Met in a Dream or Elsewhere: 9 Kisses

Over the holidays, I came across Elaine Constantine's 9 Kisses on the website of The New York Times. It's a series of short films in which pairs of actors create intimate scenes of passion, all of which involve a kiss. When I first saw it, I found it stylish, smart, and instantly memorable, though out of sync with a holiday mood because of the thread of darkness running through it. 9 Kisses resurfaced around Valentine's Day, and, again, as I watched, disturbing ripples underneath the surface of each film seemed to run counter to any manifest notions of romance.

Ms. Constantine's project continues a tradition at the Times of spotlighting each year's great performers, although they usually appear solo and not paired as they are in 9 Kisses. To me it seems that each scene in Constantine's film uses a kiss as a starting point only, a symbol for all manner of passions and exchanges: seduction, bribery, violence, betrayal, and dominance, as well as, more rarely, tenderness (mostly unreciprocated). Of all the genres that seem to fit here, romance is not the one that springs to mind. There's satire, black humor, horror, noir, and maybe even crime-drama but nothing that seems to foretell happy endings for most of the characters.

If movies are the public dreams of our culture, as Jung tells us, there's always latent content to be accounted for. I've studied the films to try and understand why each affected me the way it did, looking at the characters, settings, costumes, props, camera angles, and lighting, noticing what attracted my eye in each case. I looked at neckwear and wristwatches. I paid attention to the music in the background. I watched a film about the making of the project in which the director and actors can be seen working through their ideas, which was fascinating. I believe that you can, as Ms. Constantine says, read the scenes as nothing more than quirky riffs on romance but also that the content is purposely fluid and indeterminate. I'm reminded of Chris Van Allsburg's The Z Was Zapped, an adventurous and provocative ABC book that leaves it up to the reader to interpret the illustrations.

If you're wondering what I mean by latent content, begin with the oddities within each scene that seem to work against the surface story. Two people meet in a fashionable garden for a tryst, which might seem no more than a secret affair except for the odd costuming, the gloved hands on the neck, and the excessively shocked expressions when a light is shone on them. Two middle-aged people on a date seem merely shy until an explosive kiss rips away all veneer of self-control and they become the butt of laughter. Two women celebrating New Year's Eve seem to be lovers except for the way one woman's smiles veer almost imperceptibly from excited to predatory as the other woman sinks slowly out of sight. An intense young woman (and wasn't that actress last seen as a vampire?) closely watches a male singer from the audience before rushing the stage, knocking him down, and then disappearing backstage, obviously pleased.

A preoccupied young man encounters a woman with shopping bags, politely returns her beret, and receives an unusual form of thanks. A game of arm wrestling between a serious, upright contender and his drunken opponent turns into an almost mythic contest of wills before the seedy man resorts to a trick. A trainer is punched by the young athlete he's coaching; overcome by remorse, she kisses him, whereupon he ridicules her. A woman dancing in a nightclub is approached by a man who seems worried by her independent style; she at first appears to rebuff him before they develop an odd sort of rhythm together. An extremely agitated man, apparently (but not certainly) the groom, flees into a garden pursued by a bride who tries, with difficulty, to soothe him with a kiss.

The palette is rather muted in these films, which makes you notice pops of color--a red-and-black dress opposed to a stark white one; yellow ticker tape; a red coat and red lips against skin of extreme pallor; green tape near a microphone stand; a demure pink dress (which turns out, however, to be nearly backless); a stiff, metal-gray skirt worn by a tryster; a white wristband. There are odd pairings, too, in which the couples don't match in size (the man is small and the woman is enormous), or the woman is almost as masculine in clothes and appearance as the man. This might suggest gender reversals, if looked at symbolically.

I found 9 Kisses to be unsettling rather than playful, and many of the scenes resonated, as if I'd seen the characters before. This may very well have been the intent of the director, who wants the viewer to look for the emotional heart of each scene, in which a kiss is merely a stand-in for a variety of transactions, from personal to political. There are many puzzles to be worked out: What are those two men really fighting about? (And are they really both men?) What's behind that pale look of surprise? Does the backseat of that car represent something else? Who are those sparring partners? What's the man at the wedding running away from? I think the film reads more like a parade of the Seven Deadly Sins than a series of romantic idylls, more like Dante's Inferno than Love, Actually, and perhaps that, if you care to go there, is the point.

The link to 9 Kisses is here. If you'd like to learn more about the making of the film, see this short feature with a behind-the-scenes look at the director and actors at work and decide for yourself if a kiss is still a kiss.

