amoa-script

--

On a hill. It is early night and the sunset took place some hours ago. The sky is a turbid, dazzling orange lightly disappearing into the depth of darkness. The air is cold. Light sounds of the wind and the chirping of crickets are there to hear. In the middle of the hill stands a car, a Toyota Corolla. The engine is on providing a slight sound which mixes itself with those of its surroundings. The clearing where the car is placed is among some trees, small shrubs and a couple of rocks.  The backlight of the Corolla goes off and the engine comes to stillness leaving leeway to the radio playing classical music: Bach. ADAN likes to listen to that kind of music. It always gave him a sort of eternal feeling about his existence. European endlessness. Through the rear window there are two shapes allowing themselves to be recognised. They look down over the city.

PURA:
I trust naivety. Being alive already requires assuming some kind of naivety. We are always looking out for other places that are foreign and which give us in a way an unexpected pleasure. Maybe we can relate this to paradise.
(She speaks with a calm voice scanning the view. Her eyes are slowly following the big river that divides the city and flows into the sea.)

ADAN:
You think there is still such a place...?

PURA:
I don’t know what I think.
(Short silence)
But is this important in the matters of love? If we were created in order to live in Paradise and this place was ordained to serve us, it exists wherever we go and wherever we fall in love. It takes various forms and we let ourselves be guided to it. I guess this is how I got here.
(She closes her eyes. Even though the place she came from was named paradise by many she felt confused because the place that would fulfil such perfection was in her head always very far away. She looks at him and holds his hand which is quite big and feels protecting over hers.)

You see, that’s what I mean.
(She pointed out looking lovingly at their hands.)

ADAN:
A beautiful imagery. Paradise being a foreign place which protects us while enabling freedom at the same time. Doesn’t sound so bad.
(He says with a hint of humour in his voice.)
 
PURA:
It’s true, it doesn’t.
(She answeres grinning slightly, then being serious again)

But what was ordained for us changed; not Paradise but our destiny. I have always recurrent thoughts of this dream which I once had. In it I am inside a ship. A big container ship. All around me it’s dark but I know that I am crossing the whole ocean and I am traveling from an old to a new world. Now that I am here I feel like in one of those containers from my dream, but I can look up and watch the stars, taking the shape of constellations.
(She let her head fall back against the headrest of the seat and is now looking out the cars’ skyline.)
 
After all, dreaming is the only invention and a tool for exploration. Maybe even God given.

ADAN:
Then you need to dream in order to explore?
 
PURA:
Maybe ...
(with a deep and rough voice)

But as I said I have no other chance but to dream. I remember after the dream seeing for the first time a real ship. It was big and invading all the space that surrounded me, as if it could just become bigger and bigger every minute. I stared at it and the occurrences that took place around it: people coming in and out, sacred things being put in unknown boxes, languages being exchanged or imposed, nature being distorted, a new dimension of reality appearing, as if layers of outer space were covering us like a big heavy blanket over the continent. While I stood there it felt like centuries passing by altering everything which was known to me, my single story. Later I felt a sort of wind pushing me towards the ship and into time. I saw myself suddenly in a container filled with potatoes. Then I felt like praying and being devoted to everything that felt as my own. Being surrounded by these sprouts which culturally and mythically meant a lot to me produced in me another awareness for my transcendental experiences. Many days passed by where I could only see drops of sun or rain coming in from the unwelded gaps and feel the potatoes underneath me holding my existence. Those weeks that passed felt like years. We made a couple of stops and I was unaware of the possible shift of ships. Crossing these waters was a transgression in every sense of the word. Potato spirits visited me and tried to explain me how they were losing something. I wasn’t quite sure what they meant but after two more weeks that passed I understood how it could all be put together. These whole objects or goods and even people had a new destination. The destiny that is inherent to each of our existences was suddenly revoked. A new raison d'être invaded us and after this I didn’t look the same. My hands had a different colour, my body size was different, and my words and imagery mingled with a foreign cosmos. It was an adventure but I felt as well that a big part of me was being left, like when snakes change their skin.

(ADAN opens the door to let a stream of air come in. The atmosphere is dense. They breathe in and out together and he can scent the perfume of her hair floating in the car. She continues.)

Someone opened the door and let me out as if my presence in the ship was obvious. As if I had chosen it. Later I was standing on the bow of this ship holding myself to the railing. We were steering straight towards Liberty Island. I recognised a figure; a lank, muscular body stood upright on a plateau, the right hand reached towards my direction, the left pressed tight to its body. On its head a crown. As we came closer I saw it clearer. A woman wearing a turquoise toga while a part of her blank breast peeked out from her dress. The right hand stretched a torch towards me, arms and legs wide spread and a gentle look welcomed us. I stared at it and it looked down at me. I recognised that my neck had turned so far back to the right that it was close to being contorted. The island was now floating away. There was no harbour. The figure turned away from me. It’s back looked now full of pulsing muscles behind the surface of it’s skin. Black smoke flowed out of the torch, her upper body held a bow and a quiver. At the feet of this colossus there were lying men. Some lifeless, others hunching on the steps of the monument. After some more long minutes, we arrived ...
(ADAN interrupts her.)

