I did something kind of raw today and made a video in which I talked about my own experiences with “social distancing” and social isolation. As I said before, I do think I have a jump on this in comparison with most other people and that there might be something I could add to the conversation surrounding the psychological impacts of all this coronavirus self-quarantine, which are very real.
It’s one thing to read poems and to talk about one’s writing process; that’s one kind of vulnerability. To talk about a difficult personal experience is yet another level of vulnerable, and I think you can tell from the video that I was searching for words and trying to be honest about my own experience. If that helps you make sense of what’s happening to you, then it was time well spent for me. I decided not to edit it and to just leave it as it is, because it’s just me talking, without a lot of forethought, and once you start editing something to “package” it, it probably loses any of the original virtue it may have had.
I tend not to hold anything back when I talk about my own unusual journey because I don’t want to leave it up to someone else to tell my story for me. No one is more of an expert than you or I on our own experiences. You can visit Wordplay’s Facebook page to see the video.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Our Dickensian Moment
I debuted a video of me reading William Wordsworth on Wordplay’s Facebook page earlier tonight, and I honestly don’t see how you can expect any more of me, but here I am writing my blog post—because it is Wednesday. This is such a time of contrasts, isn’t it? One minute I’m totally frustrated with trying to accomplish a formerly simple task and the next minute I’m almost crying because I’m laughing so hard at something someone else posted re: WFH Fashion or How to Up Your Baking Game Under Self-Quarantine.
It was wild at work this week, with people stampeding through the store, refusing to respect the six-feet rule, and continuing to expect things to function as normal in the midst of a world-wide crisis. Everybody handles things differently, and I understand that, but I have talked to several people who somehow seemed to be in denial that anything unusual was taking place. One very nice woman seemed quite reasonable except for the fact that she just wasn’t accepting the fact that lockdowns in some places mean that some problems can’t be easily solved right now. I had several conversations in which I had the sense that people were hanging on to an everyday reality that no longer exists.
At the same time, I’m charmed by the humor and ingenuity displayed by everyday people trying to make the best of things and cope with challenging circumstances. I’m still wondering what will happen to those of modest means who aren’t really equipped for riding out a tsunami like this one. I’m assuming that good will and understanding from everyone involved will carry the day, and in most cases, this is probably true, but it’s difficult to imagine that all losses will be made good. How could they be? Some things really can’t be undone or redone, and there really are months (and years) of your life that you can never get back, no matter how much you want to. That’s something especially difficult for young people, who haven’t had a lot of experience with life upheavals, to understand.
The surreal is now normal, something I’m sure few of us anticipated could happen almost overnight. You just don’t expect the new normal to radically change from one day to the next. One day, I watched from a quiet corner of the grocery store as at least 20 people descended on the produce department at one time; a couple of days later, I was told I couldn’t stand in the completely empty section of the store that formerly housed the cafe because it was “closed” (though no one was within 25 feet of me or actually even in the section at all). All of the parks in town are closed except for one, which has inexplicably remained open. Last week, they were so packed with people that I was afraid to get out of my car, and now even the parking lots are blocked off, so obviously someone figured out the Petri dish potential of the walking paths—no social distancing with hundreds of people walking at the same time.
I’ve been noticing moments of splendor in the midst of chaos, something I’ve become very adept at doing. I’m often in my car and unable to stop when I notice something springlike and beautiful; if this were not the case, I would take even more pictures. I’ve noticed in the past that photographs often fail to capture the full effect of what I’m seeing, but maybe I’m getting better at gauging whether something is photographable or not. My sense of what’s important has changed since I stopped working full-time years ago. It sometimes seems to me that I accomplish more by taking a photo of a tree than I did by working an entire eight-hour day at my desk job, courtesy of some algorithm of usefulness that I’ve developed on my own.
Not all of the effects of what’s happening will be bad. I am not one to recommend character-building experiences (feeling that I’ve had more than I will probably be able to benefit from no matter how long I live)—but you certainly can learn a lot of things about yourself when you’re thrown out of your comfort zone. Of course, you already know that, so no need to state the obvious—just remember the old chestnut about tough times not lasting. And the glass being half-full, not half-empty. All those old cliches.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
The Ghost Trees of Spring
One thing about being without a permanent address over the last couple of years: I’ve gotten to know other parts of town that I didn’t know well before and probably wouldn’t have gotten to know at all in other circumstances. My opinion about which parts of town are desirable and which aren’t has changed several times; I’ve driven through entire neighborhoods I had never explored before; I’ve found out which streets really have the best holiday decorations; and I’ve gotten used to the gigantic Kroger stores that dwarf the smaller neighborhood store I used to frequent, which now seems small and cramped to me.
Driving west one winter morning over a year ago, I experienced a sunrise that turned the trees ahead of me into a molten gold, a particular shade of intense light I’d never seen before. I wasn’t used to traveling in that direction at that time of the morning and had never caught the sun at quite that angle before: a revelation. I discovered suburban neighborhoods that looked much older than they are because of the way in which mature trees had been incorporated into their development; I was surprised at how quickly they had assumed a mature appearance, because I remembered when they were brand-new.
I found out that the crabapple trees on a certain stretch of road look like ghost trees at night, something you would only know if you traveled that particular street after dark during a very brief period in spring when the trees are flowering. I discovered that downtown no longer seems like the center of things. If there is a center, it is one that seems to travel with me, like the Self, whose “center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” I’ve experienced the magic of autumn nights in streets swirling with leaves and rain. I’ve noted how much nocturnal life there is, even within city limits; a fox here, a pair of coyotes there, rabbits dashing across the roads on unknown errands. I passed a house with a horse in the front yard. I craned my neck, just this morning, to see if what appeared to be gigantic birds on a suburban roof were actually real birds or merely chimney pots or something equally mundane.
I’ve looked with longing at cozy windows, lighted at night; imagined what kind of tiny home I would design and where I would put it if I were building my own home; visited the Jot ’Em Down Store twice while driving out in the country; and photographed public art that has popped up in unexpected places all over town. I’ve passed a street sign that brings up a memory of someone who once lived there, long ago, a street that I had never seen until now, the person who lived there long since moved on. I’ve discovered that the achingly beautiful phenomenon that is spring is equally achingly beautiful all over town. I’ve found out what it’s like to have Starbucks as your living room and the public library as your drawing room. Not quite as cozy and private as I’d like, but there you have it.
Little by little, I’ve come across people that I hadn’t seen in a long time and discovered that the past is still present, that there is a sense of continuity between earlier periods of my life and where I am now. I’ve realized just how much living in one particular spot gives you a certain outlook, certain paths to trod, and particular points of view, and how not being tied to one spot expands your outlook. I’m still processing what this has all meant to me and probably will do so for a long time to come, but I will say that I’ve probably gained something from floating free, as it were, through my adopted hometown. I have a perspective on it that could never be matched by someone living settled at home, viewing the world through their front window. Some of it has to do with the strangeness but persistence of life, mixed with a fondness for this corner of the earth and its natural beauty, unfiltered through all the seasons.
Driving west one winter morning over a year ago, I experienced a sunrise that turned the trees ahead of me into a molten gold, a particular shade of intense light I’d never seen before. I wasn’t used to traveling in that direction at that time of the morning and had never caught the sun at quite that angle before: a revelation. I discovered suburban neighborhoods that looked much older than they are because of the way in which mature trees had been incorporated into their development; I was surprised at how quickly they had assumed a mature appearance, because I remembered when they were brand-new.
I’ve looked with longing at cozy windows, lighted at night; imagined what kind of tiny home I would design and where I would put it if I were building my own home; visited the Jot ’Em Down Store twice while driving out in the country; and photographed public art that has popped up in unexpected places all over town. I’ve passed a street sign that brings up a memory of someone who once lived there, long ago, a street that I had never seen until now, the person who lived there long since moved on. I’ve discovered that the achingly beautiful phenomenon that is spring is equally achingly beautiful all over town. I’ve found out what it’s like to have Starbucks as your living room and the public library as your drawing room. Not quite as cozy and private as I’d like, but there you have it.
Little by little, I’ve come across people that I hadn’t seen in a long time and discovered that the past is still present, that there is a sense of continuity between earlier periods of my life and where I am now. I’ve realized just how much living in one particular spot gives you a certain outlook, certain paths to trod, and particular points of view, and how not being tied to one spot expands your outlook. I’m still processing what this has all meant to me and probably will do so for a long time to come, but I will say that I’ve probably gained something from floating free, as it were, through my adopted hometown. I have a perspective on it that could never be matched by someone living settled at home, viewing the world through their front window. Some of it has to do with the strangeness but persistence of life, mixed with a fondness for this corner of the earth and its natural beauty, unfiltered through all the seasons.
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Social Distancing for Extroverts
Hand washing and social distancing: the watchwords of the hour. I’ve been practicing both to the best of my ability, but I can’t help thinking that the latter, while probably necessary, is rather a tragic result of the current situation. I’m naturally an introvert, so spending time alone isn’t nearly as difficult for me as it is for the extroverted majority—and yet even I recognize that humans are social creatures and need other people. Most people can’t even seem to make it at home for more than two or three days during the holidays before they’re ready to bust out of the house, so I’m sure the quarantines are going to be very trying psychologically for many folks.
Of course, there also lessons to be learned on the ways in which trying to take care of each other can be accomplished in unfamiliar ways. I was going through the drive-through at Starbucks today when it occurred to me how many germs were probably on my Starbucks card, which I was getting ready to hand to the barista, so I wiped it off front and back with hand sanitizer. Apparently, that does not keep the card from working, though there might be a limit to how many times you could do that. (It’s too bad you can’t do the same thing to money.) Trying to give people extra personal space at the grocery store and not touching any more surfaces than necessary also requires thinking about things in a new way.
