The presentation was a smashing success. You struggled not to crack an expression when I sent you a private message of "BINGO!" when a participant said "more of a comment than a Question" and followed it with "onto-relational." (What can I say? I know our audience.)
The post-panel discussion was rich with "let's do it again, only next time we can. . . ." possibilities. We love what we do and we're good at it. I stopped by the bathroom (down the hall and to the left) to swap out my skirt and flats for cargos and Keds, and now we're sitting at one of the many round tables, feet parked in chairs, sipping hot tea. The chicken Caesar salad was remarkably good, though I don't remember eating it.
A satisfied quiet is all around, punctuated with random bursts of conversation as we process, individually but together, all that we have discussed since breakfast. We're saturated, and the conversational blurts are release valves. This is creativity, and the sparks find other sparks. Energy thrums a low-key current throughout the room.
The next panel is on Thoreau and Self-reliance and we're all wondering just how sassy I'm about to be, but that's an hour from now. You point to ethicists' D&D pickup game forming over in the corner; they've just shouted a request for a thief-mage-cleric-thing or possibly a bard (they have plenty of fighters, but more are always welcome, they add raucously). It looks like great fun, but I shake my head, too spent from the presentation to say "no, thanks," and I realize I'm tired. The drop is coming -- I can feel it at the edges -- but for now it's just a contentment, a moment of stillness between swimming in Deep Thought. A feeling of being home.
