A Gathering

We are gathered here today to Witness. Witness the joining of you, (name), and you, (name), and everyone else here on this Friday evening in New York City, city alive and thumping, ten o’clock and all of us together, one time only, it shall never be exactly the same as this again, forever and ever, Amen.

We are gathered here today in judgment, even if we believe otherwise, in a room that’s hot and cooked up on mismanagement and devastation, trumped up on smiles and congratulations and thank yous, and we are each and every one of us prepared to go the extra mile to think we’re not let down.

We are gathered here today, mini-Tom Waits and mini- Bill Gates alike, with things on our minds, things on our minds, gas in the car, money in the meter, how the children are doing, Derek Jeter. We’re listening to sounds of our scheming, dancing to the beat of a diluted dreaming.

We are gathered here today, an anguished pack of ephemera, refusing to acknowledge what looms, a half-night away from the best night of our lives but never bothering to board the train.

We are gathered here today in the presence of the no-God, desperate to un-know, handsome in our feel-good clothes, the drinks sliding like cancerous slugs down our checked-up throats, the burden of midnight’s perpetual return burrowed beneath our skin like invisible lice.

We are gathered here today with overcoats and umbrellas, you never know when it’s going to rain, and the galloping ghost of a former lover occasionally pin-pricks our skulls, usually in bed at night beside she who sleeps, he who wants things, she who won’t let you out until it’s certain we’ve memorized the bullet points.

We are gathered here today in misery, but there’s hope at last! A-ha! Champagne! A two o’clock sneezing fit! The psychic whisper of Dan Nani! Puddles and steam! Seasickness! Central Park! J. Seger! Duck Duck Goose! Casinos of the snow! NyQuil! Jumping up and down! Plastic castles! Morning! Soggy nights! Champions of the World! We are free.

We are gathered here today to stop taking care of ourselves, stop trying to mean what we said, stop being reverential, stop tethering ourselves and making amends, stop smothering the loneliness and circumcising our decisions.

We are gathered here today to start looking around, start chasing chills, start blending our voices, start writing an altogether different tale of howling and woe, to stare down the  chimera, to blame happiness for the garbage revolution, to attend a standing-room-only event in honor of the new expectation, one that doesn’t shirk or smirk or shrink, but gambles and weaves and denounces nothing until it’s been properly vetted.

We are gathered here today, friends, to smell our stink, to consecrate this holy ground and joust with our dragons. We must find out what makes them tick and where they reside, instead of sequestering them like some straining jury of our peers, trying to connect the dots. Adjust! Repent! Relent! screams the chorus of the adaptive heart, the one that’s been whittled down and made to fit. Fit no more, friends, let it fill and bust through our throttled chests, and let us continue to gather in the great and everlasting chase for thoroughness, forever and ever.

Amen.