If you don’t know, I host a weekly open mic and get together called the Louisville Speak Easy. It’s amazing to see so many beautiful magical people come together, open their hearts, support each other and have a blast doing it. The last few weeks, I got people to give me requests for things they wanted in their lives so that we could all collectively support each other in our requests. There’s many things we need or want and it’s perfectly okay to want them. The funny thing is that we often fail to just ask…A simple “could you please” can work wonders.

I changed it up this last week. At the event, I hold a drawing for the “Blind Pig”. The winner gets five drinks for a dollar each. Last week, the city of Louisville was pretty much shut down from a snow and ice storm, and despite risking getting stuck to park, the room was packed with people looking for power – both electrical and emotional.. I spontaneously changed the rules of entry for the drawing. After seeing the results, I decided to keep the tradition.

To enter now, you have to write your name and something you’re grateful for on a piece of paper and throw it into the “plateful of grateful”, where a candle burns in honor of our joined gratitude. The candle managed to melt all over a lot of the pieces by the end of the night, long after the drawing had taken place. At 2 am, as I put furniture back in its place and cleared dirty plates, I came to the mess the candle had made. I began to dig through the wax, and found myself enjoying what everyone had contributed. It was like a treasure hunt, digging and scraping the wax from each sheet as I excitedly read them. So, I saved them and wanted to share them with you:

List of gratitude from magical people:

Poetry and Friends; Beautiful magical people appearing in my life; my friend Rebecca;sprite; this breath; beautiful women; chuck taylors; each person I’m lucky enough to know; friends and family;that there is a warm place to enjoy live music on this cold wretched night; for Carly Rae’s; Opiates; friends to share the warmth; for Melanie; for the Speak Easy; for beer; my 5 senses, can’t be more epic than that; for patience; F.P. Wazney; for my life; the ancient egyptians for booze, Ben Franklin for electricity, and Al Gore for the internet; Heat; still having heat, electricity, and great neighbors when others do not;for Aminor and Biscuits; for snow days and free booze; for the friends I have met so far;

And one that was a wisdom: “Even throughout disaster, there is beauty in the chaos ( Look outside at the icycles..f**cking gorgeous)”.

I’d like all of us to remember the beauty of please and thank you this year so we may observe just how magical those words are.