Playwright Portrait, Susan Mosakowski, Excerpt from Man-Made

The Playwright Susan Mosakowski, 2007

Man-Made

DARWIN

I never thought that that UPSTART, that that BUG collector could make such advancements. I devoted my life to this work when Wallace was only in knee pants. Twenty years ago I set sail on the Beagle. For five long years I cataloged an endless procession of life. Algae, kelp, and seaweed of all shapes and colors waved beneath me like a brilliantly painted flag from the ocean’s floor. Ammonites with their fossil chambered shells begged for my ear. Batrachians hunted my fingers with their forked reptilian tongues. I sought every life form—Brachiopods, Marine Mollusca, Cephalopods, and Cetacea; those my Emma are the naked skin fish, the dolphins and whales. I chased Corolla, Cotyledons, Crustaceans, Curculio, and Edentata through the jungles of Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego. The smell of eucalyptus fills my nose by merely uttering their names . . . oh Emma, if you could have only seen these places, overgrown and glorious.