PRINCESS
My
existence, my being is sleep, therefore life is my logical limit. But
maybe my being is waiting for the kiss. Waiting for the kicks, the free
kick into a different way of being. Then it’s time out for being? No,
it’s overtime! Any one of you princes, step up, time to score! I would
like to have an experience, but I am paralyzed by my inability to wake
up. The question is: Are you even the person for whose kiss I should
be waiting? I rather not ask the question, since I don’t even know who
I will be when I’ve woken up. In the meantime I will have been dead.
That is, I am still dead at this time. But unlike others, I am not permitted
to dissolve in death and turn into nothingness, quite the contrary,
I was given the task to pull death into myself until I almost burst,
he is the consultant of and constant in my being, so to speak, so that
I would overcome his chasm and work everyday for the possibility to
be. Why should I have to work so hard, only to end up as dead as before?
Next question: Who is the person waking up? Whom will you kiss? I’ve
never seen you before. How should I know who you were before, I have
lost all connection to life. Yes, Being is incomparable, but
what can one do? Anyway, there’s nothing to compare it with. You just
come here and say, you are a prince. Well, I suppose you must be, since
I seem to have woken up this moment, which could only be possible only
because of you, as Mrs. F. predicted ages ago. No matter who you are,
I have to take what I get, to be sure. I am not talking in my sleep,
from which I wake up occasionally. Apparently, I really am awake now.
Mrs F. and her predictions that not even my soul would bear staying
in my body forever! And for that fortune-tellers like her dare to charge
money, incredible! How could you bear it, my dear Mr. Prince, if not
even my soul could! Would you be kind enough to tell me who I am, since
I am about to conclude from this kiss who you are? In that regard I
am a step ahead of you. Is Prince just your name or are you really one?
How stupid. You have to be one, see above; otherwise I’d still be asleep.
But who are you really? Which country do you have in mind to rule? Mine,
I bet. And for that I let myself be pricked by a thorn or whatever it
was. For a while I rummaged inside myself quite senselessly to find
the source of the violent pain, though I could easily see the thorn,
that pointed thing, you know. And then I was gone. Out. Film torn. Finished.
Who am I? Where am I? It occurred to me now that you must be a prince
and I submit to this truth of your being. Okay, many will envy me because
of you, but also for myself, because I am also a princess. I appear
on cover photos, though not even those can prove to me who I am. Maybe
all people are princesses and princes. This is how priests talk, and
in their struggles to survive people are stupid enough to believe them.
Be that as it may, all people I know are hedges. At least, that’s a
step in the right direction. And the big guys treat them mercilessly,
like nature unto nature. I vaguely remember. Roses. That’s enough to
make one insecure. What does
it say here? A woman says, it was a form of insanity. I hoped to finally
be able to live because of him. She says: I wanted to live only for
him and it was as if I had found my soul only through him, as if without
him I was nothing but an empty vessel and only he was to fulfill me,
and only with love. Bravo. This woman has just been created and I can
be the first one to congratulate her. She is looking at a man now and
seems to know exactly who she has to deal with. So she is getting ready
to get the whole thing going and lasting, instead of being content ruminating
on what she already has and enjoying the juicy pasture. Now she asks
her conquest: Are you the same person you were yesterday? And will you
be the same tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Now that he’s already
her heart and soul, she also wants to know who he is? Unbelievable.
And if he says no, everything will collapse in her. In my case, it’s
only the hedge, a thorny investment, that will collapse. But since you
must be Mr. Right, this hedge will rise and become human instead. Would
you please take a step back now, so that you won’t get stepped on, because
my royal court will most likely change right now from an overgrown hedge
back to human bodies again. I hope the entrances haven’t been walled
up in the meantime, otherwise people in the shape of their own bodies
wouldn’t get in, poor things! Not a rosy situation, let me tell you,
even though made of roses. Waking up from one condition and not yet
or no longer knowing the other which one is supposed to get into. I
look at your tanned face, Mr. Prince, at the gel in your dark hair and
the muscles under your T-shirt, I look for the knee and the ass in your
overly loose surfer pants and I ask: Can it be that it is you somewhere
underneath there? Can it be that you are you? Can it be that I am I?
Can it be that you mean me? It must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
That is: If you hadn’t come here, neither of us would be here. That
is, without your coming here, I wouldn’t exist, at least not yet. Thank
you.
PRINCE
I
was told I should come to you, kiss you, and see what happens. Then
take it from there. Something will come out of it in any case. I like
what I see, it was worth it, that much I can say already. I am power.
