sleep. I’ve got like, two other jobs.
ZANE
Sleep’s a luxury. Too luxurious for us bottom feeders – this is hustle time.
KOO
Think everyone’s got a soulmate? Each one of us? Out there somewhere?
RAD
What’s Bo Boyd say to THAT?
KOO
Maybe it’s him.
(Not like she believes it)
CHASE
What is the likelihood we’ll find soulmates AMONG EACH OTHER? Six strangers? Seriously!
JAZZ
Maybe soulmates create each other.
CHASE
This here is exactly why Dr. Corso chose non-psych majors! Soulmates! Out-of-body experiences! It’s the old razzle-dazzle! Cover story. Dr. Corso’s the king of bullshit. That’s not what he’s interested in at all! They never tell you what they’re really testing.
RAD
Well, then, what do you think he’s testing?
CHASE
Beats me. But I sure would love to know.
JAZZ
He’s testing our dreams. I never dreamed before I came here. And ever since I moved in I’ve been having these fantastic dreams.
KOO
It’s that sick building. I’m telling you.
ZANE
It’s the drug the nurse gave us. You know, at the Health Center? The tolerance test? Whatever that stuff was. My dreams were crazy, too!
RAD
Who can forget Tolerance Test with Nurse Humptious! God knows what she did to me while I was out of it. Probably me-tooed this poor homeboy.
ZANE
Yeah, she got you in trouble and now she’ll have to marry you.
VIRGINIA Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.
LEONARD I’m not lying when I say I want you to get well more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.
VIRGINIA Don’t bother making me feel guilty, I already know I’m wasting your life. If only I weren’t so stupid a Mandrill, so unworthy of her poor, virtuous outsider Mongoose who is so thin, who trembles so much and who tries so hard. You have headaches too, you suffer from recurring malaria. Why should you toil so that I can be idle? I know these doctors’ bills are crushing us. Nessa sold the silver, I sold the jewelry, Thoby sold the Thackeray letters. What’s left, Leonard? Will you scheme with them to isolate me until there’s nothing left?
LEONARD I can earn money writing. I’ve proved that. You can earn money writing, you’ve proved that. But to get back in the fight we must be hardy and strong.
VIRGINIA I should never have married you. What kind of a wife can I ever be? Save yourself, Leonard. It’s too late for me. Let the wind blow, let the poppy seed itself, let the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build her nest in the drawing room where the thistle thrusts between the tiles. Let all civilization be like broken china tangled over with blackberries and grass.
LEONARD That you demand so much of existence, still fighting as you sit among George’s flowers, shows you’re feeling better. What we must do is keep up the strengthening. A few more days, Virginia.
VIRGINIA But how can I return to you? There’s the undisputed fact of my sexual cowardice. Perhaps it’s really nothing but my terror of real life that keeps me in this nunnery. I tried telling my parents but they didn’t want to hear. Parents have forgotten their own childhood. Or they don’t want to remember.
LEONARD What did you try to tell them? You can say anything to me.
VIRGINIA I saw the spirits of evil as soon as I could speak, but because I was a girl child I was not supposed to know. Each child hugs its vice, brooding over the swollen vein, the bruised flesh that was white and sweet but yesterday.
LEONARD I told my parents that life is unquestionably vile and humanity’s nothing but an ant heap. Parents never want to hear that.
VIRGINIA That’s what I love about you, Leonard. You at least will speak the truth. Sometimes.
LEONARD It’s a fallacy to think that children are happy. They’re not. I never suffered so much as when I was a child. Children never forget injustice. But here is the heart of it, Virginia. What we write depends upon what we think. What “spirits of evil” did you see?
VIRGINIA Going to practice Dr. Head’s talking cure on me, are you? Is that the plan? I could make up a dozen stories – I see a dozen pictures. But when I open my mouth I am locked up and shut away. What is my true story? Something lies deeply buried. Shall I grasp it or let it mortify in the depths of my mind? I want to describe the world seen without a self. But I am afraid that there is no future. There are no words.
LEONARD There are words, and there is a future we shall make. Tell me. Tell me everything.
VIRGINIA When I was young, I dug furiously to uncover myself. When I discovered that I was me and not anyone else it seemed a wonderful achievement. Once I sat beside my stepsister Stella on roots as hard as skeletons, and the next day she was a skeleton. It’s strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners or in dreams. Don’t you remember that morning at breakfast when I saw my mother? You said she wasn’t there.
LEONARD I saw nothing.
VIRGINIA Cambridge educated everything but your eyes. What is the hope of talking to you? That was the morning was when I first became aware of the enemies who change but are always present; the forces we must fight even though we suffer terribly becoming separate bodies. Don’t you recognize the enemy advancing against us, pawing at his pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy.
