Happy Halloween, everyone.
Today, I’m flying over the moon. My dog, meanwhile, is snoring at my feet.
Date: October 31, 2013
Crane: 244
Days Spent on Project: 256
Location: Apartment, Washington Heights, NYC
Person I would have sent it to: Anne D.
Anne was also there from day one. She and I started working at the Northwestern Costume Shop for the National High School Institute back in the summer of 2001, which seems like lifetimes and worlds away. I had just graduated from Kenyon, and she was still in the thick of her time at the DePaul Theater School.
I can’t remember if we hit it off immediately, but we hit it off well, and I truly enjoyed having her there and working with her. We laughed a lot. We figured out a lot… trial and error… over those few years.
She would eventually migrate over to designing the sets for the program for a year or two, leaving me behind in the costume shop, but we still managed to hang out as many of her classmates from DePaul ended up working in the costume department too.
Obsessed with Madonna, I could always count on her to have fun music to play in the shop and to be able to tell me about Madonna’s latest concert or album.
She is now married and has a child. I just went to check her Facebook account to see how she’s doing… her profile picture is of her child, while her cover photo is taken from a Madonna concert.
Music I listened to while sewing: I’ve got that Chill Out Playlist on in the background. I need something calm this morning.
Thoughts/Feelings behind the block: I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am this morning. I really can’t communicate how deeply happy I am right now.
Why can’t I feel like this more often?
Last night, again, was an amazing experience. It was crazy, overwhelming, crowded, loud, a little unplanned, but… yikes… was it ever fun.
It struck me as I was coming home at 2am (!) how random my involvement is with this event and that it didn’t need to happen and how it almost didn’t happen and I almost chickened out of signing up in the first place. It struck me how lucky I am/was to get suggested and then to jump aboard.
It also struck me that, like Brigadoon, this experience might not happen again.
And that made me upset. But happy upset, you know? Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
Isn’t that the quote?
So, tonight, I’ll savor this one more opportunity and live in the moment as long as I can. I might cry, but I’ll say it’s part of the act.
And then I have to figure out, if that’s really an experience that fires all the synapses up and gets them charged and leaves me smiling and dazed and excited, how do I get more of that? How do I make more of my life like that?
I want to enjoy more of my life. I don’t want it to just be a pocket of fun every few years, but somewhat of a regular occurrence.
Brigadoon is fine and all, but I don’t want to wait 100 years in solitude here.
I’m patient, but I want things to start happening now. Or at least more often.
A Thousand Quilted Cranes 