There'd Be Nothing Left

The thing about you is
You don't have any idea
What you're getting yourself into

See me
I look at you
And I think--it wouldn't be fair

It wouldn't even be fair of me
To slide on over
And suggest an introduction

Because--

Once I got into you
There'd be no getting rid of me
Cause, see--

I make an impact
A dent, some would say
An impression

All depending on
How you want to look at it
How you want to let me hit you
Not hurt you, not like you're thinking
Just...making a mark
Only you can see

But between you and me?

There'd be nothing left

No trust
No safety
Nothing stable
Nothing locked

You'd be rocked to your core
And you're still want more
And nobody'll be able
To get you unhooked

Look, I like you
I like you already
I can tell that--
Well, you're exactly what I'm trying
Not to look for

Sweet, kind
Mindful of yourself
Of how you're perceived

And believe me
I would destroy you

Everything
All parts
I look at you
And all I see
Is everything
I could break
And bust
And smash

You may think you're strong
You're wrong, I promise
There'd be nothing left

And the next guy would pay
And the guy after that
And you'd either get fat or do drugs
To try and make me go away
With a bigger problem (You won't find it)
Or better sex (It doesn't exist)
Or maybe you'll move (I'm everywhere)
Far away (Won't matter)
To start over (I'm God)
A new life (I'm your God)
And nothing will work (Nothing will work)

Because there'd be nothing left to work
There would
Be Nothing
Left

So you stay over there
And I'll stay right here
And if you come over
I'll politely snub you
Doing you a favor
That you won't even recognize

Your friends will sympathize with you
About the guy at the bar
Who was such a creep
Not knowing
I just saved your life
Or at least
Several years of your life

So thank me now
For resisting the impulse I have
To take what I want
Just for the fun
Of taking it
And breaking it
And making it into something
It'll never be again

Thank me
You're welcome

While You Read Your Paper

While you read your paper
I am sitting here next to you
Your neighbor

Alavere, Alasan
A neighbor

But you sit
You're calm
How nice for you

I hear you've got a new job at the factory
That the pigs from Gojibee have set up
Down by Fiddler's River

Must be nice
Working for pigs

Certainly the only way
You'll ever be looked at
As being clean, my friend

My neighbor

No words

No words mean anything
Not anymore

A word is just something
Somebody gives you
To make you turn your back
So they can kick you in the rear

That is what happened to me
Your neighbor
Alavere, Alasan
What does it matter?
You don't remember
You can't be bothered to remember such things

Poor man
Poor neighbor of mine
Who reads the paper
And has no troubles

Who reads the paper
And pays his rent
And feeds his children
And buys his wife nice things
Because why not?

Because you've earned it
Haven't you?

You most certainly have

You come outside
Before heading to work
At the factory
Down by Fiddler's River
Run by pigs
Who pay you well
Thirty-three syta's a day
And an extra bucket of slop
At lunch time

Oh, you are a rich man
You are a lucky, rich man
How good for you

How very, very good

But even a rich man's house
Can get too noisy
Even a lucky man's house
Can seem a bit cramped

Luck is tricky
It takes up so much room

So you come outside and sit
And here I am
Your neighbor

Alavere, Alasan
Sitting sadly
Hunched over
Wondering what to do next

Worrying about a rent
That will not be paid

Children who will not be fed
A wife who cries every night
And lists the names of men
She should have married

Men who provide
Men like yourself

How strange it must feel
Sitting on the other side
Of an invisible line
That separates
Happiness from misfortune

How odd to be able to relax
And smoke
And survey the news
And all the while
Your neighbor sits beside you
Trying to think of a way out
Of all the problems
He finds himself in

And could you be the solution
To any of those problems, neighbor?

Who knows?

Who will ever know?

