Renaissance Constellations

In my head, Renaissance Festivals are like constantly morphing constellations.

Take this idea as a base, but don't get too stuck on it:

In my head, the artists and performers and vendors and musicians and street cast and administrators... all the people that make up a Faire, are little dots of light, that are constantly swarming around the country in ways that look random until you watch a specific light for a while, and then you see a pattern.

Within the thousands of patterns, sometimes many dots will converge in one place, and stay there making a very bright energetic shining light together for a weekend, or several weeks, or even a month or two. And then suddenly the individual dots burst apart from their convergence, like fireworks, until they converge somewhere else; some of the same dots meet again in convergence after convergence, some a few times, and some only once or twice.

I like to think of the of Renaissance Faires as a constant fireworks display of creative energy.

Naked

My therapist commented today on how much more I am opening up, how much more I am allowing myself to be vulnerable.

She said even my body language and facial expressions were so much more open and flexible.

I felt embarrassed and naked.

Regret Nothing

“Antilamentation” 
Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.