Being an Alum, my relationship with the tour has changed. I no longer fret over inventory, and my creative juices are adjusting. This is not a bad thing, but I miss being a member of the tour, I miss my people. I miss being in the midst of it and contributing to the idea of it. the creativity, and being with others of like-mindedness with a mission. I miss the community,
It reminds me of the days when I performed in ‘little theatre’. The play was the world, an important world, we dropped into an audience and shared a story after months of rehearsing, creating, trying to make something work through sets, lights, words, costumes, and character study. That is all I thought of. I had good relationships with my fellow performers, people who worked on the play. Then it was closing night, the shutting down of that world we were involved with was gone, and the amazing nostalgic feeling, a memory. All is fleeting, isn’t it? Suddenly I was back at work, grocery shopping, available to the family, my schedule shifted.
The tour did not shut down like a play, though, It’s still filled with determined passion and interesting developments, but I moved away from it. I still have friends connected to the tour, and I will keep a behind the scenes place with this blog with Linda Case. And I am still a supporter (and customer!), but the play moves on without me. (I join the other one-hundred plus members that have moved on.)
Tonight tour members are having a meeting on the mountain at a place called the China Folk House. It is way up there, off of Mission Road. I have never been there, I had not heard of it until now. The house came all the way from China in numbered pieces, rescued from the flood gates of a dam. Here was another beloved project maintaining itself with peoples dedication. After the OTMST meeting there is a potluck, and some of us old members have been invited to attend. Four of us will ride/drive up there, if we don’t go wiggy on the gravel road, and all the twists and turns (we are in West Virginia…after all). We should have a good time. I will take pictures of the artful building way up there. Makers will gather under the beams and plan another November of this Jefferson County tour. New members will be nice to meet, and old members to reminiscence with. It will be nice to be back for a while, observe another aspect of what it is to be here. It is not the same as the surreal world of a play, where I stepped through the veil, but it has that aspect. We create the room, the relationships, the world. It’s nothing new or strange or uncommon. I can see what Shakespeare meant when he wrote the words “All the worlds’ a stage.”
