ESTRAGON: Nothing to be done.
VLADIMIR: I'm beginning to come around to that opinion...

I opened my eyes this morning after watching a live performance of "Waiting for Godot" for the first time in my life. I can't help but think about the strange journey that occurred between my first reading of the text and the show performed last night. As a senior at Clovis High School, I took the Advanced Placement English class. My folks owned the only local bookstore in town called The Enchanted Sunmark, and it was well understood that I would take pinnacle English classes like my older brothers did before me. Although I was not a champion of all types of reading, I knew when something powerful came along. When my AP teacher, Mrs. Sharma (rhymes with Karma), made the students read Waiting for Godot out loud, a strange sensation came over me. I had waited for these disjointed and abstract words for many of my youthful years.

VLADIMIR: We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. (pause) Unless Godot comes.
ESTRAGON: And if he comes?
VLADIMIR: We'll be saved.

My Christian beliefs had fallen on hard times by the time I turned seventeen. The redundant message and constant hype of Christ's Second Coming no longer captivated me, and I craved a new way of thinking. This was not an easy task in a small Bible Belt town in the plains of eastern New Mexico. Samuel Beckett's signature play instantly opened up different possibilities. I wrote my senior English thesis on existentialism, nihilism, and anything that debunked the theory of life everlasting. The information was surprisingly available in abundance at the public library.

LUCKY: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal god quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time and existence who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell.............

Enter college, where an overabundance of highfalutin nonsense was uttered by myself and others. I embraced my existential attitude and shunned much of the simple joys of higher learning. I read Camus, Sartre and more Beckett. I failed to search for a wife while the girls were naive and fresh faced. I failed to make an impression on my fellow students, subjecting myself to long thoughts of solitude. I failed to secure gainful employment upon graduation, desperately searching for the meaning of existence. Through it all, Samuel Beckett was still dead somewhere.

POZZO: Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?

Because of Samuel Beckett's plays, I began attending theatre after college. I watched "Beckett Women" and "Endgame" at the Vortex, and before long, I was watching plays on a semi-regular basis. The theatre came calling twice in one year: the first opportunity was to help run a summer-stock theatre called The Barn in New Hampshire, and the second was to join the board of directors at the Vortex. I turned down the opportunity to assist in making musicals and accepted the chance to produce edgy story driven pieces. The Vortex's first play ever produced was "Waiting for Godot," and 25 years later I became part of the theatre.

VLADIMIR: We kept our appointment and that's an end to that. We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
ESTRAGON: Billions.
VLADIMIR: You think so?
ESTRAGON: I don't know.
VLADIMIR: You may be right.

After two and a half years on the Vortex board, I retired from my volunteer position. As a group, we produced over 25 shows. I directed two plays ("Catch-22" and "High Life") and acted in three ("History of the Devil," "Reservoir Dogs" and "Killer Joe"). I hung lights, built sets, ran the box office, partied, fought, consoled, encouraged, made and lost friends, fell in and out of love, and performed so many miscellaneous duties that they all wash together. Now, I am a free-lance thespian to go along with my free-lance writing. Existentialism has a way of encouraging a free-lance life.

ESTRAGON: What's wrong with you?
VLADIMIR: Nothing.
ESTRAGON: I'm going.
VLADIMIR: So am I.
ESTRAGON: Was I long asleep?
VLADIMIR: I don't know.
ESTRAGON: Where shall we go?
VLADIMIR: Not far.

Last night, I sat in the front row of the Tricklock Theatre watching Waiting for Godot with much too large a smile on my face. Twelve years after hearing the words for the first time, I witnessed the play that became one of the strongest influences of my most turbulent days. For the first time.