Whether it’s good news or bad news, I don’t know, but the fact is I’m so used to surreal conditions that this crisis is mostly just more of the same for me. I won’t be able to frequent cafes for a while, and the libraries are also closed. I had to scramble to find things I didn’t want to run out of once I realized people were starting to buy things up; I’m living with uncertainty and wondering how long current conditions will hold, just like you are. And yet, it’s exactly the type of thing I’m familiar with, how life can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. I’m not happy about any of it, and yet in some ways I personally feel less isolated than I did when my own surreal adventure, if you can call it that, began 10 years ago. Now I know other people also know what it feels like to be isolated, anxious, and to some degree helpless, to see things spinning beyond your control.
It may be ironic that I, one of the world’s champion introverts, am so transfixed by the prohibitions on getting close to other people, but it’s that aspect of our current reality that’s really captured my imagination. Entire novels will be written about our current predicament; the one I would write would deal with the tragic aspect of not being to touch other people. It seems like a metaphor for so much more, for some kind of malaise that has perhaps been hidden for a long time but takes its visible shape in the form of a virus. Am I saying we made ourselves sick? It’s not that exactly, but more that there’s a kind of symbolic truth in the virus. How strange that it would have made its appearance at a time when we’re already so divided politically.
We will probably learn a lot of things about ourselves by the time this situation is over. One of the most interesting questions to me is how people will handle this unprecedented opportunity to practice introspection. Whether any profound changes come out of it is anyone’s guess, but the chance to get in dialogue with the Self (in Jungian terms) has never been better.
Of course, there also lessons to be learned on the ways in which trying to take care of each other can be accomplished in unfamiliar ways. I was going through the drive-through at Starbucks today when it occurred to me how many germs were probably on my Starbucks card, which I was getting ready to hand to the barista, so I wiped it off front and back with hand sanitizer. Apparently, that does not keep the card from working, though there might be a limit to how many times you could do that. (It’s too bad you can’t do the same thing to money.) Trying to give people extra personal space at the grocery store and not touching any more surfaces than necessary also requires thinking about things in a new way.
Whether it’s good news or bad news, I don’t know, but the fact is I’m so used to surreal conditions that this crisis is mostly just more of the same for me. I won’t be able to frequent cafes for a while, and the libraries are also closed. I had to scramble to find things I didn’t want to run out of once I realized people were starting to buy things up; I’m living with uncertainty and wondering how long current conditions will hold, just like you are. And yet, it’s exactly the type of thing I’m familiar with, how life can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. I’m not happy about any of it, and yet in some ways I personally feel less isolated than I did when my own surreal adventure, if you can call it that, began 10 years ago. Now I know other people also know what it feels like to be isolated, anxious, and to some degree helpless, to see things spinning beyond your control.
It may be ironic that I, one of the world’s champion introverts, am so transfixed by the prohibitions on getting close to other people, but it’s that aspect of our current reality that’s really captured my imagination. Entire novels will be written about our current predicament; the one I would write would deal with the tragic aspect of not being to touch other people. It seems like a metaphor for so much more, for some kind of malaise that has perhaps been hidden for a long time but takes its visible shape in the form of a virus. Am I saying we made ourselves sick? It’s not that exactly, but more that there’s a kind of symbolic truth in the virus. How strange that it would have made its appearance at a time when we’re already so divided politically.
We will probably learn a lot of things about ourselves by the time this situation is over. One of the most interesting questions to me is how people will handle this unprecedented opportunity to practice introspection. Whether any profound changes come out of it is anyone’s guess, but the chance to get in dialogue with the Self (in Jungian terms) has never been better.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Don’t Sneeze On Me
I’m currently fighting a cold, and all that hand-washing and hand-wringing over “Are my hands clean enough?” and “Will I catch coronavirus on top of this?” is a bit tiring, I must admit. I am a model hand-washer, but I’ve been hit with an obscure feeling of guilt over having a cold, as if the very sight of me sneezing might be enough to send the populace into a panic and the stock markets tumbling. On top of that, I’m having to stay hydrated to keep a mild cold from turning into a bad one, my hands are dry from all the washing, and my nose is turning a becoming shade of red. Good times!
The coronavirus situation was borne in on me the other night when I went in search of sanitizing wipes. There were none to be had in any of the stores I went to; a Walmart employee told me that when the store does get a shipment, they sell out immediately. In the grocery store this morning, the toilet paper aisle was nearly decimated. When I heard about the strict quarantine taking place in Italy, I was amazed: if Italy is making people stay home, things are getting serious. Officials had been telling people in the beginning that there was little to worry about here in the U.S., and technically I suppose that was true—until the first cases appeared.
It all reminds me a little of a disaster movie in which the global threat of a pandemic starts to unravel the underpinnings of civilization and send the world back to the Dark Ages. No big deal not to be able to find Purell at the grocery store, you say. Oh, that’s just what you think. It starts with Purell and then progresses to milk, bread, antiperspirant, and beer. Then they’ll run out of toothbrushes and clean underwear. People start rioting in the streets, and the thin veneer of modernity gets ripped off like a dirty bandage. It’ll be up to a straggly band of hardy survivors to escape the pestilential cities, where people are fighting over stray boxes of Kleenex and tubes of toothpaste, to set up a new coronavirus-free zone in some Edenic setting that resembles Isla Nublar but hopefully contains no dinosaurs.
Well, I hope our structures, institutions, and resolve to hang onto our hard-won evolutionary gains will keep the coronavirus from spinning us all out of control. We’ve been through it before with the flu and other infectious diseases, and there seems to be little to be done other than following reasonable precautions. I haven’t noticed people behaving much differently here. I won’t be going to any large-scale events in the foreseeable future, but I wasn’t planning to anyway. I’ll be nursing my cold, trying to remember not to touch my face, and hoping the shortage of sanitizing wipes doesn’t last much longer (they are handy things to have, but I wouldn’t fight someone to the death over them). I have no large-scale mythological advice to offer beyond “Wash your hands,” and you already knew that anyway.
The coronavirus situation was borne in on me the other night when I went in search of sanitizing wipes. There were none to be had in any of the stores I went to; a Walmart employee told me that when the store does get a shipment, they sell out immediately. In the grocery store this morning, the toilet paper aisle was nearly decimated. When I heard about the strict quarantine taking place in Italy, I was amazed: if Italy is making people stay home, things are getting serious. Officials had been telling people in the beginning that there was little to worry about here in the U.S., and technically I suppose that was true—until the first cases appeared.
It all reminds me a little of a disaster movie in which the global threat of a pandemic starts to unravel the underpinnings of civilization and send the world back to the Dark Ages. No big deal not to be able to find Purell at the grocery store, you say. Oh, that’s just what you think. It starts with Purell and then progresses to milk, bread, antiperspirant, and beer. Then they’ll run out of toothbrushes and clean underwear. People start rioting in the streets, and the thin veneer of modernity gets ripped off like a dirty bandage. It’ll be up to a straggly band of hardy survivors to escape the pestilential cities, where people are fighting over stray boxes of Kleenex and tubes of toothpaste, to set up a new coronavirus-free zone in some Edenic setting that resembles Isla Nublar but hopefully contains no dinosaurs.
Well, I hope our structures, institutions, and resolve to hang onto our hard-won evolutionary gains will keep the coronavirus from spinning us all out of control. We’ve been through it before with the flu and other infectious diseases, and there seems to be little to be done other than following reasonable precautions. I haven’t noticed people behaving much differently here. I won’t be going to any large-scale events in the foreseeable future, but I wasn’t planning to anyway. I’ll be nursing my cold, trying to remember not to touch my face, and hoping the shortage of sanitizing wipes doesn’t last much longer (they are handy things to have, but I wouldn’t fight someone to the death over them). I have no large-scale mythological advice to offer beyond “Wash your hands,” and you already knew that anyway.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Bertha Rochester Was Robbed
For some time, I had been meaning to read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel that tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, the young island woman who becomes Edward Rochester’s first wife in Jane Eyre. Wide Sargasso Sea was published in the 1960s and is considered a modern masterpiece; it is also a fairly compact novel, which belies its impact, and I sped through it, partly, in all honesty, to “get it over with.” Despite the beauty and vividness of its description of the natural world of the Caribbean, the story is so full of misery and cruelty that I didn’t have any wish to prolong the experience of reading it. It’s an accomplished work, but the story it tells is horrifying.
Edwidge Danticat, who wrote the introduction to the edition, says that she imagines someone else writing an alternative version of Jane Eyre in which Antoinette (later called Bertha) and Miss Eyre get to know one another. I confess I started writing it in my mind right after finishing the book. The most terrible thing about Miss Rhys’s novel is the lack of options open to either Antoinette or her mother once they lose the protection of the men in their lives. The other terrible thing is the background of the story, the period following the era of slavery on Jamaica, in which both upper class plantation owners and former slaves still encounter one another daily, although the terms of the encounters have changed. Hatred, fear, and resentment poison all relationships, and there seems to be no escaping the horrors of the past, which simply perpetuate themselves anew.
Young Antoinette is alive to the great natural beauty of her island home, which is all she has ever known, but she fears it at the same time, realizing even as a child that dangers lurk in the shadows. To the reader, it appears that the only chance of happiness she might have is to leave the islands and go elsewhere to start anew—it’s also obvious that her strong identification with the place of her birth makes it nearly impossible for her to imagine doing this. For her, the idea of England, the place from which her young husband arrives, is almost a fable; to him, it is the island that seems unreal. Even having a fortune does not save Antoinette from disaster, since Rochester marries her for money. Husband and wife seem unable to understand one another, and the difference in their backgrounds and experiences quickly tears them apart.