Perfidy and Email in the Iron Age

"This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer's a goddamn spy." --J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

Reading the news about the Hillary Clinton email situation creates mixed feelings for me:  I'm grateful for the evidence that, even in the unfriendly environment now existing for the press, investigative reporters are still trying to do their jobs. It's very encouraging to know that some things are still working the way they're supposed to.

At the same time, I'm disappointed to see how the Democratic leadership and many usually quite opinionated officials either defend Ms. Clinton or refuse outright to comment. A bad sign, isn't it, when people shut completely down on a topic? To such defenses as "Her critics will say anything to try to destroy her" or "This is being blown out of proportion," I say, "The emails in question are public property. They belong to the American people." A public official like former secretary Clinton doesn't have the luxury of deciding what to do with communications created in the course of her duties because they aren't "hers." They're ours. Hence the lawsuit from the Associated Press, which has been attempting for some time--without success--to obtain some of these emails through the Freedom of Information Act.

I've been watching Ms. Clinton and many of our other top leaders particularly closely for the last four years--four years I can never get back. I watch the same news as everyone else, read the same stories, see the same news videos. I've become increasingly concerned about the uncritical acceptance of Ms. Clinton by many otherwise intelligent people who seem so wedded to the idea of her as our next president that they're blind not only to red flags but to giant red banners that seem to virtually scream, "Look Out!" Reading her body language and hearing her testimony during the 2013 Benghazi hearings was alarming; reading her body language and hearing her responses during yesterday's press event was downright scary.

Perhaps we really are in the Iron Age the ancient sages spoke of, where the thieves are kings, the kings are thieves, and people believe what's false instead of what's true, because I have to tell you, I blame the public in part for what's happened. I admit to being a former supporter of Ms. Clinton, for whom, rather naively, I voted in the 2008 primary election. I think I had misgivings about her then but endorsed her for some of the same reasons other people did: despite her shortcomings, she seemed to have the experience and ability for the job.

I'm not questioning her experience and ability even now, but rather her character and actions, which I've had a chance to view more closely during her time in the State Department and after. I don't doubt that some of her detractors are, let's face it, no better than she is in the transparency department, but that doesn't change the fact that she is (to all appearances) the likely Democratic nominee for the presidency in 2016. I ask myself on an almost daily basis, "How can this be?"

It goes beyond Benghazi, of course. Actually, I suspect it would be hard to overstate her perfidy. Support of the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments and banks under investigation for criminal practices; influence peddling; refusal to condemn the spying practices of the NSA . . . and this is only what's widely known. Now we come to the lack of transparency in maintaining State Department records and lame attempts to explain it away, which I must say, I've been expecting. People: do you believe these explanations? If so, I have some swamp land in Florida that I really think you might be interested in. No, seriously.

I think that many people, based on name recognition, "brand" familiarity, Ms. Clinton's smooth rhetoric, the endorsement of most leading Democratic officials, and her "record" are willing to accept her as better than the alternatives. I am not. I know everyone complains about corrupt politics and that a lot of us don't really trust politicians--but we keep voting for them anyway, and once they're in, we don't shine a light on their activities.

I sometimes think, based on the level of complacency, passivity, and unwillingness to look beyond the surface that I see all around me, that Americans don't deserve the system we have. In the end, though, it doesn't matter whether Americans deserve America or not. The important thing is that the country's founders, and countless others since then, managed to create a miracle. We have system based on freedom and protection of individual rights that's an example to the world and a beacon of hope for others (or used to be). Imperfect as it is and always has been, we can't afford to let it fail.

Our elected officials are elected for one reason only: to serve the public. They're not elected to enrich themselves, give favors to their supporters, and do end-runs around the country's laws. I see many of them using the mythology of American exceptionalism and American pride as a means of convincing people that all is mostly well in the land when it most definitely isn't: I see it every day. A true patriot is not a cheerleader. A true patriot questions things and demands answers.

If you were to ask my advice as a mythologist, I'd say: pay attention. Adolf Hitler used mythology very successfully, as we all know. Of course, if someone arrived in Washington wearing a swastika today, we'd recognize a tyrant easily . . . but no one's going to do that here. Just because someone wears a business suit, graduates Ivy League, and carries a BlackBerry, though, doesn't mean they're any less dangerous. Manners and clothes do not make the man--or the woman. Seeing them as they are and holding them accountable is our responsibility, because it's our country. While we still have a country.

A Writer in Winter

The silence I hear outside right now is due to a muffling effect; there are several inches of snow already, it's been falling fast since early evening, and there could be a foot of it by tomorrow. This is shaping up to be a repeat of the big snowstorm of two weeks ago, which had nearly finished melting off as of today. We've had almost all our winter near the end of the season; spring is just over two weeks away.

