Images and excerpts from NY International Fringe Festival production of ``The Scavenger`s Daughter``, remounted at Poor Mouth Theatre Dec/2010

"And how wondrous it is to think of the vast inner silence, the tiny little mind breathing in every sensation, still tied by tentacle to Gods apron strings, still part of his very fabric, his skin, his blue eyes, his shiny long blonde hair, his light and vigorous Catholic glory..."

"Bye bye boys, don't tell her any lies! You've got to learn to be civilized, you're part of civilization now.

"Who are all you strangers who insist so strenuously that I have a single name, who teach me that up is up and down is down and what is right and what is wrong?"

"I will forget when Finnegan and I had minds like running water. I will forget the magical moments in children’s wonderland, walking across the blowing wheat fields and up to six A.M mass with my Dad. I will forget the silence of that vast church, and the incense, and the white snow on the windows in winter, and the grace of this creature they called God floating in the air who felt, almost, like he could be real. I will forget, that Spring, when the leaves were bursting, and Finnegan was laughing, and we were falling in love for the first time with girls in ragged blue jeans."

"And we begin to swirl around in memory back to...1975. 1975 when two boys on black motorcycles took to these very streets, the beautiful scents of alcohol, sex, and gasoline filling the air, their sixteen year old girlfriends hugging their waists- blonde, brunette, and red-headed giggles on legs. Long long legs which dangled next to the chrome tail-pipes that blasted their “fuck-offs” loud and clear into the redundant houses, the crumbling crucifix atop Mary Lake Monastery…And all around the town the shouts of:
“Wonder!. Wonder! We are alive with wonder!” gathered the ten year olds to the sprinkling manicured lawns, dancing like goblins to the sound of... Ry Cooder, Neil Young, Lou Reed
( Music out)
And behind it all the sweet smell of marijuana lingered like a reminder of Christ’s breath---- dangerous, determined and delirious.
(Pause)
(From centre stage)
“It’s 11 o’clock, do you know where your children are?”

"King City in my recollection had more teenagers in one place than any place I have seen since. On All Hallows Eve we became the seething underbelly of our parents desires; sex filled the air like porridge, adolescent boys spilled out of their homes and into cars looking for sex, violence, liquor, and …TROUBLE."

"The town of King City lies about seven hundred miles from here just north of Toronto along
that great Highway called "the 400". And every day as the cars swoosh by, the dogs who live on the farms beside the highway, watch each other. They watch in the most singular poses...some are stretched out on the cool morning grass, some are yawning. And still others are sleeping and dreaming. Sometimes it is difficult to dream with the sound of the chickens squawking, and the cars swooshing by full of people on their way up to their cottages, and the sound of the little kitties getting run over by transport trucks, but dogs have this amazing capacity to dream and twitch their little paws when all this noise is going on all around them."

"Gravity is something you’ll experience later as you plunge out blue and bleeding into the bright fluorescent lights, into the scent of freshly washed hospital gowns and sweat and blood...and shit"

"It’s really not so bad until you realize, one dark evening, one black Irish night when the fairies are swooning in a mescaline haze, one night when a certain heat overcomes the walls of the womb and your left hand, your tiny left hand, your little pin speck of dust in the Milky May, begins its regular three A.M stretch and you feel…it. Tiny, and so small, you're not even sure it's there.

But, needless to say, there it is."

End of Images. Written and performed by Colm Magner. New York, 2010. Most photos by Dixie Sheridan

"I was staring at myself in the little mirror of the morgue washroom with the scared piss pouring out of me, feeling nauseous from the smell of the antiseptics, feeling pissed at the clinical demeanor of the mortician and all the other little assistants who buzzed in and out of stainless steel doorways so officiously, those doors which open so smoothly and close with such a firm and final click."