LEONARD Marriage is the opposing force against death. A marriage of true minds can fight all enemies. Once upon a time we shared our thoughts, and fell in love. I needed someone who could hold her own, and there you were. You are the only wife I ever wanted, the only woman I have ever loved. Please, Virginia, I want you to come back to me.
VIRGINIA
(dazzled)
Oh to be a wife, to be wanted, would be so complete! Is it possible, Leonard, after the terrors, the disgusting dangers we have seen?
LEONARD If it isn’t I don’t want to live either.
(She holds out a hand to him. They clutch hands briefly)
VIRGINIA Sit down, Leonard. You look silly on your knees.
(She looks away. LEONARD sits)
VIRGINIA I used to make the family laugh. They thought me clever. But when I chased the evil spirits through a hole in the escallonia hedge, I resolved to tell the exact truth and write down the phenomena I’d seen. But no one believed me, and at that moment the laughter turned against me. I said, must not we find some way to get outside ourselves, to give our brains a wider scope? My parents declared God was dead and the world empty and meaningless. Father said to be weak is to be wretched. He said that Society is a ravenous appetite, and Nature is a state of war. You’ve laughed at me behind my back, I know you have. You, my own husband, want to get rid of me, to lock me up forever and steal my money.
LEONARD I love you, Virginia. Maybe it’s a bad thing to love you as much as I do – it cuts me off from the outside world. But the outside world is worthless and your world is so rich. When I went away to school for the first time I was shocked and appalled by the horrifying corruption of dirty-minded schoolboys. It marked me. Then I realized all of humanity are mean, nasty, untruthful, cowardly, and cruel. Perhaps I’ve been searching for a world that doesn’t exist.
VIRGINIA Perhaps we both have.
LEONARD If you will care for your health – if you will allow me to care for your health – you’ll recover. As you’ve recovered before.
VIRGINIA Nessa won’t rest till I’m brought low. When she was ill with typhoid Savage wanted to put her in a home but I backed her up! I told Savage I would care for her. Now look at what she’s done to me. You betrayed our secret, telling Nessa I’m a frigid failure as a wife. She told Clive and now everyone knows. They’re all laughing, jeering. plotting behind my back. You were sent to Ceylon to break the natives and now you’ve been sent to break me. I have been derided, insulted, sacrificed and betrayed, by all of you.
LEONARD Virginia, I am on your side. My eyes were opened in Ceylon. I was an anti-imperialist wallowing in the fleshpots of imperialism. But I changed. Now I support the independence movement with all my heart. All problems can be solved by science and logic, Virginia. It was I who was a failure as a husband. It was my marital duty to arouse you but you seemed so afraid of me. At my wit’s end, I asked your older sister for help.
VIRGINIA Does she offer lessons in humiliation? She knows how better than anyone. Is it my fault that I hate my legs being pried apart? I should never have married you, but I couldn’t bear to remain a spinster. I was struggling at everything, and you seemed so different. You said you liked women. You said you admired women’s minds.
LEONARD It’s true. Women feel more deeply, think more deeply, talk more deeply.
VIRGINIA Yet men demand obedience. You want me to obey you but I never will. You know nothing about me. Did you know that before I tried to die I read a book? Would you like to know which one?
LEONARD Which book did you read?
VIRGINIA It was your book. Your book that I read.
LEONARD My book?
VIRGINIA Your book about me.
LEONARD (a gratified author, in spite of everything)
You read The Wise Virgins? What did you think?
VIRGINIA So you admit it’s about me!
LEONARD Virginia, please. I’d love to discuss my book with you.
(She hesitates, turning away her face, then facing him with rage)
VIRGINIA
You locked me away so I’d never find out!
LEONARD You were ordered rest cures long before you met me! I don’t believe in guilt or blame. Honestly, I wanted you to read my book as soon as you were well.
VIRGINIA I won’t be stamped and stereotyped. You have publicly lampooned me as a frozen, dowdy, fussy, futile woman.
LEONARD Not true at all. I called you my Aspasia.
VIRGINIA “Cold and snowy, like the rocks.” You said.
LEONARD I’m a bad writer. I agree. I’ve got nothing of your genius. I can never explain what I really want to say. If it’s any comfort to you no one else likes or understands it either. Sales are awful. All I was attempting to do was contrast the world of a poor Jew from Putney with the rarified aristocratic Olympus for which he yearns.
VIRGINIA You hold my world in contempt because you can never be a gentleman.
LEONARD Virginia, you hold “your world” in contempt.
