oh, and talking of victories

NYC Marathon Results, November 5th, 2006

Top Women 2006 (Finish)
1. Jelena Prokopcuka (LAT) 2:25:05
2. Tatiana Hladyr (UKR) 2:26:05
3. Catherine Ndereba (KEN) 2:26:58

Top Men 2006 (Finish)
1. M. Gomes dos Santos (BRA) 2:09:58
2. Stephen Kiogora (KEN) 2:10:06
3. Paul Tergat (KEN) 2:10:10

Not a clean sweep for Kenyans, but 3 out of 6 ain't bad..........

sky a palette of greys

over Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this morning.

In 90 minutes, I do my Artburst spot, to kick off the opening session of the NPN Annual Meeting. I'm thinking about election results as I work through voice warmups.

I agree with Arundhati Roy, who likened the 2004 presidential election to a choice between 2 brands of washing powder, both made by Proctor and Gamble. But 2 things about the Democrats taking Congress and the Senate give me hope.

1) It means that the Republican-powered electoral fraud and rigged voting machines that pose a major threat to all US elections were somehow circumvented.

2) Many of the Democrats elected stood on an unambiguous anti-war platform - and won. If they can only remember that now that they're in office............

I crave sleep right now

every bit as much as I've ever craved chocolate, or coffee, or poetry, or another human being. I've averaged 5 - 6 hours a night for the last month, and my body is crying out for more.

I know there are those (new parents, medics, low-sleep-maintenance types) who'd snort and say:

Who needs more than 5 hours a night?

I do. I love sleep. It's both necessity and luxury.

Tomorrow, I leave for the annual conference of the National Performance Network, which selected Migritude for a Creation Fund Award this year. I am unlikely to catch up on sleep there.

world premiere

Two sold out shows. Both got standing ovations. Parijat and I lost count of how many bows we took.

It was beautiful. Out of all the chaos, conflict, torment, effort, exhaustion, intensity, terror, struggle of the past few months; from all the journeys we've undertaken over the past 2 years, internal and external, we made something that glowed. That spoke with power and clarity. That entered people and stayed with them.

I am so grateful.