all

Remember when S presented her last poetry recitation as my student and brought a handful of her classmates to tears?  "After Auschwitz" by Anne Sexton.  you know you're completely legit when you can recite a poem containing the line:
                   "And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus"
and not a single adolescent person in that room snickers or even breaks eye contact.
That's how you know.

Remember when i was a student- rapt attention- could not avert my eyes.... i did not dare break eye contact, afraid i would miss something.  i wanted to consume everything- to see every syllable.  there was that moment- that beautiful, perfect, outside of time moment-
"i gave you all"
where Jose acted King Lear so convincingly that I almost cried.

"i gave you all."

and even after reading hundreds of pages on the play, and producing about 20 of my own,
that was the closest i ever felt to lear.

remember when i got to play emily in Our Town?  remember when i got to move people?

i admire people who embrace the reckless abandon of performance.
in abandoning self consciousness, we touch something so pure.

i want to be moved.  i want to move.