VIRGINIA And then the hero marries the other girl. The stupid, cow-eyed one! It’s a betrayal.
LEONARD It’s just a bad novel, I’ll give you that. Don’t laugh at me. Not everyone is born with your gifts. Consider my perspective. Any rational mind must inevitably face disillusion and depression. I tried to show how poor Harry just couldn’t escape his past. He couldn’t but I think we can. I probably shouldn’t have published it but Arnold was willing and I couldn’t bear to waste all that work and all that suffering.
VIRGINIA What can you, a prizewinning Apostle from Cambridge, an imperialist potentate of a subject country, possibly know of real suffering?
LEONARD Virginia, I’m a Jew from Putney. All my life I’ve been spat upon. Job is the only book of the Bible I ever understood. Who ridiculed who first? I trained myself to avoid personal feeling. Admit you despised me. Your set. You made me into a joke.
VIRGINIA My set despises everyone. That’s what we do. It’s self-defense, from growing up amongst the most monumental hypocrites.
LEONARD You despised me personally. Be honest. You hated kissing me. You could barely bring yourself to marry me.
VIRGINIA But I did it, didn’t I!
LEONARD You wanted to shock them. You were competing with Nessa to see who could be most scandalous.
VIRGINIA I wouldn’t dare compete with Nessa. Competition is a male thing. It’s a brutal, endless game. I think all competition should be abolished.
LEONARD But it’s all you ever do! Your flirtation with her husband –
VIRGINIA (cringes visibly)
Oh God, not that. Somehow that memory turns a knife in me more than anything. How it catches at me, the fangs of that old pain. I know I lost Vanessa forever. She will never forgive me. I simply couldn’t comprehend why she married such a strange, intolerable creature with his twitching pink skin and a jerky laugh. Before Clive, Nessa and I drifted together on a sea of seducing half-brothers, hiding together beneath the dining room table. We spoke a special animal language.
LEONARD But you were no longer children. Vanessa waited till twenty-eight to marry.
VIRGINIA Who would willingly grow up? I never wanted to. As soon as you’re pushed out of the nursery, the happy moments vanish. Vanessa was the bowl of golden water that brims but never overflows. I lie prostrate at her shrine and still she won’t forgive me. When she brought home friends from the Slade they laughed at me behind the door. You can’t think what it feels like, having one’s self so thoroughly extinguished.
LEONARD I do know it. That was my exact experience at both St. Paul’s and Cambridge. St. Paul’s was a disgusting brothel, but at Trinity I met G. E. Moore. He taught me how to ask the important questions.
VIRGINIA
And what are the important questions?
LEONARD The most important question is why. Why can’t Vanessa forgive a mere flirtation? She must know by now that Clive sets out to bed every woman he meets. You at least resisted him.
VIRGINIA But I did wrong. Clive and I made common cause against my sister, his own wife. Some things should be sacred.
LEONARD
Wasn’t it true that he respected your intellectual work more than he could ever appreciate Vanessa’s daubs?
VIRGINIA Leonard! How can you!
LEONARD
If it’s the truth, shouldn’t we say so?
VIRGINIA
I tried speaking the truth, yet here I am locked up among the imbeciles. And weren’t we just arguing whether all imbeciles should be killed?
LEONARD You’re hardly “locked up with the imbeciles” at Dalingridge Hall!
VIRGINIA You’re wrong. In this castle beats the very heart of idiocy and evil. Aren’t you the one who said the most dangerous imbeciles are running the nation? Here I am at home among the hunters, where the miner sweats and dies and maiden faith is rudely strumpeted.
LEONARD But you used to love George! He told me you’d make an adorable wife.
VIRGINIA Perhaps I’ve been given too much time to think. Get a sense of proportion, the doctors keep telling me. So now I stare for the first time into the very mouth of doom. Look your last on all things lovely.
LEONARD Virginia, if you don’t want to be called crazy, you really must explain yourself. Whatever do you mean?
VIRGINIA George behaved little better than a brute. He never let me alone for a moment. That he was the pet of duchesses hardly excuses him. And yet it was Gerald who broke my hymen, when I was six years old. It’s a painful process. and now I freeze like ice. Give up on me, Leonard, there’s no awakening the dead. I’m ruined by incest, I’ve even desired my own sister. I’m locked up because I stew in murder, just as Laura did. I long to slice Gerald’s fat, transparent flesh, to take a rifle and shoot George directly in his smug, piggy face. Or could I bag him with a net and killing bottle? And why shouldn’t I turn on my tormentors? I suffered, I was helpless, why should I be the one forced to writhe with shame? I longed to be petted but instead was trapped in a cage with lions as sulky and angry as they were ferocious. I’m just a little monkey and little monkeys are too easily squashed and trampled. It’s too late for me, Leonard. My body is spoiled forever by George and Gerald.
