Dear Sarah Ruhl,
Thank you for taking the time you did not have to write 100 Essays I Do Not Have Time To Write. For someone who doesn’t have time to write, you knocked them out of the park.
I just used a sports metaphor, I must be feeling nervous.
I’ve never played any kind of organized sport except marching band, instead preferring to write essays, or read them, and what I learned from your book was to not be afraid of the small essay. Small essays can meet huge needs. There is a kindness in succinctness.
My friend Alison recommended your book. She’s an actress, and really the only recurring character on my blog, which is a feat because this blog is about absolutely nothing in particular and yet here she is for the fourth fifth whatever time, hey gurrrrrrrrl. Anyway the first few times Alison told me I needed to read your book I didn’t have my Books To Read act together but by the time the library had been request-only for months, which was preceded by an interminably miserable amount of months in which the library was 100 percent not lending any books (!!) and I took it very personally, I was ready to request you on the spot. Alison was of course straight as an arrow in her recommendation that your book might bind up some of my writerly wounds. Also it was a nice reprieve from the Frog and Toad omnibus for the 98th time.
Sarah Ruhl, your essays flutter in my hands. Your lovely words are a bright spot in my pandemania. I will write more because of you. I will Google a hell of a lot more plays because of you. I’m going to brush up on Greek myths and tragedies because of you – and Sufjan, always Sufjan.
I have accomplished very little in my life compared to yours, and Alison’s, and definitely Sufjan’s but he has no children so some of it is that – still I’m not going to concentrate on it, I’m just going to keep writing, because I too don’t really have time. My time isn’t missing because I’ve been busy being successful at other things, like writing plays, and helping my plays be performed around the world while breastfeeding twins. It’s mostly just missing because it was wasted or misdirected or poorly invested or my children desperately needed it to bury in a hole in the yard. Also much of it has been spent patching up low grade trauma. But now, look what I will continue to do with words: lavish them, redirect them, construct them courageously in non-sporting metaphors, all the while continuing to patch up low grade trauma. Perhaps some day they will rise up from that muddied pit in the yard to say: here! here we are! A small handful of talents.
Bless you, Sarah Ruhl,
your friend and teammate Megan
