TJIPETIR: A SEARCH HISTORY (excerpt) by I.B. Hopkins

TJIPETIR: A Search History in Two Acts

By I. B. Hopkins

678.936.0858 isaacbhopkins@gmail.com

Like all offspring of colonizing and imperial histories, I – we – have to relearn how to conjugate worlds with partial connections and not universals and particulars.

Donna Haraway

and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin.

Adrienne Rich

(Extracts supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian)

Synopsis: An uptight Etymologist finds herself on a warped detective case when pieces of rubber begin washing up on beaches all over the world. The single, inscrutable word inscribed on each of them, “TJIPETIR,” leads her on a dizzying expedition into submarine warfare, a Javanese rubber plantation, the history of the internet, an octopus with a vendetta and a dark family secret.

Characters: THE RECEIVER OF WRECK – British bureaucrat THE ETYMOLOGIST – 40s, female THE KAPITÄNLEUTNANT (WALTHER SCHWIEGER) – stern, German THE SUB-SUB LIBRARIAN – male, German, young then later old THE TOUR GUIDE / DR. TROMP DE HAAS – know-it-all THE CABLE LAYER – weather-beaten CHARLES* - An outsized, impossibly old Giant Pacific octopus who is stuck in the wrong ocean

*The brain of an octopus is so incommensurable with, so differently different from that of the human who wrote this play and those (presumably) who might produce it that special care in depicting Charles must be taken. This might involve puppetry, projection, multivocality, or many kinds of other imaginative human technologies.

Unless otherwise noted, gender and phenotypic expression should not be assumed for any role – even and perhaps especially those based on historical figures (i.e., Kapitänleutnant and Dr. de Haas).

- TJIPETIR – A Search History

PROLOGUE Darkness: Radar sounds.

A crash; voices screaming; Water pouring, gushing.

A long silence.

Radar sounds again.

ACT ONE Scene One: A wood-paneled office and great big wood desk covered in papers, piled and stacked. Nautical curios of all sorts line the shelves – model ships, a spyglass, an octopus suspended in jelly. An inch-thick slab of brown rubber abruptly drops from above and lay there for a while.

The RECEIVER OF WRECK bustles on, finds it, turns it over, and runs fingers over the markings...

RECEIVER OF WRECK You can’t keep people’s hands off what’s not theirs. It’s our nature. We’re diggers-up, pullers-in, scoopers-out, sortersthrough, finders-keepers, movers-on, savages - I mean – salvagers. It’s mercenary the degree to which we can stomach trash purely on the condition that it’s not of our own making.

What do we have of the Romans? Hm? Their rubbish pottery. Shards of nothing. Fragments of their... daily-ness. And it’s off that we begin to think we understand them. Hmph.

RECEIVER begins inspecting the slab, clearing off mud and algae.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Always dirt under the nails. No hope trying to keep them decent.

People ask me how I got this fancy-nancy job with the Maritime Agency. “Receiver of Wreck.” No fault of my own, I assure them.

Just a lifetime of rooting around in sea trash.

But some days, yes, treasure.

Sorry. I have this thing about hands.

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And by and large, Commonwealth Code and The Law of the Sea – that’s what it’s actually called, by the way, the rules for International Waters: LAW OF THE SEA – by and large, that’s what we’ve got to go off. Finders keepers. You believe that? Finders keepers essentially governs 68% of the earth’s surface. Not Geneva Conventions. Not Hammurabi’s Code. Something older, you understand: Finders. Keepers.

(Uncovers dirt enough to read the inscription.)

Another one of these. T-J-I-P-E-T-I-R. Tjipetir. Tjipetir. Tj – No one in the office quite knew how to pronounce it. ...

I think I’m losing my appetite for tragedy.

There are just no comic shipwrecks. And the romances are growing sparse. No, on the whole, it’s a great gaping maw of sadness.

Silent of course. Like a mouth hung open with no tongue to speak of. To speak with. It’s like Charybdis. Or Scylla?

It’s like whichever one is the hard place not the rock.

Alright, alright. I get it. Here’s what you want to know: yes, there is a difference between flotsam and jetsam.

Because, legally, right – in terms of the LAW OF THE SEA or whatever – it does matter if an item was lost by accident or intentionally.

(Quick, rote.)

Did you throw it overboard to lighten the ship? Jetsam.

Did you lose it in the sinking and it popped back up to the surface? Flotsam.

