A Vinculum
The stage is littered with many leaves, some scraps of paper balled-up, and other indistinct trash. Maybe a radio is almost getting a music station rather quietly and with static. Morning light lighting. A man dressed like a waiter stands in the trash, looking around, looking unprepared, unsure of what to do next, and a little bored too.
Man: Man, I am so disorganized.
A bird appears overhead. It hovers, flapping its wings, contrived. There is a speaker in it through which its lines are delivered.
Bird: This is the first thing to happen.
Man: You are the first thing to happen. Do you bode well?
Bird: I don't understand your question.
Pause, one beat.
Man: This is a pretty inauspicious start. I'll say this though: recently leaves fell.
Bird: And what does that tell you?
Man: “Recently leaves fell” tells me what it is. Leaves fell recently.
Pause, one beat.
Bird: If we accomplish anything here tonight, let's at least differentiate clarification from repetition.
A tree enters.
Tree: My entrance is insubstantial except to punctuate the bird's statement.
Bird: Hey, we may or may not have been just talking about you.
Tree: (gestures a branch at offstage) I was listening to before, from off.
Man: Two things have come on and I haven't moved a muscle.
Bird: We aren't things.
Tree: What I want to know is---I was listening before---who's going to account for those leaves?
Bird: I'd say that I don't understand the question but that would be repetition not clarification.
Man walks to the tree and feels its bark.
Man: I wasn't expecting to feel bark.
Bird: I think that one can repeat as long as each repetition has an elaboration on it.
Tree: What were you expecting to feel?
Man: Disappointed.
Bird: An elaboration can clarify but does not necessarily.
Tree: When is a repetition not redundant? And when will we know more about the whereabouts of those leaves, you know, from before?
Man: You make it hard to answer when you ask two questions at once.
Bird: The implication is that there is one answer that fits both questions.
Man: Both questions asked “when,” so the answer to both would be a certain time or a duration. If we could get these times to coincide…
[ page 2 of 4 ]