In the Pencil Box

The elementary school students arrive with cardboard cigar boxes, their pencils, safety scissors, and square brown erasers tucked neatly inside. By mid-term, the pencils live free in the interior of the desk, and the pencil box is home to a colorful band of squatters: stickers, an "illegal" candy wrapper or two, model glue, bottles of glitter, friendship bracelets, and unused milk coupons. My own pencil box hid precious corners of paper on which I had scrawled various goals, schemes and wishes. Dreams. Nowadays the "pencil box" is a computer desktop folder with notes neatly compiled from the scraps of paper I still keep, and already it gapes open, smiling with dreams for the coming arts season:

Richard Tuttle at SFMOMA
The Overcoat at American Conservatory Theater
PICA's TBA Festival in Portland, OR
Dr. Atomic at the San Francisco Opera
Piccolo Teatro di Milano at Cal Performances
a handful of performances by the SFCMP
Bay Area Now 4 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble at San Francisco Performances
Ives, Webern and Mahler (!) at the Symphony