Naturally, a writer should be at home in any kind of weather. No matter the climate, the heck with the season, anything is potential material--in theory, anyway. Bad weather provides a golden opportunity to think, read, write, look through your drawers, make hot tea, and twiddle your thumbs. Failing inspiration, you can always bake bread, make soup, practice yoga, give yourself a spa treatment, or dance to zydeco in your living room. But even the most stoic of writers needs fresh air at some point, and that's not easy with a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures in single digits.

Over the last few days, I've been able to go for walks, though it hasn't been loads of fun since the post-storm landscape has involved a lot of sludge and standing water, not to mention persistent icy patches. Nothing, however, that you couldn't get around, if you really wanted to and weren't averse to mud. And it was nothing compared to the day I hiked through the park when the snow was still deep--and hiking really is the word. That turned out to be more exercise than I'd bargained for.

It was a couple of Sundays ago, and the temperature was mild enough that an hour's walk didn't involve the risk of hypothermia. I was feeling the need to stretch my legs, having been unable to do so since the previous weekend, so I pulled on my boots and crunch, crunch crunched my way up the street. At that point, we'd had several days of melting, but the snow was still half a foot or more deep in places. It wasn't so much that it was icy but that it was like walking through sand--just difficult to get anywhere. Needless to say, there was hardly anyone out. The path was hidden under snow, though a few people before me had somehow managed to find it and blaze a very sketchy trail.

I slipped and slid around as best I could, trying to stay on the path when I could see it. The air was refreshing, and the wintry scene pretty enough, if a little gray--though I'd much rather it had been summer. It took me half again as long to do the walk as it normally does. I ran into even more difficulty two-thirds of the way around when I came to a stretch where the snow was undisturbed by anything except a single bicycle track. Determined to finish, I struggled on. What I really needed were snowshoes, but lacking that, I relied on native stubbornness. I had three things in mind: 1. what a good workout it was 2. that I was possibly making it easier for someone who might come along later and 3. how fast I was going to get into my down slippers when I got home.

The long and short is that I did make it through the untrod territory and eventually around the whole circuit. I didn't realize how hard I'd been working until I got back onto an actual (mostly clear) sidewalk that allowed for a normal gait; ordinary walking suddenly felt like floating, the easiest thing in the world. I stepped into some muddy water at the end of my street and managed to get my feet wet, but since I was almost home, it didn't matter. I pulled my boots off right inside the door, put on my slippers, and thought about dinner. I was also thinking that I'd never have gone on that walk if I'd known how uncongenial it was going to be, but now that it was over, I felt pretty virtuous.

From what I hear, this week's winter blast will be followed by relatively mild temperatures next week, so maybe we'll have a faster melt-off this time and I won't have to make another deep-snow trek. We'll see how it goes. Yoga and living room dance sessions are great as far as they go, but writers need to walk, too. I don't know if this is universally true, but I suspect it might be. I won't say I do some of my best thinking while walking, because I've done my best thinking in all sorts of situations, but putting one foot in front of the other does seems to jar things loose sometimes, in more ways than one.

Glimpsed Through the Fog

The other night I was watching a program about Gothic cathedrals. The lecturer's enthusiasm reminded me of the way I felt one long-ago summer when I was in England and explored everything Gothic I could find--chapels, churches, colleges, train stations, government buildings, cathedrals--you name it. If it was Gothic, I walked around, climbed around, photographed, and inspected it. I'd written a paper about Gothic architecture in a Victorian literature class for my M.A. and been swept off my feet by John Ruskin's descriptions. His soaring prose seemed to capture the essence of an architectural style carved in stone but aspiring to mystical dimensions.

Well, why wouldn't you be captivated by an architecture that finds delicacy, bravado, solemnity, ecstasy, darkness, light, ethereal beauty, and pride of workmanship in the earthiest of materials: stone, wood, and glass? A Gothic cathedral suggests, by its scale, that there's more to existence than meets the eye--and therefore, that there may be more to us than meets the eye. If out of those elemental materials a builder can create towering spires, soaring galleries, and light-filled apses that seem to float, maybe it's an indication that the things of this world are more than they appear to be.

Of course, mysticism is very Platonic, but the solidity of materials and the proliferation of so many individual saints, prophets, kings, and everyday people, created in loving and expressive detail in statuary and stained glass on every available surface, shows an Aristotelian regard for earthly life, too. It would have been impossible for a builder to put up a 140-foot ceiling or build a wall made of glass without a careful working out of scientific principles and advanced problem solving.

