the reading, part I: preamble and set-up...

about four months ago, i posted a blog entry about change.

about how changes, especially in life, can come about very slowly, or suddenly spring up to smack you in the face out of the blue. but that, regardless of which type of changes you encounter, if you can manage to squash your fear or doubt and open yourself up to them... wonderful things can happen.

one such wonderful thing happened for me on monday night.

as anyone who read the blog entries leading up to monday knows, i was a little stressed. i was wading along the shores of a fear swamp and slowly sinking into its murky waters. as the day got closer, i started to worry that what i had written was awful, that the actors reading my words would be rolling their eyes at my work, that the listeners in attendance would be bored silly, that my friends who were participating would wonder what they ever saw in me and that, by night’s end, i would realize that perhaps i should just quietly put away my laptop and pursue a career in botany or plumbing or any other field that doesn’t involve putting stories on paper. it became something of an emotional snowball – the more i worried, the more anxious i got, which made me worry more, and that fed the anxiety, and so on.

by the time monday morning rolled around, i was kind of emotionally twisted into a knot. was i about to make a gigantic fool of myself?, i wondered. and, as i was sitting on big red, trying to give myself a mental pep talk and to calm my rapid heartbeat but failing miserably on both counts, my mom called to wish me good luck.

you know how sometimes, when you’re feeling very delicate and emotional and vulnerable, the simple act of someone being kind or comforting towards you can make you start to cry?

yeah, i got off the phone with my mom and a few tears spilled out.

but, thankfully, when i was done, it was then completely out of my system. i felt better, like the pent-up emotions had finally been released, however ungracefully, and the internal pressure had been relieved. so, by the time i arrived at my friend p-lo’s home to begin the set-up in the late afternoon, i felt my nerves dissipating.

the house was blissfully silent and calm, the large room we would be using had already been cleared and the furniture moved and the microphones set up. i stepped inside and the energy felt... right – mellow, relaxed, creative. j-lo (mr. p-lo) was on full tech-support duty, and was rigging mics and checking levels and optimizing his recording options, while i put carrots and peppers on platters, spooned dips into bowls and tried to figure out the perfect placement for the three types of cookies mom and i had baked. j-lo and i worked quietly, we weren’t rushed and at no time did i feel the slightest bit panicked that i wasn’t ready.

in fact, i’d initially thought i’d arrived way too early, but it proved to be a fortunate “error” because, by the time we had everything ready and had completely re-arranged the original arrangement, the first few people began to arrive.

and, surprisingly, i still felt okay.

one by one, actors began showing up. most of them were people i was meeting for the first time that night, having only had the briefest of email exchanges with them in advance. but whatever concerns i might have had about us not getting along, or them not liking me, or me not liking them were vanquished the second i met each one. everyone was friendly and, more importantly, really nice. though two of my four listeners couldn’t make it, my remaining two arrived and fell right into place. people were eating, and drinking, and chatting, and mingling, and socializing... and i didn’t have to do anything. everything was unfolding easily and organically and, though i’d stressed about how i was going to control what felt like an enormous beast of an event, i very quickly realized that i didn’t need to try to steer something that was running perfectly all on its own.

then it was time to begin. the actors assembled on chairs and on the big sofa, grabbed their scripts, introduced themselves and the characters they’d be reading... and off they went.

to be continued...