Did you throw it over board but first tie something to it to buoy it up? Lagan. That’s good: you thought ahead.

Was it lost to the ocean floor – willingly or unwillingly – sunk, relinquished, abandoned with no hope of reclamation?

That’s derelict. A crowd favorite.

The Receiver of Wreck serves Her Majesty by discerning and cataloguing these cases, this daily-ness. What belongs to whom when it breaches the surface?

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May 17th, 2012 – Another rubber block slaps down from above.

I remember it was the day Donna Summer died.

I remember it was the day Google failed.

And another one plops down.

At the office, we had been getting calls for months. People had been finding it all along the coast. They wanted to know what “TJIPETIR” was. And Google didn’t know.

Phones ringing and four more fall. RECEIVER OF WRECK bends down to examine one.

Not ambiguous search results. Like no search results. Did you ever see that page? It’s horrible. Empty. As if in all the Internet nobody could find an occasion in which the letters T-JI-P-E-T-I-R were in order.

Maybe you don’t think that’s a problem. Maybe that’s above your paygrade. I did the only thing a person in my position could do to access information beyond my grasp. Or beyond what my grasp grasps, which is to say Google.

I called an expert on such matters of lingual perplexity.

Her Majesty’s Receiver of Wreck isn’t retained to know every word that washes up on the shore of consciousness. I just enforce the Law of the Sea. And when it – Tjipetir, anything – breaches the surface, it becomes my problem. My job. Willing or unwilling.

ETYMOLOGIST enters. She looks like what you’d expect an etymologist to look like.

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RECEIVER OF WRECK (Continuous.)

Do you ever wonder how much the internet weighs?

ETYMOLOGIST (Perplexed but doesn’t miss the beat.)

It weighs nothing. Or what a cloud weighs. What The Cloud weighs. Which is to say nothing.

RECEIVER OF WRECK You’re the Etymologist? Hmph. I’m Her Majesty’s Receiver of Wreck.

ETYMOLOGIST So it says on your door.

RECEIVER OF WRECK I appreciate your coming on such short notice.

ETYMOLOGIST Didn’t realize I had an option.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Willing or unwilling?

ETYMOLOGIST Excuse me?

RECEIVER OF WRECK What if you were to count and weigh all the component parts?

ETYMOLOGIST That’s redundant.

RECEIVER OF WRECK All the components then.

ETYMOLOGIST I shall assume components of emission, reception, and transduction.

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RECEIVER OF WRECK I accept the assumption.

ETYMOLOGIST Emission – from Latin “ex” + “mittere,” to send out. Reception – “capere,” to take, to literally grasp in repetition. And transduction - “Ducere,” to lead. “Trans,” across. A guide across an unknown chasm.

RECEIVER OF WRECK All necessary, I think. Components.

ETYMOLOGIST Internet. First entry: 1984. "The linked computer networks of the U.S. Defense Department," shortened from “internetwork.”

An interstitial space. A go-between rather than a mooring port.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Are you going somewhere with what this is supposed to mean?

ETYMOLOGIST Redundant.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Ha! You said that already.

ETYMOLOGIST Internet happens in the air! It’s all transduction! No emission, no reception.

RECEIVER OF WRECK But the size of it. The massiveness!

ETYMOLOGIST Real or imagined but always impossibly transductively weightless

RECEIVER OF WRECK But storage weighs.

Pause.

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ETYMOLOGIST (Really considering it.)

Data.

RECEIVER OF WRECK The brave ones call it memory.

ETYMOLGIST I’m not a data scientist.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Lucky that’s not what I need.

ETYMOLOGIST What you need is / a — RECEIVER OF WRECK A brave one.

Random-Access Memory. Not a single string of data but rather associative, rather more like life. I should think that capacity costs something. Where do we store all that memory if it can resurface anytime anyplace... out of any particular ocean...?

ETYMOLOGIST Random-access?

RECEIVER OF WRECK What’s underneath the word? You’re the etymologist.

ETYMOLOGIST You what, receive wrecks? What’s that like?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Scintillating. Heartbreaking. Still working that part out. My office oversees maritime wrecks and salvage. And Royal Fish.

ETYMOLOGIST ?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Fish belonging to the monarch by ancient right. Very sacred but not terribly important.

ETYMOLOGIST I don’t translate whale songs – 7

RECEIVER OF WRECK So? ETYMOLOGIST So - I don’t understand why you sent for me.

RECEIVER OF WRECK You took this meeting willingly.