LEONARD (shocked)
George? Gerald? These are pillars of society, your own half-brothers! It’s so unbelievable.
VIRGINIA George drowned us in kisses, me and Vanessa. Each kiss was an amputation. I used to sign my work, “One of the Drowned.” Oh, those horrible parties! The oppressive gatherings of Stephenses ground one to a pulp. Because I wanted to discuss Plato I was told I had no conversation. George was so angry! After I removed my ball gown and stripped off my gloves and stockings, he would come into my room and lock the door.
LEONARD But how can any of this be true? How could nobody have noticed it?
VIRGINIA Everyone did notice it. People contrive to bend it to the conventional heroic shape because he kept insisting on the purity of his love. I saw him kissing Countess Carnarvon behind a pillar at the opera! And now she’s his mother-in-law. I asked to join the British Sex Society, dedicated to the study of parent/child incest, but they wouldn’t let me in. Now that you know, you’ll have to spit in George’s face at the club.
LEONARD We don’t belong to the same clubs.
VIRGINIA Then when you thank him for this execrable house, challenge him to a duel. Will he at least feel some regret? Will he take the pigeon gun and blast himself instead? Then the aristocracy will hate me because it’s all my fault. Yet is it not a noble work, letting light in upon the evil Duckworths? Probably he’ll feel nothing. Possibly some vague imbalance.
LEONARD Let’s try to be objective, Virginia.
VIRGINIA If only I could! What a luxury that would be! How I hunger for the objectivity of beloved Macaulay or the stern analysis of cherished Carlyle. Lockhart’s ten volume Life of Scott was the best present I ever received. Reading relieves all my pain, but they won’t let me read anything here. In spite of them I’m continuing to learn. Only life itself matters, nothing but life – and the process of discovery, the everlasting perpetual process, and not the thing itself at all.
LEONARD
Virginia, I am speechless.
VIRGINIA
Now you know how it feels. I used to think it would be enough to have someone share my loneliness. But if no one believes me, the solitude is total. The Duckworths are guilty of nameless atrocities, and you’re complicit. You locked me away here, so I couldn’t speak. As soon as I open my mouth they try to destroy me. It’s a conspiracy of hush.
LEONARD If this is something you’ve only just remembered how can it possibly be true? It sounds mad.
VIRGINIA I don’t think memory is always at the forefront, Leonard. There’s only so much a human being can bear. Memory comes and goes. One requires tools to think with, to make sense of one’s experience, and these tools are alternately dull and sharp.
LEONARD Well, there are some things no one wants to think about.
VIRGINIA It’s clearer in my mind than the bad, stodgy meal I was force-fed yesterday. Our summer place at St. Ives, in the dining room; I must have been six years old. Eighteen-year-old Gerald lifted me up to a high ledge and explored my private parts. I fought and I struggled but I couldn’t get away. I could see his face in the dining room mirror. It was the face of a demon. I’ve seen that face since, on the drooling men who expose themselves in the park. Now I no longer look in mirrors. I can’t cross a puddle. The depth looks back at me, concealing malicious, hairy arms to reach out and grab. I can’t go forward, I am stuck in the loop of the six, no power even to lift my legs.
LEONARD The loop of the six? I don’t understand.
VIRGINIA
I was learning numbers. Six was my number. But I couldn’t close the loop.
LEONARD
This was Gerald you say? But Gerald is your publisher!
VIRGINIA I know! If I am not a madwoman, then the world itself is mad. What was I to do? I wrote a book and my incestuous brother was a publisher! Who else would even look at my work? When I delivered my manuscript to Gerald I was in such acute despair – so near the precipice!
LEONARD Did you tell anyone?
VIRGINIA I told Nessa and she told Dr. Savage. Who is an idiot, as you well know.
LEONARD I can’t believe it. Gerald seems so – so – well, ordinary. So completely controlled.
VIRGINIA Get out of here! I’m sorry I told you. I wish I was dead!
(She is tearing at her own throat – he rushes forward to hold her hands down, lifting her body out of the chair)
The use of force is all you know!
LEONARD Virginia, I love you.
(He kisses her neck, she becomes a dead weight. He lowers her carefully into the chair, arranges a blanket on her knees)
VIRGINIA When you touch me, I feel nothing. My body goes dead. That’s how I froze when George came into my room, night after night.
LEONARD Oh, Beloved!
