Penelope and Ulysses Page 3
YOUNG PENELOPE: I follow the sea with my heart.
PENELOPE: Have you brought the danger
and beauty of the sea?
YOUNG PENELOPE: Once I found a bottle with a note
floating in the shallow waters
of another shipwrecked and sunken world.
BOTH: “There is the sea, and who will drink it dry?”20
YOUNG PENELOPE: Ulysses, when we were young
you felt that I would drown
because I swam in the unmapped
and uncharted waters.
PENELOPE: I told you: in these waters
they do not throw nets.
You told me there are other dangers.
BOTH: The sea can seduce you and keep you.
PENELOPE: The sea has kept you from me.
Who can convince the sea to be reasonable?
YOUNG PENELOPE: We are like the bird and fish
that have fallen in love.
But where do we live?
In the sky? In the sea?
PENELOPE: Who would want to tame
the passion and desire
of the forever making and breaking sea?
YOUNG PENELOPE: I came from behind the sea,
and now where do I go
when it cuts me off?
PENELOPE: Do I want you to stay?
I can see you, smell you, sense you,
but something is preventing me
from touching you.
BOTH: We cannot touch,
I long for your touch. [They touch their breasts.]
PENELOPE: We cannot touch
because we both are suspended . . .
YOUNG PENELOPE: Above or below our life together . . .
PENELOPE: But we cannot thread our lives
into the eye of time,
into the eye of the needle . . .
BOTH: That pierces the heart . . .
PENELOPE: And heat of the moment.
YOUNG PENELOPE: I know a lot about threads
and how far they stretch
and what happens
when they break and disappear.
PENELOPE: Sometimes you have to undo the tapestry
and start again.
But it is never the same.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Something has changed.
PENELOPE: Something is missing.
BOTH: Something is longing.
PENELOPE: What is missing is only the golden threads
that hook themselves into the human heart
and pull upon the other,
to an anchored and shared
destination.
It is only those threads that I weave
and spin in my arrivals and departures.
They lodge themselves in the heart.
YOUNG PENELOPE: In this pulling and tension
between what connects and separates us,
the golden thread that will not break
always pulls the anchor in my heart.
PENELOPE: We are both suspended
upon the invisible thread of a time
that does not meet the heat of the physical.
YOUNG PENELOPE: We are suspended like stars.
We watch the light of the other
but we cannot feed from each other’s heat.
Who are the philosophers who say
that the physical does not matter?
PENELOPE: I feel everything
through the longing of my body,
the longing of my deep rebellion.
BOTH: I am from another world, another time
that has burned into the fragility
of the passing moment,
the moment that has become my eternity.
YOUNG PENELOPE: For I am meant to live
from the moments I have had with you
for the rest of my life,
beyond and further
than any trained navigator can go.
PENELOPE: Ulysses, you have shipwrecked me
on an island surrounded by men
whom I must seduce
so that I can remain devoted
and faithful to you,
so that I keep you alive in me.
YOUNG PENELOPE: How do you seduce a man?
PENELOPE: Through sexual favours?
YOUNG PENELOPE: Through food and comfort?
BOTH: That is not seduction,
only a temporary need gratification
that one can get with anyone,
at any time.
PENELOPE: Seduction of all the senses.
I know the secrets of the sirens.
I know how to keep men
burning and longing.
I am from the hidden,
the unknown, the untouched.
YOUNG PENELOPE: For ten years they have lived outside me.
For ten long years they seek
my favours and choice
of one of them.
At any time they could have and can,
conquer, and steal what is not theirs.
Instead they wait for the prize.
PENELOPE: To taste and eat
from the seed of the seductress
who is both a bird and a fish.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Aren’t you glad that I learned to swim
in uncharted and unmapped waters
so that I can live
on this suspension of time, in longing?
Aren’t you glad that I swim
in uncharted and unmapped waters,
the darkest turbulence of my heart,
so that I can learn the secrets of seduction
that keep me in love and others desiring me?
PENELOPE: Like you, Ulysses, I am a navigator
and influence the burning of my vessel
so that you may see me,
but others can come and claim this fire.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Like you, Ulysses,
I seduce the senses of men . . .
PENELOPE: And influence their hearts to follow me . . .
