The Lake of One's Being

03 December 2006

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was my favourite A-level english lit text and it continues to be one of my favourite plays.

It holds special poignancy for me in that I feel a special affinity to Martha and it catches hold of me in a way certain things in life can.
Anyway, the best part of the play at least to me is,

Martha: ...George who is out somewhere there in the dark...George who is good to me, and whom I revile; who understands me, and whom I push off; who can make me laugh, and I choke it back in my throat; who can hold me, at night, so that it's warm, and whom I will bite, so there's blood, who keeps learning the games we play as quickly as I can change the rules; who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy, and yes I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: sad, sad, sad.

...whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: yes; this will do; who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it. George and Martha: sad, sad, sad.

...who tolerates, which is intolerable; who is kind, which is cruel; who understands, which is beyond comprehension...

Some day...hah! some night...some stupid, liquor-ridden night...I will go too far...and I'll either break the man's back...or push him off for good...which is what I deserve.

To me it is such endless recriminations, paradoxes that eat away at the self and the relationship that make it all the more meaningful.
It's more than sweet nothings, and eventually a watered-down version of a relationship years into it. It's where the passion doesn't fade, where the melange of your ugliest emotions and thoughts gets thrown out into the open, in guise or otherwise. Beyond petty concerns.
Where you question your thoughts, your feelings almost as soon as you think and feel them.
It's not easy or pretty, but I'd rather have that.

The play was recently staged on the West End and before that, Broadway. What are the chances they'll bring it to Singapore?

1:16 PM;

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