RAT Plays in LA

["Jose Rivera" <paperrain@earthlink.net>]

If you're in the LA area ...

The runs of SONNETS FOR AN OLD CENTURY and REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE
ME HOT are in their final two weeks.

SONNETS runs Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8:00 PM at the Greenway Arts
Alliance  544 N. Fairfax Ave.  Call 323-655-TKTS to reserve.

REFERENCES runs Tuesdays thru Sundays at 7:45 PM at South Coast Rep, 655
Town Center Rd, in Costa Mesa,  Call 714-708-5555.  There are Saturday and
Sunday matinees at 2:00.

Also, if you're in New York Feb and March my play SUENO will be running,
starting Feb 22, at the Manhattan Class Company.  Lisa Peterson is the
director.

Following is an excerpt from SONNETS:

I would breathe against the window and watch the thin white cloud my breath
made on the glass and I would take a finger and write an X in the mist.
Then I would move ever-so-slightly left or right and I would exhale again
and make another small cloud on the glass and again I would make an X.  I
did this until I had covered the entire window in that room with the white
anxious smoke of my lungs.  Then I would go to the next window and start
over and make small X's, row upon row, small exact X's, engraved in the
temporary surface my breath made on the cold window panes.

I wouldn't even look outside.  I never took my eyes off the small X, then
the next virgin spot on which there wasn't an X.  And even if I had wanted
to look outside, it would have been pointless to look, as the other side of
the window was inches thick with dirt and car exhaust and pigeon shit.  The
light that penetrated that window was a urine-colored little spit of light,
a little piss of light fighting the compacted air and finally leaking into
the room, yellow and anxious, like a diabetic's piss.
There were nine windows in the room and nine is the number of redemption.

I don't know why I made so many X's.  I was amazed by this activity.  I
couldn't stop.  Not even when they brought the food. Little trays with
neatly wrapped sandwiches, which I ignored until I was nearly starving, but
ate quickly because I didn't want to stop making X's on those silent nine
windows.  In fact hunger only heightened my desire, motivated me, gave me a
heroic reason to continue the punishment, the shameful, secret ritual that
had locked its iron jaws around my mind.

I began to despise myself for my weakness:  it wasn't a voice, or a pair of
hands, but some force had seized me and all my cursing and rebellious
fantasies were wasted on it.  Superior and inexhaustible it commanded, yes,
commanded me to continue.

Why did I obey?  I loved food.  I loved going to the bathroom.  I loved
living in my dreams.  I loved exploring sin, but only in my imagination.
Outside of my imagination I was terrified of sin and would never commit one
and I'd follow every rule, man-made or dictated by God, no matter how
absurd, I listened, I followed.  Fear motivated me and I never strayed from
the narrow pathway leading from birth to death.  I let pleasures elude me.
I let people walk away from me, free of my fantasies of them, innocent of my
deeply buried desires and dreams, the twisting, fantastic, highly-plotted,
improbable living dreams in which I satisfied every need and never paid for
it, never lost a lover, never felt guilt, never apologized.  I turned my
back on everything in order to make little miniature X's on the surface of
great industrial windows, tightly interconnected X-patterns as elaborate and
lovely as the Book of Kells.

What was I trying to make?  What code was I trying to break?

At times I was vaguely aware of others in the room with me.  I didn't know
if they were real or ghosts.  I was aware of distant voices, detached and
clinical, voices that freeze your blood and incense your mind, voices I
tried to ignore as I covered those vast windows in X's.  I wanted to stop
and address the voices.  To turn around and viciously insult whoever it was
who spoke to me in such rude and disrespectful ways.  But I found I couldn't
turn around.  I couldn't stop making X's in the windows.  Night after night,
sleepless, nearly starved, I continued my work in light that obscured my
vision and among voices that confused my hearing.

I imagined my fists breaking through the window.  I imagined throwing my
only chair through the window.  I imagined great pure sunlight storming into
the room: then air: pure air!  And, then, space beyond the window, space to
walk and breathe and really live.  I imagined eating food again and having
lovely bowel movements and rerunning my sexual fantasies and getting an
apartment and a car and maybe a tempt job in a secure office, some old
corporation that would take good care of me.
I would like that.  I would develop as a human being in that scenario.  I
would acquire a small selection of elite books.  The great thoughts of
mankind.  I'd buy C.D.'s and listen to the latest tunes.  I would flourish
within the context of new friendships.  People would bring me news of
distant places.  All would find my story of the room and the X's appalling
and fascinating.  I would develop a reputation as an appalling and
fascinating individual.  No one at the corporation would suspect the depth
of the quiet and loyal little functionary in the next cubicle.  Storage of
so many secrets would only enhance my mental powers.  I have been a
wanderer, an explorer of the twisting pathways of the mind.  My passport is
stamped by nations grotesque and wonderful.

Over and over again I would be aware of my moral superiority.  Over and over
again ... over and over again ... over and over again ... as I made my X's.
As I made my X's in my urine-colored room I realized how stupid these
fantasies were.  How abject and cruel.  My fantasies made me sick.  And in
that sickness I found a strange liberation.

A strange liberation is what you gave me.