Whoever goes against me, loses himself, especially if he wants to take
the credit for himself. It’s a good thing you realized right away that
you have to thank me and only me for your existence. How should I say
it: I am I. As you know, I really am who I am. That’s the way it is.
I would like to be the Eternal One, maybe that’s who I am, since I haven’t
died yet, on the contrary, I even raised a dead person. With a kiss.
Must be a nice awakening: Huddled up and hidden away for so long, and
then the first thing you see: God. Me! I! I! I am the one who raises
the dead. Time says—and it is also called: I, and I am here now. No
one else. Little mouse, Princess dear, I am sure that earlier, when
you were still asleep and no one polished your nails, you couldn’t give
Being the slightest hint that you were still around. Neither
could you give me the pleasure of a postcard, a letter, or a call, even
though my cell phone was always turned on. That was just the point:
I was not to know where you are and I found you nonetheless. I was the
only one! Therefore I simply MUST be God. He who knows what no one else
knows. Most probably I even created you myself. If I am God, I can do
that. So there. And now I even did away with time because while you
were sleeping, you were gone, as predicted, for a hundred years, which
now has become the past for you, no no, don’t worry, time didn’t go
away. Since time didn’t leave any marks on you, you must have been in
the hands of God, who personally stopped the hands of the clock. Yes.
Because I am God, I was able to do that too, giving Being a hint
that now that I kissed you it should wind up the clock and chase after
you like a wild dog, so let the aging begin! In a hundred years there
won’t be any more kissing, there’ll be plenty of lifting! But of course,
we don’t want to perceive time as the enemy of eternity, only as the
enemy of female beauty, because I as God can assure you that our goal
is not eternity, nor is it its little sister, the eternity of values.
So let’s have the massacre, I mean the mascara, as long as there’s still
time for it, let’s get the wrinkle cover up stick. They must have told
you the wrong thing. You can’t erase time or throw fresh paint on it,
once it’s there. When our time has come we suddenly regret having a
body, which we dearly loved before. Because our goal is a pleasant life
to be written up in magazines and shown on television. There’s nothing
like that in eternity, nothing to report about. Nothing can happen after
all, because it’s always now and one can never read it as the past.
It certainly is pleasant for you and me that we don’t have to examine
right now what eternity has in store for us, I mean that we don’t have
to examine what eternity would mean to our lives. It could mean, after
all, that we could drop dead this moment, or that we would have to kiss
each other in all eternity, because we could never turn off this moment
again, but later we wanted to go skiing to have our picture taken, and
those beloved television cameras would want to be part of our wedding,
wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t you also see it that way?
PRINCESS
Well
. . . let’s see. Sounds good. Preserving moments. At least we finally
have some in stock again. Let’s assume that while I was sleeping, I
accepted the eternal as its own genuine reality, and it must be something
like that, since in my sleep I moved about this timeless eternity like
a fish in water. Moreover, I was prophesied eternal love by a prince
who would save me; love as another one of your tacky eternal values,
I beg your pardon, that’s not one of yours? That’s supposed to be one
of mine? I’m just saying, just because it has shown itself to me, love,
well, you still have to honor that voucher, Mr. Prince, we are in agreement
on that, aren’t we? Well then, admittedly: I was in eternity, suddenly
I am thrown into temporality, by you, my dear, but how can I understand
my being and the time in which I am I or let’s say, in which I am, how
then should I understand time ahead of time. I am only just starting
to move within this coordinate system according to which women are saying:
I was totally fascinated by that man! Furthermore, they are saying:
He radiated an inner strength, etc. Being isn’t just simply being there,
something else is needed. I’ve been stored as a princess and stirred
by a prince. Do you really think that saying: God is here, is the same
as: The prince is here? A prince, after all, can be deposed by his mother,
the queen, because he screwed a mean woman, but who should depose God?
Well, maybe even me, because I was also eternal, at least for a while?
Sleeping Beauty as the one who defeated God! (who won over God) Won’t
that cause some stir in the news and a delicious stir fry to go!
PRINCE
I
can see already, if I don’t explain it to you, you’ll never understand
your being, and who could explain it better than I! You got it from
me, after all! So then, I, your creator, am telling you: Your Being
happens now that I have delivered it to you. But if you want to own
it, as your stock-in-trade, something else will have to happen, which
I will show you right now.
(He
puts on some sort of costume made of plush with a very big penis).
...
The complete
text is available in THEATER, Volume 36, Number 2, published by the Yale
School of Drama and Duke University Press. (Readers can order it at www.dukeupress.edu/theater
).