One evening not too long ago, while I was out going to openings–or maybe to bars–a man approached me on the street and handed me a drawing. He had been drawing me from a distance while I stood outside talking with friends. The drawing was nice, but unremarkable. I held on to it for the time being, and probably would have forgotten it or thrown it out.

A hour or two later, and maybe a few drinks deeper, I was outside again. As I stood loitering on the sidewalk, again a man walked up to me and handed me a drawing he had just made of me.

Recently I attended a high school drama performance of The Sound of Music.  The play ended and the curtain fell.  For many of the actors this was the final performance of their high school career.  As the audience began to file out the curtain rose again, and all of the scenery and set pieces collapsed into the space of the stage, time and place folded into one, and they were met with their material impermanence.  What had been the solid walls of the Von Trapp family home gave way to the cracking and splintering of 1/4 inch plywood, and the swing that had once brought together two young lovers was toppled so that its metal frame could be uncoupled.  As the world of the play fell to its material weaknesses, its inhabitants mourned the death of this world, crying in joy and in sadness.  

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