-8-
'As a person alive I would
be driven by every current situation. In gear. Engaged. To sleep engaged
with the sixteen different situations that require my . . . engagement,
the next day. Geared up. As alive I . . . very alive--don't question
it! A player, as a player, it was never me, but the others. All incredibly
. . . engaging, involving, I mean I was aware of every circumstance
pertaining to the next day when I was alive I was alive I say--"
"What happened to your vocabulary?"
"So how come you stopped?
And ended up in this . . . hotel, if this is a hotel?"
"Sixteen situations? Come
on. More like three, four at the most, problems preventing you on
a given night from addressing the real problem."
"Isn't that more like it?"
"Anytime I want I can get
out of here. I'm just waiting for the time. Waiter!"
"You know how this place
operates?"
"Tell me please."
"It operates on the principle
that everything is provided for."
"Huh?"
"Well no. Not everything
is provided for; for in fact everything is not provided. What it is
is: what is provided is provided. Which isn't everything, by any means,
but the thing is, what is provided for is at least provided."
"You certainly made that
clear."
"This is very different from
life. How long have you been here?"
"In life, we recollect, much
imaginable is maybe possible, but little, or
maybe nothing, is provided
for. Here, everything is provided. So you have no discrepancies, no
worries, only . . ."
"You also have no freedom,
and it is very boring. Would be intolerable except for the memory
of life which is something you can at least mull over still."
"This is a prison. But you
don't know what the crime is."
"Apparently the crime is
having lived."
"Or not lived when you had
the chance."
"I lived, I took the chance.
I was not recalcitrant. I saw early and late that I was supposed to
live. I didn't shirk. I didn't go spiritual on everybody. I saw the
situation. I was a player. They can't say I didn't live!"
"Tell me something."
"Yes?"
"Tell me how many people
you know are dead, and alive, when you die.. You know what I mean?
Can you tally it up? Were you in a majority of the living or the dead,
when--"
"Well let's see. Interesting
parlor game. My parents are dead, my older brother alive but, well
he would be alive, still is--that's interesting how the world must
still go on; my wife, I think she dies right after I did, do, so I'm
looking for her like she could walk right in.. My children very much
alive with all their children. But my friends, a majority of them
were killed in freak accidents, now that I think about it. This is
crazy, running this tally sheet? Why do you ask that?"
