the stage is set

Sometimes, places are appearing as real as a film or stage set and the action that takes place has the significance and quality of an improvised play. As it's happening, you need to buy into it to make it work, do it with conviction and truth but it feels like nothing more than playacting. There are times, when I have, during an audition thought, this is ridiculous; don't believe it, I don't believe me or what I'm doing or saying and now there is a similar thing happening in life. The roles that people play have become very obvious.

Recently, as I entered the room for an appeal hearing for Louie's primary school place, I was struck by the heightened situation set up. The three people on the panel all stood up as I entered! The chap supposedly arguing the case against allowing Louie into the school of his choice, read solely from his notes, uncomfortably, seldom looking up. The clerk was a youngish, pleasant woman, there to tell me how it would progress, what would happen at each stage. I felt partly amused by the goings on, even though it concerned my son. It felt silly but still, doesn't the game has to be played if we are to participate in life?

The people on the panel all introduced themselves and told me their credentials for being there;children of their own, in education, on board of school governors. One man was a 'lay person.' They listened to the admissions authority case and then to mine. We asked each other questions. I spoke with absolute clarity and ease in a situation that would otherwise have created too much emotion stopping me from being effective. I knew only what was happening at any given moment. I was unable to refer to notes because I could only be concerned with that which was happening. I felt compassion for the admissions guy and also for those on the panel. They couldn't help and they knew that they couldn't. It was a farcical situation beacuse an Infant School decision can only be overturned if a mistake has been made in allocating the places and it hadn't. Or, if a decision is deemed to be unreasonable or perverse and the whole thing is set up so that's impossible to prove.

Still, there was a point where the role playing took a back seat and we did communicate. There was warmth and a meeting and an understanding that we are the same. It was momentary but it was there. I just did what I had to do, to the best of my ability-I suppose they did too. We were all playing the game, in a way, all playing our designated roles.

Explaining of the hook: The release of the contraction, the tension that comes with being a separate individual. It's gone, just evaporated into the ether. I always had me with me, my story, my history, my burdens, my limitations and beliefs and insecurities. I don't think about it now, carrying all that lesley stuff around-that's off the hook. I sometimes think, where is it, where is that sense of her that I always had pinning me down-I find it if i look, remember, but really I have to make the effort to reconstruct it. Of course there is a shadow, a taste, the funny character but that contracted idea of Lesley, set, formed and limited...just gone, I think.