I
itssanaawabam
Guest
...a dramatic is a good idea? that pretty much explains it. i really want a good groundbreaking piece for competition next year. i was thinking about an excerpt from "the virgin suicides" by jeffrey eugenides. what do you think?
if you would like to see the selection i have cut for the performance just give me your email and i will send it to you.
help would be lovely.
The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Cecilia was the first to go, slitting her wrists like a stoic while taking a bath. “What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets.” “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.” Everyone dates the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls. Even then, as teenagers, we tried to put the pieces together. We still can't. Now whenever we run into each other at lunches or parties, we find ourselves going over the evidence one more time, all to understand those five girls, who, after all these years, we can't get out of our minds.
INTRO
They were Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese. No one could understand how Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, our math teacher, had produced such beautiful creatures.
We didn’t understand why Cecilia had killed herself. But our interest in the Lisbon girls only increased. Who knew what they were thinking or feeling? Added to their lovelines
loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent.
They made Cecilia out to be the bad guy. Her suicide, from this perspective, was seen as a kind of disease infecting those close at hand. In the bathtub, cooking in the broth of her own blood, Cecilia had released an airborne virus which the other girls, even in coming to save her, had contracted. No one cared how Cecilia caught the virus in the first place. Transmission became explanation. We went outside with our hair wet in the hopes of catching flu ourselves so that we might share in their delirium.
No one ventured to the house anymore, not any of our mothers or fathers, not the priest; and even the mailman, rather than touching the mailbox, lifted the lid with the spine of Mrs. Eugene’s Family Circle.
All winter, the girls remained elusive. Sometimes one or another would come outside; hugging herself in the cold, her breath clouding her faces, and after a minute would go back in.
The girls would also order catalogues for items they would never buy, and the Lisbon mailbox filled once again: furniture catalogues, high-end clothing, exotic vacations.
Unable to go anywhere, the girls traveled in their imaginations to gold tipped Siamese temples, Japan, everywhere. As soon as we learned the names of these brochures we sent for them ourselves to see where the girls wanted to go. Far East Adventures. Footloose Tours. Tunnel to China Tours. Orient Express. We got them all. And, flipping pages, hiked through dusty passes with the girls, stopping every now and then to help them take off their backpacks, placing our hands on their warm, moist shoulders. We drank tea with them. We did whatever we wanted to, and Cecilia hadn’t killed herself: she was a bride in Calcutta, with a red veil and the soles of her feet died with henna. The only way we could feel close to the girls was through these impossible excursions, which have scarred us forever, making us happier with dre
The only way we could feel close to the girls was through these impossible excursions, which have scarred us forever, making us happier with dreams than wives.
We’d like to tell you with authority what it was like inside the Lisbon house, or what the girls felt imprisoned in it. We longed for some shred of evidence, some Rosetta Stone that would explain the girls at last.
For the next months we hardly saw the girls, and though we felt for them, and continued to think about them, they were slipping away from us. The colors of their eyes were fading, the location of moles, dimples, scars. We could no longer evoke with our inner ears the precise pitches of the Lisbon girls’ voices. The truth was this: we were beginning to forget the Lisbon girls, and we could remember nothing else. “Time to write them off,” But even as we said those words, we rebelled against them.
Just as we had begun to despair of ever being near them again, we received a letter. When we opened it, we recognize
When we opened it, we recognized at once the purple flair Lux liked to write with. In the next few weeks, other letters arrived, expressing various moods, each letter delivered to our houses by the girls themselves, in the dead of the night. On June 14, I received a letter in my mailbox that said simply, “Tomorrow. Midnight. Wait for our signal.”
We arrived late the next night; Lux opened the door and proceeded to light a cigarette.
“We’re here.” “About time, we’ve been waiting for you guys.” “Where are you your sisters?” “They’re coming. Wait, just five minutes, we’re not finished packing yet.” “Sure, but we should get out of here. I just heard something.” “I’ll go get in the car. You guys wait for my sisters. We’ve got a lot of stuff.”
We waited a while, and assuming they had finished packing descended to the rec room, where we had heard them packing. There, hanging down amid the deflated balloons were Bonnie’s shoes. She had tied the rope to the same beam as the decorations.
None of us moved. It took a minute to sink in.
We had never known her. They had brought us here to find that out. How long we stayed like that, we can’t remember. Already we knew the rest. Most likely Bonnie died while we sat in the living room. Mary put her head in the oven shortly after; Mary might have still been breathing after we left. Therese stuffed with sleeping pills washed down with gin was as good as dead by the time we entered the house. Lux was the last to go. They found her in the front seat, gray-faced and serene, holding a cigarette lighter that had burned its coils into her palm. She had escaped in the car just as we’d expected. She had unbuckled us; it turns out, only to stall us, so that she and her sisters could die in peace.
“It was the combination of many factors,” Dr. Hornicker said in his last report, for no medical reasons, simply because he couldn’t get the girls out of his head. “With most people suicide is like Russian Roulette. Only one chamber has th
Only one chamber has the bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded: a bullet for family abuse, a bullet for genetic predisposition, a bullet for historical malaise, a bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn’t mean the chambers were empty.”