I think my Platonic streak was wider when I was younger, because it was really the mysteriousness of the Gothic buildings, the way they presented themselves as way-stations to something beyond, that appealed to me. I know I'm more Aristotelian now because, after listening to the lecturer emphasize over and over the other night that the ceilings of the cathedrals were built of solid stone, I wondered why it had never occurred to me to keep a sharp lookout for loose pieces. I probably still have the mystic streak, but it's accompanied now by a greater awareness of material fragility and principles of physics.

When the lecturer was speaking of Amiens Cathedral, I had a sudden flashback to an incident I hadn't thought about in years. That same English summer, I went to France, in the middle of my summer course, for a weekend in Paris. It was a rough bus ride after a choppy ferry crossing and a sleepless night, and at the time this seemed the very pinnacle of travel discomfort (which makes me laugh now, I can tell you). I was tired and rather disenchanted.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, the bus stopped in a town somewhere north and east of Paris. As the bus started to move again, I glimpsed, through the fog and darkness of early morning, a huge Gothic facade looming over the bus, ghostly, half visible, and then gone. It was easily more breathtaking than anything I later saw in Paris, though it vanished almost before I was aware of it. The unexpectedness made it seem marvelous, as if it had appeared out of the air like some enchanted castle from an Arthurian tale.

I wondered what it was that I saw, and I still do. I didn't found out at the time, having no clear conception of where we were and no chance to ask anyone (in my halting French) who might actually have been awake and in the know. Was it Amiens? Rouen? Maybe sometime I'll go there again and find out, though I have to say not knowing hasn't bothered me.

One thing I learned then, but had to be reminded of later, was that something numinous can open up right in front of you even when you're tired, irritated, hot, and overwhelmed by the experience of being on your way to Paris for the first time. It's probably not even on the itinerary, that thing you remember all your life and would have missed if you'd only figured out how to sleep sitting up. Even with a greater respect now for gravity, loose mortar, and the ravages of time, I prize the memory of that ethereal scene granted to a grumpy but wide-eyed traveler.

Time Machine

I spent the afternoon and early evening of Valentine's Day organizing and clearing out some files, an ongoing project of mine this winter. It doesn't sound like a very romantic Valentine's activity, but it actually grew into a richer experience than I was expecting. The storage box I was organizing turned out to be something of a time capsule for late 2008 through early 2010, a period in which I finished graduate coursework at Pacifica and transitioned back into non-student life at home.

My goal on Saturday was to locate all the articles and handouts from my classes, stuffed with little ceremony into random folders, and arrange them as methodically as I had papers from the first two years at school. Things had been so busy during the last year of coursework and the dissertation phase that I'd never taken the time to create folders for my third-year classes; putting everything into one box was as far as I'd gotten. I knew there were other things in the box--receipts, letters, business correspondence, etc.--but I figured it was all boring stuff except for the class material. Concentrating on the third-year papers would make a good start, I decided.

Making stacks for each class and category of material took a long time, considering the haphazard order in which I'd placed things. I had a couple of general piles for non-school items, a heap of Pacifica items not pertaining to classes, and stacks devoted to Egyptian Mythology, Religious Studies Approaches to Myth, Hebrew Traditions, and Islamic/Christian Traditions (I put these together because there were fewer handouts). There was a stack of dissertation formulation materials, somewhat organized already. The only class for which I already had a folder was Dante: I had consulted that material for my dissertation and made a folder for it when I cleared my desk off.

As a year of academic life began to arrange itself under my eyes, emotions began to arise. Almost everything I handled had a memory or feeling attached to it. As I organized the articles for my Religious Studies class, I saw myself tucked into a quiet corner at Panera Bread, happily reading Durkheim, Malinowski, and Otto Rank. I remembered sitting in a sunny garden at school, jet-lagged, analyzing an article for Reductionist, Romantic, or Postmodern thinking. I remembered painstakingly searching for images to illustrate a presentation. I thought of a conversation with another student during a class break about the Hebrew and Egyptian traditions. I recalled speaking to the class about Wendy Doniger in a small room on a dark December afternoon fading into dusk. I found directions to someone's house for a party.

There were also welcoming notes from the school for the beginning of each academic year, quarterly syllabi, instructions for those attending graduation in spring 2009 (including two parking passes), a printed email from one of my dissertation committee members, scattered pages from a handout on an Egyptian goddess that, without a staple, had somehow become separated into three or four parts (I only found the first two pages when I had put almost everything away), and, on the back of a printed class schedule, relic of a more hopeful time, an excerpt from Alice Walker's celebrated open letter to newly elected President Barack Obama. 

