MAN MADE A One Act Play by John Monteleone CONTACT: e-mail: writing@johnmonteleone.com PO Box 2723 Sag Harbor, NY 11963 IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING PRODUCTIONS STUDENT CLASS PROJECTS If this is for a student class project you may use this text or sections of it free of charge but I want to know that you're doing it for my resume and would love a video tape of the production, and/or quality rehearsals. PRODUCTIONS OF ANY KIND OR LEVEL You may read and use this text-based script for considering work but if you want to produce my work as a student, amateur or professional production you must purchase scripts from me online and pay royalties per performance. __________________________________ Copyright 1997 by John Monteleone All Rights Reserved Registered with WGAE CHARACTERS: BLAB A person YAK Another person SETTING: A barren desert. A large pile of junk. The gray sky behind the set is endless. A large, very dry tumbleweed sits stage left. A man, BLAB sits on-stage, on the sand his head in his hands. YAK, enters, sees him, stops and smiles. Looks out over the audience. Then begins to balance himself on one foot, then both, examining his balance. YAK Have you ever wondered how we do this? Have you ever wondered how one stands? Pause. Yak begins to balance himself examining he idea. YAK It's a miracle really. Blab is wobbling. BLAB Balance. YAK That's a simplification of it. BLAB Balance...ing. YAK That's and oversimplification of it. BLAB Balancing ability profound. YAK What I meant was... BLAB ...I know what you meant I have degrees. He removes a large diploma from his sack. Looks at it and cries. YAK Oh please, not again. Tears. What I meant was that there's an incredible amount of intricacy, even skill in standing up. Each muscle is working intricately to help the body balance, so that you don't fall over. BLAB B.A, M.A., P.H.D., P.H.D. again. Oh my. YAK Impressive. BLAB So what. Look where it's gotten me. YAK I am a doctor of bilingual banana peeling and one foot balancing. There is no person on earth, perhaps in the universe, that knows the complexities of balancing on one foot such as I. I, am, the ultimate, expert. As far as peeling bananas are concerned I studied under the great Dr. Dr. Dr. Pierre, Jean Paul Skinner, who, single-handedly discovered banana peeling, and its relevance to human kind. BLAB And I hold two Fud's (PH.d's). One in Philio-theo-sci-mathio- Masterbation. And another in Plumbing-genetic-Philo- pragmaticicstic-Dreaming. But that's not why I'm questioning this incredible ability for one to stand. No. I'm questioning it because... YAK (still balancing) ...You're afraid of your inner feelings so you avoid them by concentrating on external musculature, institutionalizing your value, becoming a man of the machine instead of humanity while masking the hyped-up consumer image of being a man of humanity while all you do in every way is escape, and hide from your humanity inside the hypnotistic-redundancy of the institution... In nice clothes and car leases, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... Oh, I'm so tired of this. BLAB That's incorrect. You've made an error. YAK It's unconscious. All unconscious. You think you're conciously aware of your unconscious, because you're unconscious is more powerful and elusive to you than your conscious thus scaring the living-shit out of your moronic-degreed-cranial-apathy! So you live in denial of your self while validating your identity via blame or proving others wrong, or maintaining your positions on being right when you really don't know! Oh, my tongue hurts from that blathering! BLAB Stop analyzing it. What do you know? You think you can think? Ha. I don't think so. We're mere guppies to the universal mind, intelligent only enough to understand that we can have pathetic, incorrect perceptions about our existence. Do you know how I know that we don't know anything? Years, of unrelentless, exhaustive, study! YAK Want another banana? BLAB No. I want something more... basic. YAK (bewildered) More basic than a bannana?! Blab sees the air. YAK Will you look at that. BLAB What? YAK That space, right there. BLAB Where? YAK In front of my face. Right here. This area, here. This open, invisible, void. Right in front of my face. Yak waves his hand through