Who's a Wreck?

This business of not ever really resting: it’s pretty common I guess and I'm thinking maybe it grows out of the anxiety we have about the slopes-of-Vesuvius state of our little earth. I know I was out every single night last week at meeting after meeting. All my life I have been one of these people, running all around and never stopping - though come to think of it, one of those  nights I was actually at a play and NOT a meeting.I went to see “As You Like It” at the American Repertory Theatre where I know I would have had $50 worth of fun - if I hadn’t slept through much of the first act, waking up only during the Ages of Man speech. (You know it: it’s the speech where all the stages of a life are ticked through, from the time the child is just a babe “mewling and puking in its mother's arms."  (Always hated that phrase. Whoever Shakespeare was he sure wasn't a woman, you think hearing it spoken.)) These are illustrations of the concept, above and below.I was seated in the back since I had arrived late. I had dropped off the kids I had with me so at least they wouldn’t be late – always such a rush on a school night. They were just out of wrestling practice and still hungry (I’d made some hot food and packed it in Tupperware to eat on the way over.)But then the theatre is in Harvard Square where I had my first-ever apartment that I shared with my classmate Vicki  - and the remnants of our suppers that kept disappearing down the drain of the kitchen sink only to reappear in the bottom of the bathtub, and well, you can’t walk fast when you’re walking through your own past.So my guys were inside enjoying the play for a good two-and-half scenes before I go there and of course Management wouldn’t let me join them in my ‘real seat’ until intermission. So there I was up in the back where the actors looked so tiny and dear and the next thing I knew: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.But when intermission came I saw a new friend and that was nice, and also one old friend, not encountered in almost ten years who called out “Terry Marotta!" and that was also nice and woke me up entirelyThe kids I’d brought to the play had texted me by then. “Intermission time Terry,” they wrote. I suppose they didn’t know what had happened to me. But there they were in the lobby and we did sit together then and for the rest of the play that I was so wide awake I found myself laughing out loud AND tearing up at the touching parts…Then all the way home, we talked about the sonnets which they are reading in school and the film Shakespeare in Love and I don’t know what all else.I didn’t get to bed til 11:30, but that was an hour earlier than I got to bed every other night what with all my other meetings that were real meetings and not fun nights at the theatre.Still. Going out in the week sure does make you tired and I sure enough was beat when the weekend got here.  And judging from the all-over-the-map nature of this post it looks like I’m not recovered yet.But today is Sunday with a fresh chance for us all to calm the heck down so I’m hoping tomorrow I can talk more sensibly about what keeps us Americans push-push-pushing all the time. We shall see! For now, it’s 6am. Time to slam this old laptop shut and go back to SLEEP a while before I myself look like the guy on the right!