Possibilities

I read about a Japanese single mother struggling to make ends meet. She has a boy of three, whom she keeps at home except on Fridays when she works at her weekly part-time job. The nature of her job was not disclosed, nor where the boy is kept while the mother is working. We do not know which town she lives in. We also are not told under what circumstances the mother became a single mother, or whether she has any relatives and friends at all.

This mother's income is barely enough to keep the two of them housed, clothed, and fed. She says she is worried about her son's future. That is the only direct quote from her in the entire piece. Perhaps the author felt the need to protect the mother's privacy a little too strongly. As a reader, I was led, simply, to pity this mother, without even coming to know any of the causes-and-effects, contingencies, and motives that might have played a role in creating, or even necessitating, her particular situation, of which we know very little in any case, except that she is barely able to pay the bills. I did not know what to do with my sense of pity. I wondered if it was even right to pity her in this way. As for the boy, he is still very young, and I hoped that he would recognize his mother's love, and only his mother's love. The mother was portrayed as a gentle, loving person, who remains extremely calm and sane even in the face of suffering.

Such a loving, calm, and strong person - would such a person not be able to pull herself out of her disquieting situation? Using her warm, rich personality as a gift, I feel she could easily open many doors, or some doors at least, for herself and for her child. Or, is she so calm and composed that she has, in a way, given up, and is simply watching herself and her boy hang by all-too-delicate threads, day by day, as if they were complete strangers from a distant world? What is keeping her from breaking out of the cage? Is it some invisible social force? That would be a fine example of scapegoating. Society is the biggest scapegoat in the world, it seems. Or rather, it is okay to blame society, perhaps not just okay and necessary at times, but society cannot be blamed for inaction, or even ineffective action. Action falls under the responsibility of actors and actresses - yes, personae with character. However hidden, superficial, artificial, or genuine a persona's character may be, an act is an act - it can change endings. It can shift meanings. And meaning is everything, isn't it?

Much of the world's work has to do with clearing the stage, so the personae can act. Act together, act alone, sleep while acting.

So many, it seems, feel they cannot act. Because the stage is too narrow. Because of auditions, because of limited resources, including time. Because one simply does not want to act. Because one wants a quiet life. But if they acted, how the world would bloom even more exquisitely, flowering in all sorts of extraordinary ways. And in fact, even a quiet life would be impossible without real acting - quiet acting.

Tom says: "The possibility is real, even when it isn't yet reality."

Yes, naive. No, but not naive. Not naive, because possibilities are as hard-won as realities are.

Stage directors, they want all actors and actresses to feel as alive and hopeful as possible, so that the audience will go, "ooh-ah!" But what they also know is that the actors and the actresses, they can't be "told" to feel alive and hopeful. Each of them has to find his or her own way, and help each other find that clicking thing, which is very likely to be different for each actor or actress, and even different according to the weather, or time of day, or how much sleep one has had the previous night.

Stage directors, they know it is all about possibilities. In the world of possibilities, nothing can go wrong, except for a drying-up of imagination, or of energy. That's really the world of art, no? It's a constant search for possibilities; it is exhausting. Combinations, permutations, associations - endless, even while life ticks away. It's a game, a hunt. For food? No, for what desires food. For what permits us to want food. It's really a primordial thing. So even a child knows. Perhaps better.