Strangers - Actor Thoughts - Lyn Nagy 1

“I’m never going to get out you know. Yesterday is the same as tomorrow, and the life you know today isn’t much different either. What will change between now and your fantasized day of departure? Do we suppose perhaps one of these days one of these same people we see everyday will impart us with some terrifying knowledge, the answer to some mystifying riddle that has been the mess you call your life? Or do we think even that one day fate will just smile on me, placing in our path someone new, a new stranger, who starts by feebly trying to say something in my native tongue, but who then grows into a new and dear friend. Perhaps they will be able to change our situation in a way that you yourself cannot even fathom now. Perhaps they will be your ticket out of here.

Or do I think our efforts will get you out of here? Do I actually think we are in any position to improve your situation? Look at us! We are far away in mind and body from anybody who knows or cares about you. Your existence in their world is a shallow memory laminated by the sentiment that they always knew you would end up leading a different life. Even as we struggle, some think of you proudly. They live their happy comfortable lives, and are still able to gossip about their wayward relation who is out there in the jungle, at the edge of civilization, living amongst exotic peoples with strange customs.

Not that it matters of course, since nobody who knows or cares about you really cares anyway. If you inspired pride in some, you garnered loathing, or worse, pity from most others. You knew what you were doing when you left. You never fit in at home. You were always the black sheep. You were always the oddball. There is a reason why we are here, among so many people who don’t understand us or our culture. It is because we don’t much understand us or our culture yourself.

And these days that drag on. Wake up. Work. The dull rhythm of life outlasts any spark of panic this mind can fabricate. Do you know why that is? Because tomorrow is always a new day. Because emotions change like the wind. They are fickle, they are more random than we give them credit for, and they are completely incomprehensible to the person we will be tomorrow. So have a bad day today, don’t worry, tomorrow will be better. The sun will rise again and breathe new life into a body we thought devoid of it.

Don’t worry. Yesterday we panicked, but physical limitations didn’t let us panic forever. Eventually we had to sleep, we had to eat, we had to bathe and breathe. We had to take myself out of that existence, out of that moment in time where this life was not livable. Our moping was interrupted by bowel movements. Our tears ceased and were dried accidentally by our shirt when we lifted it to apply deodorant. Daily life upgraded our status, saved our sanity, killed the sharp pain in our heart that burned for you to escape what you considered unbearable.

You envy the antelope we see on those nature shows, desperately running from the jaguar. They are faced with a moment between life or death, and their instant physiological response is to live. If the effort to run faster than that predatory cat lasted longer than a few moments, rationality would have time to set in. Acceptance, perhaps, resignation to meet one’s fate as the dinner of one very hungry feline, might cross the mind of the antelope.

Yes, perhaps I am being harsh. So in the meantime, make excuses. Today we are tired. Last night we were up far too late, and this morning we had to rise early. Tomorrow we will think of how to get out of this cage. Hold that thought of misery just for now. An hour or two later, after work, after dinner, after the mindless existence we deserve to have for a few hours every night that we refer to as relaxation, unwinding from the day, then we will resume feverish despair.

And anyway, nothing can be done right now. It is too cold in this place. We are doing the best we can with the resources we have at our fingertips, but getting up would mean getting out from under the warm kotatsu. My lips would turn blue, my teeth would chatter uselessly and we would not be able to concentrate on anything besides how to retain the warmth of life.

But this mind cures all. This mind saves us with the gift of daily life.

So do not worry. If our pulse starts to race, if our breath shortens, you know what to do. If you feel helpless, for even one moment, and you think you might fall into pressure and despair, when you think nobody is looking, lift up the blanket just for a moment, lest we let too much cold air in. Slip my hands into that warm haven, and let my fingers loose the chill to their touch. Make your way to my belt and pull it out from under the loop. Take the spokes out of the holes that keep my belt tight enough, and unclasp the buckle.

Undo the button of my pants and pull down the zipper. Reach in and do not give us the opportunity to dwell on anything any further. When you think nobody is listening, let the sounds of your panting and replace the sounds of helpless tears. This is how we deal with life. This is how we maintain normalcy and stability.”

Strangers - Actor Thoughts - Emily Holmes 1

“Second thoughts?

Second thoughts my dear, second thoughts? As if you made a mistake? I see how you lips quiver and tremble at the thought of before. As the memories you so joyously created long before your birth into this world pour out of your dark pleading eyes, I know you lived another life. Your eyes glaze over and you are transported to another world, a world unfamiliar to the sights and sounds of today, and you know it so well you can smell it. You had hopes and dreams, some of them led you here, led you to create me, a vessel for all of your anxieties. But you never considered back then that the every day, the ordinary, would become a treasure, something you would treasure with your whole being.

Now, you see what you never saw before, the fine wire attached to every appendage on your body, to every hair on your head. They are attached with the strongest cement known to mankind. They are attached to your every breath of yester year. You can never dissolve it. You can never break the bonds of your past.

But these memories are poison.

The only way to rid us of these burdens, these tiresome recollections of a life long gone is to forget.”