ETYMOLOGIST It sounded urgent RECEIVER OF WRECK And ETYMOLOGIST And I was curious.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Curious is such a small word.

Three rubber slabs fall.

Stillness.

Are there more?

ETYMOLOGIST goes to one, runs her fingers along the letters.

ETYMOLOGIST The flight was long.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Certainly.

ETYMOLOGIST And the food was bad. And the Uber expensive. And the public bathroom Kafkaesque.

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RECEIVER OF WRECK Yes. ETYMOLOGIST One word?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Just the one.

ETYMOLOGIST It’s a bit extreme – RECEIVER OF WRECK I suppose ETYMOLOGIST You do a lot of supposing.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Rubber-like blocks etched with That One Word began washing up on the coast of Cornwall earlier this year.

That was the first report our office received. Luckily the salvage was recovered by a patriot with a bureaucratic heart who filed the paperwork dutifully. We were stumped but quietly so.

Until Facebook. And Twitter. Tumblr. And there were groups. And then the Dutch started finding Tjipetir. Then the French. The Spaniards. Norwegians. Then the Sierra Leoneans and the Bahamians.

RECEIVER is kicking the rubber blocks around.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Then! Then!

ETYMOLOGIST Then?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Outsider theories. Atlantis. Aliens. Druids.

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ETYMOLOGIST The Titanic?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Theories. From all sides. And I have nothing. And when I ask Google, it’s just – RECEIEVER OF WRECK pulls out an iPhone to show ETYMOLOGIST but gets distracted.

Omigod, Donna Summer just died.

ETYMOLOGIST (Genuinely.)

Aw. RECEIVER OF WRECK No leads. No idea what I’m even beginning to look for. Just tjipetir. I don’t even know how to say the word! It makes me look like a goddamn fool. This is my job!

Pause.

So, so slowly. Almost imperceptibly, one of the blocks begins to float into the air.

RECEIVER OF WRECK You know something.

ETYMOLOGIST What?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Your hand. It – moved. I saw. I have this thing with - You know something. About tjipetir. What it means or or or a lead or something. You know More slabs rising.

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ETYMOLOGIST I’m sorry. I – I don’t know how to help you. / You’re gonna need to find someone else.

RECEIVER OF WRECK / How many etymologists do you think there are in the world?

Still more rising.

ETYMOLOGIST I can’t just run around Nancy Drew-ing all this internet shit every time somebody asks. How’s that supposed to get me on a tenure track? Or my book published? I’ve been auditioning for Jeopardy a lot, too. What if they Call Me??? Besides I’m allergic to basically everything – including most types of rubber.

By now, half a dozen slabs are floating at various levels.

RECEIVER OF WRECK Rubber? Not exactly. We ran some tests, and it’s actually a prerubber substance called Gutta-Percha. A bit gummier, but ETYMOLOGIST But essentially waterlogged rubber?

Pause.

RECEIVER OF WRECK It must be awfully lonely in your profession.

ETYMOLOGIST ...?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Is it hard to find someone, to meet someone who’s on your level?

Who’s listening to the world the way you do? I think it must be.

How many etymologists does the world need?

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ETYMOLOGIST I’m not lonely RECEIVER OF WRECK I didn’t say you were ETYMOLOGIST I’m not a lonely person RECEIVER OF WRECK - is what people with rich social lives usually say.

ETYMOLOGIST I have friends!

RECEIVER OF WRECK What about meaning?

ETYMOLOGIST Meaning?

RECEIVER OF WRECK Meaning. An etymologist must have some interest in finding meaning. Or do you just trace the breadcrumbs, too frightened to connect the dots?

ETYMOLOGIST That’s a mixed metaphor.

RECEIVER OF WRECK I know the type. Forever trapped in a labyrinth of your own design. Sure that just around the next corner is the answer that will satisfy. Only ever finding another corner to turn.

ETYMOLOGIST And what’s the alternative?

RECEIVER OF WRECK You devote yourself to a discipline and then – what? – online dictionaries render it obsolete. That’s rough. That’s almost cruel really. You know, I’m having a hard time even imagining 12

another situation ever in which anyone would need to call for an etymologist. Can you? How many chances are you going to get to do something of real value ETYMOLOGIST Okay.

RECEIVER OF WRECK What was that?

ETYMOLOGIST stares at one of the risen slabs.

ETYMOLOGIST What’s my budget?

End of Scene One.

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