I imagined Antoinette, already driven mad by the time she and Rochester leave for England, encountering Miss Eyre during one of her nocturnal rambles at Thornfield. I imagined her becoming friends with Jane and possibly recovering some of her equanimity under the influence of Jane’s steadiness and common sense. Miss Eyre, I feel sure, would have the ability to see Antoinette as she really is, not through the filters of resentment and fear she seems to encounter elsewhere. Miss Eyre would be too just in her judgments to overlook the role Rochester himself played in Antoinette’s downfall, so bringing the two women together would change the entire dynamic of the story.
Jane Eyre was in my dissertation, and I admit that I have always enjoyed the novel for its “love among the ruins” mentality, its idea that even people who have previously failed at love sometimes get another chance (and I believe they often do). Of course, Wide Sargasso Sea was written by Jean Rhys, not Charlotte Brontë, and Miss Brontë had her own story to tell in her own way. In Jane Eyre, Rochester is older and wiser, regardless of what he may have been in his youth, and has suffered greatly. I won’t say that it’s impossible to think of Jane Eyre in the same way after reading Miss Rhys’s book, but the idea of some kind of meeting of the two women is intriguing and leads to the question of what would have happened to the love affair of Miss Eyre and Rochester had Antoinette and Jane come to understand one another.
Since I’ve gone this far, let’s say Antoinette and Jane become confidantes, and Jane becomes an advocate for Antoinette’s rights, as I believe she would have. She insists that Edward divorce his wife properly and return her money to her. Maybe St. John Rivers returns from India due to illness, Antoinette helps nurse him back to health, and the two of them find some common ground. I realize this seems too much like tidying up loose ends, and St. John would have to have loosened up quite a bit to be palatable to someone like Antoinette, but we’ll say he’s been humbled by his illness, and having lived in India, is attracted to Antoinette’s “exotic” quality. England seems perhaps a trifle tame to him after the tropics.
How’s this working so far? Not too bad, I think. He and Antoinette eventually marry, and he takes a parish in whatever part of England has the warmest climate, in deference to his wife, though Antoinette never returns to the islands. Rochester is spared the loss of his sight and the disfiguring injury, Thornfield never burns, and Jane (who has meanwhile gotten that bequest from her uncle), travels around, goes to America, and nearly marries someone else but returns to Rochester in the end, saving him from brooding, developing gout, and God knows what else. There has to be some complicating factor that brings her flying to his side, so we’ll say he develops a fever but recovers quickly once his ministering angel returns. Oh, and Blanche Ingram marries an earl and returns to the neighborhood to be a thorn in everyone’s side, and Adele becomes a renowned opera singer.
As you can see, I favor happy endings, so if I wrote it, that’s what we’ll have. I have to say that I don’t fully understand the antipathy Rochester develops for his young wife in Miss Rhys’s novel, beyond the fact that some corrupting influence seems to be at work that ruins everyone on the island. The land itself seems to be cursed due to the injustices that have taken place there, and no one seems capable of breaking the cycle. I believe that Miss Rhys was drawing some parallels between the treatment of slaves and the treatment of women in the early 19th century, but in some ways, the depiction of the relationships between husbands and wives seems a bit dated.
It should fall to someone else to write the story of what happens to the people Antoinette leaves behind on the island, but that will be a book for another day. I was intrigued by the little boy who cried when Rochester left for England, having developed a fondness for him that Rochester coldly brushed aside. Perhaps one day he becomes governor of the island, marries his true love, has five children, and lives happily ever after. If I end up having to write that one, too, that’s what will happen. I’m all for realism, but since when is it unrealistic to expect happiness?
Edwidge Danticat, who wrote the introduction to the edition, says that she imagines someone else writing an alternative version of Jane Eyre in which Antoinette (later called Bertha) and Miss Eyre get to know one another. I confess I started writing it in my mind right after finishing the book. The most terrible thing about Miss Rhys’s novel is the lack of options open to either Antoinette or her mother once they lose the protection of the men in their lives. The other terrible thing is the background of the story, the period following the era of slavery on Jamaica, in which both upper class plantation owners and former slaves still encounter one another daily, although the terms of the encounters have changed. Hatred, fear, and resentment poison all relationships, and there seems to be no escaping the horrors of the past, which simply perpetuate themselves anew.
Young Antoinette is alive to the great natural beauty of her island home, which is all she has ever known, but she fears it at the same time, realizing even as a child that dangers lurk in the shadows. To the reader, it appears that the only chance of happiness she might have is to leave the islands and go elsewhere to start anew—it’s also obvious that her strong identification with the place of her birth makes it nearly impossible for her to imagine doing this. For her, the idea of England, the place from which her young husband arrives, is almost a fable; to him, it is the island that seems unreal. Even having a fortune does not save Antoinette from disaster, since Rochester marries her for money. Husband and wife seem unable to understand one another, and the difference in their backgrounds and experiences quickly tears them apart.
I imagined Antoinette, already driven mad by the time she and Rochester leave for England, encountering Miss Eyre during one of her nocturnal rambles at Thornfield. I imagined her becoming friends with Jane and possibly recovering some of her equanimity under the influence of Jane’s steadiness and common sense. Miss Eyre, I feel sure, would have the ability to see Antoinette as she really is, not through the filters of resentment and fear she seems to encounter elsewhere. Miss Eyre would be too just in her judgments to overlook the role Rochester himself played in Antoinette’s downfall, so bringing the two women together would change the entire dynamic of the story.
Jane Eyre was in my dissertation, and I admit that I have always enjoyed the novel for its “love among the ruins” mentality, its idea that even people who have previously failed at love sometimes get another chance (and I believe they often do). Of course, Wide Sargasso Sea was written by Jean Rhys, not Charlotte Brontë, and Miss Brontë had her own story to tell in her own way. In Jane Eyre, Rochester is older and wiser, regardless of what he may have been in his youth, and has suffered greatly. I won’t say that it’s impossible to think of Jane Eyre in the same way after reading Miss Rhys’s book, but the idea of some kind of meeting of the two women is intriguing and leads to the question of what would have happened to the love affair of Miss Eyre and Rochester had Antoinette and Jane come to understand one another.
Since I’ve gone this far, let’s say Antoinette and Jane become confidantes, and Jane becomes an advocate for Antoinette’s rights, as I believe she would have. She insists that Edward divorce his wife properly and return her money to her. Maybe St. John Rivers returns from India due to illness, Antoinette helps nurse him back to health, and the two of them find some common ground. I realize this seems too much like tidying up loose ends, and St. John would have to have loosened up quite a bit to be palatable to someone like Antoinette, but we’ll say he’s been humbled by his illness, and having lived in India, is attracted to Antoinette’s “exotic” quality. England seems perhaps a trifle tame to him after the tropics.
How’s this working so far? Not too bad, I think. He and Antoinette eventually marry, and he takes a parish in whatever part of England has the warmest climate, in deference to his wife, though Antoinette never returns to the islands. Rochester is spared the loss of his sight and the disfiguring injury, Thornfield never burns, and Jane (who has meanwhile gotten that bequest from her uncle), travels around, goes to America, and nearly marries someone else but returns to Rochester in the end, saving him from brooding, developing gout, and God knows what else. There has to be some complicating factor that brings her flying to his side, so we’ll say he develops a fever but recovers quickly once his ministering angel returns. Oh, and Blanche Ingram marries an earl and returns to the neighborhood to be a thorn in everyone’s side, and Adele becomes a renowned opera singer.
As you can see, I favor happy endings, so if I wrote it, that’s what we’ll have. I have to say that I don’t fully understand the antipathy Rochester develops for his young wife in Miss Rhys’s novel, beyond the fact that some corrupting influence seems to be at work that ruins everyone on the island. The land itself seems to be cursed due to the injustices that have taken place there, and no one seems capable of breaking the cycle. I believe that Miss Rhys was drawing some parallels between the treatment of slaves and the treatment of women in the early 19th century, but in some ways, the depiction of the relationships between husbands and wives seems a bit dated.
It should fall to someone else to write the story of what happens to the people Antoinette leaves behind on the island, but that will be a book for another day. I was intrigued by the little boy who cried when Rochester left for England, having developed a fondness for him that Rochester coldly brushed aside. Perhaps one day he becomes governor of the island, marries his true love, has five children, and lives happily ever after. If I end up having to write that one, too, that’s what will happen. I’m all for realism, but since when is it unrealistic to expect happiness?
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
What I Learned by Eating Pancakes
It’s been years since I regularly attended church, but just to show you how ingrained one’s upbringing is, I’ll tell you that I was actually considering this morning whether I should give anything up for Lent. This all got started because the other day I was looking things up about Shrove Tuesday, a liturgical occasion that I probably hadn’t thought about since, literally, high school. I looked it up to see what it had to do with Mardi Gras, and when I found out that eating pancakes is something one does to mark Shrove Tuesday (because you’re eating up eggs, sugar, and fat, all those things you won’t be eating during the period of abstinence), I decided I’d treat myself to pancakes to mark the day.
With Mardi Gras, you’re throwing beads, eating King Cake, and possibly toasting the occasion with libations. I have to admit that when I hear the word “pancakes,” I don’t immediately think, “Wow—the decadence!” Shrove Tuesday is a devout person’s version of kicking up one’s heels. I sometimes made pancakes at home (not for devotional reasons, but on random occasions) and was always trying to replicate the ones my mother made when I was little. I never succeeded in doing so. Hers were thin, more like crepes than the big, thick ones restaurants serve, and she made them small, no more than four or five inches in diameter. They were delicious in an unassuming way, sort of sweet and savory. No one else’s tasted like hers, although other peoples’ presentation was often more impressive.