the space. He stares in wonderment. YAK My God, it's just... there. BLAB How are you feeling? YAK Fine. Can you see it? BLAB No. But I can hear your hand rushing through the air, for no apparent reason. It's worrying me. There's nothing Freudian about it. Unless you want to fuck it! YAK The space is phenomenal. Just think, if we were a billion, no a trillion, no a trillion, billion, times smaller than we are now, how big would this space be to us? BLAB (bored and worried) Yes. I see what you mean. YAK How large? What would our relationship be to it? BLAB Yes. Very interesting. (Bows his head) I'm so sad. YAK Why? BLAB I'm confused. YAK Over what? BLAB My old habitual impulses and my new insights which have transcended beyond them. YAK Sounds... difficult. BLAB I know. I'm not sure if my old reactions were simply motivated by fear, or some other emotion. Perhaps a mixture of them. Perhaps not. Perhaps my whole life has been lived in regret or resentment because I didn't receive enough love growing up. My father burped in my face, or farted while craddling me, now anything intimate smells of shit! Perhaps it's not that at all. Perhaps I received the perfect amount of love one should receive to have a positive self image, perhaps I've been running away from entrapment which was really love but I didn't realize it therefore confusing the two throughout my life in one upside down dance of mis- perception. It could of been hate instead. I'm not sure if I feel drawn to my family because I love them or because they represent in my mind, a past identity I feel some stability from which only exists in my mind, and in fact does NOT exist in thre real world--whatever that is. They represent some sense of who I am. A completeness based on a validation of who I am by familiar surroundings and events, both within me, and outside of me. But , if I knew who I was, then without any externals I would know. But I don't. There's too much happening. YAK I'll have that banana now. BLAB You're no help. Oh God. YAK Do you want me to be honest? BLAB I'm always terrified when someone asks me that. YAK I don't want to help you. BLAB But then I'll be alone with these confused feelings. YAK I could care less. BLAB NO. YAK I don't give a damn. BLAB I'm through. YAK No you're not your still standing up. You're going through a little personal journey, and you'll arrive. BLAB Where? YAK Somewhere else. BLAB I'm lost. All my life. Lost, lost. There was always a space. A void. All around me. I realize it at first when I felt it, the void, I'd simply do something, find things to do that I enjoyed and took my mind off of it. But after my first real loss, a loved ones death, I began to relate to it more physically. I now saw the result of meeting the void face to face, as if the void entered my dear one's body and took it over - that essence, which hovers about us all, even when we're dying, became noticeable, then visible, then blatantly obvious, that I felt it between every syllable, every note, every beat of language. My flesh, my animal pulsed out from my instinctual self, and my past experiences, my thoughts were rampant, beautiful, ugly, horrific, enticing, stupid and brilliant, against the void. All that was, and is, compares in no way to that space. Which seemingly has more power and significance then all my existence and meager understanding of it's reality. Here I am from it, it certainly isn't from me. Even the brightest star, came from that vacuous nothing. Kill me now! YAK Hmmmmm. BLAB There were times when I actually believed my thoughts, my actions, my life was significant. I believed in my beliefs as if they had any basis in fact other than the fact that I had believed in something someone else had made up for some reason unknown to me. YAK I want to do something right now. BLAB Why have the word meaning if there actually was some? YAK (comforting a child with a delusion) Look. I have never seen the stars so fiery. It's as if they speak, they have not been listened to. All that see them, have ignored their mother, and she cries with a twinkle. There is a celebration coming. I hear it in nature. I smell it in the air. There is a possibility waiting to be found out and I am going to win it. BLAB Oh dear, he's making something up. It's so fucking sick. YAK Once upon a time there