:: Theatre of the Absurd::

I suppose the human mind is capable of some of the most dramatic monologues known to theatre. And if our private measurement of what it means to be 'sane', 'normal', et al, is really nothing more than a series of unrehearsed pantomime, then if one should turn from unthinking, stock characters into raging protagonists spewing words from a lurid script, why then, we are only graduating from childish dramatic play into full-fledged Greek tragedies. Insanity, or a sequestered truth revealed only by impartial madness?

Curtains up for my aunt then, for in all factual sense of a scornful word, she has gone mad. No more dramatic play; she is now the central character in a Greek improvisation. Her script is fraught with melodrama―'Can you see the gods? They want me to kill you all'―and her stage is built upon her own compendium of truth―'See, if we all die together, then there will be no disgrace. All my insides are on fire! I will burn! So will you!'

There is farce upstage and fear downstage; everyone is helplessly compassionate and cruelly indifferent in turns. She trembles. She screams. She flings herself against walls. She hurts and want to hurt. It's an emphatic plunge into a parallel world where we―with our public versions of normalcy and sanity―cannot see the patterns, cannot comprehend the words and actions that are being puppeted with so much vehemence.

'Don't worry, we can help you,' I say, with patronising absurdity.
'I am not worried,' she says, eyes blazing with blankness. Her nails digged into my arm, leaving films of desperate strength. 'I am serious. I will kill all of us and it will be okay. Someone―we will leave a note!―will come and clean up after us.'

I want to laugh, you see―logic is a firm friend and reason is eager counsel, and both of which are useless against that sort of irrational rationality now.

But if our perception of improbable knowledge such as 'truth' and 'logic' are subjected to relativity anyway, can we really label her crazy? And―ha―is this why most prophets are mostly thought to be mad before they were regarded as messiahs? Because they see something that none of us with our unifocal eyes can see?

Now, this morning, all is still. The call was made―the ambulance was sent―the character is now a patient, and the stage is now an institution. Her bashing of her own head against the wall―I couldn't help but think, what a metaphorical act of beauty, flesh against cement, blood on mortar: no no no, I cannot effect change―was her swan song act.

My mother―still so weak, so small, swarthed in bandages and bruises―is quietly speaking to her, her tone rife with firm tenderness. Even now, even as bruises and cracks and fractures cover her body with tenacles of pain, her spirit is strong and compassionate, soaring only with the thoughts for others.

'She is a burden,' says my mother. 'At least for them.'
I smooth dabs of medicated cream over the beryl bruises etched on her thin, sallow cheeks. 'I'll do anything to help.'
Her old eyes smile, and then she winces in pain. And then: 'Will you wash my hair for me?'

When you are finally given the chance to mother your mother, it seems, you have been awarded a priviledge so great and a pain so unnatural that you realise you have finally made it to the Theatre of the Absurd, where playwrights create works representating the universe as an unknowable, where humankind's existence may be beautiful in its intensity, but is really meaningless in the three main acts of life.

***

Only Slave

April day; her heart is a dead organ,
No black song, no white notes:
No doctor guised in big white coats;
Only voices and a suicide slogan.

Vacant eyes; her mind is sandman sleep,
No hero light, no divine nod:
No medium blessed with idol god;
Only siren calls when heavens weep.

Feeble epitaph; her tomb is earnest gloom,
No partial score, no glorious win:
No holy answer crossed by mortal hymn;
Only minion dreams in violent doom.

Righteous night; her life is phantom grave,
No golden ken, no sunny spell:
No promised cure in her deviant cell;
Only pills can lay to waste, my broken mental slave.