CAL
My mother, this happened to her, at least that is what they
told me.

ALEA
The one with the radios?

CAL
Yes, she had to wear an impossible dress.

ALEA
Was the bodice pretty?

CAL
Pretty, in its way.

ALEA
Did she wear a cangue, too?

CAL
No. Not then. But she did go crazy afterwards.

ALEA
Hence, the radios?

CAL
Something like that. And then it wasn’t too long after the
radios that she died. But it took her a long time to die.
When she was dying, for weeks, all that was happening was
happening, all the while was happening, and nothing else.
Just her dying. I gave her cheese and wine. She never ate.
She never drank. And then after she died, finally, I
couldn’t find my own life.

ALEA
A disruption.

CAL
You think it might’ve occurred before, that you lived a life
somewhere, sometime before her death. When you might’ve
smoked a little weed. Or drank your first whiskey straight.
Or kissed a girl, a real kiss, because she was so, so
pretty, and you wanted her to know that. You circle over
those moments.

ALEA
An approximation.

CAL
And you circle, like a bird falling and falling from the
heavens to her rookery. Dropping and circling. You think
you’ve located home. But it’s really in the circling that’s
home. You’re suspended and falling. And what’s circling is
inside you. Your mother. Or it may be all that was
happening, saying, I am beautiful, I am full of love, I am
dying.