Giannina Braschi - United States of Banana

Giannina: You are already part of me.

Germany: We heard Zarathustra is in danger. There is war. Where is he?

Giannina: Some people you will never discover unless you create them first. He was made to be learned by heart — to be memorized, to be legendized — not to be read. He told me he was better eaten. So I ate him. Now you will not find him unless you eat me first. First read me, and then you will find the him that is in me — the Germany that has become a little island in the Caribbean — the smallest of the Antillas Mayores. I don’t know if I forced myself on him — or if he willingly followed me in my meanderings through New York City, Liberty Island, and the Isle of the Blessed. But I can tell you one thing — I had dread in my eyes — and he cured me. He closed my eyes and touched my eye lids with his fingertips — and massaged them up and down — and while he massaged them — I was envisioning a different world — I was walking miles and miles ahead of my time — there were two roads — one meeting the other — and greeting it also — shaking the hand of the other — if roads instead of crossing each other were capable of shaking hands — like shaking their destinies — like inviting one another to step into each other’s territory — like meeting each other halfway — but never halfway — because both of us — Zarathustra and I — were giving our best and recognizing in each other a part that we hadn’t given to one another — an understanding that we never knew we understood — until our roads crossed and shook hands with each other — a joyful recognition of life — a life we never lived — until we started living with each other.

Spain: Where is Segismundo?

Giannina: He is the prince of Poland.

Spain: Return him to Spain where he belongs.

England: No, I won’t return the Elgin Marbles to Greece so you can keep Hamlet.

Giannina: In Denmark?

England: In New York.

Cockroach: La cucaracha, la cucaracha,

Ahora puede caminar,

Porque ya tiene,

Porque ya anda,

con cuatro patas para andar.

Reptile: Where are the cockroaches? It’s not easy to crawl in the sand dunes of el Hotel El Exterminador. Let Oliver, Captain Oliver Exterminator extinguish them with his raid of fumigation. They are singing happily from every corner of the four poles: north, east, west, south. Bring the raid, the spray. Fumigate.

Oliver: Who called me?

Reptile: We need your song as an inspiration.

Oliver: Oliver Exterminator

Entonando esta canción

Oliver Exterminator

Es por siempre el campeón.

Reptile: ( moving his tail while Oliver sings his jingle )

Cockroach: La cucaracha, la cucaracha,

Ahora puede caminar,

Porque ya tiene,

Porque ya anda,

con cuatro patas para andar.

Reptile: They’re all deserting us. What’s happening? They’re uniting with the cockroaches.

Oliver: They were never reptiles to begin with. They were Dominicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Panameños, Hondureños, Guatemaltecos, Chiletinos, Argentinos…

[At El Morro.]

G.I.: Failures in intelligence. Crack the code of Parmenides. Open the nut of Zeno. Where’s Giannina?

G.I.: She is the one we can’t find. She disappeared. Some say in Mayaguez. Others in Ponce.

Reptile: She is hiding en el Escambrón. A reptile disguised as a cockroach spotted her talking to Socrates.

Oliver: Socrates is en el Hotel San Juan. Check the bar ’n grill.

Reptile: I’m only reporting to you what was reported to me: she’s hiding en el Escambrón.

Segismundo: Where is Hamlet? I wonder if he betrayed us and went to fight for the reptiles.

Giannina: No, I sent him to el Hotel San Juan.

Segismundo: For what?

Giannina: To study with Socrates how to become a good man.

Socrates (sitting on a cloud): This is the cloud that Aristophanes said I am always on.

Hamlet: Cloud 9. You have to get to cloud 10.

Socrates: Don’t forget what we are here for. You were taken away from progress when you were young. When your father died you were brought back to Denmark from Wittenberg. In Wittenberg I was seeing real progress in your soul — real progress — through the meanders of your soul. We were walking — you and I — with questions and answers. I was telling you:

There is a higher standard of expectation.

There is a higher standard of living.

You were saying you could not afford a higher standard of living. That is what Anglo-Saxons always say — we can’t afford it. They value what they can’t afford more than what they can afford. No, they can’t afford a lesson on how to become a good man, but they can afford to file a lawsuit. The progress I am talking about has nothing to do with getting a promotion — or being able to afford a cleaning lady — or treating a friend to dinner. The logic of affordability is stopping progress here. Do I give up on you, Hamlet?

Hamlet: Please, don’t. How can I learn to be happy in adversarial times? Happiness, Socrates, comes with freedom — and freedom with material wealth.

Socrates: You are forfeiting your creative daemon, and it will avenge you. I guarantee you that.

Hamlet: That happened, Socrates, that happened. Now I want to live a happy life. Giannina sent me to el Hotel San Juan to study with you how to become a happy man.

Socrates: I have to consult my creative daemon. I am not allowed to take you as a disciple unless Theaetetus and Charmides agree with Diotima — that I should give you a second chance — a second wing — to fly, birdy, fly. I don’t know if you have ability for philosophy, for abstract thought. Just for saying — to be or not to be — that is the question. No, Hamlet, that is not the question. There is no question between the two — nor is there a drama or a dilemma or a tragic spot in Achilles’ heel. Life encompasses life — the driving forces conjoin and enrapt them — not separation of forms and genres and genders — they are together as one — and tears seven times salt come as a comedy of errors — and a tragedian is also a comedian — and life is not black on one side and white on the other — nor is to be or not to be the question — please, no, no longer. The separation between life and death — as if it were like that, no. To be is not to be and not to be is to be — to be is definitely not to be — and life is here — being — what you, Hamlet, killed with your self-loathing — exactly that — the being alive — the potency and creativity of feeling good, healthy, wealthy, and alive.

Don’t forget what that bard thought of you — player — you are merely a player. I’m not interested in plays — so out of tune with the being — with what is happening in this society of consumerism — so out of tune with the self — so out of fashion. What silenced poetry as our way of communicating? The newscasters who replaced the bards of ancient times only report the politics of the here and now — what browns their noses as they kiss the ass of the establishment. The bards, the prophets, and Teiresias were called upon, and Diotima also, to spell wisdom — in time again and time future — to foresee — to have visions. But newscasters stop the visions and visionaries from spilling the beans because they think the spilling of beans brings bad luck — because the visions can’t be controlled — and the newscasters want to control the spilling of the beans from high heaven — so they block the spilling of the beans — why? We don’t miss bad luck. Who misses bad luck? Nobody. But Diotima of Mantineia stopped the plague from entering the city for more than ten years, which is three more than what the Bible calls seven years of fat cows (good luck) and seven years of thin cows (bad luck). She stopped bad luck from entering the city for more than ten years. That’s good luck — and it came with a visionary — a wisdom seeker — a seer — a prophet — a midwife — a philosopher — my teacher of love.