were two children. One a boy and one a boy. Both were trained to act like characters. BLAB It's going to get very insignificant, to keep his attention glued to delusion to feel alive. YAK I hear a mist. I feel the mist. I see it inside of me. I taste it. Within the rage of thunder and the calming quiet of spring wind, I speak. I sing. I dance. He dances. BLAB Do you want me to participate in your lie? YAK Please do. BLAB Movement. Images. They take your mind off of it, don't they? YAK It's wonderful. BLAB It's avoiding what I'm saying to you. It's avoiding death. YAK We could fly. He flies around the room. Blab watches disgusted, sad, very still. YAK We could travel across the seas perhaps. See other people, how they've put all the confusion into a dance. We could see their little mud huts and thingamajiggy's instead of our sub- divisions and we could comment on them. We could say things like, "oh isn't that cute. How different". And we could eat their delicacy's - eye of snake in a curried casserole instead of chicken breast in malaise sauce. BLAB (sarcastically) I have a more economic idea. Why not build a huge television screen in stereophonic surroundsound and watch documentaries on everything from ancient Greece to the American Ghetto. We could keep switching back and forth with the remote. Then listen to the news and hear who's done what God-awful thing to whom. The we'd really have a fix on it. YAK A handle. Something to hold onto. Yes, I like the idea. It would identify who we are somehow then you'd shut up. BLAB Or we could travel to sell goods. Some of this perhaps. Commodities of convenience., Get them out of those mud huts. Give them more to do. Then we could do business... YAK ...And lunch... BLAB ... with them. I know, we can invent a fax. YAK So we could speed things up. BLAB I have an idea. To stop this silliness called conversation. YAK What's your idea? BLAB It's brilliant. It's really an amazing solution to a complicated avoidance. YAK WHAT IS IT?! BLAB Let's DO something. They look at one another. BLAB Right now. I know. Let's build something. Build. To Build. To build a lot. To build everywhere. Oh, what a feeling that gives me right here. Grabs his balls, shakes them once. Smiles. YAK Build what? BLAB I don't know. He picks up a piece from the junk pile, and toys with it. They begin to build the man out of junk. They will do this throughout the entire play, stopping, then continuing until it is a large, junk sculpture. BLAB Why are we doing this. YAK So we can... sell it faster and then make another just like it. BLAB And duplicate of the same thing? YAK Yes. A replica. We'll replicate it faster. BLAB I'm finding this mundane. YAK Don't think. Produce. BLAB Produce. Right. Okay. They move faster. YAK Progress. BLAB Yes. From stupidity to stupidity. YAK But progress all the same. BLAB I used to be a poet. YAK Shhhhh. Concentrate. BLAB I explored my inner landscape. Painted pictures of the heart and soul. The deeper being inside of me yearning to come out. YAK Shut up. Blab stops. YAK Why are you stopping again? Don't you have any industriousness inside of you? We've got to earn a living. BLAB I can't do this. YAK Of course you can. You have to. BLAB I cannot. YAK We need the money. BLAB I rather go hungry. YAK You will go hungry. Blab sits. YAK For heavens sake, he's almost finished. Just one more thing. Yak puts a dollar bill sticking out of the junk man sculpture for a wisp of hair. YAK His crown. BLAB Awful. What are you asking for him? YAK I don't know. BLAB Perhaps you could call a modern art gallery, they might find someone who needs something to abstract about, find some meaning, or ego or fad in all the exhorbitant blathering. They'll blather on about it's significance, its contours, the strokes, the placement, the composition, the shadow, the light, the size, it's post, neo, or present state of classicism, modernism, moronic-ism, and give you a a hundred grand for it. HA! I think it sucks. YAK But it's not finished. BLAB It's a work in progress. It will get better. YAK That's always the excuse. BLAB I'm going to work on him. He does. YAK And you call yourself a poet? BLAB It's reprehensibly diminishing. Rigamortis, yet stiff. Fashionable, yet Traditonal... It's abominable. We can't leave it like this. YAK HA! BLAB We have