VIRGINIA Don’t. He called me that. I don’t want to be loved, I want to be believed.
(Scene 2. The Conservatory at Dalingridge Hall. VIRGINIA sits slackly in an old-fashioned wheeled chair, gazing into nothingness.)
LEONARD How are you today, Virginia? Sleep well?
VIRGINIA
(galvanizing)
How can there be sleep for those of us who see the flesh melted off the world? Have you come to gloat over the shattered splintered fragments of my body? You care nothing for what they do to me! You macerate my soul. With sleep comes horrible dreams. I was trapped in a drainpipe with the savage hairy man who squats, gobbling and belching, dabbling at my entrails. Soon I will be shrouded in snail slime sticky from the hollow stalk. Get away from me! I don’t want to see you!
LEONARD
(humbly)
I’ve brought chocolate creams. You used to love those.
VIRGINIA You are a shadow. You torment me with shadows of the people I might have been, all my unborn selves. Go away, Leonard. Your cause is hopeless.
LEONARD No cause is hopeless as long as we can talk.
VIRGINIA I have nothing to say to you. Your kind disgusts me.
LEONARD You can’t realize how utterly you would end my life too if you died or ever dismissed me. Aren’t I still your precious Mongoose? Aren’t you my beloved Mandrill?
VIRGINIA Any real relationship between men and women is unattainable. It’s all nonsense and lies.
LEONARD Weren’t we going to create our own special relationship? A real marriage, unlike everyone else’s, a vital, living thing. That’s what we promised.
VIRGINIA And then you brought me to George’s house, you traitor.
LEONARD Officialdom requires certification following suicide attempts! You’d be a ward in chancery! This is the only way!
(He seems about to sit down, she stops him)
VIRGINIA If you sit I’ll start screaming and I won’t stop.
LEONARD I’m so afraid of the future, Virginia, if you can’t get strong.
VIRGINIA You want me to tolerate filthy fingers stuck down my throat! That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?
LEONARD Is eating chocolate creams so terrible?
(He offers the box)
VIRGINIA Don’t come near me.
(He sets the box on the little table, kneels)
LEONARD I would grovel to you and kiss your toes if you would only listen to me, Virginia. Aren’t you better now? Aren’t you getting stronger? Look, you’re free and out of your straps. You’re sleeping some and eating a little. Have the hallucinations gone away?
VIRGINIA I’m terrified of sleep. I’m terrified of chloral and the nightmares it provides. When I wake at night and understand all the terror, violence and unreason still presiding over the universe it is worse than death. I am nothing. I am nobody. I am I-less.
LEONARD Didn’t you always say that only writing that brings order to madness? You called art humanity’s one defense.
VIRGINIA Art is a conspiracy among the civilized. Yet how can we call people civilized who insist on enslaving half their populace? Behold myself, empty-handed and force-fed, by your order. I know I have a good mind, but you have surrendered me to the very people bent on destroying it.
LEONARD Civilization is largely humbug, Virginia. That may be the only thing I’ve learned. I always felt I’m playing a part upon a stage. You’re the only honest person I’ve ever met and now you’re at risk. I just want you to get well, Virginia, so we can plan our hundred books.
VIRGINIA You care nothing for my plans! Shall I ever write again one of those sentences that gives me the most intense pleasure? For years now, people jerked wires to make me jump like a jack in the box when all I want is peace. I long to be ten miles beneath the sea. Here I am stuck in polar ice, harassed by barbarians.
LEONARD Your ice drifts toward home.
VIRGINIA
I have no home.
LEONARD
You will get well and our life will become possible again. As soon as you gain weight and master some calm and some cheer, we are free!
VIRGINIA Calm and cheer in a world like this one! Don’t treat me like some retarded infant. When we walked together at Asheham you inveighed against the world as a stupid, corrupt brothel.
LEONARD And I still believe that. I wanted to go into politics but politics is brutal and discouraging. Now I think I must change the world through workers’ cooperatives. We must stand up against all the evils that we see.
VIRGINIA You said writers are born to be unhappy.
LEONARD I fear to some extent that must be true. It’s harder on you, because you’re a sensitive, poetic writer. But if we swear to support each other –
VIRGINIA My punishment is unending. Mother didn’t approve of school for girls. Boys should go everywhere and know everything, and girls should stay home and know nothing. All my brothers were sent to school, where I must say they did horribly. George and Gerald were incurably stupid and Thoby jumped out a window rather than write his prep. But I learned Greek! I learned Latin! I read every book in Father’s library, all on my own! And here I am, sentenced to Bedlam for it.
LEONARD When you have seen the squalor that I have, you will realize that Dalingridge Hall is no punishment, Virginia.
