3-19-19
In a museum. A and B walk around and look at the art. KAREN sits on a bench, staring at one painting.
A
Nono don’t read the description, it’s much better without the description.
B
Did you read it?
A
I never read them.
B
Never?
A
It’s a much more fulfilling experience for me, looking at just the art.
KAREN
If there are only two types of people in this world, I think I’ll be okay.
B
What about reading it afterward?
A
Ruins the memory.
KAREN
If there are more than three, I will certainly not.
(They come to a painting.)
B
What does this one evoke for you?
A
A deep unsettling, especially around the torso. It’s like I see an illustration of my body, and someone has drawn dotted lines over it, demarcating the cuts of meat. Tenderloin, flank, breast, rib, shank, sirloin, top sirloin, bottom sirloin—I learned a lot from your grandfather—jowl and neck. And I look down, and I’m eating this sloppy joe and spilling sauce all over my white graduation gown, and I see my body, so I know it’s not my body I’m eating, so I think it’s my twin sister’s, that there is at her middle a densely packed core, rancid and heavy. And then I pull a strand of hair out of my mouth.
B
See, I don’t get that feeling. I get that it’s meaty.
A
Meaty, yes.
B
Certainly I want to touch it.
KAREN
I will understand the meaning of all words, which is to say everything.
A
If you look at a painting for long enough, you will be able to understand it like I do.
B
I want to touch every painting I see. Some more than others.
A
Just look.
B
I want to go to baseball.
A
We need to look at paintings.
B
Baseball is like painting.
A
They’re not the same thing.
B
Obviously they’re not the same thing, that’s what an analogy is, mom.
KAREN
I had this dream where I understood the infinite, I understood my purpose in life.
B
So we’re just doing whatever Grandma Karen wants to do?
A
For now, yes.
KAREN
If you can understand infinity, you can forgive yourself, it is okay.
A
It’s rare that the aging population has these moments of lucidity.