Travel Blog

It is said that sunshine is the best disinfectant.  Today I bear witness and present evidence to the fact.  I’ve been living in Kaohsiung for over a year and a half now.  I woke up today to an unbearable emotional state of being, commonly referred to as "waking up on the wrong side of the bed".  I call in sick.

After a morning of self-inflicted internal mental and emotional audit, and countless inquisitioning of the divine for possible transcendental root causes, I fail and decide to seek inner peace outside.  Luckily it was a clear breezy Spring day here in Kaohsiung.  In flip flop sandals, thai cotton pants, and T-shirt proclaiming "Pulchritudinous", I set off on a walk-about to find peace.  Noon.

I walked along the Love River by my house down to the harbor.  The Love River has been beautified over the past 5 years, with grass and trees planted along the river front.  A multitude of cafes sprung up to match.

No peace at the Love River.

I turn into DaRen Street, where just 2 blocks off the river, stands the Tao/Buddhist temple at which my family had been praying for over 50 years.  I stopped in to offer incense and prayed for inner peace. 

No peace at the temple.

I stopped across the street at a food stall that I religiously lunch after prayer.  Yummy steamed pork meatballs. 

No peace with meatballs.

Just 2 blocks further stood my elementary school.  I walked by and reminisced the blue shorts and white shirts whith my name and second grade ID stitched thereon. 

No peace with memories of dodgeball.

A 20 minute walk took me through Kaohsiung Fisherman’s Wharf to the boat docks of Gushan.  A 30 cent ferry ride across the harbor to the island of Cijin, brought me to a place a world away.  A 5 minute walk from the ferry landing across the narrow island and I find myself on a volcanic grey sanded beach.  I took a deep breath at the site of the horizon, peppered with cargo ships.

No peace in the horizon.

I sat under shading in deep introspection on an abandoned bamboo fishing boat, and futilly reviewed aspects from my life from every possible perspective.  The age old trick of distraction with a magazine enforced further futility.  I fell asleep to the sound of the waves for an hour.

No peace in the nap.

I woke to the sound of a 5 year old pigtailed girl playing with rocks and a Coca Cola bottle.  How easily children amuse themselves with just rocks and a Coke bottle!  Not feeling any lighter, I walk towards the hill at the end of the island.  Perched on this hill is an old Ching Dynasty cannon fort dating back to the 17th Century.  Through a series of boardwalks and trails, I findmyself circling upwards, past a lighthouse to the fort. 

It was 5pm, and the sun was setting.  There was a light breeze on my face.  I found a perfect corner bulwark with a near 270 degree view of the horizon, and watched the sun set over an hour.  Through the shades of purple and orange, my thoughts transformed from chaotic emotional distortion to calm and clarity.  Accompanied by deep breaths and a mental replay of Porcelain by Moby, I received one of the most amazing gifts from mother nature; a gift we oft take for granted.

We live in an ever-urbanized environment.  The digitization of our lives make us turn more inwards.  This unnatural course accumulates unknown tensions that clandestinely permeate our emotional wellbeing.  Stop for a moment and hear the call of nature.  If you happen to feel an unexplicable downturn in emotional wellbeing, I suggest paying a visit to our old friend, the Sunset. 

I found peace today.

My fellow Kaohsiungese friend, Pieter Vorster, inspired me to drive to YanShuei for the local version of the lantern festival.  The Lantern Festival occurs a few weeks after Chinese New Year, and under normal circumstances is painted with the imagery of a sea of children running along public grounds with handheld lanterns lit by tea candles.  Contrastingly in YanShuei, the town celebrates the worship of the war gods with an open invitation to fire off as many bottle rockets as possible …. at the attendees. 

The ceremony: there are about 8 temples in YanShuei, each housing the various gods from polydeist Taoism.  During this festival, carriages with pro wrestling-like metal cages encases the traveling god, and is taken to each of the other temples in town for "a visit".  Each temple honors each visiting god with a pyromaniacal display of fireworks.  A typical set up is a shelf 5 foot in height, lined with rockets side by side on multiple shelves pointed outwards on all four sides.  Attendees rush up and surround the rocket tower with only but a few feet of distance and POW!  Fireworks are shot simultaneously from the center of the tower into the sky and chains of firecrackers are lit under our feet.