I have gotten closer to her way of making them over time, but mine are too soggy, and there’s still something missing flavor-wise. It seems to me that everybody else makes enormous pancakes but relies on toppings for most of the razzmatazz and flavor. My mom’s weren’t like that: you could eat them alone and they would still taste good. I remember eating them with a little bit of butter (actually margarine) or grape jelly and considering them a treat. I wish I had asked her how she did it, but I’m not sure even she would have been able to tell me. Probably, it had to do as much with the ingredients and the skillet she used as with any technique involved. (I do know she used Calumet Baking Powder.)
Well, the gist of it is, I went out for pancakes yesterday, ended up at First Watch eating carrot cake and pecan flavored pancakes, and once again thought to myself, once it was over, “Not bad, but not like Mom’s.” The pancakes were huge, and I couldn’t quite finish them, so I rolled out of the restaurant feeling that I had definitely lived up to my “Fat Tuesday” obligations. Having gotten into the Shrove Tuesday mode, I woke up this morning thinking about whether I might get any benefit from celebrating Lent, and if so, what I might want to give up for it. Then it occurred to me, all at once: Mary! You’re living in your car! You live like a nun, you don’t even have a pillow to lay your head on, you eat hard-boiled eggs, almonds, and salad (admittedly with some potato chips and fries thrown in), and your money goes toward the basics of living. Getting a roof over your head is the main luxury you’re looking forward to at the moment. What could you possibly deprive yourself of that circumstances haven’t taken away from you already?
When you’re raised as a Catholic, you have that “But I could always try a little harder to be good” ethic impressed on you from the get-go, and while I think this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you do have a responsibility to yourself to say when enough is enough. A person can only be so good before starting to float off into the ether or sail off to heaven in a magic ship like Perceval did. If that sounds good to you, go right ahead, but I’ve spent much of my life trying to learn to embrace earthly life, not leave it behind. Catholicism, as I learned it, probably emphasized the next life a little too strongly. I can see that in the Middle Ages, when life was tough all over, this might have played well and even have given people a lifeline. But I think we’re at point in the 21st century when we have to say to ourselves, “This is where we are. If we don’t like it, how do we go about making the world better?”
So in short, I’m not giving anything up for Lent. I, personally, have had enough character building experiences and in fact probably have extra character to give away, should you be in need of some. It seems eminently more practical to try to hang onto the things I’ve got, though a good Lenten exercise might be to keep in mind that all of us, no matter where we’re situated, have something to say about the kind of world we’re creating. No matter who you are, no matter where you are, your actions affect the world we’re living in, and we can only make this life better if we decide that we want to.
With Mardi Gras, you’re throwing beads, eating King Cake, and possibly toasting the occasion with libations. I have to admit that when I hear the word “pancakes,” I don’t immediately think, “Wow—the decadence!” Shrove Tuesday is a devout person’s version of kicking up one’s heels. I sometimes made pancakes at home (not for devotional reasons, but on random occasions) and was always trying to replicate the ones my mother made when I was little. I never succeeded in doing so. Hers were thin, more like crepes than the big, thick ones restaurants serve, and she made them small, no more than four or five inches in diameter. They were delicious in an unassuming way, sort of sweet and savory. No one else’s tasted like hers, although other peoples’ presentation was often more impressive.
I have gotten closer to her way of making them over time, but mine are too soggy, and there’s still something missing flavor-wise. It seems to me that everybody else makes enormous pancakes but relies on toppings for most of the razzmatazz and flavor. My mom’s weren’t like that: you could eat them alone and they would still taste good. I remember eating them with a little bit of butter (actually margarine) or grape jelly and considering them a treat. I wish I had asked her how she did it, but I’m not sure even she would have been able to tell me. Probably, it had to do as much with the ingredients and the skillet she used as with any technique involved. (I do know she used Calumet Baking Powder.)
Well, the gist of it is, I went out for pancakes yesterday, ended up at First Watch eating carrot cake and pecan flavored pancakes, and once again thought to myself, once it was over, “Not bad, but not like Mom’s.” The pancakes were huge, and I couldn’t quite finish them, so I rolled out of the restaurant feeling that I had definitely lived up to my “Fat Tuesday” obligations. Having gotten into the Shrove Tuesday mode, I woke up this morning thinking about whether I might get any benefit from celebrating Lent, and if so, what I might want to give up for it. Then it occurred to me, all at once: Mary! You’re living in your car! You live like a nun, you don’t even have a pillow to lay your head on, you eat hard-boiled eggs, almonds, and salad (admittedly with some potato chips and fries thrown in), and your money goes toward the basics of living. Getting a roof over your head is the main luxury you’re looking forward to at the moment. What could you possibly deprive yourself of that circumstances haven’t taken away from you already?
When you’re raised as a Catholic, you have that “But I could always try a little harder to be good” ethic impressed on you from the get-go, and while I think this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you do have a responsibility to yourself to say when enough is enough. A person can only be so good before starting to float off into the ether or sail off to heaven in a magic ship like Perceval did. If that sounds good to you, go right ahead, but I’ve spent much of my life trying to learn to embrace earthly life, not leave it behind. Catholicism, as I learned it, probably emphasized the next life a little too strongly. I can see that in the Middle Ages, when life was tough all over, this might have played well and even have given people a lifeline. But I think we’re at point in the 21st century when we have to say to ourselves, “This is where we are. If we don’t like it, how do we go about making the world better?”
So in short, I’m not giving anything up for Lent. I, personally, have had enough character building experiences and in fact probably have extra character to give away, should you be in need of some. It seems eminently more practical to try to hang onto the things I’ve got, though a good Lenten exercise might be to keep in mind that all of us, no matter where we’re situated, have something to say about the kind of world we’re creating. No matter who you are, no matter where you are, your actions affect the world we’re living in, and we can only make this life better if we decide that we want to.
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Is Spring Fever Still PC?
It’s only been a little over two weeks since the groundhog saw its shadow (or didn’t see it—I don’t know which it was this time). Technically, we should be in the depths of winter, and in years past we would have been. Ten years ago we had a cold, dark February that seemed to go on and on, and since I had just gotten back from a vacation in SoCal at the beginning of the month, it seemed even worse by contrast. We’ve had barely any snow this year, and it hasn’t been notably cold, but since our winters seem to be skewing late in recent years, there’s still time for it. I’ve realized that I don’t really mind winter weather that much, except that I don’t enjoy driving in it. It’s the lack of winter that worries me.
An occasional mild winter seems like a reprieve, but a pattern of mild winters several years in a row is worrisome even for someone who loves summer. I sometimes wonder what our world will look like even 20 or 30 years from now. While catastrophic war is always a possibility, the catastrophe that scares me the most has to do with changes in our climate. Of course, many things that happen in nature are outside of our control and could also result in catastrophe, but the lack of urgency about things we could be doing to slow climate change is something I’m afraid we’ll rue sooner than we think.
What’s supposed to happen here in Kentucky is that we suffer through our Vitamin D deficiencies and complain about how dark it is for at least four months and then suddenly leap back to life again sometime in March. It may be early, it may be late—and an early spring is almost always interrupted by more winter weather—but you don’t have to feel guilty about welcoming the first signs of spring once you’ve paid your dues with a proper Kentucky winter. So it is with that preamble that I tell you that I felt a difference in the light this afternoon, that it seemed stronger and warmer, and coupled with the fact that it was still broad daylight when I was on my way to dinner, I felt unseasonably early stirrings of what I can only describe as spring fever. I felt kind of good, and then I felt bad about Feeling Good.
People around here practice a sort of “sympathetic weather magic,” which means you’ll sometimes see someone wearing shorts and a T-shirt at even the barest hint of a crocus blooming or a piece of blue sky appearing. I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone doing that today. It’s quite cold at night still, and for all I know, we could have the blizzard of the century a month from now, but this afternoon there was a distinct feeling that spring is coming on, and it’s not something you really want to say no to, no matter what. Even a mild Kentucky winter is damp and chilly and causes you to feel ready for any spring you can get, though you’re perhaps not as starved for it as you would feel under normal circumstances.
At the grocery store, they seem to have skipped directly from Valentine’s Day to Easter (if there are shamrocks about, I didn’t see any, though that may have been in a different aisle). They’ve even been dropping different songs into the playlist at Kroger after seemingly playing the same loop forever, which is probably a coincidence but has somehow become associated in my mind with an impending change of season. Not only that, but the floral department was a raft of color and bloom this evening, a gorgeous thing to behold, even if it’s only cut flowers.
So here I am, sadly enjoying these harbingers of spring, and not only that, I took pictures of the flowers at the store so that I could go on looking at them in case Old Man Winter suddenly comes back with a vengeance. Things have come to a pitiful state when you feel bad about enjoying the first stirrings of spring, so I’ll try not to let my happiness drag on any further than a few minutes. I’ve also been feeling the effects of pollen, already circulating as per usual, so this smidgen of spring is not an unalloyed pleasure. A burst of spring flowers, a stuffy nose. A chilly overnight, a dose of sunshine. Things could be worse.
An occasional mild winter seems like a reprieve, but a pattern of mild winters several years in a row is worrisome even for someone who loves summer. I sometimes wonder what our world will look like even 20 or 30 years from now. While catastrophic war is always a possibility, the catastrophe that scares me the most has to do with changes in our climate. Of course, many things that happen in nature are outside of our control and could also result in catastrophe, but the lack of urgency about things we could be doing to slow climate change is something I’m afraid we’ll rue sooner than we think.
What’s supposed to happen here in Kentucky is that we suffer through our Vitamin D deficiencies and complain about how dark it is for at least four months and then suddenly leap back to life again sometime in March. It may be early, it may be late—and an early spring is almost always interrupted by more winter weather—but you don’t have to feel guilty about welcoming the first signs of spring once you’ve paid your dues with a proper Kentucky winter. So it is with that preamble that I tell you that I felt a difference in the light this afternoon, that it seemed stronger and warmer, and coupled with the fact that it was still broad daylight when I was on my way to dinner, I felt unseasonably early stirrings of what I can only describe as spring fever. I felt kind of good, and then I felt bad about Feeling Good.