BOTH: In preparation for their arrival and departure.
YOUNG PENELOPE: I am your love,
and yet I am unattainable
and absent from you.
PENELOPE: I am from your hidden world,
from your sunken world,
from your lost and forgotten ideals,
from the ashes of your youth,
from the sparks of your passion and desire.
YOUNG PENELOPE: I am the one you love,
the one you avoid,
the one you hide from,
the one you find too intense . . .
PENELOPE: too demanding,
too overwhelming
and yet you will not let me swim past you.
BOTH: Why do you keep me alive
in the ashes of your unspoken and unfulfilled?
YOUNG PENELOPE: Do you have any idea
the deep despair and aloneness
I retreat into
when I cannot hear your voice,
see the sea in your eyes,
feel your heat near me,
feel your heat on me and in me?
BOTH: I am Penelope the blesséd and curséd.
PENELOPE: In my courtyard
I have naked men that seek me,
and I desire and long for the absent,
the uncharted, the unmapped.
BOTH: I seek the journey of the hea
rt.
I seek the body and seed of Ulysses.
PENELOPE: And there is my blessing and curse.
For twenty years I have ached for him,
longed for him, searched in the sea for him,
asked the sirens about the secrets of his heart.
BOTH: All remain silent.
All remain hidden,
unseen and still.
PENELOPE: Did you hear that?
There it goes again.
The creaking and moaning of a vessel
that has been on the sea for too long.
You all have come from the darkness
to take parts of my life,
to make it yours.
I have travelled into the unmapped
and uncharted worlds
of the searching, the seeking,
the deep longing of the heart.
YOUNG PENELOPE: The unfilled heart.
PENELOPE: The untouched desires.
BOTH: The fires that burn and keep me alive.
PENELOPE: I have waited for you to arrive.
You have arrived at the precise moment
of my departure.
BOTH: Will you stay?
PENELOPE: Will you take me with you when you leave?
Have you been searching
for decades or eons,
an eternity?
BOTH: “There is the sea and who will drink it dry?”21
YOUNG PENELOPE: Have you brought
the turbulence of the sea with you,
in you?
PENELOPE: Do I want you to stay?
I can see you,
smell you, sense you,
but something is preventing me
from touching you.
YOUNG PENELOPE: The physical.
How I desire the physical.
Even my teacher Socrates understood
all experience comes through senses,
the blood of the physical.
BOTH: For I desire and know
only what is of earth,
sea, sky, and man.
PENELOPE: In my tapestry I weave the mighty breakers
that have shipwrecked me here.
YOUNG PENELOPE: In my tapestry
the salt of your tears
and seed can be tasted.
PENELOPE: Do you have the burning desire
to be consumed by the journey of the navigator
who seeks the hidden, the unknown?
YOUNG PENELOPE: Do you have the courage
to swim where mermaids and sirens
lose their glory?
BOTH: Or is all your journey predictable
and rewarded by the acceptance of mediocrity?
Safety and security in the name of love.
I am afraid to be without you, love.
What of your Journey?
The one you were meant to make?
What of your Journey?
PENELOPE: There it goes again.
[NOISE: something falling, breaking.]
YOUNG PENELOPE: Did you hear it?
PENELOPE: Did you see it?
[Flickering of fire light]
BOTH: Did you feel it?
ULYSSES [offstage]: Penelope!
BOTH: Did you hear it?
PENELOPE: The groaning of a ship
that has carried too much in deep waters,
the groaning of my life,
the ache of the sirens
that are driven by the tenderness of truth.
ULYSSES [offstage]: [loud ] Penelope! [soft weeping]
BOTH: There it goes again.
YOUNG PENELOPE: I can hear him, in me.
PENELOPE: I can see him in me.
I can hear him in the darkest silence,
the mutest world.
YOUNG PENELOPE: He is calling for me.
PENELOPE: He is seeking me.
YOUNG PENELOPE: He is thinking of me.
PENELOPE: All the women he loves have my face.
All have to make this sacrifice to him and me.
YOUNG PENELOPE: All witches, all goddesses
have to change their face to mine.
PENELOPE: And when they love him
it is I who collect him to me.
It is I who receives his gift in me.
The longing.
[The stage darkens.]