to find out what's wrong with it, so that we can discover the missing link, the essential ingredient, the theme, the underlying image to the work, so that we can build upon it, work it, until that, which we have discovered, is present in the work. Art. Then we can show to people who have nothing better to do than giggle or wince. YAK And how do you propose to do that? And if you do propose something, how am I to know that it's anything but pure fabrication, simply to propose something that is explicitly unproposeable? BLAB I'm not going to propose anything. I'm going to respond to it, that's all. Now... Are you in it with me or out? YAK What else is there to do? Look at the desert? That tumbleweed. They watch a tumble weed (out at the audience) tumble by slowly. YAK I suppose those would be significant in and of themselves. And you. (complete abrupt change) I HATE YOU. (complete abrupt change) I'm sorry I didn't mean that. (complete abrupt change) YES I DID. (complete abrupt change) Oh dear. It's that complexity thing again. Human contradiction. I need a pill. (complete abrupt change) I WANT TO KILL YOU YOU HAVE MORE TALENT THAN ME. (complete abrupt change) Did you create this? How marvelous. What a visionary. I'm so confused. Look what I put myself through. And for no apparent reason. I know one day, I'll be as dead as that tumbleweed. And tumble across the wind forever. BLAB Forever?! Don't suggest that. Eternity is terrifying. You have no manners. No social Grace. You're intolerable. Don't ever do that again. You know I spend the better part of each moment avoiding questions and observations like that! BUT YOU HAVE TO BE THERE TO CONSTANTLY REMIND ME OF MY INSIGNIFICANT MIRACLE! YAK I'm so sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyy... (weeps) Blab looks at him. Yak sits with his head in his hands. BLAB Look at the distance between us and there. Go on. Look. Between you and I. Both separate. One further away than the other. Interesting to examine distances and special relationships and colors and color relationships and form. There, might as well be the stars. So, so alone inside our selves. And they, only mere repetitions of the past. All we see is their light, not them. Even there, we are more alone, in what we see, then when we hug someone whom we can never be inside of! Worse! Can we ever really know ourselves? He (the junk sculpture) is who we are. We, are his God. Is this what man creates to believe he's superior? YAK Don't be absurd. It's a pile of junk. BLAB What else can I be, I'm human. YAK Then don't be ridiculous. BLAB I am ridiculous. YAK Don't be defensive. BLAB I am defensive. YAK Repetitions. BLAB I am. YAK Stop arguing. BLAB I can't. It's all an argument. YAK STOP. BLAB I CAN'T STOP, I'M ALIVE. YAK Then control yourself. BLAB I am controlling myself or you'd of been dead a long time ago, and I'd be screwing her by now. YAK Her? Where? BLAB My groin seems to have a mind of its own. YAK Like a dinosaur. Disgusting. Weren't you brought up Catholic? BLAB God forbid! No. I wasn't brought up. I simple grew. YAK (weeps) I was brought up Catholic. I'm so confused. I don't believe I really have a penis. I believe it's someone elses. I believe God made penises because he likes babies, not penises. Babies babies and more babies, to hell with us! Especially my penis once the babies arrive because the vagina's are no longer fixated on penises, but instead their babies. Now, when I get... you know... horny, I pretend it's not me, actually. But instead, a demon. Someone who belongs in hell. I realize this is silly, and that it's my penis. But I can't help the guilt. It was placed there by women in black, and men in robes who worshipped a crucified savior they never met, didn't know, but believe existed. Perhaps that's why I studied bannana's for so many years. BLAB Very old creature dangling down there. I'm having an experience, again. YAK Another... experience? Don't. It'll just exhaust you. BLAB Yes, an old, very repetitious one. YAK You mean..? Yak closes his eyes, smiling broadly at his fantasy as he speaks. BLAB ...Yes. I see her there. In the distance of my mind But she's all of them, in me as one special fantasy. Each one a sensorial motif of lusty love, adorned with fragments and bits from all the other]s love, and we merge