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Images
Eternity (played by an image of the Utah Salt Flats) performs a little hide and seek and is ultimately quantified in terms
of the tasks associated with the rest of a life (I only have to meet 3,156 new people and then I won't have to meet another
new person ever again.)
Pascal shares some insight on the matter, "Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But
even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the
advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this."
If we could just dance, perhaps everything would be okay. And while we are dancing we could think about nature, we could
think about how nature is outwardly AND inwardly infinite, and about how a two dimensional image of the landscape is like
our relationship to nature (flat and in forced perspective); there certainly is more there than meets the eye.
Thing is, moving forward seems like loss and the future seems like an abyss: it is from this perpetual precipice that
we must now negotiate happiness.
If this is the way it's going to be, then let's find a way to be happy. Let's try to tell ourselves that we are infinite.
Let's get in a car and go as fast as we can. Let's count for as long as it takes us to fall asleep. Let's stare at the sky
and let ourselves be moved.
We can quell the longing by imagining your face, or your hands, or the way you walk. We dream long dreams that imagine
your sleepless nights, and your quilt doing a solitary dance in the living room (in your head.)
And if you stand here and we jog away, eventually we will cease to exist (your eternity will destroy us), and if we do
still exist somewhere - it is in your head.
Run time: 1:20
Petitmal was premiered in a limited engagement with PAC/edge Performance Festival at The Athenaeum Theater in Chicago April
3,4,10 2004. It was subsequently run at Links Hall in Chicago September 3-12, 2004 and at PAC/edge 2005 March 11-20.
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