The Voyage Taking Shape

A Ballet in Verse

A young girl dies. As she moves from her past life to her next, she is escorted by a corps of beings who help her navigate each bardo—the intervals between lives. 

The Tibetan word “Bardo” translates as “gap, interval, intermediate state, transitional process, or in between.” According to Tibetan teachings, there are three death bardos: the painful bardo of dying, the luminous bardo of the reality of one’s mind, and the karmic bardo of becoming. The afterlife is culturally relative insofar as its imagery is projected by the perceiver, in our case, the YOUNG GIRL. We should assume that everything she experiences is a product of her own mind. 

CHARACTERS 
A YOUNG GIRL 
A GRIEVING MOTHER 
A CORPS OF DANCERS/SINGERS 

SETTING 
A bare stage with suggestion of a bedroom off to one corner. Drapery and light design evocative of entering a new dimension. 

 Scene 1: The Bardo of Dying 

(Lights reveal dark stage with YOUNG GIRL in bed and GRIEVING MOTHER by her side. The CORPS emerges, barely visible from the wings. Expectant, they make soft chirping sounds and beckoning motions. YOUNG GIRL rises, leaving the shell of herself on the bed, and stands apart. She seems astonished and tugs at her fingers and face. GRIEVING MOTHER remains by bed in quiet mourning.) 

Young Girl 
Death is a purring kitten with sandpaper tongue 

(The CORPS ventures further and YOUNG GIRL gradually becomes aware of them. They exhort her to join them with echoes of “Done” and “Gone.”) 

It starts at the tip of my nose 
A bright white heat 
Spider walks across my face 
Through the hollows of my head 
Closing off my throat, my ears 
It hits the back of my eyes 
It is done 
And I am gone 

(CORPS advances upon her and pulls her away from her bedroom.) 

Young Girl 
I wasn’t sad to go 
I was cursed and it came true 
My mother looks mournful 
With her crocodile tears 
But I think it is guilt 
She wears it so well 

Death lingers there in the bed 
Making a lunch of me 
Before moving on 

(The CORPS begins to ululate and echo some of YOUNG GIRL’s words. The CORPS rises up as a wave and crashes upon the stage.) 

We all move on 

Scene 2: The Bardo of Awareness 

(Tempo changes as light and drapery shift. CORPS sings a wordless accompaniment and selected words in repetition.) 

Young Girl 
Something else happens now 
It begins 
Or maybe it ends 
I do not know if I am coming or going 
But I feel the voyage taking shape 

(The CORPS encircles her, removes her gown, swings her among them, and brings her center stage. The GRIEVING MOTHER removes the bed clothes.) 

Young Girl 
I’ve brought nothing with me 
I am naked in the dark 
Back and forth through time 
Cascading accordion folds 
Life was a deck of cards 
The deal made 
Hand overplayed 
Game over 
And the Queen of Spades digs my grave 

(The CORPS removes a protesting GRIEVING MOTHER. The CORPS explodes in pulsing sound and raises up fluorescent orbs and hoops to trace glowing arcs across the stage. YOUNG GIRL weaves among them, skipping, jumping, running. CORPS advances and retreats like waves while YOUNG GIRL treads their sand.) 

Young Girl 
I leave 
Passing through 
The patterns of all things 
Little nooks and places 
Ever smaller ever larger 
All the same 
Always 

A glowing fractal 
A wild womb 
Nursery of infinities 

It’s all right to not understand 
These are not my school lessons 
There will not be a test 

The movement of the seas 
Carries me 
Crunching shells along the bottom 
Making sand 
Making sand into Time 
Into me 
Walking the beach 
Into infinity 

(YOUNG GIRL sifts “sand” through her fingers.) 

I see Time now 
As we were meant to see 
Time is a friend 
A playmate! A tumbling ball!
Time has often played with us 
Now we can make Time our toy 

(YOUNG GIRL joins the CORPS in play, swinging and swirling, tossing Time among themselves, laughing.)  

Scene 3: The Bardo of Becoming 

(Tempo grows chaotic as light and drapery shift again. The CORPS discards their circles and echoes YOUNG GIRL’s words in a pulsating song. They surround YOUNG GIRL, dividing and multiplying themselves in cascading dives across the stage.)  

Young Girl 
Not coming 
Not going 
Not being 
Not there 
Cracking in two, four, eight 
Time collapses its scissoring arms 
Hollering fireflies scream yellow alarms 
I see it as such 
I see Time’s touch 

Time collapses its sandpaper tongue 
It was the burning in my nose 
I felt first and last 
It was the movement without touch 
It was my grieving mother 
Holding my hand when I let go 
Now that I am here 
I am not sad, even though— 

(The CORPS reorder themselves in columns with YOUNG GIRL in between. They undulate as if swimming or flying.) 

Young Girl 
Here at the threshold 
Everything is upside down 
Inside out 
I float like a jellyfish in soft undulations 
I sing with the fireflies in rising ululations 
The world behind is vapor 
And the world ahead is water 
And I am melting snow 

Any direction is forward 
There is no backward anymore 
Flowing auroras part and close 
Change shape 
And move me through their folds 

(YOUNG GIRL flings herself into the arms of the CORPS. Together they process up center to back of stage) 

Is this remembrance 
Or premonition? 
Coming or going 
It is always a voyage taking shape 

(Light and tempo shift; the CORPS and YOUNG GIRL float towards a horizon as drapery enfolds them. The CORPS crescendos in a shattering high note and they all disappear in a blinding white light.) 

THE END 

ANNE DIMOCK

Anne Dimock is the author of Against the Grain (Woodhall Press, 2022) and Humble Pie: Musings on What Lies Beneath the Crust. An eclectic writer of plays, short stories, and essays, Dimock’s work has appeared on stage and in print. She resides in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.