Yesterday, the 31st annual Texas Renaissance Festival completed the fifth weekend of its eight weekend run in its medieval village setting an hour north of Houston.
I was there helping my sister sell some of her handmade Sea Glass jewelry and thoroughly enjoyed the whole outing.
As usual, what I enjoyed most was not what could be seen or heard or tasted or smelled or touched (and there was a heckuva lot for all five senses to enjoy), but what I felt about the whole experience : a renewed belief in the necessity of rebirth, or renaissance, in our personal lives.
I worked as a hawker for my sister's business there. I dressed up as a Johnny-Depp-style pirate and tried to motivate fair-goers to visit her booth. Then my sister's partner would sell them the one-of-a-kind jewelry on display. Notice the piece at my neck.For those considering going, don't miss the Ded Bob Show and the French Performer (cannot spell his name - it begins with an "A"), both of whom performed at the Odeon Stage in Pirate's Cove section of the Festival.
Also of note are all of the gardens added over the past few years, most notably the Sherwood Forest Garden Walk, a canopied respite along a babbling brook that takes you away from the hustle and bustle of the Festival for a few minutes.
AS is true every year, the single most absorbing aspect of the Festival is the people watching. Remarkable as the official workers were in their authentic costumes and regal bearing, they held not a candle to the inventive, spontaneous, unpredictable, and wholly refreshing creativity of the paying public fair-goers.
Fabulous costumes of every ilk were represented, from the basic almost-naked characters (both male and female) to the fully-outfitted warriors, wenches, knights, royalty, clergy, preternatural (fairies, centaurs, elves, satyrs, etc) and even other-worldly (aliens) characters.
As the famous saying goes about standing in one place on a river and seeing the whole world go by, so too could you stand in any one place in this medieval village and see the whole panoply of people performing in one way or the other as their "reborn selves," even if only for this weekend.
And there's the rub.
I am one of those folks who believes in the search for personal rebirth. Each time we begin anew in some way or the other we enter upon the arduous task of making a personal renaissance.
This is not for sissies. Most folks would simply rather stay exactly where they are, doing exactly what they are doing in the same way they have been doing it, and doing it with exactly whom they have been doing it. And as Jerry Seinfeld once said "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
In fact most folks will choose that path because it's what's best for them. And I am envious that they know what's best for them, because I keep searching.
For me, exploration is where it's at. I am most fulfilled setting about to discover what's around the next bend, and I am certain I would have found a way to join explorers from days of yore had I lived back then. Truth is, though, that there's plenty to explore in today's world as well, you just have to be open to it.
So I constantly placing myself in situations where I am forced to undergo a "rebirth" in one fashion or the other, learning what I must so that I might keep exploring this fabulous, abundant world.
And it was a delicious way to spend a weekend - participating with others enjoying their own brief "renaissance" at the Texas Renaissance Festival.
Go if you can. There's three weekends left. Dress up in costume. Become yourself. Or at least explore who that might be !
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