On a single wall, as if the three-dimensional space of a bedroom had been flattened onto it:
- a painted mattress, attached flat against the wall
- a lamp
- five drawers (opening directly from the wall)
Each drawer conceals a small speaker: when a drawer is opened, a voice emanates; when it is closed, it is silenced. The drawers are programmed to be opened and shut in a specific order. Each drawer is associated with a specific character.
The characters:
Maya (daughter)—Drawer #1
Mother—Drawer #2
Father—Drawer #3
Narrator (mitosis)—Drawer #4
Rumi—Drawer #5
The dialogue, which runs in a continuous audio loop, is adapted from R.D. Laing and A. Esterson’s account of the Abbotts in Sanity, Madness and the Family (Drawers #1, #2, #3); biology textbooks (Drawer #4); and the poetry of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet (Drawer #5).
NOTES:
Maya is an attractive woman, in her late twenties, who has spent the last ten years in a psychiatric hospital.
Father and Mother manage a general store.
The Narrator’s voice (female), describing the various phases of cellular mitosis, is melodic with the calm detachment of an airline stewardess describing the steps to follow in the event of an emergency landing.
Rumi’s (male) words are spoken with the gentleness of a lover whispering in the ear of his beloved in the morning.
A CONTINUOUS AUDIO LOOP
Maya—Drawer #1
You should be able to think for yourself, work things out for yourself. I can’t. People can take things in but I can’t. I forget half the time. Even what I remember isn’t true ‘memory.’
Mother—Drawer #2
I think I’m so absolutely centered on the one thing—it’s well, to get her well. I mean as a child, and as a teenager, I could always sort out whatever was wrong—do something about it but it—but this illness has been so completely … um … . Our relations have been different. You see Maya is, um—instead of accepting everything—as if I said to her, um, ‘Black is black,’ before she would have probably believed it, but since she’s ill, she’s doesn’t ever accepted anything any more.
Rumi—Drawer #5
Love cracks hundreds of fissures into the heavens; unconnsciously Love makes the earth tremble.
Mother—Drawer #2
She’s had to reason it out for herself, and if she couldn’t reason it out herself, then she doesn’t seem to take my word for it—which of course is quite different to me.
Narrator—Drawer #4
The chromatin, which is diffuse in interphase, slowly condenses into well-defined chromosomes. Each chromosome has duplicated during the preceding phase and consists of two sister chromatids.
Father—Drawer #3
If I was downstairs and somebody came in and asked how Maya was, if I immediately went upstairs, Maya would say to me, ‘What have you been saying about me?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ She said, ‘Oh yes you have, I heard you.’ Now it was so extraordinary because unknown to Maya I had experimented with her you see, and then when I’d proved it, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll take my wife into my confidence’, so I told her and she said, ‘Oh don’t be silly, it’s impossible.’ I said ‘Alright then, when we take Maya in the car tonight, I’ll sit beside her and I’ll concentrate on her. I’ll say something, and you watch what happens.’ When I was sitting down she said, ‘Would you mind sitting on the other side of the car. I can’t fathom Dad’s thoughts.’ And that’s the truth.
Narrator—Drawer #4
This is a bipolar structure composed of microtubules and associated proteins. The spindle initially assembles outside the nucleus between separating centrosomes.
Father—Drawer #3
Well, following that, one Sunday I said—it was winter—I said, ‘Now Maya will sit in the usual chair and she’ll be reading a book. Now you pick up a paper and I’ll pick up a paper, I’ll give you the word’ and er—Maya was busy reading the paper and I nodded to my wife, then I concentrated on Maya behind the paper. She picked up the paper—her magazine or whatever it was—and went to the front room. And her mother said,’Maya, where are you going, I haven’t put the fire on.’ And Maya said, ‘I can’t understand’—no, it was—‘I can’t get to the depth of Dad’s brain. … Can’t get to the depth of Dad’s mind.’
Maya—Drawer #1
Well, you shouldn’t be doing that. You shouldn’t be trying to influence me that way. You shouldn’t be experimenting with me that way. It’s not natural.