People around here practice a sort of “sympathetic weather magic,” which means you’ll sometimes see someone wearing shorts and a T-shirt at even the barest hint of a crocus blooming or a piece of blue sky appearing. I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone doing that today. It’s quite cold at night still, and for all I know, we could have the blizzard of the century a month from now, but this afternoon there was a distinct feeling that spring is coming on, and it’s not something you really want to say no to, no matter what. Even a mild Kentucky winter is damp and chilly and causes you to feel ready for any spring you can get, though you’re perhaps not as starved for it as you would feel under normal circumstances.
At the grocery store, they seem to have skipped directly from Valentine’s Day to Easter (if there are shamrocks about, I didn’t see any, though that may have been in a different aisle). They’ve even been dropping different songs into the playlist at Kroger after seemingly playing the same loop forever, which is probably a coincidence but has somehow become associated in my mind with an impending change of season. Not only that, but the floral department was a raft of color and bloom this evening, a gorgeous thing to behold, even if it’s only cut flowers.
So here I am, sadly enjoying these harbingers of spring, and not only that, I took pictures of the flowers at the store so that I could go on looking at them in case Old Man Winter suddenly comes back with a vengeance. Things have come to a pitiful state when you feel bad about enjoying the first stirrings of spring, so I’ll try not to let my happiness drag on any further than a few minutes. I’ve also been feeling the effects of pollen, already circulating as per usual, so this smidgen of spring is not an unalloyed pleasure. A burst of spring flowers, a stuffy nose. A chilly overnight, a dose of sunshine. Things could be worse.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Blue-Eyed Hero
Following the death of actor Kirk Douglas at age 103 last week, a slew of news stories appeared summarizing his life and achievements in the movie industry. I actually didn’t know very much about Mr. Douglas, but he does earn a place on this blog for his portrayal of Ulysses in the 1954 film of that name directed by Mario Camerini. It was my first introduction to Homer on film, and while in many ways it may have been less faithful to the spirit of the Greeks than other adaptations I’ve seen, it was, at the same time, one of the most entertaining versions of “The Odyssey” on record.
I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have some familiarity with the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome. I read “The Iliad” when I was a teenager and followed it up immediately with “The Odyssey” but wouldn’t be truthful if I said I got a lot out of it. I remember having a book in junior high school with retellings of the stories of Greek and/or Roman mythology that was more accessible than Homer, Ovid, or Virgil in their original forms if also somewhat simplistic—but even at that stage I was already familiar with the stories. In the same way I absorbed fairy tales, seemingly without effort and from a variety of sources, I came to know ancient mythology without being able to say how it happened.
Even in junior high school, though, I was struck by the fatalism evident in many of myths, which—unlike fairy tales—sometimes ended unhappily. Why did Persephone have to keep going back to the Underworld just because she’d eaten some seeds, I wondered. Why did Daphne have to change her very being just because Apollo wouldn’t leave her in peace? Why couldn’t Icarus have listened to his father and flown a little further from the sun? There didn’t seem to be any answers to these questions except “that’s the way it was,” a sobering fatalism mixed up with all those wonderfully inventive characters and stories.
It wasn’t until I read some of the Greek tragedies that I realized that Odysseus was not always portrayed as the sympathetic, godlike hero I first knew who wandered for many years, enduring many hardships, only to return in triumph at last to his beloved home and family. The Odysseus who was instrumental in sacrificing Iphigenia at Aulis bears little relation to the hale and hearty Ulysses Mr. Douglas portrayed on screen in the 1950s, and to be honest, the big-screen Ulysses is the way I preferred him. He was glorious on screen, fearlessly brawling and maneuvering his way from one adventure to another, maintaining a sense of humor, courage, and elan no matter what happened, and looking good while doing it.
The versions of the myths I heard as a child emphasized the heroic qualities of the characters, while the “adult” versions revealed cruelty, ruthlessness, misogyny, and more. When you see Mr. Douglas’s Ulysses up on the screen, you know that he is truly a hero, that he deserves to defeat his enemies, and that his homecoming is a just reward. Well, who wouldn’t prefer to see him in that light? In Euripides, one finds it difficult to drum up any enthusiasm for the Greek cause because you know the human cost of purchasing the winds favorable to their venture. The Trojan War seems cursed from the outset, and the Greek leaders, including Odysseus, come across as a pack of savages.
While the “adult” versions of the myths make us extremely thoughtful about such things as war, peace, family psychodrama, and expediency, the more playful versions give us heroes and adventures we can follow by proxy. I’m not sure that one type is really that much more superior to the other—there’s plenty of room for multiple retellings of these stories, and there are many different ways to approach mythology. I have to thank Mr. Douglas for giving me my first and most visceral image of Ulysses, even if it is somewhat larger than life, since that is the one I will probably always cherish. I will admit to preferring my heroes to be heroic, even if it doesn’t always happen that way.
I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have some familiarity with the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome. I read “The Iliad” when I was a teenager and followed it up immediately with “The Odyssey” but wouldn’t be truthful if I said I got a lot out of it. I remember having a book in junior high school with retellings of the stories of Greek and/or Roman mythology that was more accessible than Homer, Ovid, or Virgil in their original forms if also somewhat simplistic—but even at that stage I was already familiar with the stories. In the same way I absorbed fairy tales, seemingly without effort and from a variety of sources, I came to know ancient mythology without being able to say how it happened.
Even in junior high school, though, I was struck by the fatalism evident in many of myths, which—unlike fairy tales—sometimes ended unhappily. Why did Persephone have to keep going back to the Underworld just because she’d eaten some seeds, I wondered. Why did Daphne have to change her very being just because Apollo wouldn’t leave her in peace? Why couldn’t Icarus have listened to his father and flown a little further from the sun? There didn’t seem to be any answers to these questions except “that’s the way it was,” a sobering fatalism mixed up with all those wonderfully inventive characters and stories.
It wasn’t until I read some of the Greek tragedies that I realized that Odysseus was not always portrayed as the sympathetic, godlike hero I first knew who wandered for many years, enduring many hardships, only to return in triumph at last to his beloved home and family. The Odysseus who was instrumental in sacrificing Iphigenia at Aulis bears little relation to the hale and hearty Ulysses Mr. Douglas portrayed on screen in the 1950s, and to be honest, the big-screen Ulysses is the way I preferred him. He was glorious on screen, fearlessly brawling and maneuvering his way from one adventure to another, maintaining a sense of humor, courage, and elan no matter what happened, and looking good while doing it.
The versions of the myths I heard as a child emphasized the heroic qualities of the characters, while the “adult” versions revealed cruelty, ruthlessness, misogyny, and more. When you see Mr. Douglas’s Ulysses up on the screen, you know that he is truly a hero, that he deserves to defeat his enemies, and that his homecoming is a just reward. Well, who wouldn’t prefer to see him in that light? In Euripides, one finds it difficult to drum up any enthusiasm for the Greek cause because you know the human cost of purchasing the winds favorable to their venture. The Trojan War seems cursed from the outset, and the Greek leaders, including Odysseus, come across as a pack of savages.
While the “adult” versions of the myths make us extremely thoughtful about such things as war, peace, family psychodrama, and expediency, the more playful versions give us heroes and adventures we can follow by proxy. I’m not sure that one type is really that much more superior to the other—there’s plenty of room for multiple retellings of these stories, and there are many different ways to approach mythology. I have to thank Mr. Douglas for giving me my first and most visceral image of Ulysses, even if it is somewhat larger than life, since that is the one I will probably always cherish. I will admit to preferring my heroes to be heroic, even if it doesn’t always happen that way.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Sending Love to Iowa
I logged onto my iPad yesterday morning wondering how the Iowa caucuses had gone and spent a lively couple of hours reading news articles about how it all went down. I, along with most people, I guess, was expecting to see results first thing, and when I read about the app problem that prevented results from getting through, I figured it would be sometime in the afternoon, at the longest, before we heard anything. Election glitches are nothing new.
In the meantime, I read the news while trying to steer as clear as I could of pundits talking about “what’s broken” and “what a big mess everything is.” Admittedly, I was impatient to find out who had won, but I had the advantage of not having been tuned in the evening before when the caucuses were actually taking place, so I didn’t experience the anxiety and confusion that had unfolded in Iowa in real time. Apparently, nerves were worn to a frazzle (and no wonder) all around as people had to rely on trying to call in their results the old-fashioned way, only to be met with long wait times and hang-ups.
I read words like “debacle” and “disaster” and saw opinions expressed about how we were seeing the beginning of the end of the caucus process in Iowa, and I have to admit: my feelings were rather different. Granted, I was at a remove from it all in time and space, but as I looked at the photos and watched the videos of Iowans taking part in one of our country’s most important participatory processes, that of choosing the person who may be our next president, I was, more than anything, moved.
I was moved by the excitement I could see in people’s faces, by the conscientiousness with which they patiently navigated the ins and outs of the system, by the diversity of the Iowans themselves—including one precinct with largely Muslim constituents—and by the very public nature of the process itself. Nothing hidden or secret there, just people very openly and matter-of-factly sorting themselves into groups to support their preferred candidates. You could actually see democracy at work, right in front of your eyes. I don’t remember the last time I was so touched by anything having to do with politics, but I didn’t have a single sarcastic thought while I was watching the people of Iowa caucus. What I was really thinking was “This is what democracy is all about, and how wonderful for the people of Iowa to get to lead the way.”
