Meditations in an Emergency

Oddly, I fiercely remember my first moment on a stage, 47 years ago in a first grade play during the Cuban-US missile crisis. Inevitable doom loomed, something that seems true now. Yet, I think our class had no clue what the reality was. We were to put on a global, musical kaleidoscope of the world. Darla Cosgrove was the tiny geisha from Kyoto. Danny Hardage was the gaucho from the Argentinian pampas. I got preposterous on the Bosphorus.

My mother made me harem paints, and I constructed my own headgear out of red felt and cardboard. Oddly, I recall every line I sang on the stage:
I am a little Turkish boy,
My home is near a missile base.
I wear a fez upon my head.
And with Russia I keep pace

Some memories, I wish, would just fade. I only want to recall that any emergency eventually dims with or without meditation.