together, aloneness about it. And explosion. And a separation. Even in a fantasy. YAK They're all one thing? BLAB But I can separate the experiences that lunge inside the experience. YAK Fragment them? BLAB Separate each to understand it better. YAK But if you separate each, then you lose what the total experience was. How is that understanding it better? BLAB It's academic. The mutilation. You know. YAK The butchery. BLAB The murders. YAK The violence in the act of... BLAB How we identify. YAK Re-identify. BLAB Solidify. YAK Categorize. BLAB The experience into it's component parts... YAK In order to file each part in it's proper dichotomy, so the total experience is... BLAB Ambul-ator-ized. YAK Yes. Ambul-ator-ized. So we can discuss it with more clarity. BLAB But not totality. YAK The experience? BLAB The many experiences within the experience. YAK Oh. It's limbs. BLAB Yes. The themes, the plots, the sub-plots, the ramifications, the sub-divisible qualifications, the qualities, the elements, the genres, the subtleties, its histories... YAK Of the... They look at one another briefly. BLAB ...Experience. YAK Of course. I see. How do you feel now? BLAB It's gone. YAK I feel more at ease somehow. BLAB You weren't the object of my desire. It was a fantasy. YAK You were... you mean... over an idea? BLAB An image. Images. YAK Of a real experience? BLAB No. Of an experience I never had, but wanted. YAK An experience you never had... so you made it up and it cause a reaction... down there in your bannana region? As if it had actually occurred? BLAB An erect bannana reaction to be blunt. A need to expel the images... YAK That you created but never had. BLAB Not in itself but with others placed in the positions in the fantasy. YAK So the fantasy was real to you? BLAB Extremely real. YAK Am I an image? BLAB I can't know what it is like to be you, nor can I understand what it means to be you. I can only assume you, are me, or if you are not, that I accept the differences. But in the differences, I place an image I can understand even though it won't actually exist in you so I can believe I understand you, and me understanding you. Pause. They look at the half finished man made sculpture, then one another in dissatisfaction. They continue to build him. YAK And how do you feel now? BLAB Calm. YAK That's it? BLAB And tense. YAK Calmly tense? BLAB Euphoric, relieved, embarrassed, cold, envious, angry, in love... YAK AT ONCE? BLAB And more. YAK I don't believe it. BLAB Now I want quiet. YAK Night is coming fast. The lights abruptly change in one beat from bright day to night. They see it. Stop as it changes. Resume building the man in the dark. BLAB I'm frightened. I have nothing to do. YAK Why are you frightened? BLAB I want it all to make sense. YAK I know. It's terrifying. Pause. They exist terrified. Looking up. To the right, then left, then straight ahead into the abyss. Then hug looking out over the audience at the dark abyss. YAK There's a wind coming, a cold wind, I feel it. The loud sound of a wind begins and continues. BLAB We could enact. YAK Enact what? BLAB An... enactment? YAK What enactment? BLAB A... thing. YAK Now I feel clarity. BLAB A... responsibility. YAK Oh no. Not one of those. BLAB Yes, that's the problem. Not enough burdens to force us to feel as though our actions had some... meaning. YAK Meaning. Hmmmm? That word sounds familiar. I believe I went to therapy for fifteen years once, to learn how to cope with my search for meaning. BLAB How did it work out? YAK It was meaningless. BLAB I know the feeling. I was a therapist once, seeking to find meaning through other people's search for meaning in an effort to avoid my meaninglessness. The only thing I found worked for them was a prophylactic. YAK Now you've gone off the deep end. A rubber? BLAB A prophylactic and hygienic view of humanity. Answers. YAK I've heard it all. I'd rather simply enact. BLAB Knowing what the definition was. To their feelings of confusion. Find something they could... latch onto. YAK Did it work Added to the wind, are howling wolves, bats, thunder in the distance, jungle sounds, etc... They're still hugging to keep warm and safe center stage. BLAB If they were stupid enough to believe there were answers to their human experiences, it was thrilling. They wanted credit cards