On A Fire Escape, In Seattle

We had dress rehearsal for The Crucible last night. It’s been a long and fairly tough schedule, and I’ll tell you true, I’m pretty beat. Excited, but beat.

We are performing in a theater that is in the Oddfellow’s Hall, a fantastic old building here in Seattle. During Act I, which I do not appear in, I went out to the fire escape on the top floor. It’s one of those old fashioned, iron fire escapes that I have always associated with city buildings, and always felt a little jipped that I never lived in a building with one.

I could see so many trees throughout the neighborhood. I could see the scattered clouds struck red by the sun heading down. I could see a sliver of Puget Sound and smell the perfect aquamarine color of the breeze coming in off of it.

I felt this profound loneliness suddenly. Not a maudlin, nobody loves me, pity-fest loneliness, but just this still, sort of bittersweet isolation. I thought of the people I had lost in my life, the people I had left behind, the people I had only known briefly-for moments-but that had made such an impact. There was this stoic sadness that held in its cold and strong hands this burst of joy.

It made me think of the people I still have, my loved ones, the ones that overflow love and make the world a more amazing place by simply… being… there.

I was overcome by this perfect balance of emotion; a wondrous blending of sadness and bitterness and joy and elation, and calm assurance in the blinding face of a life that already seems so full and long and varied. It was like a meal, an utterly perfect meal.

Thank you everybody for being amazing at your best, and amazing at your not-so-best. Thanks for sharing yourselves, and thanks for sitting through this fairly cheesy post.