Sarah Ruhl will sort you out

A few months back I wondered out loud if she might be the world's first quantum playwright.

After reading "Dead Man's Cell Phone" last evening (it finally arrived yesterday, three months or so after I pre-ordered it from Amazon) I know she is.

From the play:


You know what's funny? I never had a cell phone. I didn't want to always be there, you know. Like if your phone is on you're supposed to be there. Sometimes I like to disappear. But it's like — when everyone has their cell phone on, no one is there. It's like we're all disappearing the more we're there.


But when Gordon's phone rang and rang, after he died, I thought his phone was beautiful, like it was the only thing keeping him alive, like as long as people called him he would be alive. That sounds — a little — I know — but all those molecules, in the air, trying to talk to Gordon — and Gordon — he's in the air too — so maybe they all would meet up there, whizzing around — those bits of air — and voices.


I wonder how long it will take before no one calls him again and then he will be truly gone.


I wonder too. I'll leave his phone on as long as I live. I'll keep recharging it. Just in case someone calls. Maybe an old childhood friend. You never know.


I get onto the subway. A tomb for people's eyes .I believe that when people are in transit their souls are not in their bodies. It takes a couple minutes to catch up. Walking — horseback — that is the speed at which the soul can stay in the body during travel. So airports and subway stations are very similar to hell. People are vulnerable — disembodied — they're looking around for their souls while they get a shoe shine.


I put these two together. You're a sick person, you want to deal with red tape? You want to be put on hold — listen to bad music on the phone for seven years while you wait for your organs to dry out — is that love? No. Is that compassion? No. I make people feel good about their new organs. I call it: compassionate obfuscation. There are parts enough to make everyone whole; it's just that the right parts are not yet in the right bodies.


That's right. When you die, you go straight to the person you most loved, right back to the very moment, the very place, you decided you loved them. There's a spiritual pipeline, you might say. In life we are often separated from what we love best — errors of timing, of geography — but there are no errors in the afterlife.

....................

$11.16.