ADAN (Hastily):
I remember I saw you coming down of the ship and walking towards a telescope which pointed in the direction of liberty Island.
You had read the inscription of the stone I had seen sometime before but had completely forgotten…

... then you recited the words you had seen inscribed under the feet of the colossus and looked at me from afar slowly approaching me because you found me irresistible and knew we would end like this: in love.

(She laughs)

PURA:
I probably wished that unconsciously, but I didn’t really know it would happen. I guess there are many people like me who wish for love once they arrive in the unknown. Maybe you someone else like me?

ADAN:
Well you remind me of a man I met some decades ago. He was also part of the masses yearning to breathe free. We talked for some time and I realised he was also very much in love. He was very special as well, since he didn’t fall in love with a person but with our heritage and history. He appropriated our language in order to create intersections between two poles: our stories and his stories. Along this he propitiated his own code in which the result was more mythical and existential; closer alike to our lives. The single stories were cancelled and with this creation or invention if you will, he acquired his own freedom. Throughout this conversation I realised that for a long time we had written history and named paradises being unaware of the subjectivity that this entails and with a wish or need for naming, we alienated others. Later on I read about what it was to be an alien and the word actually meant a “transfer of ownership”. We declared histories our own which didn’t actually belong to us. But it was also for us a way of falling in love. Sometimes love is not only accompanied by all that’s good.
(ADAN serious, which is something very uncommon for him.)

I travelled my whole life to realise that his invention was for me the summary of most of the actions I had done throughout my life. Mostly related to shipping. I was a seafarer back then.
When we arrived to one of the lands which we thought to have acquired as a possession, many ships sailed to and fro bringing objects that seemed less important - for example a piece of furniture - but all together these objects constructed the small universe that we named our own.

PURA:
You made these objects into codes that constructed a puzzle with a familiar motive which you put together in order to continue writing your history…

(He looks at her skeptically but then nodds)

ADAN:
Something like that. After many years of our intends to accommodate or maybe even impose -as you said before- this codes onto this new territory, inhabitants of this land started to decode the puzzle by making it part of their own.
(She was listening carefully and feeling connected with him in this new layer of their storytelling. As if it was her story as well)

What we thought we had brought for our own good was turned into a weapon. We had made them strangers, and they wanted to be liberated and freed from our imposition.

PURA:
Your words were used against yourselves, so that you didn’t have a chance to refute our desire for liberation.

ADAN:
We couldn’t. After all these words belonged to us and it didn’t feel right to deny our heritage.

PURA:
You had to accept it.

ADAN:
Yes. In our words we called this a revolution. It was born within us and it came back to be against us.

PURA:
But in the end we couldn’t release ourselves completely since many of these elements were almost nailed into us already. It wasn't a full revolution, we didnt "roll back".

ADAN:
I know.
(He said looking sad)
Since these events you changed and I realised I had changed as well.

PURA:
True. But that is also revolution.

ADAN:
So many other events came with it and are happening now in front of our eyes: the such called progress which if we look closely, in the end is just actions being repeating again and again, sometimes changing their dimension or place specificity, but it all looks and produces the same.

(PURA points to the containers on the ship with the word GOLD written on them)

PURA:
Look. Maybe on that precise image there is the consummation of all the phrases and thoughts outspoken tonight. The word GOLD referring to the beginning of this era, just a representation of what now can’t be seen and is hidden behind the ship and behind history, behind the container, behind the flags and the continuous movement. Love is born, sunken and moved through these paths opened for commodities. We are as well the consummation of one of them.

(ADAN looks again towards Liberty Island where the container ship is turning to the right and disappearing in direction to the harbour. He tuned the radio which played Nada, a Tango by José Dames. Both front doors of the Corolla open and they step outside on the clearing. The sun starts to rise again and the birds are singing. They walk to the hillslope and contemplate the city and the sea once more. As soon as the sun crosses the horizon the light becomes very blinding and PURA, ADAN, the clearing, the Corolla and the city in front of them being enfolded by an extreme brightness.)

ADAN looks at her lovingly while she contemplates the sun in the horizon. He realises in these last minutes that the love that was growing between them was awakening again the love he used to have for discovery and invention. He thinks about the languages he had learned, the peoples he met, the inventions that were developed. In that precise moment, being on that hill with her, everything that had happened before makes sense. He feels they had been together for centuries traveling in that car and coming suddenly to that precise spot where everything was exposed to be viewed by both as a summary from all that happened and all that was to happen. The sun rises further up the sky and both drink the first drops of its light while rewriting these whole histories all over again.