VIRGINIA It’s a punishment for me. Think of its owners, in their smug pride, rulers of the universe. How can you of all people, abide them? But they seduce even you with their privilege, luxury and glamor. What is the use of the finest education in the world if it teaches people not to hate force but to use it? Why can’t we learn the arts of understanding people’s lives and minds? All that the professions preach is worship of the sacred tree of property.
LEONARD The doctors say you pushed yourself too hard.
VIRGINIA Is that what you really think, that diving deep is dangerous? Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.
Following her honeymoon Virginia Woolf attempted suicide and was sent to recover at her half-brother’s estate, Dalingridge Hall.
CHARACTERS
Virginia Woolf: a sensitive young artist having a breakdown
Leonard Woolf: her new husband, nervous, forceful, an “outsider”
Dr. Craig: bluff, elderly, genial, doctor to the wealthy
Dr. Hyslop: a fashionable eugenicist
Two orderlies: rough & tumble Cockneys ALF & BOB (orderlies & doctors played by the same actors)
(Scene 1: Dalingridge Hall, An ostentatious faux British castle with all the updated luxurious mod-cons. A pair of white-coated orderlies maneuver a stretcher into a sickroom.)
ALF Hold up a mo, let’s have a fag.
BOB Buckle her in, and then we’ll have a fag.
ALF Now that’s right stupid, that is. Tie her up, the job is done. No time for a fag then.
BOB Oh, right. I get you. Where can we stow her? She’s heavy.
ALF Tall as a man and strong like one, so they say. Prop her up over here. Careful, now, you got me shin!
(They lean the stretcher against the wall facing the audience. Fumble with cigarette packs. ALF sits on the bed.)
BOB I don’t like her looking at us.
ALF Oh, she’s well out of it. Off to dreamland. Took the mickey out of her, they did.
BOB So what’s up with this one? Trying on hats and ordering jewelry too much for her?
ALF I heard it was her honeymoon what sank her!
BOB Oh, Lord!
(they both guffaw)
BOB Wonder it doesn’t happen routine-like, what with the shock and all. I mean, she’s not used to seeing the farm animals getting frisky in the spring. She’s not walking to church with the village lads. She’s not sharing a bed with the brothers and sisters. So everything seems right and proper until the big night and then –
ALF All hell breaks loose!
(they laugh uproariously)
BOB So, you seen the husband?
ALF Oh yes, he was hanging about. Wringing his hands.
BOB So what’s he look like, then? One of them muscle-bound rowing blues?
ALF No, no, no. Nervy bloke. Just back from the East where he’d been sorting out the blacks.
BOB Oh, Lord! Used to carrying a big stick is he?
(they gasp, cough, laugh and fall about)
VIRGINIA
(groggily)
What is this place? What vast forces of good and evil dropped me here? I burn, I shiver. I turn, I tumble, I am stretched. I am nailed like a stoat to the stable door.
ALF Oh my jugs and jiggers, she’s coming out of it. Look here, you take that end.
BOB Hold her up, hold her up!
ALF She’s heavy, I’m telling you. They feed them women up like Strasbourg geese. Look sharp now.
BOB There’s hell to pay if she’s not buckled in.
(They get her on the bed. Much buckling and strapping.)
VIRGINIA Who are you? Where am I? I have been diving through seas of horror to come up rotting in dirty ditchwater. Don’t touch me!
(She starts struggling when it’s too late. She’s already buckled in. The men rest, gratified but exhausted.)
ALF Nothing to fear, my lady. You’re all right now. You’re safe here at Dalingridge Hall.
(His last words reverential)
VIRGINIA Dalingridge Hall! Now the agony begins, horror has seized me with its fangs! I am turned, I am tumbled, I am stretched and everyone pursuing!
(She starts screaming)
ALF Hypo! We need a hypo!
(ALF and BOB rush about panicked. Enter LEONARD. Exit orderlies.)
LEONARD What is it? What’s happened?
VIRGINIA Dalingridge Hall! They’ve taken me to Dalingridge Hall!
LEONARD Virginia, your brother Sir George and his wife Lady Margaret have kindly lent us this splendid mansion. They’re staying up in London and have left it all to us. Up to date comfort. Plenty of servants – French chef – the food is magnificent. Eleven bathrooms! Spotless, hygienic, – the nurses are impressed I can tell you.