Father—Drawer #3
I don’t do it—I didn’t do it—I thought ‘Well, I’m doing the wrong thing, I won’t do it.’
Narrator—Drawer #4
Prometaphase starts abruptly with the disruption of the nuclear envelope, which breaks into membrane vesicles that are indistiguishable from bits of endoplasmic reticulum.
Maya—Drawer #1
You should be able to think for yourself, work things out for yourself. I can’t. Other people can take things in, but I can’t. I forget half the time. Even what I remember isn’t true memory.
Rumi—Drawer #5
God said: If it wasn’t by pure love, how could I have brought the heavens into existence?
Maya—Drawer #1
I mean the way I react would show it’s wrong. I mean, you and Mother are always saying that I’m so jumpy and irritable and confused. Well, who wouldn’t be?
Narrator—Drawer #4
The kinetochore microtubules exert tension on the chromosomes, which are thereby thrown into agitated motion.
Father—Drawer #3
And there was a case in point a few weeks back—she fancied one of her mother’s skirts.
Maya—Drawer #1
I did not. I tried it on and it fit.
Rumi—Drawer #5
I have elevated the sublime celestial sphere so that you could understand the sublimity of Love.
Father—Drawer #3
Well, they had to go to a dressmaker. The dressmaker was recommended by someone. My wife went to pick it up and she said, ‘How much is that?’ The woman said, ‘Five dollars’—and my wife said, ‘Oh no, it must have cost you more than that.’ So she said, ‘Oh well, your husband did me a good turn a few years back and I’ve never repaid him.’ I don’t know what it was. My wife gave more of course. So when Maya came home she said, ‘Have you got the skirt, Mum?’ And my wife said,’Yes, and it cost a lot of money too, Maya’—and Maya said, ‘Oh you can’t kid me—they tell me it was four shillings.’
Maya—Drawer #1
No, seven I thought it was.
Narrator—Drawer #4
The kinetochore microtubules eventually align the chromosomes in one plane halfway between the spindle poles. Each chromosome is held in tension at this metaphase plate by the paired kinetochores and their assoiciated microtubules, which are attached to opposite poles of the spindle.
Father—Drawer #3
No, it was five, you said—exactly—and my wife looked at me and I looked at her—so if you can account for that … I can’t.
Narrator—Drawer #4
Triggered by a specific signal, anaphase begins abruptly as the paired kinetochores on each chromosome separate, allowing each chromatid, now called a chromosome, to be pulled slowly toward the spindle pole it faces.
Maya—Drawer #1
Sometimes I lie in bed and wonder if my mother and father are doing it. Sometimes I get excited, sexually that is, when I think about it. I can’t help it. I just find myself thinking about it.
Mother—Drawer #2
No you don’t, dear. You do not have any thoughts of that kind.
Maya—Drawer #1
I do too. And sometimes, I masturbate.
Father—Drawer #3
No you don’t.
Mother—Drawer #2
She certainly does not.
Narrator—Drawer #4
During anaphase, the polar microtubules elongate and the two poles of the spindle move farther apart. Anaphase typically lasts a few minutes.
Maya—Drawer #1
I still masturbate.
Mother—Drawer #2
You most certainly do not, Maya.
Father—Drawer #3
You are making that up.
Rumi—Drawer #5
The body is not opaque to the soul, nor the soul to the body, still no one can see the soul.
Narrator—Drawer #4
In telophase, the separated daughter chromosomes arrive at the poles and the kinetochore microtubules disappear.
Maya—Drawer #1
I hate it when my father can’t even be bothered to go into another room to shave. I’ll be trying to eat my breakfast and there he is—you can’t not see him. It’s disgusting to have to watch that while your’re trying to eat your breakfast. And Mother is always picking on me. She’s always trying to tell me about my own mind, how to use my own mind. You can’t tell a person how to use their own mind against their will. But it has always been like that with Mother and I resent it.