Five of us, wearing standard protective gear including a full motorcycle helmet, gloves, heavy jacket and pants, and a towel wrapped around our necks are allowed to charge with thousands of other attendees dressed in the same fashion, at walls of bottle rockets fired directly at us.  The biggest one featured a wall of 250,000 rockets fired into the crowd underneath a waterfall of sparklers.  Pieter and I ran in front of a god carriage as 3 chains of firecrackers went off under our feet.  The carriage pushed through the crowd at high speed and flattened 10 people.  We crawled out from under with firecrackers bursting around us.  The war god givith no mercy. 

YanShuei for the evening looked like Sarajevo under seige.  Across the horizon hundreds of fireworks go up simultaneously like anti-aircraft guns.  The constant bursts of explosives surrounding us rang in our ears until the next day.  For those who wore synthetic jackets, the rockets melted holes to mark scars of war. 

The siege began at 630p and ended at 2am.  8+ hours in total.  Spain may having the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.  New Orleans may have Mardi Gras.  Only in Taiwan can one charge at 250,000 bottle rockets.  One fond tip: follow the fire engines because you know something big is going to explode.  YanShuei 2007 is an open invitation for those tempted, or just plain crazy, like us. 

Fried Chicken.  I love fried chicken.  My vanity hates fried chicken.  Somewhere in this seemingly complex structure that I have called a brain, fried chicken creates a perfectly harmonious concoction of biochemical love and hate that zeros in on my pleasure sensors like pubescent boys to cheerleading uniforms.

Fried chicken is the epitome of guilty pleasure.  Tastes SO good.  Feels SO guilty.  It led me to ponder, why is it that most everything on earth that feels or tastes fantastic, is undoubtedly bad for us?  To name a few just from the letter "B": butter, bacon, Belgian chocolate, beer, bad boys a la James Bond, and bitchy girls a la Paris Hilton.  Definitely good for the soul.  Definitely bad for reality.  I offer no solutions, but plant a seed of curiosity that perhaps will lead you to a personal answer.

Let’s talk about food first.  If you were born in the middle of the rain forest, completely unaffected by what we know as society now, and your parents fed you creme de beetledung since birth and told you that it tastes good.  Would you know the difference?  Would your cerebral wirings convince you that creme de beetledung was "the shit" in culinary delights?  Pardon the slang and pun, in that order.

Now let’s talk about bad boys and bad girls.  You know the type.  Those that make you activate your long lost 8th grade crush tingles or tie up your stomach in knots followed by temprary aphrasia.  These people can make botany the most exciting date activity you’ve ever done.  They drive you made with their brash or abrasive personalities.  They ignore you, abuse you, douse your brain ina vat of their bad temper, and it only makes you want them more.  It feels good to be angry at them.  It feels good to love them. 

Dangerous men and provocative women are stimulating and unpredictable.  We’ve all been there before, and in fact, some of you may be there now.  If you’ve been there, take a minute to reminisce the soulfulness of diving in without care.  If you’re in it now, enjoy it while it lasts.  Some theorize that you don’t cherish something easily gained.  Therefore we aim to tame.  Taming a tough personality produces an overwhelming sense of accomplishment the likes of summiting a mountain.  Another likely theory is that going out with such a person is but a voyeuristic peek into a life otherwise lived.

The fact of the matter is that it is but another trial in life.  Live it.  We were meant to stir the emotional brew once in a while.  Feel the anger.  Feel the lust.  Feel the guilt.  Whatever truth is locked in the depths of our desires, we can only fully decode our souls by process of elimination.  Try being a dangerous man or a provocative woman.  If you don’t have the fortitude for the said experiment, you can always resort to the traditional large bucket of fried chicken. 

Paraskevidekatriaphobia.  This seemingly German word is, in fact, English defined as the fear of Friday the 13th.  This seemingly irrational superstition is, in fact, very entrenched in our culture.  Its basis, nonscientific.  Its origin, obscure at best.  Yet undeniable proof of the strength of this superstition appears clandestinely in our lives. 

I recently read a fascinating article by David Emery on this topic.  Here, I will give you a synopsis of his findings.  The superstition can be broken down by its parts: (1) Fear of Friday and (2) Fear of 13.

