Thursday, April 30, 2015

Scene II: A Tempest

My brother, who lives in a sparsely populated state, once said he'd like the place even better if it had fewer people than it did. That may sound misanthropic, but I can sympathize. Where I live, it's nearly impossible to walk out the door without falling over someone or getting an earful of overheard chatter from people you don't even know. One expects occasional inconveniences such as these as part of the price of living in society, which is why rules of courtesy are necessary. Of course, that only works if people follow them, while my observation is that people seem not to have heard of them. Whose idea was it to do away with the Golden Rule?

People talk about feeling alone in a crowd, but in my experience that would be a rare thing these days; others are all too apt to enter my personal space, whether I'm drinking coffee, reading, walking through the park, or shopping for groceries. If someone isn't blocking my light in the cafe, he's talking too loudly on his cell phone, pulling out in front of me on the street, or failing to keep his dog under control so that I can walk in peace.

Were all of these people raised in a barn? Are they exhibitionists? Are they merely addled? Are they trying out for reality TV? Who told them being obnoxious is a good idea? Am I less forgiving than I used to be? (Any and all of these could possibly be true.)

This afternoon, I was sitting in a corner chair in the coffeehouse, minding my own business, as usual. I had been sitting outside, though it was a shade too cool for that, and I moved indoors when it looked like I could find a seat. I had, unfortunately, forgotten my earplugs, which is a real no-no if you plan to spend any time at all in Starbucks, but I was engrossed in my book, and things seemed to be going fairly well until other people started filling up the corner where I was sitting.

Now, don't get me wrong, I get it that Starbucks is a public place and that they're in business to keep the seats filled. But this particular Starbucks has a number of segregated seating areas, designed, I'm told, to create quiet places for people who want to read or study. I was sitting in a screened-off area near a large table where people usually congregate with books and laptops, but for some reason, everyone who entered that space was incapable of doing so without creating a scene, a not uncommon thing in Starbucks. People in line near the pastry case seemed intent on projecting their voices to the farthest corner; a large woman flounced in front of me, noisily taking the adjacent chair with a bit more ado than was really required; another patron walked back and forth in front of me several times, talking loudly on a cell and (quite unnecessarily) bumping my footrest; someone else camped out in my peripheral vision, apparently to read his text messages--not quite in my space but just close enough to be annoying.

Any one of these would have been irritating by itself; in the aggregate, it was just plain ridiculous. I got up and left.

Well, this story ends a little better than it begins. Rather than going home mad, I decided to take a short drive. I checked out the site of the future branch of the public library on Richmond Road and stopped to get gas. While I was doing that, I noticed some very dark clouds massing in the northwest: really Old Testament, Wrath of God thunderheads. I thought I could get home before they arrived, but since I was on a side of town I rarely visit any more, I drove around for a while, marveling at how little I remembered of the streets, though I used to be out there quite a bit.

Over here lived someone I interviewed when I worked at the newspaper; back there somewhere is a church I've been in, though I couldn't begin to find it now; my brother used to live on that street; I used to know someone who lived down that hill. It was almost as if I'd driven into a time warp, and I wandered around for a while, pleasantly lost. The leafy suburban streets looked both familiar and unfamiliar in the altered light of the approaching storm; it felt a bit like Van Gogh's Starry Night, a little town drowsing under a tumultuous sky. I seemed to be reclaiming something that belonged to me in the process of driving around.

When it started to rain, I was still in the wilds of suburbia. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and small bits of hail hit my windshield. I decided I should be getting home, in case the weather got worse, so I started in that direction. I kept remembering people I'd known who lived in this house or that one--where are they now? The church steeples on Tates Creek Road stood up dramatically against the thunderheads, water was ponding by the side of the road, the wipers could barely keep up with the rain, and I . . . was feeling much better.

A spring thunderstorm doesn't sound calculated to be calming, but somehow it had that effect. Actually, I think it was just catharsis. Just when I was feeling like a thundercloud myself, here came a real one, washing everything clean. When I pulled out onto the road I live on, the changed light (aided, maybe, by my feeling of having revisited the past) made the street look subdued and elegant, like an old black and white photograph. I almost expected to see a Model T drive by.