From this you will see that I am sharply at odds with the people who keep moaning about what a disaster it all was. The only disaster I saw was in the app that didn’t work, and with the paper ballots completed by the participants, there seems to be no way the outcome will be in doubt once it’s known. I was actually wishing our state had a caucus, because to me there was something fundamentally satisfying about watching people show up with their friends and neighbors and then publicly sort themselves, declaring their candidate preference in front of one and all. There was something sort of New England town hall-ish about it all, democracy with a small d, right down there at the grass roots level. I was (if you don’t mind if I express an old-fashioned thought) just plain proud.
I think it’s wise for the officials in Iowa to take their time about checking the results to make sure that it’s all done properly. While it’s frustrating, it will not prevent everyone from moving on to the next contest. If anything good can be said to come out of it, it is perhaps the fact that the problem with the app was discovered in time to prevent another state, possibly without the easy visibility of the caucus system, from finding itself in similar circumstances with inadequate backup.
Personally, I think it would be a shame if Iowa gave up its caucuses over a piece of software. You guys just keep on keepin’ on, no matter what the experts say. There’s too much genuine joy and excitement in the system you’ve got, and if you can get Wordplay (as cynical as I am sometimes) to say so, you must be doing something really special.
In the meantime, I read the news while trying to steer as clear as I could of pundits talking about “what’s broken” and “what a big mess everything is.” Admittedly, I was impatient to find out who had won, but I had the advantage of not having been tuned in the evening before when the caucuses were actually taking place, so I didn’t experience the anxiety and confusion that had unfolded in Iowa in real time. Apparently, nerves were worn to a frazzle (and no wonder) all around as people had to rely on trying to call in their results the old-fashioned way, only to be met with long wait times and hang-ups.
I read words like “debacle” and “disaster” and saw opinions expressed about how we were seeing the beginning of the end of the caucus process in Iowa, and I have to admit: my feelings were rather different. Granted, I was at a remove from it all in time and space, but as I looked at the photos and watched the videos of Iowans taking part in one of our country’s most important participatory processes, that of choosing the person who may be our next president, I was, more than anything, moved.
I was moved by the excitement I could see in people’s faces, by the conscientiousness with which they patiently navigated the ins and outs of the system, by the diversity of the Iowans themselves—including one precinct with largely Muslim constituents—and by the very public nature of the process itself. Nothing hidden or secret there, just people very openly and matter-of-factly sorting themselves into groups to support their preferred candidates. You could actually see democracy at work, right in front of your eyes. I don’t remember the last time I was so touched by anything having to do with politics, but I didn’t have a single sarcastic thought while I was watching the people of Iowa caucus. What I was really thinking was “This is what democracy is all about, and how wonderful for the people of Iowa to get to lead the way.”
From this you will see that I am sharply at odds with the people who keep moaning about what a disaster it all was. The only disaster I saw was in the app that didn’t work, and with the paper ballots completed by the participants, there seems to be no way the outcome will be in doubt once it’s known. I was actually wishing our state had a caucus, because to me there was something fundamentally satisfying about watching people show up with their friends and neighbors and then publicly sort themselves, declaring their candidate preference in front of one and all. There was something sort of New England town hall-ish about it all, democracy with a small d, right down there at the grass roots level. I was (if you don’t mind if I express an old-fashioned thought) just plain proud.
I think it’s wise for the officials in Iowa to take their time about checking the results to make sure that it’s all done properly. While it’s frustrating, it will not prevent everyone from moving on to the next contest. If anything good can be said to come out of it, it is perhaps the fact that the problem with the app was discovered in time to prevent another state, possibly without the easy visibility of the caucus system, from finding itself in similar circumstances with inadequate backup.
Personally, I think it would be a shame if Iowa gave up its caucuses over a piece of software. You guys just keep on keepin’ on, no matter what the experts say. There’s too much genuine joy and excitement in the system you’ve got, and if you can get Wordplay (as cynical as I am sometimes) to say so, you must be doing something really special.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
To Celebrate 10 Years of Wordplay, I’m Giving Out the Best Advice You’ll Ever Get
With all the activities that come with the New Year—gathering tax documents, renewing car registration, planning for retirement (more on that in a minute), I frankly forgot to mention an important milestone: Wordplay—Writing & Life’s 10-year anniversary, which occurred at the beginning of the year. Yes, it really has been that long. Though in some ways it’s difficult to believe, since I clearly remember the day I sat down and wrote the first post, in other ways it feels like every bit of 10 years and more—the longest 10 years of my life, in fact.
I was feeling very hopeful when I started this blog. I was about to embark on the great unknown of writing a dissertation, and I was also hopeful of possibly seeing other changes in my life. Successfully completing a three-year course of graduate school while working full-time had given me the confidence that I might be able to do other things I’d never done before, including, but not limited to, moving and getting a new job. I didn’t want the job I was in then to be the job I retired from, and I knew that with a library degree I was probably employable just about anywhere. I wasn’t unhappy to be in Lexington, but the idea of moving had been in my mind for so long that I figured it would probably happen sooner rather than later.
Before I started the myth studies program, I was a writer in search of a subject matter and a spark that I hoped would set something alight in my mind—and that is exactly what happened, though not in the way I thought it would. If you had asked me then what I imagined myself doing 10 years on, I probably would have said: I will be living in California, or at least dividing my time between Kentucky and California. I would have said I will be working in a creative field, publishing books, perhaps teaching part-time, and maybe even exploring my newly formed interest in working with images and film. At that point, I viewed my library career as something I was likely to transition out of. But first things first: there was the dissertation to write.
Although the end of 2009 had ushered in some unexplained and unsettling events, as I have said before, it was really more of a Dada phase in my life, not the full-on Surrealistic Nightmare that was shortly to ensue. At the beginning of 2010, I still felt that I could steer my life in the direction I wanted it to go, and in fact, that’s what I was doing. The main anxiety I had was the pressure of the dissertation, and, while daunting, this was largely a good pressure, one I had chosen for myself.
When I look back, I’m thankful that I had my dissertation to think about once all hell broke loose, because it gave me a focus, an intellectual activity that required me to gather myself together and give it my all. If I hadn’t had it to work on at the end of 2010 and during the latter part of 2011, I don’t know what I would have done. But there I was, doing the things I had always done best, gathering sources, reading, and distilling all of that into writing. In a way, completing the dissertation was like one long writing meditation, although I suppose most people wouldn’t think of an analytical process like scholarly writing as a meditation. In effect, though, it centered me and helped me keep my feet on the ground during an extremely bewildering time.
In Jungian terms, I was in dialogue with the Self throughout it all. In some strange way, despite having been semi-agnostic for long stretches of my life, I felt at that time as if I could sense a divine presence hovering at the edges of things, quietly willing me to succeed. It wasn’t just “succeeding at the dissertation.” It was succeeding at surviving. If you’re an atheist, this will probably make no sense to you, but I was a believer in the goodness of God at that time like I had never been before in my life.
Needless to say, most of the things I had hoped for 10 years ago did not come true. Once I successfully completed my dissertation, it was as if I was at a dead standstill. My ability to land on my feet upon leaving one job, which had never failed me before, had suddenly deserted me. There I was, a newly-minted PhD, with—I felt—more to offer than ever before, unable to get any kind of a job. No matter that I was more focused, more skilled, more valuable as a worker than ever before—none of that availed me. I felt stymied at every turn, even when I applied for jobs I would rather not have had. My 10-year plan certainly didn’t include using up my retirement savings just to live, and yet that is exactly what happened. In my wildest dreams I never imagined ending up homeless, and yet that happened, too.
There has, however, been at least one great good thing to come out of it all, which possibly wouldn’t have happened if none of the above had taken place, and that was that I was forced into myself and my own resources and ended up finding a way to turn my frustration and pain into writing. I had always wanted to write fiction and suddenly found that when I turned my hand to it, instead of hesitation over every word and sentence, the words came tumbling out as fast as I could write them. I was pleased with what I was doing fiction-wise for the first time, and that, friends, is no inconsiderable thing.
I’m not going to make it easy on anyone else by saying that the writing has made the last 10 years all worthwhile; what I really feel is that I succeeded in what I was doing in spite of the last 10 years. I chose to finally shed some of my innocence, to acknowledge the darkness I could not get free of, and finally, to triumph over it to some extent by bringing it to bear on my writing. I feel sure that few of the things that were happening to me were happening because of someone’s good intent—just the opposite—and yet the fight I found myself engrossed in eventually had the effect of giving me (and my writing) some much-needed edge. I would never have described my life prior to 2010 as “uneventful,” but in some ways I feel now that not enough had happened to me. I was still almost a child, comparatively speaking. One thing about fighting for your life is that it gives you heaps of fabulous material, if you choose to see it that way.
So now, the time has come to once again look to the future and answer the question of, “What do you see yourself doing 10 years from now?” And I would say, very much the same things I was thinking I wanted to do 10 years ago, as long as I am in charge of making my own choices. I have never given up on my dreams and hopes and am no further from doing that than I was 10 years ago. I’m reaching retirement age this week and have chosen to apply for social security retirement for economic reasons. Living modestly on social security and wages from Home Depot was never part of my plan but is now my reality, so I intend to make the best of it. I make a small income from my writing business (I don’t make much, but, yes, I make enough that I have to report it to the IRS, so I have in effect been a working writer all this time). Perhaps some day I’ll make more than I do now.
Being a writer is what I am, at my core; I never realized that surviving would one day depend on my holding fast to this, but that’s turned out to be the case. I can do a lot of things, but there has never been anything else that I wanted to do as much. It’s as natural to me as breathing. I also want to add that the timing of Greta Gerwig’s film, Little Women, has been rather fortuitous, because that book, given to me by my aunt when I was seven years old, loomed very large in my imaginative life as a child. The fact that several of the March daughters had talents and aspirations, including—most notably—Jo, the writer, didn’t seem at all remarkable in the book and was simply presented as a given. Ms. Gerwig would have no way of knowing this, but my experience of seeing her film on Christmas Day brought me back to one of my foundational experiences as a reader and a writer, confirming for me that, at least where it really matters, I’m right where I need to be in my creative life. It was as if I had circled back to myself.