(1) Fear of Friday

Some say that the fear of Friday goes back to the beginning of biblical times.  It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit.  Adam bit, and they were both ejected from Paradise.  Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified.

In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day.  Later in Britain, Friday was hangman’s day.  In some pre-Christian cultures, Friday was a day of worship, so those involved with secular activities on that day could not be blessed by the gods.  This explains the taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.

Here’s a good story:  One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky.  A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday".  They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain.  To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.  Ooops.

(2) Fear of 13

Thirteen is sometimes called the Devil’s Dozen.  The nexus between the number 13 and misfortune originates from legends and myths of antiquity.

Twelve gods were invited to a banquet in Valhalla.  Loki, the god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13.  Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods.  Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly.  All Valhalla grieved.  And although one might take the moral of the story to be "Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe", the Norse apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck.  As if to prove the point, there were exactly 13 present at the Last Supper.  One of the dinner guests betrayed Jesus, setting the stage for the Crucifixion, on a Friday.

Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue.  Many buildings don’t have a 13th floor.  If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all would die within a year.  If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil’s luck.  Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Theodore Bundy all have 13 letters in their names.

Ultimately, there are powerful forces in this world we have yet to comprehend.  These forces of nature move about us.  We cannot see it.  We cannot hear it or smell it.  Yet we sense it.  Call it destiny, karma or feng shui, deep within our hearts this underlying energy in our lives is undeniable.  Whether or not you believe in superstitions, on this Friday the 13th, take a minute to send a quiet and personal non-denominal wish of safety for your friends and family.  And in case your sixth sense cautions you with bad luck, better stay home, lock the doors, close the blinds, wear garlic, throw salt over your shoulders and keep your fingers crossed.

I have conversed with friends who reside outside of Taiwan who have but only crumbs of knowledge of the China phenomenon.  Being Chinese, and your friend, I think it is a matter of personal friendship that I give you sufficient information for you to be dangerous in discussions.  Here, I will arm you with readily quotable facts and statistics that will impress.

Let’s review some of the cultural and historical aspects:

Historical Fact #1: Why so many Overseas Chinese?  We quietly infiltrate every culture and slowly infuse Chinese food into the culture.  Our aim is to bring it all down from within.  I jest.  Actually, the year is 221 B.C. during the Qin Dynasty.  Emperor Qin, a big fan of Confucius, systematically forced the coaster traders out of the country.  Under the Confucian system, farmers were revered while traders were shunned.  Traders created nothing and lived off the passing of goods between people.  Out with the leeches!  Chinese have been rooted throughout SEAsia since.  Immigration of Chinese to America, Australia, and Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Historical Fact #2: Emperor Qin Shi Huang did the following during his 21 year term:

(1) Unifed China by sheer military might;

(2) Establish Mandarin as the official language;

(3) Built the Great Wall O’China;

(4) Rumoured to have indirectly given birth to Japan;

(5) Created 7000+ terracotta soldiers to guard his tomb.

Historical Myth #1: As with all megalomaniacs, Emperor Qin was fixated with immortality.  Appointed doctors that could not deliver the elixir of youth were subsequently beheaded.  One clever physician was sid to have delayed his decapitation by fabricating a mystical eternal herb in a far away land.  The price: 50 young men and women were sent on a ship to retrieve this herb.  Myth is that they landed in Japan.  Let your imagination run henceforth.

The doctor was eventually decapitated.  Qin built 7000 soldiers, horses and carriages to guard his tomb in case he came back.  I imagine when the tomb was finally sealed; all workers withknowledge of the tomb were executed.  The last guy probably had to commit suicide. 

Historical Myth #2: Labor laws were lax.  Emperor Qin was keen on quality control.  Each section of the Great Wall of China was appointed a foreman overseeing hundreds of laborers.  The mortar had to be tightly packed and the stones meticulously placed.  Each day a Qin officer would ride along the wall and systematically thrust his sword into the mortar.  If the tip of his sword were to pierce the mortar by more than 3cm, the foreman along with his entire crew of hundreds would be beheaded.  That section of the wall would be torn down and rebuilt.  This explains why the wall is still standing after more than 2000 years.

