Day 1

Day 1.  I was hoping for a priest to bless my journey (inward as it may be), but there was nary a one to be found this morning.  (It's Ash Wednesday, some years they have been around for the imposition of ashes.)  Instead, I hear the birds sing as they dart between the branches, and the light from the rising sun touches my face, and that will be blessing enough.

As far as the draft goes: more action, less words.  If I'm doing it, I don't need to say I'm doing it. (But do I need to write that direction in? Eh...trying to cut.  A few sentences too long.)

I suppose I can change it still, but I haven't thought of anything else to perform.  Was spending most of my free time thinking about the clown piece.  Maybe if I made more time to free write, yeah. 

I do know what it's about now, but I don't know if there is enough story.  It's about tyrants, which I'm basically defining as voices that tell you that you have to "be good enough" first, "be perfect" before good things can be in your life...and we can never live up to the standards.  We will never be true to ourselves, whatever it is we have to offer the world, if we run around trying to please, or worse yet, trying to not offend, others.  For me it  goes along with the comment of "first world problems."  The idea that basically, if I'm not choosing to live in poverty, and giving all my income to "save" others, and saving dying babies (a worthy cause, but you know, work upstream so we're not always in crisis mode), my life is not worth anything.  That message is out there.  (Someone signing up donors once actually tried to tell me that if I really cared, I could go live in a car to save money so that I could find a way to help others...there is a truth in helping yourself first, not out of greed, but out of self care, so that you are also not someone who now needs help.) Often spread by people (probably not consciously, even) who are not choosing to live that way themselves.  And anything bad that happens is your own fault.  You weren't being good enough...never mind any other players involved, or a rigged game.  If you can figure out what they want and do it, stay in the cage, the tyrants won't strike out.

Okay.  So that's heavy.  And that's the background of the piece, not the piece itself.  It's the mindset I found myself in when the event happened, that I was being "punished" for doing something for myself.  I wasn't of course, stuff happens.  I carried a sense of dread with every step, until the necessities of life drowned out that fear.  Most of the journey was filled with people (relentlessly) teaching me that it was enough to be alive, that my being alive was good...which is one way to break an ingrained belief.  (And I guess that makes it about opposing voices.)

It lingers in the background still.  Not so loud now.