GEORGE:  I’m gonna jump, I tell you!  I’m gonna jump!

CLARENCE:  Don’t jump, George.  I’m Clarence, a benevolent illusion.

GEORGE:  I thought you were my guardian angel.

CLARENCE:  Who’s to say what I really am?  If it helps you personally to believe in angels, then fine, that’s what I am to you.  I might be something else to someone who doesn’t believe in angels.  And that’s OK.  It’s the belief that matters, not the object of belief.

GEORGE:  Why are you here?

CLARENCE:  I’m here to cheer you up.

GEORGE:  You’re not doing very good so far.

CLARENCE:  Look, you want to jump because you think life is pointless, right?

GEORGE:  Right.

CLARENCE:  Well, that’s just the chemicals in your brain getting you down.  Find some good pharmaceuticals and you’ll be fine.  And the good news is you live in the best time ever – Obama (here Clarence reverently bows) will make certain that everybody will get anything they ever wanted or desired – including the chemicals, anodynes and soporifics that help us get through this miserable mistake of happenstance that we call existence.

GEORGE:  Say, you’re screwy!  You’re nuts!  I’m going home to Mary and the kids!

CLARENCE:  They don’t exist.

GEORGE:  What do you mean?

CLARENCE:  They’re mere concatenations.

GEORGE:  Huh?

CLARENCE:  Random groupings of atoms to which you foolishly assign names and identities.

GEORGE:  They’re real, I tell you!  They’re real!

CLARENCE:  The names are real, but the things they signify are not.  There is no “Mary”, no “Bobby”, no “Zu-Zu”.  These are simply names you apply to absurdity, labels you put on meaninglessness.  But that’s OK!  Whatever gets you through the night, man.  I’m in no position to be judgmental.  Hell, I’m a benevolent illusion myself.  Oh, Christ, sometimes I get so depressed!  (buries his face in his hands)

GEORGE:  Why don’t we go to Martini’s Tavern and I’ll get you a drink?  Maybe that will cheer you up.  Come on, little fellah.

CLARENCE:  (wailing) Oh, what’s the point?  Every day it’s the same damn thing – come up with meaning in a world that has none!  Come up with meaning in a world that has none!  Confront the abyss with your own belief-system!  Confront the abyss with your own belief-system!  It’s exhausting, I tell you!

GEORGE:  You don’t have to work so hard, Clarence.  There is meaning in life.  There’s truth. There’s love.

CLARENCE:  If by truth you mean the comfort of lies and if by love you mean the working of our gonads, I completely agree with you.

GEORGE:  (growing angry) My wife Mary is not the product of the working of my gonads!  She’s the woman I love!

CLARENCE:  (laughs cynically, lights a cigarette, plugs in his ipod, ignores him)

GEORGE:  (heaves him over the bridge, brushes himself off, goes back to his life, exorcised, renewed, happy)