PENELOPE: [holding his sword above her head, whispers]
Ulysses! Ulysses! [offers her sword to YOUNG PENELOPE]
[Complete darkness.]
Note: At the end of the dialogue when the elder PENELOPE finishes her “longing of Ulysses,” the YOUNGER PENELOPE will take the sword from her hand, lift it up, and run into the next Act, which is “Joy.”
The lights will go dark and then light up to a sunny beautiful day, with only YOUNG PENELOPE on stage to be followed by YOUNG ULYSSES and the start of Act II.
Act II
Joy
Colours of Spring
[Ulysses and the young Penelope are in their sacred chambers, madly in love, but they also sense that something will enter their world that will change them and their world together forever. Nothing will remain the same, and sensing this, they are vividly intense, enjoying every moment they have together. These moments will have to feed them, in the face of adversity, uncertainly separation, or even death. That is why this dialogue between them is so intense and playful.
The lights work in harmony and together.
As the lights diminish around PENELOPE, the YOUNG PENELOPE will enter the stage and the lights become bright.
YOUNG ULYSSES is dressed as a warrior. He is strong, happy, and in love.
Both YOUNG PENELOPE and YOUNG ULYSSES enter at the same time, YOUNG PENELOPE in front of him and he following her. Bright yellow lights.]
YOUNG PENELOPE: Ulysses, Ulysses.
You lost your sword to me.
[laughs and puts his sword behind her neck.]
[Music. PENELOPE starts to dance “The Song of Penelope”—a warrior’s dance.
ULYSSES watches and at the ending joins her
in their play and worshipping of each other’s body and youth.]
YOUNG ULYSSES: Once more, my love.
[They swordfight with neither one dominating.
Then they bow to each other in mutual respect of each other’s skills.
ULYSSES bows to YOUNG PENELOPE and she returns his sword.
They kneel in front of each other and revere each other’s beauty.
They are on their knees facing each other in deep longing and desire.]
I swear by all that makes and breaks me,
my purpose is to always find you,
to always seek you,
to always long and ache for you,
my beloved and desirable lover.
Whatever life, with all its turns and twists,
brings or asks,
by the power of the gods,
the anger of the devils,
the rage of the furies,
and whether I have been blessed in heaven
or cursed in hell; I am in heaven and in hell,
I will worship you every night.
[puts down his sword and kisses her passionately.]
YOUNG PENELOPE: And will you not reverence me
in the morning?
For not to be with you
would be for me an eternal night
in which I would stay on the sea of life
searching and seeking and longing for you,
in every passing port,
every passing face.
The earth with all its passing beauty
would be a world of darkness.
YOUNG ULYSSES: Did you know, Penelope,
that before I saw your face
I loved you as a formless shape and flame?
You have haunted me since long
before I knew your name.
When I saw your eyes,
your smile, your face [touches her face tenderly],
I knew I was with my woman.
I knew I had the incarnation
of all loving—
you are all women to me.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Did we dream of each other
before we met?
I had already heard your voice
in my dreams.
I recognised you when I heard your voice.
I had come home.
Or was it that you had come home to me?
I arrived and you had waited for me
with kindness and tenderness.
Every moment, every second is to be lived and consumed
in the fire of our love.
You are the fire
in my moment
and the seed from eternity.
YOUNG ULYSSES: Therefore, there is no other way—
I will reverence and delight
in the joy that you bring to me
for I will need to carry
these moments with me
when the sea calls me back to her,
when my destiny takes me away from you.
YOUNG PENELOPE: The sea—she is your mistress
and she surrounds my world.
Why are you listening
to her murmuring?
YOUNG ULYSSES: I do not listen to her murmuring
with my ear.
The murmurs,
sighs, whispers,
and rage are in my heart.
My heart resembles the tides
and passions of the sea, swirling
and raging the river of blood in me.
We are all related to the desires
and passions of the sea.
Last night I dreamed
that the sea was calling me,
“Ulysses, return to me.”
All her sirens and mermaids
have your face and voice, Penelope,
and all were tempting me.
I struggled to hide from her song
and all the while my heart beat and raged
like her mighty breakers.
My heart never rests.
It is always moving,
making, breaking, flowing
in deep tenderness or dark rage.
It is always awake.
Always seeking and longing.