when there really was mystery. A mortgage focused their minds, the thought that they were mysteries to themselves, seemed to make them want debt. Overworking, purchasing office equipment, was salvation it seemed. I found the more I probed into the innocuous, the ethereal realities of their problems, that their problems were only clues to self, rather than something to over come, that their existence came from something they themselves could never know, that they had no real control over their lives than the wind had control over its breeze, the more they wanted church, temple, and ice cream Sundays. It was truly a depressing experience. YAK When I was in therapy, the more I understood myself, the more I became interested in tax evasion. BLAB Yes, the IRS is a great deterrent from the abyss. Did they chase you? YAK For years. BLAB What ever became of it? YAK I paid them off and sought another catastrophe. Didn't work. Look where I ended up? BLAB Mine was divorce. Oh, what I'd do for a good, lacerating, war of a divorce. The passion, the pain, the hurt, the lost dreams, fighting over who owned the VCR as if it were World War Two, wondering if the kids were damaged because of it, the need to screw around behind her back, and then screwing around behind her back... the complexity of deception... the reaction to deception discovered... oh yes yes yes... there was so much to do. YAK I did that while the IRS was chasing me. BLAB Heaven. Pure heaven. YAK I was also a hypochondriac, and sought the services of numerous doctors in hopes they'd tell me I was done! BLAB What symptoms did you have? YAK All of them. It was wonderful. Looking back. They both fix their eyes the man-made sculpture. YAK Why were we building this... this... BLAB I don't know. I feel compelled. YAK I feel compelled because you feel compelled. But why? BLAB I don't know. Do you like it? YAK No. It's ugly. BLAB I don't think it's ugly. I think it's... interesting. YAK Innovative. BLAB There's a story in him, somewhere. YAK If the wind and those ghastly beasts would stop, and the sun would shine, and my fears and terros would stop, I'd be able to let go of you, I be happy again. And become productive. BLAB I feel the same. The wind and jungle sounds stop ABRUPTLY. They look at one another, unhappy, brush themselves off, and... YAK All right, let's finish him. BLAB Or her. YAK IT. BLAB Is it done? YAK No, it's a ... work in progress... BLAB Then it will never be finished. YAK What kind of Gods are we to let something this hideous, this unfinished, exist? And on a desert no less. BLAB Terrible Gods. Immature Gods. Selfish Gods. We have to complete it. YAK Look at it... looks lonely. Alone. BLAB Dead. It looks dead. Like the tumble weeds. They watch a tumble weed again, this time moving from the opposite direction than the first. YAK Let's make it look alive. BLAB I'm not sure we can. YAK We have to try. They work on him for a little while, then stop, look at one another blankly. BLAB I need a role while I do this. It's not enough simply to create it. Who am I in it? That's the important thing. We need People's magazine to do an article. YAK Perhaps a review in the Times. BLAB Yes, critical success would do the trick. YAK Yes. A defined, role. Oh yes yes yes. BLAB What I'd do for a role. YAK We could embark on a mission. Have false reasons for existing. BLAB False reasons for existing. Sounds wonderful. But how? YAK If we only had... a customer. BLAB A customer? Yes. Now you're onto something. Someone to buy something from us. What and idea. Maybe... this? YAK But it's not finished. BLAB If they want to buy it as is, we simply call it untitled. YAK What an idea. BLAB If we could only sell it. Be paid for our creating it. It's a truth, there's no doubt about it. It came from us, the artists. And there it is. They look at one another in disgust. YAK A sale. If not him then at least all this other... BLAB ...Junk..? YAK ...Stuff... BLAB Yes, of course. Quality merchandise. YAK The highest quality merchandise. BLAB Made out of the finest goods. YAK By craftsman around the world, assembled here in our little, shop. BLAB That we're proud of. Very, very proud of. YAK That we sacrificed to create. BLAB Yes. We are the proprietors, of our little stuff shop and we are in business to serve our fellow