It was still raining when I pulled into our parking lot, and I still had a little coffee left in my cup, so I sat for a few minutes and read some more of my book until the downpour eased a little. It's ironic that driving around in a thunderstorm could be more relaxing than sitting in a dry, well-lighted coffeehouse, but those are the facts. Sometimes a little solitude is better than a crowd.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Shadows and Mirrors

I saw an article online a while ago that, in honor of Shakespeare's birthday, listed his Top Ten insults. Apparently, there's a tradition of doing this every year, since I found similar lists in various publications from years past. That started me thinking about what Shakespeare means to me and whether I could compile a list of my own--Favorite Shakespearean Moments, or something like that.

I remember someone saying to me once that she wondered if people pretended to like Shakespeare more than they do because it seemed to be expected of them. Maybe that happens sometimes, but I think the Shakespearean allure is very real and due to a variety of factors, including the fun of costume drama, the power of his language (which sometimes catches people unaware), and the appeal of his sense of humor.

I can recall many hours spent in a local park on warm summer nights as the annual Shakespeare festival played to a large audience of people of all ages. Gathered together in the humid dark, with trees framing the stage and crickets trilling in the background, everyone seemed to fall into the spirit of things, willingly entering Shakespeare's world for an evening, despite the time, distance, and nuances of language separating us from him. These evenings were always festive; even children seemed to respond to the pratfalls and physical comedy though they may not necessarily have understood the plots.

As with many people, the first Shakespeare play I ever read was Romeo and Juliet, which I still enjoy. Of the other tragedies, I like Hamlet best; of the comedies, it's hard to pick just one, but maybe A Midsummer Night's Dream would do for a favorite. In high school, I once had to memorize and recite Hamlet's soliloquy, and, on another occasion, enact the witches' scene from Macbeth, along with three other students and a cooking pot borrowed from my mother (dressed in black crepe to stand in for the cauldron).

I was entranced by Kenneth Branagh's film of Henry V and captivated by a filmed version of The Tempest from Stratford, Ontario, that starred Christopher Plummer. (To date, I haven't seen a version of The Tempest that I didn't like.) I finally appreciated Othello when Mr. Branagh's Iago reminded me of some Machiavellian workplace politics I had experienced, and A Midsummer Night's Dream ended up in my dissertation when I remembered that mazes are mentioned in the play, giving my fourth chapter a welcome buoyancy.

But my favorite Shakespearean moment is the evening I spent watching a production of Much Ado About Nothing on a London stage years ago. I'd probably read the play but had never seen it performed, and that production remains for me the most magical Shakespearean experience of all. The play starred Derek Jacobi, and, I believe, Sinead Cusack, as Benedick and Beatrice. What made the production memorable was the staging, the brilliant use of a deceptively simple set of angled mirrors on a dark stage, lit from the front, so that all the action took place in a circumscribed area, a pool of light in a sea of black. The characters appeared out of darkness, enacted their scenes in front of the mirrors, and disappeared into shadows, so that the entire proceeding seemed to take place at night, giving an urgency, intimacy, and hectic, dreamlike quality to the quarrels, jests, complications, and ultimate reconciliation of the lovers. The acting was outstanding, and the characters, in contrast to the dimness and confusion of their reflected images, seemed very much alive.

If I could recommend only one Shakespearean production, this would be it. I see myself, wide-eyed and probably open-mouthed, 25 years old, sitting in that darkened theater, the same girl who had recited "To be or not to be" word for word and played a somewhat clueless Macbeth (my main dramatic contribution to that scene being, quite honestly, the soup pot). This may have been the first time I actually got it, the first time I entered Shakespeare emotionally. Every now and then, I can still see Beatrice, still feel the sadness beneath her witty one-liners and her yearning for authenticity in the midst of so much surface show. The happy ending was all the more poignant for complications narrowly averted, and I feel certain everyone left the theater happy that night.

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare, and thanks for the memories.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Death and Taxes, Not Necessarily in That Order

"April is the cruellest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land . . ." --T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

I was looking up the quotation above in my copy of The Waste Land and saw that I had written a note in the margin about Eliot having turned Chaucer's pilgrim gaiety on its head with these opening lines. Chaucer's spring fever is Eliot's elegy: clearly, these are two different views of spring. Is one more apt than the other? It probably depends on who you ask, or, maybe, when you ask. I don't think the sentiments really contradict each another.

Almost all of us have felt the surge of renewed energy that arrives with spring. Likewise, most of us have known times when we felt out of step with this mood, for one reason or another . . . a personal tragedy or an illness, perhaps. And regardless of anything else that might be happening, April is tax season, not really the highlight of anyone's year. It always seems like a shame to be preoccupied with 1099s and schedule Cs just when the weather's finally getting nice, but, in the wisdom of the Federal government, it has been so ordained that we must suffer (so you know it must be right).

