Water By The Spoonful

“Rough translation, ‘Can I please have my passport back?’” 

The phrase that Elliot wants translated seems innocuous enough, and the audience never learns what it really means to him. This represents an undercurrent of the play–a trauma from the past haunting a character in the present. 

“Japan…Wow, that little white rock sure doesn’t discriminate.”

Chutes&Ladders, an African-American male, is surprised to learn that Orangutan is Japanese. It’s a small moment, but it highlights that everyone is vulnerable to pain and addiction. It’s also one of the few, but key, references to race/ethnicity in the play. The Ortiz family is Puerto Rican, and each of the other characters is from a different cultural background. It’s not discussed explicitly in the play but is certainly a piece of the overall theme of different people coming together in harmony (the chat room) or in discord (Yaz’s divorce from a man with a different socio-cultural background).

“Chutes&Ladders, I’m buying you a pair of water wings.”

This is one of many instances in the play where Haikumom/Odessa mothers her online friends. She knows he needs support to be brave, and she continues to encourage him throughout the play, even pushing him to accept Orangutan’s invitation to friendship. Odessa is also a mother figure to Fountainhead/John as she encourages him to embrace recovery. These instances of mothering provide a sharp contrast to the back story, where the audience learns that Odessa was unable to take care of her own children due to her struggle with addiction.

“Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, 1964. Dissonance is still a gateway to resolution. A B-diminished chord is still resolving to? C-major. A tritone is still resolving up to? The major sixth. Diminished chords, tritones, still didn’t have the right to be their own independent thought. In 1965 something changed. The ugliness bore no promise of a happy ending. The ugliness became an end in itself. Coltrane democratized the notes. He said, they’re all equal. Freedom. It was called Free Jazz but freedom is a hard thing to express musically without spinning into noise. This is from Ascension, 1965.” 

Coltrane’s music is only played in Scene Three, but the fact that large sections of Yaz’s lecture are included relay the music’s importance to the theme of the play. The notes are like the characters in the play, coming together or being free to go their own way. Sometimes, when the notes come together, the noise is ugly, such as when Elliot humiliates Odessa at the diner. Other times, the noise can be beautiful, like when Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders greet each other with a warm hug in Narita Airport.

“It’s a psychological battle and I’m armed with two weapons: willpower and the experts.” 

Fountainhead/John’s arrogance is on full display when he introduces himself to the chat room. He believes he can overcome addiction by his own mental strength and by using advice from recovering addicts. He doesn’t yet understand that he will also need humility, honesty, and human connection. By the final scene of the play, he is humbled enough to bathe Odessa and help her get ready to go to rehab. This suggests that he will also be able to move toward recovery.

“Once upon a time I had a beautiful family, too. Now all I have is six years clean. Don’t lose what I lost, what Chutes&Ladders lost.” 

Odessa acknowledges the isolation and separation from family that addiction created. She also speaks for Chutes&Ladders (and he objects to that with the next line, “Excuse me.”) Thisreference to family and the importance of connection in lifereoccurs in the play. The loss of family is something that Odessa grieves, and it is a key to her motivation for creating a new family via the recovery chat room.

“It was an elaborate bait and switch. The ideas don’t fill the void, they just help you articulate it.”

Yaz says this in response to Elliot’s, “You love ideas. All you ever wanted to do was have ideas.” Yaz’s upbringing and life are contrasted with Elliot’s a few times during the play. He had a traumatic childhood, whereas she seems to have been more sheltered. He attended the neighborhood public school; she attended a virtually all-white prep school. He works at a Subway sandwich shop, and she works as a college instructor. This line tells us that the trauma experienced by the Ortiz family deeply affect Yaz, too. She is not entirely sheltered; she just has an armor of words and ideas to express the pain.

“His family has Quaker Oats for DNA. They play Pictionary on New Year’s. I’d sit there wishing I could scoop the blood out my veins like you scoop the seeds out of a pumpkin and he’d be like, ‘Whatchu thinking about honey?’ And I’d be like, ‘Nothing. Let’s play some Pictionary.’”

Yaz describes her soon-to-be ex-husband and her experiences of cultural dissonance while spending time with his family. This dialogue suggests that Yaz experienced pain from the cultural differences between her husband’s family and her own.

“But you would’ve pissed your pants. At least their pants was dry when they went down.”

Elliot explains to Yaz that she could not have survived in the neighborhood public school when they were children because she would have been too afraid. When Yaz points out that many of their relatives did not survive in the school, Elliot suggests that even though they “went down,” they were not afraid or numb. With this statement, Elliot seems to value numbness over fear and/or pain, which recurs in his own life via his struggle with addiction to pain pills and his attempts to ignore the Ghost.

“Washing up at age twenty-four. Disabled vet. Motherless chil’. Working at Subway. Soon-to-be homeless.”

Elliot speaks these lines, providing a glimpse of how he sees himself. Of course, his character is so much more than these descriptors. Elliot took care of Mami Ginny before she died from cancer, maintains a strong, supportive relationship with his cousin Yaz, andhas had an acting job in a Spanish TV commercial. These lines reveal the contrast of Elliot’s self-identity with his potential. At the end of the play, one of the main reasons Elliot gives for moving to Los Angeles is a dream that the man he has become frightened Mami Ginny. Elliot’s attempt to move outside of these labels is an act of hopeful recovery.

