Sleepers

This was a day of very heavy rain. I stayed at home and took pleasure in cutting boards for shelving and a small repair to the house. That gave me the feeling of having accomplished much.

Tonight I saw the extremely fine play New Jerusalem by David Ives at a downtown theater. Two things happened together as I watched the players alone. The actors delivered an intensely emotional and intellectually thrilling performance, and I took all of it in with ease, which was like coming home. I can remember times when I've watched similarly fine spectacles, knowing that there were levels I was missing, not being quite whole myself.

After the play I walked to the trolley line. This man and his cat were asleep as you see them beside a bus shelter on Market Street, nearly deserted now but which in daylight is as dense with feet as a sidewalk can be.

At home I ate heirloom purple mashed potatoes and listened to First Lady Michelle Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention on the radio. I was expecting her to outclass the entire line-up of last week's parade of Republican slime-balls, but she did more than that. The speech was good enough to stand out as a milestone among great and memorable speeches. Her task being to speak of family matters, she stated to the world what those are, and by contrast, without a direct word, she showed the Romneys to be a pair of phoney, cardboard assholes.

Now it's Midnight. The rain has stopped, and my cats are waiting for me to join them for a long nap.