Image from Wikimedia
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sonnet
TIME AND PLACE
Present. A park.
CHARACTERS
JACK DAWKINS, a child.
SIR, Jack’s father.
KAI, a story-teller.
JACK
When I get nervous, I have a tooth that aches.
My tongue goes around, inside my mouth, to feel each tooth as I count them.
And one always says it hurts.
On its own.
KAI
In Japan … something else:
You won’t find people less helpful if you want to know your shortcomings.
No one dares offend you.
I lost my brother over a debt he could never repay, and I would never ask him to repay.
No amount of money is worth that.
That’s what I had to learn.
On my own.
JACK
I don’t have a brother.
SIR
People are the way they are, Son.
Some have brothers, and some don’t.
KAI
And some lose them.
SIR
All life is, is lessons, and opportunities, and losing someone you love.
KAI
It’s left me with thuds in my heart and a boat to ride out to sea,
drifting on thoughts and dreams.
I feel as though I’ve been imprisoned in an ark.
Your Emily Dickinson.
And Howard Hughes.
And Germany’s Nietzsche, when he had his nervous breakdown.
And our country’s Yamabushi monks.
Isolated and alone, even with people all around.