Kristen Kosmas – Part 2

The actor imagines a scene
it has heard described
from a movie: a razorblade
slicing across an eyeball
(“Or was it the moon?” it wonders, “Was it the moon or an eye? Was it a movie?
Was there a razorblade?”)
The actor imagines falling out a window
& being impaled
on a fencepost

The actor imagines being
The actor imagines being small enough
to be caught in a mousetrap
The actor imagines being caught in a mousetrap
(Perhaps the legs twitch here, perhaps not)

The actor imagines not being
The actor imagines not being able
The actor imagines not being able to spell the word “balloon”
in a spelling contest, aired
on a kind of futuristic
global
psychic
television
which is broadcast by satellite & no one even has to turn it on!
It just appears
In the mind
Of everyone

The actor leaves out one of the ells
in the word balloon the actor
imagines the failure the actor
imagines the awfulness
of futuristic, global, psychic
television

The actor imagines
being trapped under something in water
not being able to get its head out
from under water
The actor remembers
it did nearly drown once

The actor imagines everyone it loves
The actor imagines everyone it loves genuinely
The actor imagines everyone it loves genuinely
leaving forever, in various ways
Some with suitcases, some with clenched fists, some with raised voices,
some in pine boxes

The actor imagines a Chinese
delivery boy riding up behind it on a bicycle making a terrible racket
A terrific squeaking and screeching, it imagines a maniacal
Chinese delivery boy harming it with knives
(Wheels screeching sounds sound like blades crisscrossing sounds)
The actor imagines the delivery boy laughing, the delivery boy does not
kill the actor in its imagination, he only does
irreparable damage, permanent damage
The actor imagines permanent damage
of all kinds
to all kinds of things and persons, ideas and geographies

The actor imagines not having any legs
ears

The actor imagines the life force leaking out
being sucked out through a small point on the chest somewhere near the heart
The actor imagines this with the body, not the mind
(This may inspire a rising, or bowing out, of the chest)

The actor imagines not being able to find the words
The actor thinks about its pajamas
The actor thinks about its soft parts, its vulnerable
parts under its pajamas and wishes it had
a permanent shell, permanent shells
(The actor’s hand may subconsciously
gravitate toward & fall
near or around its soft parts, near or around its vulnerable parts
But only SUBCONSCIOUSLY!
The actor’s hand may only subconsciously
gravitate toward & fall. Otherwise
the actor is in the wrong kind of play, is doing
the wrong kind of play.)

The actor imagines getting stuck
Getting stuck like a machine
Getting stuck like a machine in a certain
rhythm
The actor imagines getting stuck like a machine in a certain rhythm of petting
Of petting another
creature
The actor imagines petting the other creature
raw, not being able to stop because
the petting is inspired by— is an act of— is inspired by— is an act of—
is inspired by— is an act of— love.
The actor imagines forgiveness

The actor imagines plastic.
The many horrors of plastic.

The actor imagines the pinprick again
in the fingertip
The pinprick gets bigger and bigger
The hole at first swallows the whole
hand
Then the arm
Then the self
Part by part

Then the chair the actor sits on
Then the room it sits in
Then everything
Including the audience

The building
The entire block
As far out as it can imagine
The pinprick
hole swallows the whole
world

The actor imagines the life force, which was previously sucked out
going out now to the very edges of the universe
And gathering all that was once within it (the universe)
and collecting it in a kind of imperial sweep
Completely disintegrating and annihilating it, without design, desire, or purpose
Then, the life-force returns to the actor on its monstrous path
bringing all along, but now all as nothingness, all as momentum
of nothingness

To clarify: The life force
goes out, gathers everything, destroys it (almost as if by accident), comes back
into the actor and then! Goes on until it (everything)
disappears into a pin-prick in the very center of the actor’s person—
the soft spot under the breast-bone/rib-cage—
The universe, dragged back there by the life-force, disappears into the actor
Everything
disappears into the actor & brings the actor with it
The actor disappears

To clarify: The actor
imagines infinite expansion
and then infinite retraction
out of & then back into the self
This ultimate expansion slash retraction (which destroys everything and returns it
to nothingness taking the actor and audience with it)
is difficult to describe, but easy to imagine
It’s also
really super scary and weird
For the actor

To clarify: The universe
exhales
& then inhales
completely
And then nothing ever happens
after that

Or so the actor imagines

The actor has been sitting in a chair this whole time. There has been a blanket on its lap, which the actor now slowly lifts to expose at first the feet, then the ankles, then the shins, then the knees, then the thighs. When I say slowly, I mean: SLOWLY.
At this point, the legs of the actor open. The whites of the thighs are revealed as well as the white fabric of its underclothes.

On this whiteness is projected a film.

The film is one of nature. Things happening in nature.

The film plays for a time. We hear the mechanism
of the film projector.