I wait side-stage with my carpet bag at my feet, ready to share my collection when my name is called.  While I stand in the shadows, saying encouraging words to those about to take stage or those departing, I brighten at each moment I think my name will be called, and deflate each time it is not.  Periodically, I check my carpet bag for all the treasures I have to share, occasionally admiring a forgotten object, removing an out of date one and adding things I notice while I wait.

My patience now wearing thin, I try in vain to find the one who calls names, or at least the one who makes the lists for the one who calls names.  I walk in circles finding only the line-up and noticing for the first time, it is a closed loop.  There is no way to join the end of it, and no one makes space for me. 

I retreat outside to the forest where I sit unjudged by thousand year-old trees.  I watch squirrels bury nuts and wonder if they will remember their hiding place.  I listen to an orchestra of birdsong.  I look in my bag and marvel at what I have gathered, a lifetime of treasures collected in silence and carried in shadows.

The wind tells me all I need to know.  A change is coming.

In darkness I return to the theatre and knock on the door.  No answer.  I enter, take the empty stage and begin my broadcast to the vacant seats. From my bag I pull each item that caught my interest and I weave the story of how they are all connected to each other.  The broadcast waves run from the objects to me and back again.  Then I see it, the tiny light flicker at the back of the theatre.  It disappears then returns, and then there are four, then there are fifty-five.  Then as I focus back on the waves, I lose count of the lights connecting with the waves. 

I called my own name.  I claimed my responsibility to show up, with everything I had, and began my solo broadcast.  I called my own fucking name.