Last night, had a reunion get-together with a group of friends. Risa, back in town for Passover, wanted to see everyone in one go. We all met at a great place in Chelsea called “The Trailer Park” bar. The decor fit the name: velvet Elvises, Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can, lava lamps. It was a good evening. Good talk, deep, connected…all of us re-connecting, catching up with one another (surface events: “So what have you been up to?” and then the subcurrents: “And how are you really doing?”)
At a later point, Marpa started a game: You pass around a piece of paper. Each person writes one sentence, or one phrase, on it, and as you go along, you fold the paper over, so that the next person only sees the sentence directly before, not the whole thing, and has to add to it, not knowing what the rest of it says. Sort of like how Woody Allen passes out his scripts. He never passes out the whole thing. The actors only know their parts, the scenes they are in. They have no idea how it will fit into the whole.
Once the paper had gone around the table, Marpa took it, and read out what we had written, as a group. Here it is:
Friends gather as if no time has passed … giving connection to the rise and fall of nations, hoping love and joy can supercede greed in a world so confused and bring forth a new foundation from which greatness, joy, and love will emerge like a breath that fills you all the way down You hear your own voice say, “I love you. Yes. I do.”– Shit! Did I just say that? It is really quiet now. What is love anyway? My mother-in-law says that eventually it is the big blue ocean, love saturationn. Tell me, how can it go wrong!? So as you might expect a new institutionn is born for the good of all mankind.
