Do you remember the movie, Just Like Heaven? Reese Witherspoon is in a coma, between life and death, and she visits Mark Rufalo who has rented her apartment while her family waits to see if she lives or dies. Well, a spoiler, but it's an old movie: she lives, but she doesn't remember him from her coma visions. At the end, when he comes to find her and touches her, she remembers all the nice things about him and they live happily ever after.

I bought the DVD so I saw the extra bits. Her memories include scenes where things were not so good. They weren't deleted; the audience saw them but they were deleted from her memory when she touched him. The extra bits reminded us of what she had chosen to forget. I think sometimes we do that, I know I do, - but I remember the bad things, sometimes, when I'm on a downward spiral. Then it gets worse, hard to get off the roll and look up. I remind myself of that, when I get low lower lowest. Good things and bad things happen to everyone. Not that we should put on rose-coloured glasses and be like Candide, thinking everything's lovely in the best of all possible worlds, but we do have some choice. We can choose to remember the good things, look on the bright side, as the saying goes, and look UP. After all (I can't stand this) tomorrow is another day.

This is going to be a catchup day for me, at the Paper Desk and in the back files of Little Mac. For you, too. I've been talking to so many interesting people and lining up different events, it's going to be a busy fall, with better weather than we had here in July. So I'll have lots to talk about.

I went with a friend yesterday to see The Sea, the play by Edward Bond playing at the Shaw Festival this season. I saw it years ago in Toronto and liked it then. Bond is arguably the best playwright of the 20th century. Arguably, but he is pretty good. I remember being very jealous of him when I read that he wrote a play in three days. The first time I tried to do that I wrote three pages and then someone fell and needed a Band-Aid, and someone had a birthday party (well, I had a birthday party for someone, one of my children), and I ....don't know. Time passed. I got back to the play two weeks later. I actually finished it. It had a reading eventually but was never produced.

The next time I was more prepared. By that time, my husband had died and I was trying to make a living for me and my kids, and I seemed to have more time. (Husbands are very time-consuming, bless them.) And I had a system. I thought out my characters and planned the play on scene cards (aka recipe file cards) and then I sat down to write - and finished it in three days. First draft, that is. Sometimes one is all it takes. Sometimes one isn't enough. You never know until you read it or until other people read it - out loud.

Anyway, I went to the Shaw and saw The Sea, and loved it, the play that is. I have some cavil with the cast, nothing for them to worry about. It's a very good play and it has some nice comments about age that I want to remember, so I'll buy a copy. Not an e-script, but a paper book that I can mark up and keep close.

My computer just warned me that I'm running down, so I must recharge. Today is a catchup day. Use it well.