The World According to Wallace

Below, is a map of where Wallace's Will has been ordered. Thus far, it's only perusal copies of the book...but terribly cool, nonetheless. (One of the groups considering the play is from Dublin!!!)


View Wallace's Will in a larger map

We also got a write-up in the Portsmouth, NH paper, Foster's Daily Democrat. Also, tres cool.

I guess this is just the year of writing/publishing? No hands-on theatre, which is weird and unsettling, but lots of publishing (?). It's very curious to be back here. But I must recall that His plan, although frustratingly circuitous, is always the fastest and clearly the best. (He's like an old grandfather who knowingly takes tangental detours in his stories when you wish He's just get to the point.)

Howsomever, last night I went through my filing cabinet, trying to locate (unsuccessfully at it turned out) two very old plays I'd written for my summer stints at Hershfield Park in New Jersey in prep for getting together a list of possible plays for Playscripts, Inc. (whom I met not this Tuesday but last when I was down in NYC for the Risking Innovation AATE/ATHE Theatre Educator's Conference).

So, I was going through my filing cabinet and found, much to my surprise and delight, files from 1991-2000 - plays, music, poems, programs (including David Tennant as Romeo! With pictures!!!), journal entries, French homework, all sorts of stuff! I found quite a few old stories with worlds that I'd completely forgotten and characters that I didn't remember. Some of it was fairly passable prose. I feel I was much more quirky then. And certainly full of life and longing for life and vim and vigour and emotion and love for what might be. There was one journal entry from 16 year old Emily that said "Good night" to future Emily...who is now almost twice that Emily's age.

A frightening thought. Am I old enough to have files upon files upon files of poetry and prose from nearly two decades ago? And was I once truly so caught up in the idea of doing nothing but writing as I was then? I honestly would do almost nothing but writing. I remember that. But to read it, to hold the proof of it in one's hands, to hear - as it were - the voice of a person I once was, who is somewhere still within me, but whom I had forgotten or disdained over these past decades in favour of a life with people and not merely with prose (and therefore with publishing...).

Emily of 16 would be over the moon, would be dancing about, would be ecstatic, would be shouting for joy, would be singing her guts out and bouncing her voice off of buildings, heedless of what the neighbours thought at the mere idea that anything of hers should be really (e.g., not by her) published. I suppose, at least here on the interwebs, I still am. But I should like to do so, courageously, in life.

Kristen recently wrote me "Be Bold."

I've become so cautious. So inured to these joys that I'm not immediately giddy. However, I'm still melodramatic at least in my so-called introspection! Regardless, in this year that seems to be about publishing and not about doing, it's good to remember that a self half my age was mooning about hoping for this day. And for her sake, I must embrace it. And for my sake, I must rejoice.

Mood: Ca va.
Music: Random flotilla in my brain.
Thought: How utterly ungrateful we humans can be.... Thank You, God, for this opportunity and the time in which to do it. Amen.