Mother—Drawer #2
I think Maya recognizes that—er—whatever she wanted, really wanted, if it were for her own good, I’d do it—wouldn’t I?—Hmmm? —[no answer]—No reservations in any way. I mean if there are any changes to be made, I’d gladly make them—unless it was absolutely impossible.
Maya—Drawer #1
Well, actually, she doesn’t really pick on me. That’s just how I look at it. That’s just how I react to it. I’ve got to calm myself. I always feel I’ve got to pick back at her—to stand up and get my own back—get back my self-posssession.
Narrator—Drawer #4
The polar microtubules elongate still more, and a new nuclear envelope reforms around each group of daughter chromosomes.
Mother—Drawer #2
Maya once attacked me for no reason. She of course can’t remember a thing about it. It was her illness coming on again.
Narrator—Drawer #4
The cytoplasm divides by a process known as cleavage, which usually starts sometime during anaphase.
Maya—Drawer #1
Once I was dicing some meat and Mother was standing right behind me, telling me how to do things, telling me I was doing it all wrong as usual. I felt if I didn’t do something right then, that moment, I would break into a thousand pieces. So I turned around with the knife in my hand and told her to just shut up. Then I threw the knife on the floor. I’m not sorry for what happened. I was feeling quite okay at the time. This had nothing to do with my ‘illness.’ It was not the ‘voices’ telling me to do that. It was me. I wanted to do that.
Mother—Drawer #2
Maya is always imagining that she is not really ill. Of course, I hope and I pray all the time every day that Maya will be able to remember something, anything if it would help the doctors to get to the bottom of this illness. But I have to remind Maya again and again that she can not ‘really’ remember anything because Maya is always ready to pretend that she is not really ill.
Maya—Drawer #1
Mother and Father are always trying to force their opinions on me. They are trying to obliterate my mind. … [pause] … But maybe this is just my illness that makes me think so … [long pause] … I hear my own thoughts in my head. I hear them in different voices, as if they were someone else’s thoughts. I don’t think, the voices think. And when I talk, it’s as if my vocal cords give me a voice but it’s not really my voice. When I move, when I walk or stand up, the movements come from the front part of my brain, but it doesn’t feel like I’m moving.
Narrator—Drawer #4
The membrane around the middle of the cell, perpendicular to the spindle axis and between the daughter nuclei, is drawn inward to form a cleavage furrow, which gradually deepens until it encounters the narrow remains of the mitotic spindle between the two nuclei.
Maya—Drawer #1
Mother is a person that I lived with. I don’t feel anymore strongly than that. If something happened to her I should miss her and I should keep on thinking about her, but it wouldn’t make any difference to the way I go on. I haven’t any deep feelings. I’m just not made that way. I can only see one side of things—the world through my eyes—and I can’t see through anyone else’s eyes.
Mother—Drawer #2
Sometimes I try to help Maya to realize that she is ill by showing her how she only imagines she remembers things. A lot to times she only thinks she remembers something because her father and I have told her about it. But she doesn’t realize this.
Rumi—Drawer #5
All the atoms in the air and in the desert, let it be known, are like madmen.
Maya—Drawer #1
I was never allowed to do anything for myself so I never learned to do things. The world doesn’t seem quite real. If you don’t do things, then things are never quite real. I find it hard to hold down a job because I don’t know what is going on in other people’s minds, but they seem to know what I’m thinking about.
Narrator—Drawer #4
This thin bridge may persist for some time before it narrows and finally breaks at each end, leaving two separate daughter cells.
Rumi—Drawer #5
Love makes the sea boil like a cauldron; Love reduces the mountains to sand.
Mother—Drawer #2
She doesn’t realize that she actually doesn’t remember things on her own, and besides, when she does, she gets the facts all wrong. It’s her illness. It’s her illness, but she doesn’t realize that, that’s why I try to show her that she is really just imagining that she remembers things.
Rumi—Drawer #5
Each atom, happy or miserable, is in love with the Sun of which we can say nothing.
RETURN TO BEGINNING