I see myself as a catcher on a trapeze and there is no net below. On the other side are a group of words that will soon come flying through the air. My job is to catch them in the right order! So on with the show.

First the suspense must mount. I must climb carefully onto my old desk chair and limber up my hands a few times. The spotlight must play on the screen of my Mac and it would help to have some Leonard Cohen playing as I get ready to entertain the circus crowd.

The words themselves are poised opposite me in the arena, high above the audience. They are resining up their hands and shaking themselves to loosen up. And the ringmaster is getting ready to say, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Flying Words!

I swing back and forth a few times, as far out as I dare to go (wink, wink), and the audience is totally quiet, in anticipation of the sight of words flying through the air. Will they take the bar one by one or in sentences or phrases?

But enough of that. On with the show. Here are the very words that I am given to write.

The circus is just in town briefly and then it moves on. You will stay behind.

You will go home and re-enter your ordinary life. No cotton candy, no diversions. Just your garden-variety life.

That, my friends, is the greatest show on earth.

No spectacle, just you living and breathing in the moment. No eye is trained on you, no tricks are being performed. Just reality.

When the words have flown across the field of your vision, what’s left is what really matters.

You.