I believe I'll go with All Lacquered Up...

So here I sit, in my backyard, on an October day that is still in the high ‘70’s. The only use I can find for this weather is that it helps dry my nail polish more quickly.

I’ve always loved to do my own nails. Having to go without for 47 days, once a year, is excruciating because I’ve convinced myself that men don’t want to hold hands with a woman who has dirty nails. So you’d think I’d be very happy to paint them again. I am, sort of.

Being able to paint them again means that fest is over for another ten months. Seven years ago, I didn’t know what this feeling was like. The end of fest meant that I took all of the pictures off of the wall, dusted them, put them back into the plastic bins in a very anal-retentive way (which is right down my alley) and then packed the plastic bins into the back of the huge automobile in a very anal-retentive way (again, no objections). I would then drive down the dirt road out to Highway 41, usually crying like a baby. Those tears were for the loss of an opportunity to experience the magic I saw outside of the booth every day. Wanting to be able to say that I knew those performers I saw out there, making people laugh, smiling all day long, even in rain.

Six years ago, I started a new tradition at this time of the year. I was granted the rare opportunity to be a part of what I had watched for seven years past (in case you’re confused with the counting at this point, I started working in a booth in 1999, then joined the cast and “worked” starting in 2006 through present. That’s where I get the seven years past [1999-2005] and seven years ago [2005] and six years ago [2006] and if you use numerology, you end up with the number 2, which has nothing to do with anything). Where was I? Oh yeah, six years ago, I started a new tradition of being able to come back on the day after and eat and laugh and pack up one more time with everyone. There would be the long fest/Minnesota good-byes, some tears, some inner thoughts of “Damn, I should have hooked up with him. Maybe next year”. There would then be a good week’s worth of depression. I never seem to appreciate at the time, how much I would miss the crowds of people, the impossibility of ever being alone except maybe in the privy, the inability to make a statement without someone else having a retort, until it’s gone and I’m suddenly surrounded by silence…and memories.

Every meal is empty without someone sitting next to me on a bench with a good portion of dust on our food. Every evening is just darkness without someone beside you, walking across a patch of land dotted with decrepit buildings and beautiful sunsets, with one hand on your pass, ready to show the people with yellow flags. Scotch never tastes as good as it does being poured out of someone’s belt into a dusty, dirty, small wooden chalice-shaped shot glass as people file by you to get to their cars, maybe wondering to themselves “I knew it, they all do drink here!”. I’m considering hiring Rich Shepardson to show up outside of my bedroom window every morning just to sing the last few bars of “Swing Low…”. That rattles my rib cage….in a good way. I’d like Rich to bring Neal Skoy with him to run into my tree trunk in my backyard.

I suddenly want one more chance to walk down the lane and mistakenly step on someone’s bit and feel really stupid for a few minutes until someone mistakenly does it to me. I want to walk in the parade while a pirate tries to snatch my glass out of my hand and I swing it carelessly about.

Making someone laugh is the best thing I could think to do for them. I feel silly giving people cards. Giving presents can be fun but it’s kind of fleeting. Getting them to laugh is priceless and everlasting. Having been on the receiving end during the lowest points in my life, I can tell you that it is priceless and everlasting. If anyone uses that statement against me at contract time, I’ll beat the hell out of you.

The kind of humor that is found at fest doesn’t always translate in the same way outside of fest. At least, the reaction isn’t as free. Your co-workers will correctly give disapproving head shakes because the employee manual says so, but I think that deep down inside, there is a guffaw lurking.

Finding the opportunity to be able to do this at this specific location is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that transcends management, ownership, parking conditions, and heat. I’ve met the most incredibly talented, generous, caring people, all of whom continue to let me be around them.

Mandy Patinkin, in a Princess Bride documentary, talked about what it meant to be a part of that movie. At the end of his statement, he tears up and tries to say, without his voice cracking, that “I never dreamed I’d get to be in a movie like this. I never have since and I guess you’re lucky in this life, if you ever get close to something like this.” I couldn’t agree more.

So now I will paint my nails and dream of what could be in another ten months.

Brian’s Song:

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
…Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, then closes
Within a dream. (Earnest Dowson)

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)