A funny coincidence happened yesterday. First, you were reading Little Women for a class you will be taking (that’s another story for another time) and reached the chapter “Camp Laurence” in which the little women go one a picnic with Laurie and some of his friends. The group plays a game in which one person begins a story, then each subsequent person adds to the story. They called the game “Rigmarole.”

By the way, this is probably the first time that you have read Little Women since you were in elementary school, although you may have tried it in the 1990s. You find several readers in yourself as you go along. One is the historian, noting the context of the various versions of femininity and tedious moralizing that crops up from time to time. One is the adult self understanding the reasons that you were more of a Little House girl, which leads to another who compares the two sets of girls. Another reader is the movie-watcher who notices that the movies all owe more to one another (and to the musical, which owes more to the films, too) than to the book. For example, the movies make Jo the main character, but all four sisters carry the story equally in the book.

Again, you digress. That’s all another story for another time.

That evening, you went to your Actors Studio, which you’ve been attending since its first meeting over a year ago. That meeting coincided with the close of Orlando. You were wondering what would replace Orlando, which itself was a lovely gift, if you would ever get to act again, and if you did, you should probably find children your own age to play with. Then, the notice of this Actors Studio popped up. All sorts of creative people gathered, working in plays, films, comedy, improv, and just wanting to get back in or in in the first place. Every month is a different topic, from auditioning, to scene study, to television acting, to film acting, to all sorts of things. Much of it has been making it up as it goes along.

Again, you digress.

Last night was improv, not your strong suit. Ever. Improv asks you to do the very thing that you have spent your entire life learning not to do: be utterly fearless in the face of failure. You have to be completely in the moment, not plan anything, trust the other person or people with you, shut off every editing mechanism in your brain, and kind of fall face first and eyes open. Yes, and… is just the technique. All of that fearlessness has to be there for it to work. So, just going was a leap because you have decided to accept Yes, and… into your life as a principle.

The evening’s leader runs an improve group called — and this should have been my tip off that I had made the right choice — Fubar. If you know you know, as the young folks say. If you don’t know, every day’s a school day: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. He had you all play some improvisation games. The thing is, you get scared, but as you watch and see what goes on, you want to jump in and do it.

Yes, and….

You digress.

One of the first games he had the whole group play was called “Yes, and…” We stood in a circle, all forty-some-odd of us. He fed a line to the first person. Then, that person would say, “yes, and” to begin adding a line to the story, all the way around the circle. This was Little Women‘s “Rigmarole”! Whereas the little women went on about knights and ladies, this group was way more interested in ballpark food, specifically pretzels and hot dogs. The story became sillier and sillier the further around it went. At one point, you thought, “this must have been the way the movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once came about!”

So, that was the coincidence.

Yet, as you think about it, you realize that maybe you might want to go to the improv group, too. Not to perform, just for the exercise of doing it, of letting yourself fuck up or not. You remember the liberation of Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft” and that one therapist so many years ago who told you to pick a hobby and do it badly (or, rather, do it for fun, not to be good or perfect). This would be a bit like that. A means of releasing something.

You are also going to be blasphemous and say, you aren’t too sure that you like Little Women, but you will take the “yes, and” approach and keep going for more than just the class.