Not you

Not while you sit there
On the other side of the line
Reading your paper
Looking at all the people
In the paper
Walking by
Sitting beside you

All the people
Who aren't as lucky
As you

You Live in a Very Small House

You live in a very small house

On a street

That’s getting busier

You moved in when the baby was coming

And you’ve been here ever since

And now the baby’s got a baby coming

You need a new roof

And new paint on the walls

And a carpet for the living room

You decided not to put the pool in this year

Because it’s supposed to rain all summer anyway

And that other stuff is more important

Parades go by in front of your house

And at night, you can sit on the porch

And wonder about the neighbors

When it’s winter, the snow comes right up

To the front door

Like a stray looking for food

When it’s spring, you get flowers you never planted

And the ones you did plant

Never come up

You face disappointment, great and small

Years later, you remember trivial instances

With a golden frame

You get insomnia some nights

And look out the window at the broken pavement

Thinking maybe you should have tried living in the city

What if you feel like pizza at 3am?

What if you need a little noise to sleep?

What if you made a mistake?

You think about people in bigger houses

And wonder if that would make you any happier

I mean, you’re pretty happy right now, aren’t you?

You’re not sick

Nobody you know is sick

The house is yours—paid in full

The car works

The kids aren’t on drugs

The guy’s coming to see about the roof on Thursday

Meanwhile on the street

Patches of nothing

Become overnight retail

They’re putting in a Domino’s a block from you

And another CVS, and the third Walgreen’s in two miles

Plus a yogurt shop and a consignment store

You didn’t go to the city

So the city’s coming to you

Maybe it’s time for a move

But you like the sounds of the high school nearby

Every fall, you curse the increased traffic

Secretly, you like seeing the parents dropping off their kids

You like walking the dog

Down the same blocks

To the same fire hydrants

You like knowing what you’ll see when you wake up

And when you go to bed

And what’s waiting for you after work

You like the way time rolls here

Over and over

Hitting the same bumps, gliding down the same dips

You live in a very small house

On a street

That’s getting busier

And at night, when you can’t sleep

You get to thinking

About all the other houses

And all the other people you know

And don’t know

And never will know

And you think about all the living you’ve done

In this very small house

And you’re sort of amazed at it

That such a small place

Could contain

So much life

A car goes by

And then another

And then nothing

And then nothing but quiet

For a very long

Time

Nobody's Happy for Anybody

When I was a little kid

I wanted one thing

One thing

To be famous

I watched endless hours of television

Movies, hour after hour of nothing but me

Watching all these famous people

And I knew—I KNEW

That one day

I had to be one of them

I just knew it

Like, in my soul

And I think I’m not alone in that

I think, for whatever reason

My generation

My particular generation

Has a lot more people in it

Who want to be movie stars

Or tv stars, or just pop stars

Or just famous

For whatever reason

Famous

I don’t know why

I mean, I know movies and tv and music

Are nothing new

But—

And maybe I’m way off on this

Maybe every generation has had a lot of people in it

Who want to be famous

Maybe I’m not giving—

Well, I don’t know if you’d call it ‘giving somebody credit’

Or whatever

But it just seems like

Everybody I know

Wants to be known

Wants to make an impact

But not just like—invent a cure for cancer

But like—be admired, be envied

Be—I mean, I hate to say ‘popular’

But yeah, popular, right?

I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about, right?

And the problem is

That even as you have this generation of people

All striving for the same thing

The same goal

The goal

That goal

Is losing value

Okay?

Fame—what it is to be famous

Is slowly eroding

Okay?

Because so many more people are famous

And the thing is—

When that all started

When it became possible to be, like—

A Youtube star

Or, a blogger

Or have a million followers on Twitter

We thought, I think, I mean—the collective ‘we’

--We thought that the nature of fame

What it means to be famous

Would just expand

That it would grow

To include all these new people

Who, like, weren’t movie stars

Or pop stars

But were, like, known

Nonetheless

And we didn’t qualify it

We didn’t say—

Oh, well there’s famous

And then there’s being known

And I think that was a mistake

I think we should have done that

Qualified it

Because now we’re labeling all these people as famous

Who aren’t really famous--as famous

The way the people I envied growing up

Were famous

And so instead of expanding

The word ‘Fame'
And the IDEA of fame

Is shrinking

It’s shrinking into nothing

And I think that’s bad

I think that’s really bad

And we need to—

I mean, I don’t know how we can do something about it

Because, I mean, what can you do?