Historical Fact #3: What’s the story with China and Taiwan?  Here is the Cliff Notes version:

(1) Modern China was born after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

(2) Chang Kai-Shek led the nationalists.  Mao led the rebel communists.

(3) They fought with each other until the Japanese invaded in the 1930s.

(4) They got together to kick out the Japanese during WWII.

(5) After WWII, they went back to fighting each other.

(6) In 1949, the communists won and the nationalists pushed off on boats to Taiwan.

(7) China and Taiwan have been at a stalemate since.

Today, you will not find a more unique blend of paradox.  When Mao launched the cultural revolutions in the 60s and 70s, he effectively destroyed 5000 years of cultural history.  Why?  My personal conjecture is that a billion people would have no extracurricular distractions but to listen to everything he says.  No religion, no philosophy, no roots.  Freshly injected with western capitalism, teh current generation of Chinese is born with a characteristic that only Gordon Gecko would wish: an ethical bypass at birth.  Capitalism is the new God.  Thanks to Mao, modern day mainland-Chinese do not ahve the ethical or moral roots to anchor their pursuit of happiness.  Like Terminator, they will not stop until the money in your bank account is in their bank account.  they feel no pity, no remorse, no fear.  The paradox: communist by name, socialist by policy, and pure capitalism by mentality.

Now let’s review some of the economic aspects:

Scary Fact #1: China has 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the world population not accounting for the 34 million Overseas Chinese.

Scary Fact #2: China is the 6th largest GDP economy in the world in 2004 and is anticipated to be the 4th largest in 2005, after America, Japan, and Germany.

Scary Fact #3: Opened for business in 1978.  It’s just getting started.

Economically, China is everywhere akin to a swarm of bees hovering over a busted hive.  The majority of items you buy these days is from China.  It always starts with textiles and toys, then plastic and rubber household goods.  Then progress to low tech kitchenware, then electronics goods.  Take a look at the back of your Ipod.  Surprise.  It is the manufacturer to the world for one reason: labor cost.  Here is a sampling:

Average hourly wage in 2004

Germany US$31.00

USA US$22.00

Taiwan US$5.64

China US$0.92

There is no typo.  With 92 cents an hour, any Chinese manufacturer can approach any German manufacturer and claim: "For every one of your workers, you can hire 40 of mine."  Downside risk: quality of product and intellectual property infringement.  But WOW.  US$30 savings per hour! - Yummy by any business standards.

Not bad for 20 odd years of progress.  So if you have an iron will and a fortified consitution, "Go East, My Friend!".  East is the new West.  Red is the new Black.  And a traditional Chinese dress looks fabulous on any woman.

I had a stimulating conversation with my friend Hans who runs a company a floor down from my office here in

Kaohsiung

.  Hans is a chemical engineer from

Germany

, and has been in

Kaohsiung

long enough to be more Kaohsiungnese than me.  The topic: Love.  Being a meticulously logical person that he is, he had created a formula for the Value of Love©, which is akin to the econometric formulas we all feigned to understand in college, and later became embarrassed to even earn a passing grade.  The purpose of this formula was to systematically place a numerical value to love.  It involves multiple variables and utilizes complex charts for prioritization.  As he intends to write a book on this topic, I will not steal his thunder here by divulging trade secrets.  But the discussion ignited another basic observation about human behavior: the need to organize an overwhelmingly chaotic world.

The world is naturally chaotic.  We have a proclivity to put order to chaos.  To achieve this order, we naturally organize concepts and ideas into formulas based on conclusions founded from experiences.  The formulas or basic truths help us understand nebulous concepts such as the personality of someone we love, or personality of someone we love, … oh yeah…, and the personality of someone we love.

Let’s use an example.  I once saw a proof for why girls are evil.  Sorry girls, this is just exempli gratia.  I mean no offense.  It goes something like this:

It is given that:             Girls = Time X Money

We all know that:          Time = Money

Therefore:                   Girls = Money X Money = Money²

We also know that:       Money = Root of all Evil = ÖEvil

Therefore:                   Girls = (ÖEvil)²

Conclusion:                   Girls = Evil

Another thoughtful observation to organize our love lives goes something like this:

There are 5 stages of a romantic relationship:

(1)          Initial Attraction          Boy meets girl.