VIRGINIA Now this monstrous ugliness is explained. I hear the crack of antlers as if the beasts of the forest are rearing, plunging among the thorns. One has pierced me. One has driven deep within me. You have left me to undergo this squalid humiliation served out like soup by greedy, casual scullions, coarse, ogling, brushing, destroying everything, smearing even our love with impure fingers. “What is this secret sin, this untold tale, that art cannot extract nor penance cleanse?” Don’t you understand? ALL DEATHS ARE ONE DEATH.
LEONARD
Would you like to see Sir George?
VIRGINIA
George! That obese alligator who used to roll me round my bed of an evening as if I were a minnow shut up in a tank with a frenzied whale. I would rather touch a decaying dogfish than that man’s body.
LEONARD Hush, Virginia. George is an Adonis, a true man of the world, adored by great ladies and parliamentarians alike.
VIRGINIA George has the eyes of a sow! Or is it an elephant? Sows look so much like elephants on the Duckworth side of the family. He used to fondle me so I couldn’t read my Greek. The very locusts deform the trees with their lusts.
LEONARD George claims chastity until hi marriage. That’s more than I managed.
VIRGINIA What liars men are! George was a pig, snuffling, rolling, grabbing, calling me Beloved. How he tortured both of us, me and Vanessa alike, Greek slaves in the harem promised him by Eton. He smothered us with caresses until Nessa told Dr. Savage and Dr. Savage made him stop. George told Dr. Savage he was only comforting us for the illness of our father.
LEONARD Virginia, you’re romancing. Dr. Head says longing for adult attention creates a wish-fulfillment leading to ideas like these. He says the only way out is the talking cure.
VIRGINIA So it’s wish fulfillment that has trapped me in George’s house? Dr. Head is another booby, Leonard. We were right to dismiss him. He knows nothing.
(she grabs him)
Don’t you understand that we are poured to the very edge of the abyss, Leonard, where we shall be broken together into nothingness and flames? Help, help! Get me out of this thing!
LEONARD Dearest, you threatened to harm yourself, remember? You attempted suicide.
VIRGINIA You left the veronal unlocked. I thought it was an invitation. My father praised the Duke of Bedford for having the courage to shoot himself. Surely you longed to be rid of me. I’m a bad bargain all around.
LEONARD
No Virginia, no. I love you. I moved heaven and earth to save you.
VIRGINIA But I’m already dead, Leonard. I am certainly in hell. Fallen in a duck pond and strangling in duckweed! Quack, quack!
LEONARD Virginia, why do you reduce me to madness too? If you could only comprehend how insane you sound.
VIRGINIA You can’t think what a raging furnace it is to me, madness and doctors and being forced. I am bent like a tree under a remorseless gale. The crass blindness that poisons childhood still threatens bitter storms. Children will be trodden under. Speech is false. The demand to submit must always be returned with cries of pain, hate and rage because that’s all they understand.
LEONARD You were violent, Virginia. You attacked your nurses. Don’t you remember?
VIRGINIA I was defending myself. They attacked me! Forcing food down my throat. I will go down with my colors flying. Father used to say, “Face the inevitable with eyes wide open.”
LEONARD You vomited on Lily and you struck Susan with a platter of cold meat. You must eat to gain weight, Virginia. Then the voices will subside, the doctors say. That’s why they’ve ordered a rest cure.
VIRGINIA Those doctors! My life is a constant fight against doctors’ follies. That cretin, Savage? He’s not fit to be about. Borrowed from another century.
LEONARD Four doctors and all of them in agreement. You know this, Virginia. You chose Head yourself – because Roger Fry recommended him – Vanessa suggested Craig and I found Hyslop.
VIRGINIA Really, a doctor is worse than a husband. I’ve given up expecting doctors to listen to reason. If only those pigheaded sawbones could see I speak the sober truth without excuse! Alienists know absolutely nothing. Their vanity is as profound as their ignorance. What does their “treatment” amount to? It is all eating and drinking and being shut up in the dark, sequestered with lunatics.
LEONARD The food here is delicious. May I bring you some?
VIRGINIA Once when we travelled by train to St. Ives the lemonade spilled on the sandwiches and turned them into mush but Nurse still made us eat them and I was sick and then I was punished. Leonard, don’t you see that when I am weighted with food I can no longer make the moments flow together. I become an excreter, an excretion. No, of course you don’t see. You’re in a conspiracy, plotting against me. I see your grinning, I know your subterfuge, I hear you sneering behind my back.
LEONARD Virginia, the people who love you are trying to decide what’s best for you. I’m trying to make the best decisions I can.
VIRGINIA You’re punishing me for disappointing you. For being a bad wife.
LEONARD When you’re well, you admit you’ve been mad.
VIRGINIA My sister wanted to be rid of me. While she threw away our father’s possessions I lay in bed and heard the birds singing Greek.
