How do you keep yourself a “me” when those who are telling your story would have you a “they?” Or worse, not have you at all? Tell nothing, see nothing. Turn you invisible with their “they.”
How do you keep yourself a “me” when you are in a wave of “they?” You long for the arrogance of those who retain their “me,” who get to tell the story of you. It is tempting to turn the others around you to “others,” if only to try to find your “me” within the throng of “them,” forgetting you are both “me” and “them.”
Do you find yourself through separation or connection?
Do you find yourself at all?
Excerpt from EXODUS -- Libretto, below,
by Ursula Andkjaer Olsen, translated by Barbara J. Haveland, 2016
“Let the one who is unclean
wash him- or herself no let the
one who is unclean be bound
hand and foot far from
the wash-basin.
* * *
Someone picks all the hands
off the arms stretched out
toward them. And display them
in vases in their living rooms.
The shadows stand almost completely
still on the bare wall.
Someone picks all the apples
and chases us out of the cores.
Let the one who is unclean
wash him- or herself.”