Whatever talent or passion you yourself are nurturing, openly or secretly, I encourage you never to let go of it. Pay attention to your soul’s requirements, and you’ll never find yourself agonizing over “what might have been.” Find a way to make it happen, and resist people and situations that pull you away from what you know to be your truest self. Stubbornness, often said to be a vice, is in fact a highly underrated virtue, and one I would advise anyone to cultivate, at least in the things that really matter. It will enable you to stand up for yourself. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate my stubbornness doesn’t need to be talking to me.
Thanks for reading my blog, and maybe we’ll have the same “taking stock” talk 10 years from now. Wordplay is not going anywhere.
I was feeling very hopeful when I started this blog. I was about to embark on the great unknown of writing a dissertation, and I was also hopeful of possibly seeing other changes in my life. Successfully completing a three-year course of graduate school while working full-time had given me the confidence that I might be able to do other things I’d never done before, including, but not limited to, moving and getting a new job. I didn’t want the job I was in then to be the job I retired from, and I knew that with a library degree I was probably employable just about anywhere. I wasn’t unhappy to be in Lexington, but the idea of moving had been in my mind for so long that I figured it would probably happen sooner rather than later.
Before I started the myth studies program, I was a writer in search of a subject matter and a spark that I hoped would set something alight in my mind—and that is exactly what happened, though not in the way I thought it would. If you had asked me then what I imagined myself doing 10 years on, I probably would have said: I will be living in California, or at least dividing my time between Kentucky and California. I would have said I will be working in a creative field, publishing books, perhaps teaching part-time, and maybe even exploring my newly formed interest in working with images and film. At that point, I viewed my library career as something I was likely to transition out of. But first things first: there was the dissertation to write.
Although the end of 2009 had ushered in some unexplained and unsettling events, as I have said before, it was really more of a Dada phase in my life, not the full-on Surrealistic Nightmare that was shortly to ensue. At the beginning of 2010, I still felt that I could steer my life in the direction I wanted it to go, and in fact, that’s what I was doing. The main anxiety I had was the pressure of the dissertation, and, while daunting, this was largely a good pressure, one I had chosen for myself.
When I look back, I’m thankful that I had my dissertation to think about once all hell broke loose, because it gave me a focus, an intellectual activity that required me to gather myself together and give it my all. If I hadn’t had it to work on at the end of 2010 and during the latter part of 2011, I don’t know what I would have done. But there I was, doing the things I had always done best, gathering sources, reading, and distilling all of that into writing. In a way, completing the dissertation was like one long writing meditation, although I suppose most people wouldn’t think of an analytical process like scholarly writing as a meditation. In effect, though, it centered me and helped me keep my feet on the ground during an extremely bewildering time.
In Jungian terms, I was in dialogue with the Self throughout it all. In some strange way, despite having been semi-agnostic for long stretches of my life, I felt at that time as if I could sense a divine presence hovering at the edges of things, quietly willing me to succeed. It wasn’t just “succeeding at the dissertation.” It was succeeding at surviving. If you’re an atheist, this will probably make no sense to you, but I was a believer in the goodness of God at that time like I had never been before in my life.
Needless to say, most of the things I had hoped for 10 years ago did not come true. Once I successfully completed my dissertation, it was as if I was at a dead standstill. My ability to land on my feet upon leaving one job, which had never failed me before, had suddenly deserted me. There I was, a newly-minted PhD, with—I felt—more to offer than ever before, unable to get any kind of a job. No matter that I was more focused, more skilled, more valuable as a worker than ever before—none of that availed me. I felt stymied at every turn, even when I applied for jobs I would rather not have had. My 10-year plan certainly didn’t include using up my retirement savings just to live, and yet that is exactly what happened. In my wildest dreams I never imagined ending up homeless, and yet that happened, too.
There has, however, been at least one great good thing to come out of it all, which possibly wouldn’t have happened if none of the above had taken place, and that was that I was forced into myself and my own resources and ended up finding a way to turn my frustration and pain into writing. I had always wanted to write fiction and suddenly found that when I turned my hand to it, instead of hesitation over every word and sentence, the words came tumbling out as fast as I could write them. I was pleased with what I was doing fiction-wise for the first time, and that, friends, is no inconsiderable thing.
I’m not going to make it easy on anyone else by saying that the writing has made the last 10 years all worthwhile; what I really feel is that I succeeded in what I was doing in spite of the last 10 years. I chose to finally shed some of my innocence, to acknowledge the darkness I could not get free of, and finally, to triumph over it to some extent by bringing it to bear on my writing. I feel sure that few of the things that were happening to me were happening because of someone’s good intent—just the opposite—and yet the fight I found myself engrossed in eventually had the effect of giving me (and my writing) some much-needed edge. I would never have described my life prior to 2010 as “uneventful,” but in some ways I feel now that not enough had happened to me. I was still almost a child, comparatively speaking. One thing about fighting for your life is that it gives you heaps of fabulous material, if you choose to see it that way.
So now, the time has come to once again look to the future and answer the question of, “What do you see yourself doing 10 years from now?” And I would say, very much the same things I was thinking I wanted to do 10 years ago, as long as I am in charge of making my own choices. I have never given up on my dreams and hopes and am no further from doing that than I was 10 years ago. I’m reaching retirement age this week and have chosen to apply for social security retirement for economic reasons. Living modestly on social security and wages from Home Depot was never part of my plan but is now my reality, so I intend to make the best of it. I make a small income from my writing business (I don’t make much, but, yes, I make enough that I have to report it to the IRS, so I have in effect been a working writer all this time). Perhaps some day I’ll make more than I do now.
Being a writer is what I am, at my core; I never realized that surviving would one day depend on my holding fast to this, but that’s turned out to be the case. I can do a lot of things, but there has never been anything else that I wanted to do as much. It’s as natural to me as breathing. I also want to add that the timing of Greta Gerwig’s film, Little Women, has been rather fortuitous, because that book, given to me by my aunt when I was seven years old, loomed very large in my imaginative life as a child. The fact that several of the March daughters had talents and aspirations, including—most notably—Jo, the writer, didn’t seem at all remarkable in the book and was simply presented as a given. Ms. Gerwig would have no way of knowing this, but my experience of seeing her film on Christmas Day brought me back to one of my foundational experiences as a reader and a writer, confirming for me that, at least where it really matters, I’m right where I need to be in my creative life. It was as if I had circled back to myself.
Whatever talent or passion you yourself are nurturing, openly or secretly, I encourage you never to let go of it. Pay attention to your soul’s requirements, and you’ll never find yourself agonizing over “what might have been.” Find a way to make it happen, and resist people and situations that pull you away from what you know to be your truest self. Stubbornness, often said to be a vice, is in fact a highly underrated virtue, and one I would advise anyone to cultivate, at least in the things that really matter. It will enable you to stand up for yourself. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate my stubbornness doesn’t need to be talking to me.
Thanks for reading my blog, and maybe we’ll have the same “taking stock” talk 10 years from now. Wordplay is not going anywhere.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Aquarius Rocks, Evidently
Do you ever read those horoscope descriptions of your birth sign characteristics and wonder, “How do they come up with this stuff?” That happened to me last night. Since Aquarius is my sign and we have just entered it, astrologically speaking, there are a number of articles floating around the Internet describing what Aquarius people are like, including tests to help you figure out how you stack up against your fellow Aquarius people. Like me, you probably can’t resist looking at these articles now and then, even though you don’t really believe in horoscopes. You just want to see what they’re saying about you.
I read one article last night that was so flattering about Aquarius people that I thought, “Wow, I guess I’m really kind of cool. Who wouldn’t want to be an Aquarius?” Of course, it left the less flattering things out (and I see no reason to enumerate them here either). I thought that it sounded so much like me that I was truly amazed, the way I was one time when someone “did my chart” and said a lot of things about me that seemed surprisingly accurate. “How does that work?” I wondered. I still don’t know. Though some people say that there is a science to astrology, I sometimes wonder if astrologists don’t have a lot in common with mediums in that they are just very good at reading people and casting their charts accordingly.
Someone once told me that I was very down-to-earth for an Aquarius; I gather that, along with their other good qualities, Aquarius folks are supposed to be zany. I wouldn’t describe myself as “off-the-wall,” and I doubt if most people who know me would either—playful, maybe, but not zany. Some of the things I read in the article sounded a lot like a description of an INFP, which I also am, but there are plenty of INFPs who do not fall under the Aquarius sign. INFPs, and introverts in general, are inwardly directed and do not rely on other people to tell them what to do or how to be. This is apparently a hallmark of Aquarius as well, as they are famous for moving to the beat of their own drum.
I did succumb to taking a test to see how “much of” an Aquarius I am and was pleased to find out that I didn’t match up to the standard too closely. Why be predictable, right, even in unpredictability? I guess what it boils down to is not wishing to be pigeon-holed, or stereotyped, or placed in a category determined by someone else. Whether or not the stars and planets have any influence on our psychology, one always wants to feel that he or she is making his or her own way through life, mistakes and all, moondust and stardust be damned. Cassius was right: The faults do lie in ourselves, and not in our stars—and, hopefully, all the good qualities do, too. I suppose it’s barely possible that old Uranus is in some tiny way responsible for the Aquarius reputation for seeming to be from another planet. But I’m pretty sure the stubbornness and lack of biddability come from being Mary Hackworth.