Somehow, I hadn't really paid much attention before to the fact that April 15 is the date of Abraham Lincoln's death. Had you? Maybe it's because April 15 is overwhelmingly associated now with the Internal Revenue Service, e-filing, and tax forms, but it seems a shame that these things so far overshadow such a major tragedy in our history. I hadn't noticed much being made of the anniversary in the past, but this year, as you've heard, is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's death, and so it has come to the forefront.

To me, collecting taxes is an odd way to honor President Lincoln, but apparently the date was appointed in the 1950s to give taxpayers more financial leeway (the filing deadline used to be March 15). I'm wondering now how much thought went into the selection of the date other than its being conveniently located an exact month later than the previous deadline. Did no one think of Lincoln, did it not seem to matter, or was the need to pick a date already associated with taxes (and thus easy to remember) the most pressing concern? Many people probably make little of the coincidence, but looked at from a symbolic viewpoint, it almost feels like a "papering over" of a painful moment from the past. (Don't tell me these things don't happen--they do.)

Of course, we now have a more recent tragedy associated with April 15, that of the Boston Marathon bombing. I was out walking the other day, a lovely, mild evening on which the local park was filled with young people dressed for prom night, the sparkling colors of their clothes competing with the tulips and blossoming trees for brilliance. As this exuberant crowd of students, parents, and friends milled around, the Boston tragedy came into my mind. I agree, it's sad that such a festive evening turned my thoughts toward something so tragic, but there it is: the mood near the finish line in Boston that day must have been similarly exuberant.

Loss is no respecter of seasons. Personally, I've lived through tornadoes, a fire (which actually occurred on April 15 some years ago), the death of a friend, and traffic accidents, all occurring in or near early April. Some of these events affected me greatly, and some very little in the long run, but one thing I do know is how surreal the beauty of the season seems under circumstances of loss, how disconnected one can feel from the flow of things. I've come through most of these events in no way diminished (except for losing the friend). I love spring, but I can't help but think of the people whose lives were interrupted that day in Boston and wonder how they're coping.

There's no bringing back Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, or Sean Collier, no undoing the devastating injuries suffered by the survivors. It's hard to take in the scope of what occurred until you imagine it happening to someone you love, in which case it comes into focus pretty quickly. I look at the Kentucky springtime unfolding all around me and wonder how long it will be before the survivors can look with anything but grief at the beauty of a Boston spring.

Death and taxes. Death and new life. Tragedies occur, and somehow life moves on. Is there a point to this post? Well, yes, there is. I keep thinking of smiling 8-year-old Martin Richard, holding up his sign, expressing his wish that people would stop killing each other. I often think, when I read arguments and counter-arguments for fighting terrorism with more war, that it's amazing the human race has come as far as it has. Why wouldn't you look for those who support terrorism, financially or otherwise, and charge them in a court of law? Isn't it more salutary to treat acts of terrorism as crimes than to start wars that seem untenable from the outset and may do little to address ultimate causes? We go around in circles, never getting to the bottom of things. Our government makes a show of being tough on terror but merely perpetuates it (and for this, we pay taxes).

Martin Richard will never see it, but for his sake, I'm making a plea that we do some soul-searching as a society and try to look more deeply into the root causes of terrorism. This will probably hurt. I believe that many people who consider themselves completely opposed to terrorism actually support it by trusting the government to fight it on their behalf, a government that is not only dysfunctional but also not opposed to doing away with constitutional rights in its quest to--it tells us--make the world safer. The government doesn't always have a vested interest in telling the public the truth about things--far from it. But the public always has a duty to insist on it.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

A Tiger and a Unicorn

Just think, only a month ago we were digging out from a foot of snow. Although the calendar said March, the reality outside was deepest winter. And that was our second storm in little more than two weeks. A lot of people said the second one was worse. In my little pocket of the world, we seemed to get the same amount of snow both times, although there was more drifting with the first storm; a car I could see from my living room had snow to the top of its wheel wells and wasn't moved for a week. Driving across the parking lot was akin to sledding on a glacier.