“A friend, the kind that is nice to you and you are nice to in return. That would push the comfort zone. The invitation is open. Come tear my shyness open.” 

Orangutan says (types) these lines to Chutes&Ladders when she invites him to come to Japan. Chutes&Ladders wants the safety of his normal routines, but Orangutan needs to be pushed outside of her comfort zone. Instead of just having online conversations, she wants to attempt to connect with another human being in real life. She wants a friendship that is not solely based on shared experiences of addiction and recovery. Orangutan’s vulnerability through seeking human connection speaks to the main theme of the play: the healing power of community.

“So stop being a highly functioning isolator and start being a highly dysfunctional person. The only way out of it is through it.” 

Haikumom/Odessa says this to Fountainhead/John. She stresses that isolation and denial will not help him recover from addiction. The only way to recover is to be honest about the struggle, admit the inability to function, and seek connection and support.

“Five minutes. Spoon. Five minutes. Spoon.”

Elliot says these lines when telling the story of Odessa’s neglectful parenting to Fountainhead/John. The story is critical because it points to the meaning behind the title, and it serves as the impetus for Odessa’s relapse. The repetition of the words reinforces the play’s theme of the recurring cycles of trauma and recovery in a person’s life. 

“What I am: sober. What I am not and never will be: a pathetic junkie like you.”

Elliot types these words to Orangutan after she recommends a different chat room for people recovering from addiction to pain pills. Although he is technically communicating with Orangutan, the anger and bitterness of the lines seem directed at Odessa, Elliot’s birth mother. Elliot’s inability to acknowledge his own struggle with substance abuse, along with his still-fractured relationship with Odessa, continue to cause him significant pain.

“The only thing I got left from those days is the nightmares. That’s when he came, and some days I swear he ain’t never gonna leave.”

This is the only time in the play Elliot explicitly references the Ghost. Apparently, the Ghost began haunting him during his first overdoses from pain medication for his leg injury. The despair behind the words, “some day I swear he ain’t never gonna leave,” suggests the hopelessness that Elliot feels. He is suffering and is in as much need of healing as the “pathetic junkies” he judges.

“Learn how to live, that’s all I’m goddamn trying to do!” 

Orangutan is in the middle of a heatedonlineargument with Chutes&Ladders. He keeps trying to remind her of all of the things that could go wrong if she tries to meet her birth family, including relapsing. Orangutan tries to explain that even though she does not have all the answers, she knows she needs to try and take risks in order to live a full life.

“Elliot is the standing, walking testimony to a life. She. Was. Here.” 

Yaz says these lines to conclude Mami Ginny’s eulogy as Elliot walks off the stage in distress. Mami Ginny has no dialogue in the play, but she is a central figure: the ideal mother to Elliot after his own mother failed, and the caretaker of her community.

“Everyone had cleared away from the carousel. Everyone had their bags. But this one was unclaimed. It could still be there for all I know. Spiraling. Spinning. Looking for an owner. Abandoned.” 

Odessa says these lines while Yaz and Elliot find her unconscious in her apartment. She steps away from where her body is supposed to be and tells a story of meeting her father for the first time as he was flying in from Puerto Rico. The image of the “spiraling,” “spinning,” “abandoned” suitcase carries extra meaning, as Odessa has just relapsed after six years of sobriety.

“Your lifeboat has just arrived. Get on board or get out of the way.”

Chutes& Ladders says these words to urge Fountainhead/John to take care of Haikumom/Odessa after her relapse. By taking care of another human being and putting their needs before his own, Fountainhead can find the lifeboat he needs to recover from his own addiction.

“We’re in PR and I’m gonna dig a new hole and I’m not putting a wish or a list in there, I’m putting a scream in there. And I’m gonna sow it like the ugliest foulest and most necessary seed in the world and it’s going to bloom!” 

Yaz says these lines as she tries to explain to Elliot that she has not done anything meaningful with her life. She has not helped the people she loves with their pain. Now that she has returned to Puerto Rico, she wants to bury her despair and the ugliness that accompanies it. She knows that out of the ugliness, something beautiful can come, just like the jazz music she loves.

“Did someone put on water wings?”

These are the final lines Odessa has in the play, although she does not say them directly. Instead, she whispers them in Fountainhead/John’s ear as he bathes her, and he repeats them. The specific reference is to the water wings she sent to Chutes&Ladders to encourage him to be brave. The line, however, is an open-ended question to all of the characters seeking to be brave, to head into the deep waters and find a way to heal.

“Totally weird. The land of the living.”

Orangutan says these lines as she meets Chutes&Ladders for the first time at Narita airport in Japan. They greet warmly, but they also acknowledge the awkwardness of meeting someone in person with whom, prior to this point, has been known only through intimate online conversations. The phrase “the land of the living” suggests that meeting in person will be healing for them both and help them cross a boundary from death and suffering into life and hope.

“She won’t stop looking at me, but she’s terrified, horrified by what she sees. And I don’t know if my lip is bleeding or there’s a gash on my forehead or she’s looking through my eyes and seeing straight into my fucking soul.”

Elliot tries to explain to Yaz why he needs to move to Los Angeles. He had a dream that Mami Ginny was smiling proudly at him and then staring at him in horror. Elliot admits to Yaz that he goaded Odessa on purpose, and he knew his personal attack would likely lead to another relapse. He does not want to become a hate-filled monster who hurts people; he wants a fresh start, and to move forward with hope.