my name in print

writing on tempting fate

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This story starts with a piece of string. A while back, my sister Samantha sent me a wishing bracelet in the mail. I used to make them myself, tying red thread around my wrist while making a wish. The idea is the wish comes true when the bracelet falls off. In mid-March, right around the time I was feeling so hopeless I couldn’t get out of bed, I had my husband tie the new bracelet onto my arm. I wished for what I always wish for: to see my name in print.

About a week later, an article was published in our local paper that the local movie theater was on the verge of closing. When I read the news I couldn’t hide my grief. It was a Friday morning and as soon as I read it I walked into our kitchen to Matt planning the farming season. What was going on? How could this happen? What was I going to do?

Matt made a simple suggestion. Go upstairs, he said. And write a letter to the editor. I’ll do it this weekend, I replied. No, he said. Do it now. Do it now while you’re in it.

My husband understands how I work. It’s easy for me to talk about doing something and then lose steam as the day goes by. But when this moment came it was a tender time. I had just gone back to work after a month off on medical leave and was being told by my doctors, my family, and myself that it was time to renter the world slowly and carefully. A letter wouldn’t hurt. So I went upstairs and wrote. The letter was published online Sunday and subsequently printed on Tuesday. It was the first time I saw my name in print.

To the editor: The recent news of the potential closing of the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington has left me shaken. I know I am not alone in saying that I see the theater as an anchor in our communi­ty.

I grew up in Stockbridge in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the memories I have of my childhood and teenage years are interwo­ven with afternoons and nights spent in the dark rooms of the Triplex.

From midnight showings of the first "Har­ry Potter'' movie to trips with my Monument Mountain HJgh School English class to see "Atonement" after reading the book, to sneaking in without paying (please forgive me) with friends In high school, it is the place I was introduced to storytelling.

When I moved home to settle in the county 1n 2017, I jokingly attributed. the decision was based on the existence of a handful of local businesses: The Bookstore 1n Lenox, Stock­bridge Coffee and Tea in Stockbridge, and the Triplex. Looking back now, l realize I wasn't joking.

I go to the movies at least once a week in Great Barrington. Sometimes I bring a group of friends. and other times I go by myself to see movies that I want to experience alone. Both are available to me at 70 Railroad Street.

I'm a writer. a storyteller, and I’ve taken for granted the access to both the blockbusters and independent movies offered 1n my own backyard. Nowhere else can I see both "Spi­der-Man: No Way Home" and "Belfast'' on the same day. During the COVID shutdown, I continued to buy gift cards that now sit unused in my desk drawer.

My heart is breaking. There truly is no alternative to the contributions orcommwlal space offered by the Triplex. If the commu­nity is committed to keeping culture alive in the county, I ask ftiends and neighbors to do whatever we can to save this special and important place. Meanwhile, I will do what I can. I will be there Monday night I will see whatever is playing at the theater.

Hannah Wilken, Lee

Since that letter, published on Tuesday, March 28, I have put in blood, sweat, and tears to this project. I did not reenter the world slowly or carefully. A group of five other people in the community, strangers to me at the time, formed a nonprofit (I am the Vice President), fundraised to purchase the theater (we have raised close to $600,500 to date), entered into a purchase and sale agreement with the owner of the theater (overcoming the offer of a commercial cinema company with eyes to buy it and run it), and rallied the community to engage and join us in this endeavor (more than 600 people have donated). You can read about our success here. But the thing is, I talk in my sleep now, practicing pitches and conversations about fundraising for the cinema. I haven’t been reading. I haven’t been writing. My wishing bracelet fell off the day the letter was printed.

*****

I woke up early today, the first of July. It’s been three months since I attended the community meeting about the theater, and I’m still asking myself the same three questions I needed answers to when I heard the news of its closing: What is going on? How could this happen? What am I going to do? Now though, the questions don’t pertain to the future of a movie theater, they pertain to my life, my goals, what I want to spend my time doing each day.

In my most recent therapy session, I asked my therapist how I could transfer the passion, energy, and success I had about the Triplex into my actual writing, my literary writing, the novel I am trying to finish. She told me to sit down and think about what made that theater project special, what drove it forward. I knew the answer without having to think: a set time limit, a community holding me and the project accountable, and an unrelenting and unwavering confidence that I would succeed. If I want, I can create those things this morning. I could put everything else aside and see my name in print in a different context. The headline below my original letter reads, “a small world with big possibilities.” The irony is not lost on me.

I don’t have any answers right now. The truth is, I thought if I sat down and wrote the story of the theater and my involvement—if I dedicated space on the page to think about how I want the project to fit into my life now—I would have answers. But the used wishing bracelet is sitting on my desk in front of me, halfheartedly tossed in the corner next to my collection of Lydia Davis’s essays and Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living. The string taunts me. What is going on? How could this happen? What am I going to do?

Today, I will just be. I will send this letter out, I will go to yoga, I will pat my dog, and I will watch the leaves on the trees waver and sway in the breeze. And maybe, I will tie a new wish to my wrist, and see what tomorrow brings.

*bonus new* a video of my beloved dog running in the meadows of Stockbridge. I hope it gives you as much joy as it gives me.

Talk soon.