It's always nice to see  people congregating  outside(and for bicycles to have been in such  abundance that it was  difficult to park). While I was uncomfortable at  Cyndi's show when I  was up close surrounded bya wall of video  phoners(even if the experience  lent greater profundity to the drag  queen show I saw earlier in the  day) It was heart warming to go  farther  back from the stage where groups of relaxed friends lip sang  "if you  fall I will catch you--I'll be waitin" to each other and the boy  with  the rainbow coloured hoola hoop danced his heart out. I also went  to  nathan phillip square where a friend and I caught the jazz drifting  in  the air and I got to see the ecstatic expression on the face of   another good friend as he danced on stage with one of his cultural   heros.  Another man upon greeting some of his friends who arrived there   as the encore started stated: you're just in time for the best part Of course the best  part for us was the long  walks home. Hanging our bodies uside down and  remembering the  awkwardness of that which we usually take for granted;  how you can be  walking and falling at the same time. smelling the  flowers, tasting the  mulberries. Revisiting our ghosts and we traversed  queen street. Watching drunken dancing after last call at  cameron house.  Getting down to the core, following the labryinth in  grange park, both  recanting our sins through the eye of god and  reclaiming our virginity  through the tree of life.  Lying under the  silver maple where I wrote  that poem when I was 22. But most of all just seeing people beautifully   trying to be truly themselves.

And life  is grand
And I will say  this at the risk of falling from  favor
With  those of you who have  appointed yourselves
To expect  us to say  something darker
And  love is real
And though I realize  this is  not a deep observation
To  those of you who find it  necessary
To  conceal love or obscure it,  as is the fashion
life is grand