#actor monologue

The Harshing of the Mellow…

first published June 5, 2016 Cas I fancied myself a tragic Cassandra, my warnings to the world ignored and unheeded. I could recognize the birth of a killing wave long before even a ripple fluttered beneath the water. I paid attention when the stone was dropped, and could accurately calculate how long it would take before those waves engulfed the shore, There, the revelers and the workers plowed…

The Rule of Anarchy

Originally published March 26, 2015

Kha

In the time and place when I last lived it was impossible to tell the righteous from the evil.  Sometimes,  your enemy could be kind or generous or offer you aid in your time of need; and sometimes your own friends and family betrayed you.  Trust was a luxury in which no one dared indulge, not even in love.  Allegiances fluttered like leaves on the trees;…

Originally published April 7, 2015   Pila I was on a trajectory to a perfectly normal life. I was mostly good, though sometimes a bit naughty. There were times I was full of certainty and promise and other times I was crippled by misgivings and frozen by doubt.   Sometimes, I felt myself to be invincible; other times, I felt vulnerable and bare. In other words, I was perfectly normal. And then…

Devastation after Hurricane Dorian, Bahamas, 2019 First published Oct 25, 2019 Sama It was going to be gigantic. Overwhelming. Massively destructive. They told us to seek safer ground.  Most people did. But I lived with my mother who was old and sick and infirm. She could not be moved. She begged me to leave her behind and seek safety.  She didn’t have much longer to live even under the best…

A Gentle, Invisible Force

First published August 16, 2016 San I first met her on my first day of school and she was there when I died, but I barely knew her.  Our lives crisscrossed each other like strands of DNA.  Though we rarely interacted in any deeply personal way,  we applied a kind of subtle gravitation force upon each other. In school, she was the pretty one.  The smart one.  The one who never let her emotions…

The Definition of Us

first published March 29, 2015 Aya Love is defined not only by the emotions we feel for others but by how others feel about us. We each make our choices about who we want to be. Shall we be the kind of person whom others feel joy to keep close to their hearts, even after we long are out of their lives? Will we be entirely forgettable, leaving little impression on those whose lives we’ve…

Equilibrium and the Bell Curve

First published March 23, 2014 Mok As a child, I never had much use for school. Perhaps I lacked the interest or the attention span. Or maybe I just wasn’t smart enough. Or maybe a little of each. I dropped out of school before high school and felt like a big, important man because I worked and had spending money, while my friends still suffered in class. When I was older, those same friends…

First published July 29, 2016 Gle I was just out of school, still mostly a boy,  when I joined the Navy. There was a big war going on, and I was eager to serve my country and see the world. In the early days, I had the exuberance of youth; the certainty of my invulnerability. I believed I would return home a hero, with interesting tales to tell for the rest of my life. It wasn’t long before my…