He's calling again. I'll find out what he wants from us. Out here, far away in our loneliness.
Read more Alma QuotesFrom: Persona
He was married. We had an affair for five years. Then he got tired of it, of course. I was terribly in love, and he was the first. I remember it all like one long torment. Long periods of agony, and brief moments when -- your teaching me how to smoke reminding me. He smoked constantly. In hindsight it all seems so dreary. A real dime store novel. In some strange way it was never quite real. I don't know how to explain it. At least, I was never quite real to him. But my pain was real, that's for sure. But that was somehow all a part of it in some nasty way, as if that's how it was supposed to be.
He's calling again. I'll find out what he wants from us - far away out here in our solitude.
I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one.