The second snow, though formidable enough to halt travel statewide, ended up melting away like a mere dream of winter in only a few days of sun; it just couldn't hang on like the first one. A week later, it was hard to believe it had even happened, though memories of digging a path for my car with a dustpan as a frosty afternoon turned to purple twilight and my nose turned pink assured me that, yes, I had indeed been there. One week more, a mild, sunny day, and I was driving around with the radio on and the window rolled down, and the world seemed a different place, if only for an afternoon.

After lingering in the borderland of winter's-over-but-it's-not-quite-spring, we had another cold night on Saturday--but the next day, Easter, I saw my first blossoming trees of the season, and a day later there were even more. With the heavy rains of the last few days, the border of the sidewalk next to our building has sprouted some ground cover that almost looks like small shrubs, and the grass, which had been brown and lank except for some green tufts, is suddenly thick and lush, a riot of vegetation.

If March came in like a lion (and it did), April has been tigerish in its own way. We've gone from frozen waste to uproarious jungle, with pollen flying, birds darting, and lightning flashing. If this spring were music, it would be Stravinsky's strident Rite of Spring, not Vivaldi's sweet and chirrupy Four Seasons. The human world may flounder and fumble, but the natural world streams on.

I saw a political headline today: "2015 is all about 2016." I guess I should care, but I'm more excited at the moment by the weeping cherries, crab apples, and redbuds and the prospect of putting my winter things away. Show me a politician as reliable as the return of spring, and I'll show you a green and gold tiger romping in the tall grass with a unicorn. I'm not sure that the first sight isn't much rarer than the second one.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Rogue's Gallery

According to Chaucer, April is the month when people "long to go on pilgrimages." In his day, when the urge hit, people struck out for Canterbury to see the cathedral and its relics. Of course, that was England in the Middle Ages, but something like the same idea probably still applies. Spring break commonly falls in April, though trips to the beach or Disneyland are much more common than pilgrimages to holy shrines nowadays.

When I was younger, I took it for granted that people were just more pious in the Middle Ages, but now I suspect that for many pilgrims, devotion was just an excuse for a vacation, a break from the everyday grind. For them, going to Canterbury was something like going to Daytona, or even Vegas.

I've actually been to Canterbury, though I didn't do it according to the Chaucer plan. I arrived there on a bus, in the month of July, with my camera and my grandmother. (This was the same summer I traipsed around half of southern England looking at Gothic buildings.) I was very interested in what you might call the numinous properties of Gothic, but I wouldn't term myself a pilgrim in the strict sense of the word. I was more interested in aesthetic, historic, and imaginative inspiration than in a religious experience, and I wasn't disappointed in what I saw.

I remember that Canterbury Cathedral could be seen from a long way off across the countryside; once it came into view it towered over everything else. I imagine that for medieval pilgrims, regardless of their original motivations for taking the trip, the constant and ever more dominating presence of the object of their journey must have been awe-inspiring, perhaps a bit like approaching the doors of heaven. It would have been the presence around which everything else arranged itself, like Wallace Stevens' jar upon the hill in "Anecdote of the Jar." This was probably true even for the most jaded.

Can you imagine traveling with such a crowd today? I suppose it wouldn't be unlike a bus tour or a cruise, in which you're thrown in with such a random sampling of humanity that there's no telling who you might be sitting next to, knave, fool, criminal, or saint. Although it's been a while since I read The Canterbury Tales, my recollection is that while the last group was in short supply, the other three categories were amply represented. Perhaps it's unfair, since it's been a while since I read the Tales, but when I ask myself now if I would have chosen to take such a journey with a crew like that, the answer is no. It may just be that the rogues stand out more in my memory. It's also true that I've never been one for group travel to begin with.

Of course, I'm being a little facetious. Chaucer's idea, I think, in depicting such a cavalcade of characters is to provide amusement. It's a comedy, with all the vices (and virtues, naturally) of humanity on display. You're meant to recognize, with a wry smile, characters that remind you of people you know (and perhaps yourself, if you tend toward introspection). The Canterbury Tales is, after all, a species of armchair travel. You're not actually on the trip--you're at one remove from it. Except insofar as life itself is a journey . . . but never mind that . . . Chaucer has made it possible for you to just sit back and enjoy this one.

If you're making any spring journeys of your own, safe travels. Watch out for the other guy and all that. As for me, I'm going no farther than the local coffeehouse, where you may see me ensconced with Paul Theroux's The Pillars of Hercules. I've gone by sea, by air, by rail, by land, and on foot, but right now armchair travel is what I like best.