The following are excerpts from the short play, Coming Through the Rye, by William Saroyan. I dedicate it to the conflict in the middle east. I dedicate it to america. I dedicate it to iraq. Oh, what the heck, I dedicate it to this world.


The Voice: O.K., people. Your time has come. You are now going to enter the world. You'll find it a strange place. There are no instructions. You know your destiny now, but the moment you are in the world, breathing, you shall forget it. You can thank God for that, let me tell you. Good things, and bad, are ahead for each of you. The world is still new, and the idea of sending you out there for a visit has not yet proved itself to be a good one. It may in time, though. Your destination is America. It's an interesting place. No better and no worse than any other place, except of course superficially, which the Americans make a good deal of, one way or the other. . . . Everything you do, you shall imagine is your own doing. You can thank God for that, too. You shall live as long as you shall. No more. You will find noise and confusion everywhere, even in your sleep. Sometimes in sleep, however, you shall almost, but not quite, return to this place. Nothing in the world is important. Nothing is unimportant. Many things shall seem important. Many shall seem unimportant. In a moment you shall begin to be human. You have waited here nine months of the world's time. From now on you shall be alone in body, apparently cut off from everything. You shall also seem to be alone in spirit. That, however, is an illusion. . . .


The next passage is a conversation between two individuals waiting to be born -- Butch, age nine, and Mr. Carrol is in his 70s. Both are the age they will be at their deaths.


Butch: Miss Quickly -- she told Steve it wasn't fair.


Carroll: What wasn't?


Butch: My father dying before I'm born and my mother being poor, and dying a year later. She says I may have to go to an institution. What the heck's an institution?


Carroll: That's an orphanage, I guess. Now, listen, Butch, don't you go worrying about anything. Everything's wonderful out there.


Butch: What are you going to be out there, Mr. Carroll?


Carroll: Well, let's see. It says here, Thomas Carroll. Mother: Amy Wallace Carroll. Father: Jonathan Carroll. Will be, at birth: son, brother, nephew, cousin, grandson, and so on.


Butch: Brother?


Carroll: Yes. I guess I've got a sister or a brother out there, maybe a couple of sisters and a couple of brothers.


Butch: I thought we were all brothers. I thought everybody was related to everybody else.


Carroll: Oh, yes, of course, but this kind of brotherhood is closer. Whoever my brother is, he has my father and mother for his father and mother.


Butch: Well, what the heck's the difference? I thought we were all the same.


Carroll: Oh, we are, really, but in the world there are families. They're still all really one family, but in the world the family is broken down to the people you come from, and the people that come from you. It gets pretty complicated.


Butch: But everybody is one family just the same, though, ain't they?


Carroll: Well, yes, but in the world everybody forgets that for a while.