Burden

Last year I completed the first draft, a very rough first draft, of a stageplay.

I have no real intention of seeing it produced, much less sending it out for publication.

The play is titled Burden.

The play is about how we come to own and are owned by the things we destroy.

A thing (I use that word in the broadest sense) can be destroyed in many ways: negligence, malice, accident, so-called “acts of God”, etc.

The main character is an atheist who owns a great deal since he can’t blame god(s).

James Agee wrote that “you never live an inch without involvement and hurting people and fucking yourself everlastingly.”

The play is also about that.

The word “burden” has its origin in the “Proto-Indo-European root [bher-] meaning ‘to carry,’ also ‘to bear children'” (source).

Though the play is not directly inspired by Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, it’s fitting that I thought of Agee nonetheless. The featured image on this post is from that book. See more from Evans here.

This may be the most intense depression I’ve experienced since I was in the Army, or a teenager. Maybe both.

If nothing else, I want to be as gentle as possible with everything I encounter though I know that I’m not. Not as much as I’d like to be.

Though it may not always be apparent, I’m working very hard.