Center Stage

It's a little too center stage, sometimes, to be yourself. I mean, the spotlight is yours, you can hardly avoid it. You can be yourself putting on an act, or you can be yourself making observations of yourself. Or you can be yourself trying to lean forward, past yourself and straight into things without interference. You can be yourself trying to be and act and think and talk how you would if you weren't thinking (and talking, and acting, and being) about it. All of this is just being yourself, how you normally would.

I like to be myself hanging back, and watching me go. What did I just say - that? What am I doing - where did that come from?! HOW did I do that!? Oh my god it worked. Or, hoooooo boy did that not work.

We can't avoid being center stage, each in our own self-directed production. But if you ask me, a good director is not shouting from the wings as the show is trying to go on. Direction is given in rehearsal, not in the act. The director ought to be able to sit back, watch the performance - cringe a bit, maybe! Because directors must be inwardly, more critical than critics. But mostly - just watch, and laugh, and cry. The director can always have a word with the cast at the end of the night, give tips for tomorrow's performance.

"We exist in the moment behind intention." Does that mean behind it, always a step behind and catching up to what we meant? Or does that mean behind, always standing aware behind it, and egging intention on? Well I don't know what you're asking me for. It's got to be one or the other. Go ask yourself which. It's got to be one or the other.

For myself, the intention, whatever it is, races ahead of me. I race after it, to make sure I keep it honest. Sometimes I pounce! Tackle, throttle, dissect it - proved true! So many intentions, proved true and faultless, killed in the process. Exonerated by autopsy - then free to go! Oh. Other times, it seems too innocent to bother with the arrest, the examination. Maybe I've already in my life killed so many intentions that looked just like that one. Let it go free. Saved by profiling. Sometimes the intention doesn't even seem worth following. Let it race on ahead, out of sight! - maybe someday, I'll run into it where it sticks.

The universe is only the point at which you enter into it. You are carried outward on the ripples of the impact you make. Your mind can surf outward, can look back at your self from infinite distances - but you will always be standing right there, at center stage.

Don't worry about it. It's just a stage.