man. YAK And women, don't be a misogynist. BLAB Of course not. We're contemporary people. Co-ed minded. Okay then, let's set up our shop. YAK This feels better doesn't it? BLAB Much better. YAK Now what do we do? BLAB We have out products, and our store. We could keep books. YAK And have order forms. BLAB And hire a delivery boy. YAK Or girl. BLAB We could divide up the business into parts, departments, so we could categorize everything. YAK And advertise specifically what we sold. BLAB And advertise. YAK He'd enter. BLAB Or she. YAK Yes. Right through the door. BLAB A coupon in his hand from our advertisement. YAK And we'd greet him. BLAB Hello sir. YAK Mam. BLAB SirMam. YAK How may we be of help to you SirMam? BLAB It's our pleasure to serve you SirMam. YAK A delight. BLAB An honor. YAK A job. BLAB A job. Yes, we have a job. We're part of a community. We're part of an idea in the world. We'd be working--the President would be thrilled. YAK SirMam? BLAB You'd like the toaster? YAK By all means. BLAB Let me get that for you on the double. He takes a toaster off the junk sculpture. YAK Would you like that gift wrapped? BLAB Sent abroad? YAK First class, express mail, Fedex? BLAB U.P.S? Aireborn? Or hand delivered. YAK We could have our delivery boy. BLAB Or girl. YAK Deliver it right to the front door. BLAB Fully giftwrapped. YAK And it comes with a limited guarantee, SirMam. BLAB Limited, but warranted. YAK More warranted than limited. BLAB It's fully protected, but you could purchase at a small, additional fee... YAK More small than additional. BLAB An extended limited warrantee. YAK More extended... BLAB And warranted... YAK Than limited... But definitely... limited! BLAB And we back our products... YAK If we fail due to the limitations in the warrantee... BLAB Then you go strait to the manufacturer and he'll replace at no extra charge. YAK Almost all the parts and labor required to repair this toaster. BLAB Almost all... YAK Except the limitations set forth in the contract on the bottom of the toaster. BLAB Which are rare. YAK And if those two fail and you purchase the extended limited warrantee... BLAB And the toaster malfunctions... YAK ...after the basic limited warrantee expires... BLAB Then the insurance company who sells the extended limited warrantee "product"... YAK ...will take care of almost all the parts and labor set forth in the contract... BLAB ...on the bottom of the toaster. YAK More all. BLAB Than almost. YAK And our delivery boy. BLAB Or girl. YAK Will deliver it back to you in perfect working order. BLAB So you'll always have toast! Pause. They look at one another. YAK Seems a bit overdone. BLAB Not as good as divorce or the IRS. YAK Perhaps we should have a fight? BLAB No more of that. I'm retired. YAK Do people really need toast? BLAB Of course. YAK I'll admit it felt good to say all that. But what happens if something really goes wrong? BLAB Well... They look at one another. Then the space. YAK Who are we in all of that? BLAB I felt so lost to the actions. YAK I was involved in too much activity to notice what I was thinking. Or feeling. BLAB I'm lost. Inside of me, there is a landscape so long and wide that eyes cannot see its scope. I know it, only when I'm silent. And then I'm inside another level of reality that frightens me, because we never build our world from that dimensional reality. Oh what I'd do to be stupid. YAK You are stupid. BLAB I resent that. YAK Are you offended? BLAB YES. This could be the end of our relationship. YAK I can't seem to get angry about all of that. I'm.... "too burnt out, man". BLAB I know. I tried. I'm sorry. YAK Being offended used to work, so well. Disgusted, hurt, oh well. YAK I need to go inside for a moment. (he closes his eyes) Like twilight sleep. Dosing off into a dream. A dream that lives while we're away. But is hidden behind the eyes. BLAB A landscape? YAK Yes. I see it. BLAB So long and wide the eyes cannot see it's full scope. it's felt. O, to let it live. They gaze out, and look over the audience in awe at what they see. The MAN-MADE sculpture, stands center of them and looks like a dead robot. It stares out with the same expression as its creators, but with a blank look of horror/death on it's face. Like Picasso's second to last self-portrait. Hold in the tableau. Black out. The End