after my performance last night, after somehow gluing together 2500 words (not all of them very good words), i seem to have none left. it was such a terrifying thrill to be up there on stage, doing the kind of performance that I feared the most. Solo. Spoken word. Just me. And the audience. and I didn’t know a soul, except for the organizers of this event.

i was up there reading (or bleating)  and it was peculiar because i was reading some other person’s words. But that other person happened to be who i was up until the moment i stood there on stage. I didn’t think what i wrote was all that amusing but I was amused that the audience found this so amusing… it began to amuse me. and i committed my cardinal sin of laughing onstage. Which was embarrassing. I was trying to focus on other things but they would not stop laughing. And I wasn’t even trying to be funny. i was trying to make it through 25 minutes without blowing too many notes with that frail instrument known as my voice.

all of these people i didn’t know congratulating me afterwards. i wish i knew each of them better because i am certain i could find things in them that i would like to congratulate.

And then it was over. They invited me to the “cast party” of sorts at a bar, but I decided I needed to eat a burrito first. At Whole Foods, with election coverage blaring from the TVs above the bar, alone. Or at least that was how I dreamed it. And by the time I arrived at the bar, I didn’t recognize a soul. Eventually I realized I was at the wrong bar. And I went home. And within minutes the election was over. And Obama was re-elected and the world was magically transformed. It was impossible not to feel joy and relief.

But I could actually portend this would happen the day before it happened. I saw someone walking an English Mastiff who looked exactly my guardian angel Mastiff. And whenever that happens, that always is a portent of great things to come.