All The World's A Stage: A Collection Of Monologues

A woman walks on stage, holding a map.

MEREDITH: Excuse me, porfavor… um, I… do you speak English? Yes, okay gracias, obrigada, great, good, bien. I am looking for the deserted house. The carriage house? The one by the river.. by the… duoro is it? Do you know the way? Ah! Okay, I can walk there. Ten kilometers, I can walk. Sure, sure. Good workout you know? No, thank you. I like to walk. I’ve walked since as long as I remember myself. It’s really okay. The heat is no bother. Agua? Sim. Sim. Thank you, thank you. You are very kind. Everybody I met in this town is very kind. Sweet natured, polite. Not many tourists come by here, huh? Me, I… am here to take pictures. I traveled from California, through Dallas, then Amsterdam, then Lisbon. Then took the train to the nearby town and now I’m walking. All that just to take pictures. One picture, really. You know the saying ‘one picture is worth a thousand words?’ Or something like that. So I take that one picture. And then in a magazine, someone would look at, and travel there in their mind, and maybe they’ll appreciate the beauty of nature overtaking a home. A ruin. A deserted home, overrun by wild weeds, bushes, ivy, overgrown plants, moss… People won’t travel here but if you show them a picture something happens to them. For just a moment, they enter my world for a change. They see the beauty of nature the way I see it: as overpowering, as shielding, as repairing. The only thing to repair a broken world is nature running its course. Years from now, in the future, you and I will no longer be here. Neither will this house over there, or that one, or that. But something else will grow here, morph into something. Such is the way of the world. Such of the way of the world: Build, destroy, rebuild. And so on. And so on…. Nature is a cycle and we have no control over its course. But we can do is be transported for a moment into its beauty through. Picture in a magazine. So yes, I traveled far to take this picture. And I’ll do it again as long as I am still here. For all those who long to but can’t, and for al those who overlook the beauty of destruction, and the beauty of nature rebuilding itself.