(2)         Discovery                     Boy and girl engage in dating activities to find out about each other.

(3)         Conflict                        Boy and girl discovers things they dislike about each other.

(4)         Conflict Resolution       Boy and girl resolve conflict by coming to terms with what they dislike about each other.

(5)         Commitment                   Boy and girl are promised to each other.

The conundrum is that for boys, they enjoy (1) Initial Attraction and (2) Discovery; but are more likely to leave the relationship upon first sign of (3) Conflict.  For girls, they also enjoy (1) Initial Attraction and (2) Discovery; but then have the greater propensity to bypass directly to (5) Commitment. 

These formulas provide perhaps a false perception of control.  The control feels good.  We perceive mastery of yet another mystery of life by applying simple structure to it.  If love ad infinitum has a formula, it is undoubtedly complex.  It must involve chaos theory for definitions.  It must involve quantum math for a solution.  Then again, perhaps it is as simple as rolling dice: pure chance.  Conclusion: We should all learn something from

Las Vegas

: “Whatever happens here [in life], stays here [in life]”.

The birthday blast radius is December 27^th +/- 2 days.  I have had the honor and privilege of meeting some of the finest human beings within this blast radius. We often meet people who share the same birthdays and, without fail, we are stunned at the coincidence.  Let’s put this into perspective.  There are roughly 6 billion people on earth and 365 days in a year. On average, this would yield 16,438,356 people who have the same birthday as you. 

Here I want to send out a Happy Birthday to all those within my radius:

Myla Yee

in NYC on 25th

Theresa in the LBC on 26th

Vicky in

Vienna

on 27th

Nikie in

Taipei

on 27th

Babs in LA on 27th

Erich in SF on 27th

Megan in SF on 27th

Chris in SF on 27th

Chris in

Houston

on 29th

So that’s 9 persons out of a possible 82,191,780 within this 5-day radius.  I will end this blog here because, obviously, I have a lot more people to meet. If you fall within this blast radius, email me.

Last night, I rounded up the more liberal thinking folks around

Kaohsiung

to partake in a local tradition: shrimp fishing.  It has been uncontested that this is a phenomenon unique to

Taiwan

. Thai mountain people eat stir-fried crickets. Xinjiang Chinese eat deep-fried scorpions.  Taiwanese people shrimp and then eat them.

The idea of shrimp fishing conjures images of shrimping boats a la Bubba Gump. Uh… no that exotic.  We walk up a concrete ramp into a light grey sheet metal warehouse of about 1000 square feet.  In the center there is a concrete pool of nebulous water where shrimp are allegedly farmed.  Twenty local men sit around on a variety of pink, grey, and green plastic-injected chairs with shrimping rods, smoking cigarettes, drinking Taiwan Beer™, and eating grilled shrimp. A bar characteristic of an 80’s dive bar in downtown LA was obviously shipped in crates and resurrected here.

Imagine this scene.  I, in my Pepe Jeans™ off-white sweater jacket, walk in with 4 fashionably dressed women toting handbags the likes of Fendi™, Gucci™ and LV™, each with Starbucks™ Vanilla Lattes in hand.  There goes the neighborhood.  I contemplated bringing out my ipod mini to play some down tempo music; but restrained myself to prevent inflicting psychological damage on the locals. One local later asked: “You folks from

Taipei

?”

We pick up shrimping poles lined up on the walls as if pool sticks, go to the blood stained mini-fridge full of chicken liver, and off we go. You have to first tie a line with 2 hooks onto the pole, then cut miniscule pieces of liver for bait.

A nice Taiwanese man stuck the entire end of the rod into the water to gauge the depth, and helped me adjust the bobber.  You then put the bait in the water and wait. The shrimp eat the liver, you eat the shrimp.  The food chain simplified.

We talked. We laughed. We took pictures like tourists.  We all caught shrimp, racked them onto a grill, and put them into the convenient oven at the facility and sent them all to shrimp hell. Then we ate them.  Yum.

To recover from this oxymoronic urban outdoor experience, we all went to the opening of a new lounge bar called Loft.  My new found friend Thomas meticulously designed every piece of furniture and décor over 6 months and finally opened to debut his artistic sense. We enjoyed a bottle Moet surrounded by purple velvet drapes, comfortably upholstered red couches and pillows, with down tempo music as background. It was another good school night in

Kaohsiung

. 

