LOST AND FOUND

My purple scarf -- it's purple chiffon, I tie it around my ponytail.

My  favorite color, right length, it cascades down my back to my shoulder  blades -- just the right amount. frames me -- my head -- me in my not  very attractive work outfit, and gives me a femininely decorated look.

I misplaced it.

"This is dumb," I have said every single day since last Tuesday, when it disappeared. I blamed it on Marta the maid, who cleaned last Tuesday. I scolded myself for being attached to a scarf that is not only an inanimate object, but also a replaceable item. I mulled over and over where I could find another scarf that color, made out of chiffon -- I bought at the Woolworth's 5 & 10 cent store, that used to be on 14th street in Manhattan -- it closed about 10 years ago.

I searched everywhere in my office -- under the desks, behind the cabinets, bookcases, and  shelves -- I always put my favorite purple scarf on the shelf next to a small carton that contains chiffon green, blue, orange, and yellow scarves that I don't like to wear. Saying out loud to the room, "it must be here," I searched again. After I mentioned it to John, my husband, we looked in the studio-theater, his office, the hallways. Upstairs, together, we searched for my scarf in the bedroom, kitchen, bathrooms, dining room, and the brown and green living rooms.

No purple scarf.

Cursing, furious, I have frantically searched all those places a second and third time, yelling "You're a nut. Ridiculous idiot, Stop looking. You know it's gone. It's been thrown out accidentally. By Marta, damn her. Or by you -- you when you emptied the waste basket. Or  maybe John did it. -- dammit.

That it was gone, lost forever, made me depressed, frustrated, sad. It seemed symbolical. It reminded me of other things I have lost, looked for and never found. Gone things -- things that are irrevocably gone like youth.

I FOUND IT

ELEVEN MINUTES AGO.

There it was in the hallway on the floor, behind the legs of the rolling typewriter table on which sits the paper-cutter that sits on top of the Random House Dictionary.

I've got my purple scarf -- my decoration, the prettifying frame for my face when I'm in my work outfit.

The symbolical essence of gone things has told me -- gone things are not necessarily gone.

(VIDEO) STAGED READINGS

Em wants to know how John Cullum enjoys doing "book in hand" performances.

John explains that the hard part of the job is preparing the script.

He describes what he has to do -- how he re-formats the script so that he can do the blocking and choreography,  with his eyes off the book -- focused on the dramatic issue.