For those who don’t know my life has been interesting recently. Not in the good way. In the panic inducing, life is changing and there are minefields out there sort of way. I’ve been off my game and trying to see my way clear to what I should do.

At the core of it is a simple question of taking a huge leap. It’d be immense and it’s frightening. And no, that’s all the details I give right now. But this all plays into what happened tonight.

Marianne was in town and I was supposed to go down and hang out with her and a bunch of other people for dinner and drinking. I started the day feeling crappy and it got steadily worse. Eventually I went home at about three and crashed, having told everyone I wouldn’t be showing up.

Around seven I decided I should maybe go anyway. I should force myself out because this habit of avoiding plans because I can’t cope too well has been depriving me of good times, and I needed to cut that shit out and live my life and stop being someone I didn’t want to be.

So I’m on the A, going downtown, trying to find music I want to listen to. I decide on the Barnum soundtrack because it tends to shake me out of my spell a lot. Sappy? Possibly. There’s a lot of history there, personal and family and all sorts of shit tied up in the works. Whatever. So Out There comes on. And this, with lyrics, is how the magic played out:

Staying home, living day by day
May be safe, but it can’t be duller.
Seeing things only black and gray
When the world is alive with color.

I noticed heads turning. I figured it was a mariachi band playing that I couldn’t hear. Maybe some break dancers. This happens on the train. Whatever. You start to assume there’s always an invisible mariachi band off to your right.

Doing just as your neighbors do
May be wise, but it ain’t so clever.
Every man has a dream or two
Let ‘em go and they’re gone forever.

But the gazes are moving. And so I look. And there she is, walking down the length of the train. A woman, short, with a black bowler hat on. The hat has squares of brightly colored tape all over it. All the colors of a rainbow. Dancing across her hat. She has a smirk. Not a smile, a smirk. Like there’s a game going on and she knows the rules and you don’t.

Out there somewhere just out of sight.
There’s a world that’s blazing with light.

She’s juggling. Three red velvet balls. Not just straight juggling, but doing tricks. As she walks down the center of a crowded moving train. Then she reverses and walks all the way back. People are just watching her, rapt. They don’t have the right soundtrack. I do.

Ain’t each man alive got the right?
To stray just a mite from the straight and narrow,
Shoot through the night like a flaming arrow.

Because I’ve been trying to see if I should make some choices, and totally unsure of what the right move was. And here I was, listening to a circus musical, being told, yet again, that sometimes you have to just do things and not get wrapped up in doing them, but simply do them.

And there she was. Juggling for all she was worth, because she could. Oh sure, she passed a hat after, sure. Still, that smirk. The doff of her hat right before she left, like we had witnessed a magic trick we didn’t know was being played, and she was off. Gone onto a platform, off to another train, another set of strangers, more performing for some cash. I’m sure she didn’t intend to be a sign, or to bring clarity. But she did.

Does this mean everything is better? Of course not. There will still be doubts and fear and uncertainty and long nights. For a little bit, though, there were just three balls spinning through the air and a woman in a brightly patterned hat – smirking. And that was all, and exactly, what I needed.

Sometimes you just have to join the circus.