Am I Okay

By Scott Dodgson
Here is an excerpt from my new play Homeless in America. I'm starting production this summer in New York. An Artist's predicament? Comments would be very welcome.
PETER


You ask if I am ok, I don't know what that means anymore. My spirit is low, my heart aches, a depression has formed around me like a thick dark fog and my will is as brittle as a fall leaf. I don't have a desire to bring down more people who profess their love or kindness towards me. This may be my only noble act. There is hope on the horizon, success lies before me like a newly paved road, but I am bogged down in the rutted, stony mud of missed opportunity. My wheels have turned square with despair and my draft horse is sick and wants to lie down. I can only describe myself in metaphors as the truth continues to wield the battle hammer blow after blow against my fragile body. I am not well. Happiness is just an empty word. Despair is my cold rock. No I am not well. I am an artist and my art is the only lifeline to the world around me. The airs of confidence, joy and hopefulness I give only mask all that and more. I am only a man who has deluded himself into thinking beyond his station. Now the station has turned from a gilded dream to an abandoned shack crushed by time, withered and weather beaten and dilapidated. You ask why I don't turn to God. He will give my faith, but I have no faith in him. He has failed all of us to many times. Will he wipe away the fatigue in the legs of my draft horse? Will he rise up and pull straight and strong? Is it fair to give him blinders so he cannot see the sparrows and wrens that dance wildly amongst the summer flowers? What life is this? What hope is this? I am just a man beaten by life's game. It is just me alone on the road. It is just me crawling to my grave. It is just me buried beneath the earth like some strange experiment of futility. The only mark I have left on this world is the tracks of my bloody knees on the ice of my destiny.