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Why I Send You Away: A Piece for Two Voices (Excerpt)
This one-act play is based on a Korean folk story called Kyŏnu wa jiknyŏ ( Herder and Weaver).
Once upon a time, a princess and her father lived happily in the sky-world. The princess was called the Weaver because she was a gifted weaver of hemp. One day Weaver met a herder with an ox at a silvery river, the Milky Way, and fell in love. Weaver and the Herder were allowed to marry, but soon the Weaver's father separated them because, in their love, they had grown negligent in their other duties. The King sent Weaver to the western sky and Herder to the east. However, their love for each other only deepened with distance, and so they were allowed to meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month. Crows and magpies flew up to create a bridge across the vast Milky Way to enable Weaver and Herder to unite for a day. The rain that falls on July 7th represents the tears of joy shed by embracing Weaver and Herder.
Our version of Weaver and Herder, Why I Send You Away, a father-daughter dialogue, was written in Seattle, far from the legend's original place of birth.
Father was written by Deborah Woodard and Weaver by Don Mee Choi. In somewhat different ways, each of us addresses issues of literal and psychological dislocation and exile, filtered through the lens of personal loss and family sundering.
- Father:
- Did you know that in a dream I was making lanterns of you both, placing each of you, gentle tongues of flame, at the end of a spit of pebbles, which were the other, unstirred stars?
What did you bring back? Take only what you can quickly toss into the basket of the eye.
Separation is a small price. Do you want to become like the ducks and the carp ignoring one another in the selfsame lake?
First he loses his oxen and then he forgets you. My maxim for the day.
- Weaver:
- Father, moon is full. I'm weaving. Steamed carp with lotus roots, how was it?
Was its tongue as tender as a cow's? How you love rolling cooked eyes with your teeth as if you were scraping meat off two bulging stars. I'm out of bark, threads, and hair.
I'm weaving paper with falling shit from stars.
You ignore black holes that crush turtle shells into fine sand. You ignore my loom twisted like wisteria trunks from my copious tears. Stars are separate. I want to be a dead star.
Herder easily forgets me. He's an addict. He writes love songs about how there must be parting. His ox stinks. I left him for a comet.
On July 7th, I'll tie prayers to crows and magpies' feet and pee. Father, expect rain. I'll pose briefly by the bridge. Come ready with your camera.
- Father:
- Why did I bring you together? You made charming cloths, your lips pushed together slightly as you wove. You'd already learned to imitate the shirred leaves of the lace maple. You were born to make the dark lace of crushed shells and yet how dutifully you bent over unsullied cloth.
Herder broke into the scene we were about to snap. Excuse me! His yellow T-shirt hogged the lens. He needed to get some place very fast, felt it in his limbs. He hasn't changed. He's naive enough to think he can outrace your comet.
My dear, Father must see to it that the lamps are lit. Wind enters the stone house flames bow and curtsy, like the untrammeled silks of veins and arteries. Cloth is meat. Your body was unspoken for, unspeaking. We sheathe corpses in unbroken loops of cloth. Skulls can be retongued by need. Here, strike the match against your flesh, quicken flames within the patient bone. I depend on you to take me back into the body.
What? Still making a long face? Count your blessings. 1) One day suffices to explore the garden. 2) Due to an accident of birth, you aren't a whore and so your body is not your only cloth. 3) You are also not the daughter of a whore. 4) You're the princess asked to plant a birch. You'll have to leave before it looks like much, but you dream it has as many colors as the water. 5) Even your shit comes from the detritus of stars.
(This is an excerpt of the full play.)
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