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But her mind was somewhere else

text by Tamara Antonijevic 

performance by Malgorzata Wdowik

22/09/2019

DAS Theatre, Amsterdam

3. The Dream

I’m at the swimming pool. You’re swimming in the fast lane. I’m watching you, and I’m impressed. You move like a fish. Suddenly, we’re standing next to each other and you’re dripping wet, smiling at me and without a word, you put one of my fingers into your mouth. I’m surprised but I don’t fight against it. My whole hand disappears inside your mouth and I realize that I’m losing balance. I can’t see my feet or my hands and I feel dizzy, like I might faint every second. The wetness of your mouth is completely disproportionate to their size and somehow you manage to swallow me whole.

So I dive in. I float around your insides and you seem to be organ-less.
Even though, I feel the pressure of your weight and parts of your flesh are pressing mine, but I can’t see them, I’m floating in the cloud, cloud full of warm rain.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to digest me and if I’m ok with that. I’m not sure where is the way out of it, but I keep floating around your insides, like a crab, like a seal, like a giant turtle, like a baby dolphin, like a jelly fish, like a whale, turning around, flapping my flukes.
From the inside, I’m sucking in all your viruses and bacteria, all the fungi from your feet, and all the bad memories, disappointments, headaches, heartaches, details of erupt breakups, sudden deaths of family members and friends, tearful fights, regrets, shames, last conversations that you didn’t know that they were last, last conversations that you knew were the last, fears of not being good enough, of being afraid of darkness, of being rejected, of rejecting, of not wanting to be, all your social anxieties and insecurities,

I’m an algae eater, cleaning you, from the inside.

When you start raining, I think to myself, it will be the cleanest, warmest rain and I will fall down together with it, digested and finally calm.

Then I see you, floating around in the darkness of your own stomach, dressed up as a priest, with a black hat with a very broad brim. I wonder why the hat, but I don’t ask. You’re straggling against the current of your own fluids and holding your hat so it doesn’t float away. You seem to be very busy with that. You have a friendly smirk on your face, as if you’re about to say something very important to me, just in a moment, when conditions get better.

Are you here to do an exorcism on me? Is this the reason behind your polite smile and kindness in your eyes? Are you here to put a stake through my heart? Or to call upon divine forces and make me fall apart into many bloody pieces? Is it going to hurt? Am I going to disappear in the cloud of smoke? Screaming? Me? Or you?

I decide to turn my head from this situation, scared of what might be next.

I see the face in front of me. Huge face, one nostril big enough for me to climb inside and hide. But I don’t dare. The face seems to be calm, sleeping face, with eyes closed, rapidly moving.
It must be dreaming.