i keep telling myself that i'm not going to spend any more late nights awake. here it is, midnight already, and i'm still wide awake, about to break my promise again. my dear friend mike took me to see rent tonight - it's touring off broadway right now, and this week it's at the merriam theater in center city. we left early and got student rush tickets a half hour before the show and settled into the ninth row center and waited for the lights to dim. it's been years since i've seen a show, and it did to me tonight just what it has always done to me. it make me feel a million things at once. i was jealous and thrilled, energized and thoughtful, laughing and crying and singing along. i am a musical junkie, if you must know. something about a world where everyone dances, where people know you well enough to join into the song that you're singing, something there calls me to run up on stage and join in. they are living a story that has a perfect soundtrack and an ending that may not be happy but is always full of poetic justice. if i could be sure i was living a life like that, i might sing and dance too.

i can be captured by a show. it feels so safe to jump into a scripted world for a few hours. the type A part of me loves the freedom of a place where everything is certain to be wrapped up in the end. when i'm sure of that, some part of me that i normally hold pretty tightly wriggles loose and takes a deep breath. i feel great tonight, and i think that's why. i think i breathed a little more deeply while i was caught up in all the stories and the lights.

i need to do that more often. i'm too busy doing all kinds of prep work for the future that i almost turned down the chance to see rent, not because i am too busy, but because lately having that kind of fun is not something i 'do'. i 'don't have time' for it. and some days that might be true, but not today.

and if i could sing it, i would... there's no day but today.