Walt Whitman To Eleanor:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes," Walt Whitman writes.

Eleanor shows this to her Biographer. See? she says, see?

Her Biographer remarks, Walt Whitman is Walt Whitman, and you, Eleanor -- are you. There's only one Walt Whitman, and there's only one Eleanor.

You sound so familiar, Eleanor says, a fake yawn, hand to her mouth several times like an obscene gesture of the obvious. So familiar, she says, but I'll tell you what. I'm going to grow a white beard and write poetry all day and all night and totally contradict myself but that's going to be okay, because I am filled with everybody. I am multitudes like Walt Whitman!

In fact, Eleanor continues with no small measure of bravado -- who's to say that I'm not the Biographer, and that you aren't MY character?

(She is dancing about like a ballerina. She dances wildly, provocatively. She dances a kind of seduction, but this is all about the words. It's always all about the words.)

Please do write my story then, her Biographer says. In fact, I dare you to.

*
They prepare to drink Moondust tea, and Eleanor's Biographer knows this could knock him out for a few days, if it's like last month's brew. But so it goes -- so it goes, indeed, he thinks, on Full Moon Day.