Map presentation – there’s no place like here

There is a single chair at center, facing the audience.

I enter wearing my backpack and sit, immediately leading into dialogue. Under the dialogue I begin to untie my sneakers and remove my shoes and socks, placing them under the chair.

This summer I went in vacation to a national park in Maine. All around the park there are these wooden signposts with maps of the park, in case you get lost. I wouldn’t say we were lost, more like, curious.

So we go up to this sign and it’s in the key, in the legend and everything, that it’s supposed to be there, but there just is no big red dot for “you are here.” It’s like someone forgot to put it on, or it fell off, or something. And I thought to myself, you know, if we were actually lost, we’d be kind of screwed.

Now barefoot, reaching into backpack and removing pair of ruby red slippers, a la The Wizard of Oz, and putting them on.

And it got me thinking, that I spend all this time worrying about where I’m from and where I’m going, home to here, here to where, that I don’t really stop to think about the one thing I do know.

Remove from backpack big red dot foe construction paper, place on ground in front of chair, and stand upon it.

I am here.