Strangers - Cassidy Rivers - 2

When he escaped Ranch Rivers, Cassidy was 23 and the world was changing in ways that wouldn’t hit rural Australia for years. The 1980s were in full swing and not since Marco Polo was the eastern hemisphere as commercially important to the world as it was becoming now. Japan and the Asian Tigers were leading the way in shifting the focus from the west, and Australia too was benefiting from increased trade and an easy supply of cheap goods. Increased mechanization of agriculture also meant that the young Mr. Rivers was not the only former farm boy leaving his life behind for the big city.

Cassidy moved into a new world when he rented that small, entirely over priced, shack of an apartment in Melbourne. Modern living may have meant he had hot water at his fingertips in a moment’s notice, but it also meant living like a sardine that managed to fit a toilet, bed and kitchen sink in one can. After finding work in construction in the rapidly growing business of building life-sized monopoly pieces, Cassidy took the lease with some self-goading.

“The world is my abode. My apartment is just my bedroom.” he once commented to a fellow countryside transplant turned laborer, with a grin. That coworker ultimately couldn’t put the spin on his life Cassidy did, and in longing for wide open pastures, and a house one can walk through in more than 5 steps, eventually abandoned his new life.

Perhaps the years of maintaining a nearly consistent high off marijuana finally burned a hole in his head, (he still enjoyed a more than occasional toke) but Cassidy felt no discontent about his housing situation and his strenuous, grunt work. To ask him if he was a happy man (and have him respond in earnest) might have set him off balance, forcing him to reevaluate his life, his mother, his future, and all those mops of hair in-between. This was something he was completely uninterested in doing. Life is unpredictable, changes in a moment. What is the use in looking at the path that got you there? Far more important to take life as it comes.

As a side effect to the Asian Miracle, xenophobic Australia was subjected to a new threat for the first time since English prisoners made the continent their new home: foreigners who looked funny. They came mostly as businessmen, but familiar American and European tourist faces slowly but surely were being subsidized by the faces of the new Japanese rich. And with them came their strange language, and their strange food, and strange mannerisms.

Unlike many of his peers, particularly those in parliament, Cassidy rather liked these new comers. They mostly avoided eye contact with him, they didn’t wear those god-awful Hawaiian t-shirts, shorts and sandals, they didn’t find his “accent” cute and he didn’t find their “accent” obnoxious. Most importantly, they were short and had nice, uniform hair. It was mesmerizing to look at a tour group.

Strangers - Actor Thoughts 3

“A borrowed memory from a time I did not exist:

Erika was a very popular girl from my high school years. She was loved by the average student, envied by the outcasts, and desired by the easily excitable pubescent male populace. Her breasts were perky and youthful, her curves smooth but not over exaggerated, like some of those playboy models. She wore the most fashionable clothing, and she wore it better than any other girl did. Perhaps, as these were the memories I have of her, I too was infatuated with this girl.

She was smart too, but not too smart. While a serious enough student to win her the admiration of teachers and parents, she was never a book worm, or a girl who cared to do math problems more than explore the secret world of a young man’s pants. She was athletic, and graceful; one of the school volleyball team’s top players. Everyone knew she had a promising future. It was common knowledge even to one such as myself.

During her final year, before heading off to university she stepped into the car of a boy lucky enough to retain her attentions long enough to be considered her boyfriend, for a drive. What her purpose was that day, I am unsure of, but the youth, with a lack of experience on the road, and stubborn, foolish teenage ego, managed to take a detour into a tree.

Erika was thrown from the vehicle and suffered serious head trauma and lacerations and broken bones. Her spine was dislocated in several areas and some would later say it was a miracle that she was not paralyzed for life. As it was, she was not able to walk for months. She could not even lift herself up from bed to the table where the hospital staff placed her meals in the few weeks that followed her after she awoke from her coma. She had to be retrained to sit, learn again how to walk and run. Her nerves had been nearly severed so she had to re-learn how to feel. It took her over a week just to be able to sit up in bed.

That day of the crash in the middle of the road, when the paramedics finally reached the scene, they found Erika, badly injured, but wide eyed and sitting up, her back so immaculately and straightly aligned that it would have made an English princess in training jealous.

Why was it that her broken body, unable to accomplish that feat in the following months, was able to maintain that position?

Trauma, physical or mental, has a powerful effect on a human being.”

Strangers - Actor Thoughts 2

“My life. I wake up in the morning and hear strange, yet recognizable words. The young and the old that I approach, women and men, there is nothing I cannot understand from the mouths of these people, but there is something oddly unfamiliar about these words. They lack roots. They lack true feeling and emotion. They are hollow words of a game I believe I started played before I was ever conscious of myself.

This cannot be my native tongue. At least, there is something odd about this language. My words do not express me, but they become a mask of everything I believe in and feel. They turn unbearable pain into quiet pleasantries. They make my physical memory forget of love, loss, and passion, and instead place the topic of the weather at the top of my priorities.

I speak a language that is light on the tongue. The words flitter in my mouth and on my lips as a butterfly makes its way through wildflowers. Sometimes my tongue is so light that it trips on itself, and I stumble in words. This cannot be my native tongue.

And yet I command the syllables that escape my lips with eloquence and possess a natural fluidity that surprises those around me. Try as I may, I cannot make this language coarse in my mouth.

There are deep memories in some of the words I choose. Memories from before the time of my existence. ”