“It's still magic, even if you know how it's done”

I'm floating.

My school's arts council runs this event twice a year called Java After Dark. Talented people perform, there's an intermission and we eat cookies and drink coffee, then more talented people perform.

THERE WAS JUST SO MUCH TALENT.

One of my favourite parts was right after the intermission. A thunderstorm had just started.*  Everyone was chatting, slightly hyper from their recent caffeine doses. This guy walked up to the front of the library to perform a story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart.

The room became silent as a boy (I had always seen him as quiet) filled the air with his presence. As the madman - because that is who he became - admitted to his crime ("I admit the deed! Tear up the planks!") lightning struck and thunder boomed. For an instant, there was perfection.

Within the badly painted library, stocked with second rate microphones, an only semi-functional projector, and uncomfortable plastic chairs, there was a miracle.

In fact, every performer tonight found something true, something right, something unencumbered by small flaws.
Somewhere within our acne-filled faces and metal-filled mouths and barely developed senses of self lies a little bit of perfection.

I'm hoping to track that down in myself one day.

*I adore thunderstorms.

-Gabi