And yes, maybe I’m just jealous because—

I’m not even in that widening and widening pool of people

Who ARE fake-famous

I’ve never even been on a reality show or anything

But—I think—um—

Wait…

Okay, right—I think

That it’s bad

Because we all need

Something

To aspire to

And if that thing

That fame thing

That a lot of us grew up

Wanting

Really really badly

Becomes devalued

I really think we’re all going to, like

Sink into a national depression

Or a generational depression

Or whatever

I mean, isn’t it statistically proven

That we ARE really depressed

And for, like, no reason?

Because things are actually really good

And we have all this stuff?

WELL—that’s because the one thing science can’t give us
Is fame

And it goes really deep
I mean it goes against the idea
Of what the American Dream
Is supposed to be

Because working hard
Doesn’t make you famous

It’s this elusive mysterious thing

And it’s inequitable

I mean, the poor guy down the street

Who just happens to fall off his bike in a really funny way

Can get on The Today Show

The same way a rich guy could, right?

So it’s luck

It’s all luck

And it’s driving all of us crazy

That it’s luck

That we can’t do anything to—

You know, get there faster

If we’re actually going to get there

And so we think

Well, maybe we need to become more ruthless

Maybe we need to become more ambitious

I mean, it’s not true

It doesn’t do any good

But we think it anyway

Because it gives us permission

To hate everybody

Who’s doing really well for themselves
Because we can tell ourselves
That they didn't work for it
That they got it unfairly

I mean, do you know the last time

I was really happy for somebody?

Like, honestly happy for someone

And not threatened by the fact

That they were doing well?

It’s been a long damn time

And I feel bad about it

I really do

I feel like it makes me a bad person

And yet, at the same time

I can’t help it

It feels biological

It feels like it’s built into me

And I don’t know what to do about it

Because my brain or whatever

Sees all these people

Becoming famous

And it at the same time

It sees that fame is becoming something else

And it’s not only panicking and saying—

GO GET THAT

GO GRAB IT

It’s saying—

GRAB IT NOW

GRAB IT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

GRAB IT BEFORE IT STOPS MEANING SOMETHING!

And every time

I see somebody doing well

Succeeding

It's not like--It's not like that whole

Happiness pie idea

Where you think there's only so much happiness in the world

And every time somebody's happy

It's taking some away from you

No

NO

It's not like that

It's--

It's like you see somebody succeed

Become famous

Become known

Whatever

And you think--

You're contributing

You're contributing to this problem

To destroying this thing

That I love

That I want so much

For myself

You're tearing it apart

And I haven't even gotten it yet

It's not even mine yet

And I--

And I…

I…

I…

The thing is…

A lot of us have been spending our whole lives

Running this race

This race

This race towards something

And imagine

Imagine if you spend

Your whole life

Running a race

Only to find out

Halfway through the race

The race that you might not even win

The race that you’ve been running

And will run

Maybe your whole life

Imagine if word got back to you

When you were only at, let’s say

The halfway mark, okay?

I said that, right?

The halfway—okay—

Word gets back

That the finish line

Is gone

That they took it down

That they took everything down

That there is no more race

What do you do?

I mean, if there’s really nothing else you want to do

Besides run this race and win

What

Do

You

Do?

…..

You keep running, right?

You keep right on running

Because—why?

Because you hope—what?

You don’t know

You keep going

But you don’t know why

Because—Maybe because—

What else are you supposed to do, right?

Right?

I mean—

…..

So all you can do

Is run

And hope you get somewhere

And hope there’s something there waiting for you

When you do

The Pet Store

            (SIMON and FELICIA are having a stand-off in the pet store they work at.)

SIMON:  We’re saving the cats.

FELICIA:  That’s not your call, Simon.

SIMON:  Your face looks like an elbow.

FELICIA:  Inappropriate.  I could get you fired for that.

SIMON:  Who’s going to fire me?  The manager who didn’t show up?

FELICIA:  I can fire you.

SIMON:  You and what elbow-faced army?

FELICIA:  Stop saying I have an elbow face.  I don’t.

SIMON:  That’s a matter of opinion.

FELICIA:  Maybe I have opinions about you.

