Illusionary Nihil

They move across leaf-lined campuses

in colorful herds like deer at dusk.

They huddle and shimmer then scatter.

Strings of allnighters have lent them

an intimacy with obscure thinkers and

they are careful to be heard in passing,

dropping names like rose petals as if sharing

a lover’s detail, trinkets from degrees they

will abandon. Deadlines come and inspiration

goes, a blunt promise blown into other fields.

“What happened to your dream to marry

some average-looking guy from a wealthy

family,” whispering wildflowers who change

from year to year, but nothing ages like

the pretensions of a unique fashion sense.

They shift again, how quickly they jitter

out of focus and off the slide, these

moving targets. (Few things are as becoming.)

But what becomes of the love for books,

a universe where poetry isn’t a foreign

language? Spilled secrets dry up like freesia

after rainsoaked seasons, a pungency

abstracted from a heady palette of words

like aesthete, anathema, and cadre. They

move, more somberly now, cocooned

in wool and stockings that web across

fidgeting legs. They are all chunky

gesture and awkward jewelry. Inelegant

ballet of flat shoes and pointed discussion.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t distinctions.

But aren’t they beautiful for having passed.

The limelight twinkling.

                                                                Rita Anderson                                   

As the other KCACTF Region 6 winner and I spilled out from the plane onto the sprawling American hub of the political world, I was too frightened to breathe but I kept my tired limbs in motion. Our hectic D.C. week had not yet begun and my nerves tautly rang with the litany of unfinished things I had back at home, responsibilities that would have to wait, although they harangued me like unwanted satellites orbiting my brain.

“It’s all in the journey,” yeah, yeah, I know, but how is it that I, this middle-aged blue-collar liberal from the Midwest who had settled in the South, had come to this fortuitous but formidable “end”? I was this X on that map because, after trying a host of jobs that didn’t satisfy, I had decided that I owed it to myself, if not (*a tear in the eye and a pang in the heart*) to the art world, to pursue my first passion: THEATER.

My grandmother immigrated here from Poland when she was seven and only got an eighth grade education, and my mother received her GED when I was twelve so being one of the select few in this national competition was more than an honor, it was a generations-long dream come true—so why did I feel so wildly unprepared, and how could I stifle the maddening chorus of “I can’ts”?

This week as I’ve sleepily snaked up and down the subways to listen to Joey Arias wail about a life wasted on excess, I have contemplated the hazards of a dream never ventured, and last night as I watched Eugene O’Neill’s epic about a woman desperately searching for the meaning of life, I felt like all roads led to me. Was I imagining it or did these motifs dovetail into a cosmic consensus about the deep-seated need for connection? Weren’t all of these theatrical pieces various attempts at securing happiness—even if it meant we had to manufacture it in order to hold it, firmly in our fists, for a few golden moments?

Nonetheless, as I pass through the Halls of States, intimidated by the Heads of Greats, I can’t help but feel uplifted by these dramatists whose transcendent language and timeless messages spur me on to climb the Olympus of my fear, even if it means that I will fail or, worse, be laughed at for trying to scale a mountain “at (my) age.”

I won’t readily admit it, but I am not one who believes in “accidents.” Is it so foolish to believe that if we stay in the race with creative hands, yearning hearts and open minds that things will fall into place when and where they were meant to happen? Perhaps this is why I even felt anointed by the fact that this year marked the 100^th anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Celebration. It was like the universe was converging to send out loving encouragement.

Although art does not need a purpose, I think it heals us on many levels, especially because we grasp the eternal when we connect with art. In art’s ability to make the personal universal (and vice versa), we can all join the conversation and find our place among the sputtering stars.

                                                                             —Rita Anderson