More RenFest Pics

I was walking around at the festival today and was struck by this moment of overwhelming peace. I don't know what prompted it, other than that it might be I'm feeling more content than I have in quite some time, but I just suddenly found myself caught up in how things seemed to be going nicely, and for the first time in a while I wasn't worried about something that was coming up, or where some great chunk of money was going to be coming from, and what my long-term financial outlook looked like.

I think much of it had to do with the atmosphere, too. When it's approaching 90° and the all the world seems determined to just move more slowly, you tend to take the time to check out your surroundings. The surroundings at the festival being what they are, it's hard not to relax into it. I brought my camera to the show with me and snapped some shots around the festival grounds. This would have been incredibly out of the question when I was playing the mayor of the village all those years, but now that I'm a stage act I get away with a little more.

I caught these little girls right before going up for the opening ceremony at the front gate - at which several of us entertain the people who're waiting for the front gate to open, and principally we hawk our shows. They were really cute. They're the children of some of the vendors and crafts people at the festival. I asked the one in blue if I could take her picture and she said yes - what little girl doesn't love to have her picture taken when she's dressed up as a princess? Almost immediately, however, her two friends decided that they couldn't be left out, so I ended up with all three of them posing in front of the garden just inside the front gate. We immediately struck up a conversation in which they felt obliged to tell me all sorts of things about stuff I couldn't understand. As I often do with children, I picked out the little bits I did understand and questioned them intently and earnestly on those issues. Children are wonderful; if you show them even a modicum of respect while you paying the requisite attention, they love you to death, and want so much to really have a conversation with you. Even if they're not at the level where they have particularly coherent conversations.

So my days at the festival are going well enough - though the bus rides to and from New York (overnights on Friday and Sunday nights) are probably going to kill me dead. I tend to be a bit of a zombie by the end of the day on Monday... I'm praying that my performance isn't suffering noticeably.

Wish me luck.