SIMON:  Maybe you do.  Let’s hear them.

FELICIA:  I’m not going to stoop to your level.

SIMON:  Are you saying I’m short?

FELICIA:  I’m saying you look like a raincloud.

SIMON:  I’m going to rain on your elbow face in a second.

FELICIA:  Look, we can’t just take all the cats out of here.

SIMON:  A comet is coming, Felicia.  We can’t just leave the cats here to die.

FELICIA:  What about the dogs?

SIMON:  I’ve spoken with all of them.  They’ve accepted their fate.

FELICIA:  What?

SIMON:  They’re dogs.  They’re optimists.  Some might say they’re naïve.

FELICIA:  Who would say that?

SIMON:  But the cats understand that death is coming.  When the comet hits, the dogs will still be smiling.  The cats, however, will be terror-stricken.  Leaving them here to face that on their own would just be cruel.

FELICIA:  I disagree with everything you just said.

SIMON:  Of course you do, you’re heartless.

FELICIA:  Simon—

SIMON:  I can’t even hear you over the sound of the demons in your soul laughing.

FELICIA:  Where would we take the cats?

SIMON:  Your house.  It would only be fulfilling your destiny of becoming a crazy cat lady.  I think it’s a swell idea.

FELICIA:  Wow.

SIMON:  You may even want to keep all of them and then—with our cat section sold out—we could finally get that iguana barn.

FELICIA:  That’s actually a thing?  I thought you were making that up.

SIMON:  It’s just a little barn toy you can, like, put iguanas in, but it’s cute.

FELICIA:  I’ll tell you what—if you want to save the cats, save them.  But you’re not taking them to my house.

SIMON:  Well, I can’t bring them to my house.  My mother’s allergic.  She also hates animals.

FELICIA:  How does she feel about her son working at a pet store?

SIMON:  She doesn’t know I have a job.  I tell her I go to the mall everyday and spend my father’s money.

FELICIA:  Doesn’t she notice when you don’t come home with anything?

SIMON:  Usually by the time I come home she’s three martinis away from being the subject of a Stephen Sondheim musical.

FELICIA:  I’m so glad we’ve never gotten to know each other, Simon.

SIMON:  Why would we?  You’ve never liked me.  And you’re awful to the animals.

FELICIA:  I am wonderful to these animals!  I give each of the dogs a kiss on the head before we close each night.

SIMON:  Well, that’s just odd.

FELICIA:  I want them to feel loved.

SIMON:  Fine, I changed the plan.  I’ll take the cats home.  My mother can sneeze herself into a coma for all I care.  You take the dogs, and both of us will agree to look the other way.

FELICIA:  I can’t take the dogs home.

SIMON:  If you love them so much—

FELICIA:  I can’t take them home because I live here.

            (A moment.)

SIMON:  What?

FELICIA:  I mean, above the store.  I live above the store.

SIMON:  There is no above the store.

FELICIA:  The roof.  I live on the roof.

SIMON:  How long—

FELICIA:  About a month.  I got into a fight with my stepdad and he and my mom decided it would be better if I moved out.  So I did.  But I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so I…used a credit card and bought some camping equipment and—

SIMON:  You’ve been camping on the roof of the pet store?

FELICIA:  It’s not that bad.

SIMON:  Is there a tent up there?

FELICIA:  Well, yes, but—

SIMON:  Jesus, Felicia, the parakeets are living better than you are!

FELICIA:  I don’t have a choice!  And that’s why I can’t take the dogs or the cats or whatever home because—I’d just be bringing them up to the roof, and that’s, you know…

SIMON:  Pointless.

FELICIA:  Right.

SIMON:  Wow.

FELICIA:  I know.

SIMON:  Does the manager—

FELICIA:  Of course not.  He doesn’t even know my last name.  He’s barely—

SIMON:  (Simultaneously.)  --Ever here.

FELICIA:  (Simultaneously.)  --Ever here.

SIMON:  Yeah.

FELICIA:  So if I seem like a…Maybe I’m on edge, because, you know, I’m living in a tent.  That…does things to people…I would imagine.  I mean, I don’t really know anybody living in a tent besides me.