I read one article last night that was so flattering about Aquarius people that I thought, “Wow, I guess I’m really kind of cool. Who wouldn’t want to be an Aquarius?” Of course, it left the less flattering things out (and I see no reason to enumerate them here either). I thought that it sounded so much like me that I was truly amazed, the way I was one time when someone “did my chart” and said a lot of things about me that seemed surprisingly accurate. “How does that work?” I wondered. I still don’t know. Though some people say that there is a science to astrology, I sometimes wonder if astrologists don’t have a lot in common with mediums in that they are just very good at reading people and casting their charts accordingly.
Someone once told me that I was very down-to-earth for an Aquarius; I gather that, along with their other good qualities, Aquarius folks are supposed to be zany. I wouldn’t describe myself as “off-the-wall,” and I doubt if most people who know me would either—playful, maybe, but not zany. Some of the things I read in the article sounded a lot like a description of an INFP, which I also am, but there are plenty of INFPs who do not fall under the Aquarius sign. INFPs, and introverts in general, are inwardly directed and do not rely on other people to tell them what to do or how to be. This is apparently a hallmark of Aquarius as well, as they are famous for moving to the beat of their own drum.
I did succumb to taking a test to see how “much of” an Aquarius I am and was pleased to find out that I didn’t match up to the standard too closely. Why be predictable, right, even in unpredictability? I guess what it boils down to is not wishing to be pigeon-holed, or stereotyped, or placed in a category determined by someone else. Whether or not the stars and planets have any influence on our psychology, one always wants to feel that he or she is making his or her own way through life, mistakes and all, moondust and stardust be damned. Cassius was right: The faults do lie in ourselves, and not in our stars—and, hopefully, all the good qualities do, too. I suppose it’s barely possible that old Uranus is in some tiny way responsible for the Aquarius reputation for seeming to be from another planet. But I’m pretty sure the stubbornness and lack of biddability come from being Mary Hackworth.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Wordplay’s Official Policy on Zombies
The other day, I was making a joke on Facebook about zombies, and here today I want to make a clarification. I wasn’t talking about zombies in the sense of the reanimated dead of Haitian tradition but rather in the pop culture sense familiar to us all, plus I was being a little sarcastic. But please don’t shoot the messenger: I can’t think of another metaphor that better describes some of the strange things I’ve seen in recent years. It really began in earnest in 2016, a year so full of celebrity deaths that I commented to someone that I wondered if some of those folks were really going undercover to work for the government.
I don’t want to be insensitive here, since of course people do die in large numbers all the time and are mourned by the people they leave behind. I’m not trying to create doubt in anyone’s mind about the fates of their dearly departed friends and family. I’ve mourned deaths of loved ones of my own, and as much as I miss them, I have no doubt that I won’t see them again in this life. I’ve told a few people the story of how I once saw someone who looked exactly like my dad, who had been dead for almost 12 years at that point, and I believe I was misunderstood by some of the people I told. I didn’t conjure up a hallucination of my dad, I saw an actual person who looked exactly like him. I’m sure the illusion would have been dispelled had I walked up to the man and talked to him, but I didn’t. It was just another bizarre incident in a string of many at that time.
The puzzle to me was why it happened and how it happened. I recently read an article about the retirement of the CIA’s master of disguises in which some of the agency’s very impressive methods of subterfuge, pioneered by this official, were described. When I read that the capability exists to create a mask of one person that will make a different individual look exactly like the first, the question of “how” such a thing might occur was no longer a mystery. I’m not suggesting that the CIA sent someone made up to look like my dad to the hospital to scare me; I’m merely pointing out that this technology exists and can be used by anyone with access to it. Prior to that, my idea of altering a person’s appearance extended to heavy makeup à la Hollywood; I never dreamed you could actually recreate the face of another person with such exactitude.
As far as the living dead go, I almost feel I should make a statement (or perhaps there is an appropriate Voudon ritual for keeping them away?) to describe my feelings about all of this. In a nutshell, it’s creepy. It’s become common for me to see people who resemble other people but are definitely not them, and that’s weird enough, but seeing people who are supposed to be dead is another category of experience altogether, and not a welcome one. From former English professors to comedians to fiddling musicians, all of whom have been reported as “deceased” by numerous sources, I’ve seen it all over the last few years. And none of these encounters were with people I had any emotional attachment to; it’s just that the feeling of recognition was so strong that I was almost sure I couldn’t be imagining it.
So Wordplay’s official stance on the living dead flitting hither and yon among us is, “We disapprove.” We’d ask you to go haunt someone else, but that really wouldn’t be kind either. We don’t wish that type of experience on anyone, as the times are disconcerting enough without that. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t those whom the world would probably welcome back with open arms, should it turn out that reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated: no doubt Robin Williams, whom I thought I spotted on the L.A. Red Line in 2017, would be one of these. Prince would probably get a pass, too. But dying is no small matter, to the person doing it or to those left behind, and trifling with death or the appearance thereof seems to me to be bad mojo, unless it is for a very good reason indeed.
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice demonstrates how hazardous it is to try to come back to the land of the living from the Underworld. If Eurydice, guided by Orpheus, with a special dispensation, couldn’t do it, it indicates that the borders truly aren’t meant to be permeable. Think of your state of mind if all of sudden anyone—from your long-dead grandmother to your bullying deceased ex-husband—might pay you a call at any time from beyond the River Styx. You might think the prospect of getting to see someone you’ve dearly missed again would be wonderful, but just think: if they can get through, anyone can, including that college roommate you did an ill turn for all those years ago or the teacher who terrified you as a child.
If by some chance Robin Williams really is out there somewhere, let me just say that if I actually did see him in L.A., grinning to himself while dressed as an Asian tourist on the subway, that was about the only time I didn’t get a bad vibe from a “zombie” encounter. I can’t really explain why not, except that this person gave off such an aura of good humor that it never occurred to me to be scared or upset. What it was all about, though, I haven’t the foggiest. I imagine you could see a lot of strange things in Hollywood, but if I’m honest, I have to say I was about 80 percent convinced that it really was Robin Williams on the train that day. I’ll leave 20 percent room for doubt because, after all, it was L.A.
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
What the Bee Saw
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”—William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5).
I was strolling through the mall one evening at the beginning of the holidays when a window display unexpectedly jogged a memory. A stick-on display in a women’s clothing store featured a large pair of patterned wings that could have been inspired by either a butterfly or an angel. I thought first of a butterfly but then realized that the winged creature I was recalling was actually a bee. It happened like this: In my myth studies program, we had a class in Irish mythology and storytelling, and one of my classmates told a story involving a bee (the particulars of which I can’t remember). She handed out to each of us a small cardboard cutout of a bee, and I took mine home as a memento.
Why that particular pair of wings in the window reminded me of my classmate’s bee I don’t really know. At first, I thought I was remembering the handout as a butterfly, a symbol of the soul, until further reflection brought the rest of the story to light. Instead of putting the bee on a shelf somewhere once I got it home, I had decided to take it into work with me. I remember thinking that the heaviness that seemed to have settled over my office might be alleviated for me, at least slightly, by the presence of this little bee, which I left on the counter in the break room. I viewed it as kind of a talisman of good will and good luck, and I thought that it might also bring a small sense of delight to anyone else who saw it and wondered how it had gotten there. I don’t remember if I told anyone else what I had done, but I don’t think I did. I saw it as a kind of under-the-radar thing.
I thought I would leave the bee there for a while as a sort of magical object, free of charge, for anyone who might notice it. I was taken by surprise when I saw, the next time I went into the break room, that somehow someone else had picked it up and run with it, as it were, by moving the bee and placing it so deliberately in an odd location (perhaps on top of the hot water dispenser or among the tea bags) that it was impossible to think it had gotten there by accident. I moved it to another location, just as deliberately, and there followed a sort of dance between me and an unknown person (or persons) in which the cardboard bee was the connection. The next time I came into the break room, it might be sitting on its head among the swizzle sticks; I might next tip it on one wing and prop it against the soap dispenser. It was a little like passing a paint brush back and forth, though I never actually saw anyone move it, and I didn’t think the other person knew I was moving it either.
It’s hard to describe how this affected my feelings about being in the office. At a difficult time (which was to become much more difficult later, though I didn’t know it then), it was a little magical opening, a feeling of being at play, that I had never felt in the office before, even at the best of times. Someone was responding to my gesture with creativity and humor, and I had never expected that to happen. There was some kind of a meeting of the minds (or perhaps, more accurately, of the souls) taking place, and for some reason the entire episode made me feel that someone perhaps understood me and was validating my impulse to bring the bee into the office. I wondered who was doing it, but I didn’t really want to know. The mystery just added to the ludic quality of the game.
I can’t remember how long this went on, only that it happened in the summer, and that it made me feel better about going into work every day while it lasted. Then one day, the bee was gone. At the time, it made me sad: I thought someone had just thrown it away, and that seemed such an abrupt end to what had been a harmless but nonetheless engaging distraction. All these years later, I now wonder if in fact that is what happened, or if my mysterious interlocutor decided to keep the bee for some reason. It only occurred to me recently that stranger things might have been happening in the office than I was ever aware of—and perhaps not all of them bad, though there was plenty of that, too. You’d probably be amazed if I told you everything I’m thinking about that long ago time . . . a face wise beyond its years that comes into focus from somewhere in my memory, an overheard conversation, an inexplicably sad farewell that I am—rightly or wrongly—now associating with the episode of the bee.
In my mind, I think I have solved the mystery, though I can hardly believe it myself and am certain I was far from being the only one oblivious to a mysterious presence in our midst. Possibly, there was more than one mysterious presence there over time, not all of which were benevolent—though this one was. Sometimes, very significant things might be happening while you are thinking about something else entirely, and you might never be the wiser were it not for a small cardboard bee and a few smatterings of memory.
Am I right or am I wrong? To be determined . . .
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