You Try And Title This Stuff

Back when I used to write fiction, I remember how I would write something and then within months, something very like whatever I had written would happen in real life. It almost got scary. It's one thing to understand that we write from past experience, it's another entirely to wonder if we write from future experience.

Anyway, I am thinking of that tonight as the air is sucked still of everything and it seems as if the planet, or at least this very small part of it, is holding its breath. There is a feeling of something impending and indeed, the radar shows a gnarly front heading this way right now, this second, and I wonder how long I'll have power.

Let it be a good storm, not a bad one. As I wrote this morning, there is a difference.

Tonight was just good. Damn fun. A packed house. We did skip great chunks of lines and scenes but then we always went back and found them, more a fancy embroidering back of the piece into the whole than a picking up of dropped stitches. I found it thrilling, I found it satisfying, I found the resulting quilt a more colorful and beautiful and us-created thing.

Our youngest cast member, our Dee-Dee, had her family there and I met her mama and her three siblings. They are all beautiful. Her six-year old sister was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous little girl I've seen in forever and a day. She wanted to meet me after the play and I wanted to catch her up to me, her sparkly silver shoes shining, her face like some perfect example of what the human race can look like if given the chance. I swear to you- she was a vision, and dressed up in a long dress and with a big shell necklace and those sparkly silver shoes, her hair pulled back and her face not hidden one bit. I remembered what it was like to be the mother of a six-year-old girl and I remembered how amazing it was. Six-year-old girls may be the most enchanting and magical creatures on this earth. I do not know for sure, but they are something. Women-to-be, already possessed of powers and beauty that will take this world by storm. As has our Dee-Dee, only fourteen and in her first role, creating and supporting and knowing and making us laugh so hard and slipping into her role as if she were born for it, slipping also into our hearts and bringing us something vital we so sadly lose as we grow up.

Kathleen, who runs the lights and sound, got a sudden attack of vertigo and luckily, Rich was there to serve tables and he took over. No, it wasn't perfect but for having had about fifteen minutes of instruction, it was perfectly wonderful. Kathleen went home and I have to think it was this storm front coming in that made her dizzy, that had her drunk on the pressure change. I will call her tomorrow morning and see how she is.

And before the play started, Jack told me this: "I am so glad I know you."
He didn't have to say that. It made me cry although I stood there all butchy and dumb-struck. "Man, don't make me cry. Stop that shit!" But he'll never know how much those words meant to me.

Ah...the wind is beginning to make the wind chimes sing, the leaves of the magnolia brush like a woman's green satin skirt in a fancy dance. A dog in the distance is barking. Beyond that, there is silence except for these typing sounds, my whisper-voice as I say what I type as I type it.

I need to eat. Without Mr. Moon here, I eat this and I eat that, none of what you would call good for me. None of it what you would call a meal. It is so late but I might cook some pasta, heat up some jarred sauce, have a bowl of that and call it done. The wind chimes sing a minor-scaled tune of warning. They say a storm is heading this way. That dog continues to bark. The night is as deep ink-black as the devil's own heart. My own dogs are nervous and keep looking at me as if for guidance or reassurance. I would not be surprised to have a snake charmer appear suddenly in my hallway, a cobra in a basket rising to his eerie flute. I wish I had a braid down to my hips and could wrap my hair around me, my lover so far away, it would be comfort in this approaching storm air.

Yeah. It's been that kind of night.

I wonder what sort of morning it will be. We shall see. We shall see. We shall see when it arrives.