SIMON:  Yeah, you’re one-of-a-kind.  But, like, in a really sad way.

FELICIA:  I’m not proud of my ingenuity or anything.  It’s mortifying, but whatever—the world’s ending.  I’ll just…be in a tent when it does.

SIMON:  Yeah, but what if it doesn’t?  There’s a twenty percent chance—

FELICIA:  If somebody told you there was an eighty percent of rain, are you telling me you’d say ‘Screw the umbrella, I might be fine?’

SIMON:  No.

FELICIA:  No, of course not—you bring the umbrella.

SIMON:  But let’s say it doesn’t—are you just going to keep living on the roof?

FELICIA:  …I was thinking of bringing one of the turtles up there with me.

SIMON:  Oh God.  Stop.  Just stop.  Look—get some of the carriers.  We’re saving the cats and the dogs and whatever else we can fit into the van I rented with my dad’s credit card.

FELICIA:  Simon—

SIMON:  And we’re saving you too.

FELICIA:  What?

SIMON:  You’re coming to my house until the comet hits—and if it doesn’t, you can stay in the pool house until, I don’t know—until you can do something else.

FELICIA:  I can’t do that.

SIMON:  Why not?

FELICIA:  Simon, I can’t impose.

SIMON:  Did you not hear the word pool house?  I have a pool house.  An empty pool house.  A house that exists just in case the pool gets lonely.  You’re not imposing on anybody.

FELICIA:  That would be insane.  We don’t even like each other.

SIMON:  What’s insane is somebody living in a tent when somebody else has a pool house and four guest rooms with nobody in them.

            (A moment.)

FELICIA:  What about your mother?

SIMON:  I’ll tell her you’re the new maid.

FELICIA:  What happened to the old maid?

SIMON:  Nothing.  We have eight maids.  She won’t notice one more.  I might even be able to get you on the payroll as long as you’re willing to refill my mom’s drinks whenever she throws an empty glass at you.

FELICIA:  This is…Thank you.

SIMON:  Don’t get all mushy though.  We’re still not friends.  But I guess we can be roommates who tolerate each other.  It’ll prepare me for my Bohemian twenties.

FELICIA:  So…who do we save first?  The dogs or the cats?

SIMON:  Let’s start with the fish.  There’s a man-made pond in my front lawn where we keep them.

FELICIA:  You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?

SIMON:  Almost.  I still don’t know what we’re going to do about the snakes.

            (They look at each other for a moment.  Then—)

SIMON and FELICIA:  Screw ‘em.

            (They shake.)

Stars

            (An observatory.  CAROLINE and JEAN are seated.)

CAROLINE:  They never listened to me.

JEAN:  It’s important not to be bitter, Caroline.

CAROLINE:  I’m not bitter.  I’m not even mad.  It’s just too late now to…Oh my.

JEAN:  Well, even if they HAD listened, what could they do?  Shoot it out of the sky?

CAROLINE:  We could have prepared at least.  Or we could have helped everybody else prepare.  People have had—what?  A few days to adjust to the idea that their lives are over?  How can you significantly squeeze a lifetime worth of—whatever it is you want to do—into a few days?

JEAN:  Maybe it’s better this way.  Imagine if everybody on the entire planet had known for thirty years that the world was going to end this weekend?  Imagine the selfishness, war, the actions most people would—it’s better.

CAROLINE:  Is that why you sand-bagged me?

JEAN:  Caroline—

CAROLINE:  Threw doubt onto my research when you knew it was accurate?

JEAN:  Are we going to dig this up again?

CAROLINE:  No.  No point.

JEAN:  I questioned your research because that was my job.  We were the only two women working—well, practically in the entire field for all I knew—I mean, there were a few in California, but for the east coast, we were it.  And it wouldn’t have helped anything to have everybody thinking the crazy women were predicting the end of the world.

CAROLINE:  If a man had said it—

JEAN:  It was unpleasant and nobody wants to hear unpleasant things.  That’s what the issue was.

CAROLINE:  It ruined my career.

JEAN:  I warned you about going public.

CAROLINE:  Something had to be done.

