With every work, each individual involved both leaves a part of themselves with it and also takes something away. A trade is made, a transaction. Somewhere, at some moment, a secret is laid bare. For the creator, be it playwrite, or painter, or architect, the entire work is rife with secrets but those other collaborators leave things, as well. There have been a number of coincidences when it has come to this work.

My coincidence, my secret is within the small monologue I give. It trips me up a bit. I've been where the character is but not so much in a metaphorical way. There weren't any speeches or confessions when I looked upon whom I looked upon. I looked upon a lot. I held a few hands. I carried someone important to me to a waiting helicopter.

There are things that you can not give up. There are also things that you will not give up. Some things sprout from us as from the soil and those roots are so intermingled with us that they will never be pulled out. Others are carved, or burned, or etched. Some are simply locked away and, maybe, not even we, the possessors, know where they are to be found. Some things are ours.

I was planning on saving this picture until the show had run. Sometimes, I think, we are afraid of changing things.
I took this picture on March 28, 2005 while I was driving in Diyala province, North of Baquba. Field after field of yellow flowers. That is the surface of my secret. That surface is what I have added to the play. It is this.