Monday, December 10, 2001


OPENING NIGHT.

Granted, this is for a one-night performance, but there is no time I love more than the day of an opening night. After having the show dark for three months we've run it back up to speed over the weekend, and there is a special frisson of nervousness and expectation that makes me feel very young.

It was crisp and chilly in Brooklyn this morning, which was good for a change--it had been so warm the last few weeks that it felt like the weather had lost track of what season it was supposed to be on. As I walked through my neighborhood with its eight funeral homes, pork rendering store and loud Italian mothers whose nails can cut through leather I was, for a moment, very very happy.

In the rest of the world, in normal places, it's Monday and I understand that it sucks. When you don't know where the money is going to come from and you don't have a plan to your life it's small rituals that become important...so I spent the morning drinking coffee and catching up on email with people I haven't spoken with in a long time. Outside the sky looks colder, and the clouds are tracking across very low and fast, while on the ground the wind is steady. Expectant. I'm a victim of my own magical thinking, my wife tells me, but there are moments when the portents line up and you see the distance laid out in front of you, when it is suddenly unmistakably clear where you fit. I guess you need to take that when it comes, because there is no guarantee implicit in its granting. Chase it or don't, but do not expect that you will continue to know which way the wind is blowing.

Coffee's done. I have to get to work.