But this is all a chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too…blind. They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn’t help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. It didn’t matter in the end, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us. Calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.
if you would like to see the selection i have cut for the performance just give me your email and i will send it to you.
help would be lovely.
The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Cecilia was the first to go, slitting her wrists like a stoic while taking a bath. “What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets.” “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.” Everyone dates the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls. Even then, as teenagers, we tried to put the pieces together. We still can't. Now whenever we run into each other at lunches or parties, we find ourselves going over the evidence one more time, all to understand those five girls, who, after all these years, we can't get out of our minds.
INTRO
They were Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese. No one could understand how Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, our math teacher, had produced such beautiful creatures.
We didn’t understand why Cecilia had killed herself. But our interest in the Lisbon girls only increased. Who knew what they were thinking or feeling? Added to their lovelines
loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent.
They made Cecilia out to be the bad guy. Her suicide, from this perspective, was seen as a kind of disease infecting those close at hand. In the bathtub, cooking in the broth of her own blood, Cecilia had released an airborne virus which the other girls, even in coming to save her, had contracted. No one cared how Cecilia caught the virus in the first place. Transmission became explanation. We went outside with our hair wet in the hopes of catching flu ourselves so that we might share in their delirium.
No one ventured to the house anymore, not any of our mothers or fathers, not the priest; and even the mailman, rather than touching the mailbox, lifted the lid with the spine of Mrs. Eugene’s Family Circle.
All winter, the girls remained elusive. Sometimes one or another would come outside; hugging herself in the cold, her breath clouding her faces, and after a minute would go back in.
The girls would also order catalogues for items they would never buy, and the Lisbon mailbox filled once again: furniture catalogues, high-end clothing, exotic vacations.
Unable to go anywhere, the girls traveled in their imaginations to gold tipped Siamese temples, Japan, everywhere. As soon as we learned the names of these brochures we sent for them ourselves to see where the girls wanted to go. Far East Adventures. Footloose Tours. Tunnel to China Tours. Orient Express. We got them all. And, flipping pages, hiked through dusty passes with the girls, stopping every now and then to help them take off their backpacks, placing our hands on their warm, moist shoulders. We drank tea with them. We did whatever we wanted to, and Cecilia hadn’t killed herself: she was a bride in Calcutta, with a red veil and the soles of her feet died with henna. The only way we could feel close to the girls was through these impossible excursions, which have scarred us forever, making us happier with dre
The only way we could feel close to the girls was through these impossible excursions, which have scarred us forever, making us happier with dreams than wives.
We’d like to tell you with authority what it was like inside the Lisbon house, or what the girls felt imprisoned in it. We longed for some shred of evidence, some Rosetta Stone that would explain the girls at last.
For the next months we hardly saw the girls, and though we felt for them, and continued to think about them, they were slipping away from us. The colors of their eyes were fading, the location of moles, dimples, scars. We could no longer evoke with our inner ears the precise pitches of the Lisbon girls’ voices. The truth was this: we were beginning to forget the Lisbon girls, and we could remember nothing else. “Time to write them off,” But even as we said those words, we rebelled against them.
Just as we had begun to despair of ever being near them again, we received a letter. When we opened it, we recognize
When we opened it, we recognized at once the purple flair Lux liked to write with. In the next few weeks, other letters arrived, expressing various moods, each letter delivered to our houses by the girls themselves, in the dead of the night. On June 14, I received a letter in my mailbox that said simply, “Tomorrow. Midnight. Wait for our signal.”
We arrived late the next night; Lux opened the door and proceeded to light a cigarette.
“We’re here.” “About time, we’ve been waiting for you guys.” “Where are you your sisters?” “They’re coming. Wait, just five minutes, we’re not finished packing yet.” “Sure, but we should get out of here. I just heard something.” “I’ll go get in the car. You guys wait for my sisters. We’ve got a lot of stuff.”
We waited a while, and assuming they had finished packing descended to the rec room, where we had heard them packing. There, hanging down amid the deflated balloons were Bonnie’s shoes. She had tied the rope to the same beam as the decorations.
None of us moved. It took a minute to sink in.
We had never known her. They had brought us here to find that out. How long we stayed like that, we can’t remember. Already we knew the rest. Most likely Bonnie died while we sat in the living room. Mary put her head in the oven shortly after; Mary might have still been breathing after we left. Therese stuffed with sleeping pills washed down with gin was as good as dead by the time we entered the house. Lux was the last to go. They found her in the front seat, gray-faced and serene, holding a cigarette lighter that had burned its coils into her palm. She had escaped in the car just as we’d expected. She had unbuckled us; it turns out, only to stall us, so that she and her sisters could die in peace.
“It was the combination of many factors,” Dr. Hornicker said in his last report, for no medical reasons, simply because he couldn’t get the girls out of his head. “With most people suicide is like Russian Roulette. Only one chamber has th
Only one chamber has the bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded: a bullet for family abuse, a bullet for genetic predisposition, a bullet for historical malaise, a bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn’t mean the chambers were empty.”
But this is all a chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too…blind. They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn’t help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. It didn’t matter in the end, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us. Calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.