JEAN:  If you wanted to work in a field that could effect change, you should have become a lobbyist or something.  We’re astronomers.  We don’t intend to fix anything, we just observe.  We’re observers.

CAROLINE:  There are still things to be learned from what we observe.

JEAN:  Of course, but you were talking about spending thirty years building bunkers and—

CAROLINE:  And do you think people didn’t?  You think those bunkers don’t exist?  People listened to me.  They may have scoffed and laughed, but in the back of their minds, they listened—and they prepared.  Just not enough people.  That’s why you need buckets of money just to get into any of those bunkers.

JEAN:  My daughter’s going in one.

CAROLINE:  Well, she’s the governor.  She should.

JEAN:  She’s going to have to leave her daughter behind.

CAROLINE:  No!  They won’t let her—

JEAN:  She’s not essential.  That’s how careful they are.

CAROLINE:  If it were my daughter, I wouldn’t go.

JEAN:  I don’t think she is.  I think she’s going to try and make a switch.  Her daughter for herself.  What good is it being governor anyway?  It doesn’t mean anything.  In situations like these, it’s just a title.

CAROLINE:  Everybody should just settle in.  There’s nothing that can be done, so why go in bunkers and panic and—

JEAN:  People fight.  It’s what we do as humans—we’re fighters.  We don’t settle in.

CAROLINE:  It makes me think of something I saw on the news once.  These people lived in tornado alley and when a tornado destroyed their house they just kept screaming ‘We’re so mad!  Something should be done!’  As if anything could be done about tornadoes.

JEAN:  Well, they could have moved out of tornado alley.  That might have been a step in the right direction.

CAROLINE:  We spent our entire lives looking at stars.  Does that seem like a—

JEAN:  Caroline, don’t suggest that I’ve done something meaningless with my life.  I did with it precisely what I wanted to, and that’s more that most people can say.

CAROLINE:  I was twelve when I got my first telescope.  It was more than my father could afford but my mother saved up for a year, and then at Christmas, there it was.  I couldn’t even speak, I was so happy.  I just remember hugging her and hugging her and she was laughing because of how emotional it made me.  ‘This is for you, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘I’d give you the stars if I could, but I can’t—so here’s the next best thing.’  After that, I always associated what I did with that feeling—of Christmas morning, and my mother’s sacrifice, and that hug that never ended.

JEAN:  I just remember a handsome science teacher at my high school named Mr. Walker who told me I was too pretty to be as smart as I was.  Nowadays I’d be offended to know a teacher said something like that to a girl, but back then—Oh God, he was so handsome.  I hung on his every word and my marks in science were so good, my father said, ‘You should keep on with that’ so I did.

CAROLINE:  I still have a telescope in my bedroom.  Not the original one of course, but—I’ve never been able to sleep unless I had a telescope somewhere nearby.

JEAN:  You still look at the stars every night?

CAROLINE:  No, I use it to spy on my neighbor across the street.

JEAN:  Caroline!

CAROLINE:  He’s one of those Crossfit instructors.  And very tall.

JEAN:  You always were secretly shameless.

CAROLINE:  I’m not sure there’s a way to be secretly shameless, Jean.  You sort of have to shout about it.  That’s the point.

JEAN:  I’m glad we’re friends again.  I missed you all those years.

CAROLINE:  The truth is I wanted to stay mad at you, but I was afraid my anger would outlast one or the both of us, so I just said screw it and that was the day I called you.  Who knew if you let forgiveness come first, it’ll take care of the anger?

JEAN:  I wonder where all the men are now.  The ones we worked with over the years.  The one who told you that you were wrong?

CAROLINE:  They’re dead.  That’s the nice thing about being a woman.  You have to suffer the oppression of men, but ultimately you outlive all of them and then you get to write books about them, and that becomes your revenge.

            (They laugh.)

JEAN:  And here we are.

CAROLINE:  Back looking at stars.

JEAN:  A whole lifetime of it and there’s still so much I don’t know.

CAROLINE:  What a beautiful thing.  To spend an entire life chasing after something you know you’ll never catch.

            (They look up, close their eyes, and smile.)