And your Identity, Mrs. Smith?

I just read Amandolin's newest blog entry, and it is riddled with epiphanies having to do with the ultimate insignificance of the human race. She's not disregarding our role in this world, she just delves into the fact that we ARE small compared to our environment, the planet we live on, the surrounding planets, our galaxy, the universe...I could go on. It's unbelievable how SMALL we are. WE ARE SO SMALL. And yet our lives mean so much to us. The people we know, the enemies we have, the family we love, our friends, our teachers, our mentors, we all look for answers in them, we all want to know what is going on in this world, but do you realize how minuscule their opinions are? They're just one person. One person in this infinite...infinity. I can't help but laugh when I think about this. I think about the times when something really really meant a lot to me, and how important it really was to me. That thing, that object, will soon be gone. Soon, that stupid something won't mean anything. I like that our interpretation of the word "soon" has become something like 5 minutes or a half hour. Do you know how small a half hour is compared to the history of the universe? Do you know how small 5 years is? How about 10? 20? We're not even hitting a second, that's how small that is. A person's lifetime doesn't even scratch the surface. So when I say "soon", I'm speaking in universe time. I'm talking about when my life ends in some 65 years or so. Soon, everything that was such a big deal to me, that hit me so hard personally, will not matter in its tangible form.

This whole subject got me thinking a lot about the last act in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Now, that is a play that only really truly hits home for people once they have either been in it, or have seen it performed, cuz I swear to God, I tried to read it on my own before I was in it, and almost shot myself in the head it was so boring. It's just so simple. There's hardly any conflict. Oh, fuck that, there's NO conflict. Up until the last act. The last act is where everything is explained, where you finally understand the play's simplicity, when you finally KNOW what Wilder is saying.

Throughout the entire play, there is a character called The Stage Manager, and he is basically the narrator. He sets up the simple set changes, tells the story, and gives incite and back stories for most of the characters. It takes place in a very small rural town called Grover's Corners, which I believe was in Massachusetts, or Vermont, or some New England state. It starts out in the early early 1900s, around 1904 or so. We see this play in what I believe is a 15 year period, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. The story seems to generally circle around a gal named Emily Webb, and a boy named George Gibbs, and their families', and the small circle of friends their families' have. George and Emily grow up together, date each other, eventually marry, and all of this happens in the first two acts. It's all very cute and beautiful, hardly touching on its main theme, but it gives enough foreshadowing for us to know where the 3rd act leads.

It opens on a graveyard. But because of the bare set, the audience is usually unaware of this. There are about 3 rows of chairs located somewhere on the stage, indicating gravestones. The person who represents each gravestone is seen sitting in the chair. It's all very new age and abstract compared to the simplicity of the rest of the play, but it all makes sense if acted right, and when the Stage Manager goes into his 400 page monologue about each person, where they are, the significance of where they are and all of that.

Emily Webb is dead at this point. She died while giving birth, which we all find to be relatively ironic. There is an empty chair on stage next to the dead, and she eventually resides in that chair, after the Stage Manager allows her to relive one of her childhood memories, and the dead assure her that she needs to "sit down and be patient", even though they all have no idea what they are being patient for. Emily relives her 12th birthday, and as she witnesses each moment and sees her parents, and her brother, and her home, she realized how much she took for granted and is immediately filled with regret. But she also realizes that she has to come to terms with her own mortality, and does, in a very moving speech dedicated to her goodbyes. She says goodbyes to "sleeping and waking up", to "clocks ticking" and "new-ironed dresses", obscure things we wouldn't even think twice about, but mean the world to her in that moment. And after her last goodbye, she says these heart-wrenching words: "Oh, Earth. You're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

I am now crying, and I haven't even mentioned the most beautiful moment in the play. Yes, Emily's goodbye is beautiful, but there is a line that comes before it that has haunted me since I heard it.

When the 3rd act begins, and all the dead people file onstage into their respected gravestones, the Stage Manager stands off to the side and watches them file in. Throughout the play, he has a pocket watch that he looks at constantly, giving us another essence of the power of time. After the dead have filed in, he looks at his pocket watch and begins an epic monologue with the line: "This time 9 years have gone by, friends." He goes on to describe the area they are at, who the dead people are that we see, why they are here, and then he delves into the thought processes of all the dead people. He goes on to talk about our identities and how they can be gone in an instant, but how there is an eternal part in all of us.

"There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."

I don't even know what to say about that line. I don't even know how to explain it. It's just true, it is so true. Think about all the relationships you have had, the effects you have had on people, the ways you may have inspired people, or the ways you have been inspired. It all comes from someone that you knew before, and someone they knew before, and someone that they knew before...everyone is connected, everyone rubs off onto everyone. I am a concoction of who I know, who my mother knew, who my father knew, who my friends know, who my grandparents and my aunts and my uncles and my teachers and my directors all knew. And when you think about that...everything doesn't seem so insignificant. Suddenly you feel proud to be bearing all of these qualities that have come from millions upon millions of people throughout centuries and eras. It all comes down to a fucking game of Six Degrees of Separation, goddam it, and who you know, and who you knew, and who they know and knew, and so on and so forth. Suddenly, you have all of these people's qualities and teachings echoing in you and you feel obligated to tell everyone and pass it on to someone else, who will then in turn pass it on to someone else. MY MIND IS FUCKING BLOWN.

All I can do is hang my head and smile at the paradoxes formed between significances and insignificances in this world, and wonder what each passing moment does for each person, and how different each moment can be depending upon opinion. I feel so small and so large at the same time.

I forgot this remarkable gem Wilder wrote as well, it is a whole other world to look into:

"Emily: Do any human beings realize life while they live it--every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No. (Pause.) The Saints and Poets, maybe they do some."

I want to be one of those Saints or Poets.