“What bird so sings, so yet does wail? Tis the ravished nightingale Jug, jug, jug, tereu she cries And still her woes at midnight rise.”
LEONARD You’re hurting yourself with all this wild talk. No one can understand anything you say.
VIRGINIA People know very well enough but it’s a secret. King Edward spewed the foulest possible language amongst the azaleas and yet they crowned him. “Swallow, my sister, O Sister Swallow,” I sing. If I become king of the lunatics shall I escape molestation? God, I wish I were dead. I will soon have to jump out of a window.
LEONARD These violent oscillations, Virginia! If I could only get you to see! A whirlwind brings madness in its wake!
VIRGINIA How long can any man love a woman without driving her mad? How long can I protect my clean visions from the odious masculine point of view – from the egotism of men? You crack my brain like a thrush cracks a snail – hammer, hammer, hammer.
LEONARD I am not your enemy, Virginia.
VIRGINIA Then who else is? Why shouldn’t I be frightened? I wanted to spend my life innocently indifferent among the trees and rivers but instead men expose themselves whenever I step out doors. I saw a woman pinned beneath a car and horses falling in the street. Outside our scullery a man cut his own throat. His jowls were whitened as codfish. The human face is hideous. What are you doing? Don’t touch me!
LEONARD Trying to loosen your straps. You’re getting excited. Doctor!
If This Card Chooses You – you have reached the point of access to the gifts of the Warrior. Let the healing begin. Are you a believer in magic? Do you dream of restoration, of nostalgia, of lost youth?
Warriors Believe In Magic – Bravely, we put ourselves in the way of harm, and harm is done to us. But we believe in the magic of restoration through transformation. These scars, these wounds, these experiences make us smarter, harder, brighter and more beautiful.
Understand the Meaning of Your Scars – These are life’s tattoos, which have ennobled you. It is your honor to embody the story of the universe with your blood and your bone. But It is the Warrior’s Brain that brings us closest to God. The mystery of suffering is that it educates us into the greatest mystery of all –that God is willing to suffer with us because Love means holding each other through pain and infusing our strength into another’s sadness.
Bow To Each Other – We are each other’s masters, we are each other’s pupils, we are each other’s lovers, siblings and rescuers. Drinking ginger tea from translucent porcelain cups, we lift our cups to each other. We bathe together in steaming pools. I release you as you release me. When darkness falls, we touch one another’s hands before departing. If we can bear it, we touch bodies.
Warriors Recognize That We Cannot Diagnose Ourselves – We offer ourselves for the universe’s good and so it takes a world to cure us. Healing and diagnosis alike will come from the welcome lips of another. It has been scientifically proven that even plants respond to kind words. We yearn for the laying on of hands, for the gentle rituals that pass us from one stage of life to another.
Warrior Challenge – Paradoxically, no “medicine” can succeed unless we “accept” our healing spiritually. We must feel “worthy” of restoration. What are we fighting for? Think deeply. We are not self-punishing but stating as clearly as we can that life is valuable in all its forms. If you are only as “young” as you feel, are we only as “healthy” as we allow ourselves to be? Forgive yourself. Accept change. Contrary to our fears, it is change that keeps us young.
Warrior Danger – Healing cannot occur in an atmosphere of self-hatred and self-blame, but many of us are STILL “blaming” ourselves for twists of fate, for unlucky genetic, social and medical outcomes. “Fundamental attribution error” consists of blaming individuals for group effects. We are all caught up in the machinery of temporality. Never forget that we are souls who happen to have bodies, not bodies who happen to have souls.
Warrior Opportunity – “Restoration” is such a glorious promise that early Christians found themselves ensnared in decades of argument about PHYSICAL resurrection. How would it work in cases of burning and dismemberment, exactly? It is easy to laugh at these painfully ridiculous theological conflicts. One is reminded of St. Joan of Arc’s response to interrogators at her trial who asked if angels appeared to her naked – “Do you think God cannot afford to clothe his angels?” Accept the power accorded to you by the universe. Accept the strength of your own mind, the control given by your chosen attitude. Healing is not just possible, it is a life-force in which we can all participate. Jesus came to us as a healer.
Models & Mentors – “Healing yourself is connected with healing others” – Yoko Ono
“What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” – Haruki Murakami
Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.” ~ Catherine Rippinger Fenwick
“We are healed of suffering only if we experience it to the full – Marcel Proust
“Maybe the dragons in our lives are princesses” – Rainer Maria Rilke
#Haiku: I Don’t Know
Admit ignorance No shame – It’s healthy – Empty glass Asks for water
Alysse Aallyn 