Several times a year, for the last ten years, I dream an anxiety dream about my High School senior play. In real life, this was the culmination of training in dramatics at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, and at the time I really did have enormous anxiety.

Generally in these dreams I am showing up late to a theater (they look different every time), where the cast is bustling about, already in costume and makeup- a well-rehearsed army that moves together like an organism in a murky ocean. Though I have a lead role, and should be on stage soon, I have no idea what the role is, what my lines are, or even - horrors - what the play is. I try to get someone’s attention, to ask  where my costume is, or what their lines are before mine, to jog a memory without betraying how lost I am. Their collective attitude towards me ranges, in these dreams, from frustration to expectation, to indifference. Curtain call inches closer, and I am still sorting through piles of dusty costumes, and finding that I cannot read the torn and fraying script.

But recently, in waking life, I lived a spate of wonderful days. I crested a wave of delight, and one night, dreamt that I was back in the theatre.

The play, this time, was not actually in a theater, but in a manicured English garden in the back of a fine marble estate, in the sun. The cast was already into the performance full throttle, spread out, projecting among the topiaries. (The audience was all around on bleachers, as at the US Open). I sprinted through the marble halls of the estate, arriving at the garden right on time to leap through the air over the stairs, and into my starting position. On cue, I began my song and dance number. I did not wait to wonder what my lines were- I merely warbled what was obvious. The cast responded- they knew exactly what to do. They supported my lines with harmony, danced responsively…and then, out of sheer joy, I extended my final note into a swingin’ bam-ba-de-de-de-dum-ba-dum-ba-de-de-dum-ba-dum that lasted several minutes! The whole cast followed my lead ecstatically, the audience roared to its feet, and I unfurled a final, high, climactic note! It was a coup.

A second later, the reviews were out, and hot off the presses. Wiping our brows in the English garden, we snatched a copy from a newsboy. A high school friend read the rave review of our show… and of my performance. It said, “Eva really brought the cinnamon this time!”.

What?

Yes, my friends. I brought the cinnamon.

I told this story to Canelle and Christina at work (because Canelle’s name means ‘cinnamon’ in French). They cracked up, and Canelle promised to institutionalize the ‘bringing of the cinnamon’. It’s when you don’t hesitate too much- but tap into what is joyfully obvious. The cinnamon. Muah.

Noun. Mine.

A doctrine, wherein the believer feels that all the world is his/her oyster.

It may be used pejoratively, as when you resent someone for smugly feeling that he can do/have anything, or it may be wonderfully, as when an oysterist you admire tips their telescope eyepiece toward you, and shows you how beautiful the view is for them. OR it may be used possessively, as when you tuck the world around you like your own damn duvet, and warm yourself with your own… oysterism.

Adrianne:

“I requested a libretto for Satyagraha* at the local public library, and this nice librarian orders it from a warehouse somewhere in New Jersey. Ach! Gosh, the resources of this city are incredible! I mean, it’s great if you’ve got a lot of money, but it’s remarkable even if you don’t!

What we have here is a great font of happiness!…If one knows how to partake of it. Dig below the pop culture and…are you still there, Eva? Ok…to something that truly excites you, and all the resources are there to help you deepen and develop your interests. And a lot of very fine people to help you along your way…”

*Philip Glass opera on the Bagavadgita and Ghandi’s life, currently at Lincoln Center.

It’s a word that means a free-for-all! A brawl! A public quarrel or dispute! It comes from about 1852, named after the regularly held Donnybrook fair in Ireland, whereat brawls tended to erupt.

Lachy gifted me with this word today. Then asked what I thought of relationships. (Build a bridge between these facts, or don’t).

On relationships, I wrote, “Cultivate a seriously long-term, intensely loving one with yourself, and think of the ones with others as merely weather.”