“I often feel like life is pointless. That’s why I want to have a kid… who will eventually hate me or not talk to me.” —–My friend Y, Circa 2005

This quote is absolutely brilliant. These 2 sentences concisely capture those moments that we have sometimes. Even the most optimistic have these moments. They just hide it better than most. So this blog is dedicated to those silent moments we have to ourselves: moments that are unbearably dark; moments that are excruciatingly us; moments that are undeniably human.

I believe that for the majority of us lucky few with relatively un-traumatic family lives, the root of this dark matter rests on one simple question: what the hell is this all about anyway? I do not want to mislead you to think that I have the answer to the meaning of life. I don’t. But one fact is certain: knowing that we’re not the only ones to have these moments sure does make me feel better. Therefore, I can only offer some thoughts as a nexus to all of our collective dark moments. You are not alone.

Too often we ask questions to which there are no answers. Yet we don’t have the innate capacity to stop ourselves from asking them. We have intelligence. We have opposable thumbs. We dig rocks out of the ground and build towers that touch the sky. We forge metal cylinders and hurl ourselves underneath the ground and across the globe. It’s just that… someone forgot to tell us why we were doing all of this!

This begs the question: why do we need someone to tell us in the first place? Why are we waiting for some external being, some random grand poobah to tell us the purpose to our lives? We don’t. As I see it: we have about 80 years to live on this earth. We spend too much time pondering the origin of our soul and its final destination after we die. Perhaps we should focus on the 80 years that we have here. Without further evidence, I for one believe the only reason to be here is for the experience.

I turn 34 this coming week. I’m not yet half way through my allocated 80 years and I feel like I’ve experienced so much living by this philosophy. I’m blessed with extremely creative friends to help me fill in experiences. I’ve learned to be less fearful of my dark side.

So my friend Y is right. Life is kind of pointless. But having a kid is an experience, and having your kid hate you or not talk to you is also an experience. That is, perhaps, the only point.

Tonight, I did something extraordinary.  There are truly few moments in life like this…the first crush, the first kiss, or the first …. uh… firework show in your pants.

About a month ago, my South African friend Pieter Vorster asked me to participate in Extreme Theater at a space called Mindful Phoenix here in

Kaohsiung

. An enterprising gentleman named Thomas Sebastian, an Australian, and lethally good looking, decided to open up a space for people to learn kung fu, tap dancing, salsa, and put on plays. Kung fu and tap dancing.  Who would have even had the gumption to put the two together?

So once every other month, they put on Extreme Theater.  The concept is that on a Friday night, 3 writers are invited and given three facts: (1) a person, (2) a place, and (3) a prop. These writers have 24 hours to write a play incorporating these three facts, get actors to rehearse and act out the play by 8pm the following evening. I reluctantly volunteered to act.

I had never done any stage work before, which is the main reason why I decided to venture into this unknown. The three facts in my play were (1) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (2) a treacherous mountain range, and (3) a hot air balloon. Craig wrote the play, called “Tonight we devour the Wolves”. I played a hot air balloon captain, who is hired to take Charlie’s 9 month pregnant wife to look for him because he had freaked out about the impending baby, and took off with the guise of discovering the perfect yogurt covered chocolate balls.  The short of it is that Charlie get’s devoured by a pack of wolves, and I deliver a baby. My co-actress Erin did such a great job.  Her delight of the day was the opportunity to slap me across the face as part of the act. She REALLY got into it. I left with a rosy left cheek.  She left satisfied.

The story is unimportant.  What’s important about tonight was that I learned yet another valuable lesson. I pushed myself to do something I had never done before, and the growth was invaluable. I have a new found respect for actors.  To put yourself in front of people against every grain of entrenched social limitation, with the possibility of total embarrassment, is unfathomable.  Yet the thrill of the experience gave me a rush of adrenaline like that of the first firework show. You know what I mean.  I highly recommend the rush.  You’re stomach will never be as tightly knotted or as filled with a swarm of butterflies. You will open up parts of yourself that you never imagined to have existed before. Just for today, I was a thespian.