I also found tax forms, the receipt from a hotel where I spent my first post-Pacifica vacation, brochures for various places visited in Southern California, a calendar of events for a Pasadena bookstore (five years out of date), an empty rental car folder, directions someone had drawn to show me how to find a particular labyrinth in Ventura, Internet material on New Harmony, Indiana, a flyer on a labyrinth church in Saint Louis, notes from Jung lectures in Cincinnati, and a picture I'd been looking for for a long time, lodged mysteriously and out of time sequence in a hodge-podge of papers, news clippings, and maps.

To sum up this experience, it was like looking into a mirror that showed me how I was six years ago: busy, absorbed, hopeful, engaged, and alive, despite many lumps and bumps on the road. I didn't have much time for things like filing, obviously, but I was active, seeking, stretching, very much alive in mind and spirit. All those trips to California and other places, the people I met, and the things I was doing kept me full of ideas and purpose. 

Reliving those days was somewhat of a bittersweet experience, but it was also instructive in reminding me of who I am, where I'm going, and how full of possibilities life always is. I've sometimes looked back on my school days from a distance with very different eyes, reassessing my opinions about certain experiences and events. Quite fair enough. But organizing my papers reminded me of how much I gained from it all and what a source of richness it was, with the added bonus that I now know where everything is. I threw away fewer items than I thought I would, even keeping a few things I really don't need any more. In the end, it seemed like a time to remember. 

Inner Resources

It's been a moderately quiet week around here, with nothing very unexpected going on, except that I ended up writing a poem. This came about because I forgot to take a book with me to Starbucks last weekend. I was annoyed when I got there and found I had nothing to read, but on the other hand . . . it's good to test your inner resources sometimes.

First I decided to clean out my purse. I found a collection of miscellaneous receipts (mostly from Starbucks), expired and unexpired coupons, and a movie ticket stub, along with a couple of bank slips. There were also some notes I'd forgotten I had from an online course on Joseph Campbell. I'd jotted them down on a series of blue Post-Its that ended up in one of the pockets of my purse. Why they were in my purse and not in a drawer is a question I can't answer, but it did solve the problem of having nothing to read.

I suppose that once you've written a book of your own, you're just naturally more opinionated about things; at any rate, I found on reading the notes that I was a little annoyed by the professor's ideas. The topic was Campbell's concept of the hero's journey, and I had a different idea of what it means than did the lecturer, who thought Campbell's monomyth was too impersonal. Part of the problem, too, was that I had just finished that course on medieval philosophy a couple of weeks ago and was bursting with ideas on the universal and the particular.

The result of it all was that after reading the notes, I started scribbling a poem on a blank Post-It as a response (though not a very serious one) to the discussion of the universal versus the particular. It ended up being two haiku strung together:

Plato's Cat

Universal cat
Do you ever crave tuna?
Does Plato feed you?

If you chanced to meet
A nice, particular cat
Would it make you glad?

(I know haiku are supposed to be about nature, but I use them for a lot of things. It's my all-occasion poetic form, with apologies to its true masters. I was once asked to bring a limerick to a wedding shower and ended up writing a haiku instead because it felt more comfortable. If you really want to stretch the form, try writing about a cracker dish.)

Feeling better, I left Starbucks to go home. I had to stop on the way for milk and apples, and when I got out of the car, I noticed two things: a single star in the still bright sky paired with the top of a very tall evergreen and an odd effect of the setting sun that produced dramatic rays across an expanse of sky, something akin to zodiacal light. Either or both would have been worthy of a proper haiku, but I haven't written it yet. Maybe I will next time I'm in Starbucks without a book.

What the Groundhog Saw

It's surprising how many different names Groundhog Day has. I wrote about the cross-quarter days--of which February 2 is one--last November, and I knew Groundhog Day was called Imbolc (in the Celtic tradition) and Candlemas in England, and that it has associations with Saint Brigid and with lambs. I'd forgotten that in the Catholic liturgical year it's known as Presentation Day or Purification Day, which has to do with the presentation of Jesus in the temple and rites of purification for his mother according to ancient law. I'm trying to remember if this is also when we used to have the Blessing of the Throats, when the priest went around and blessed everyone with two crossed candles to ward off colds. I'm not sure if this is still done, though it was kind of a charming idea.

There's a lot of old European lore associated with February 2, some of which has made it to America. We think of it as the midpoint of winter, when thoughts turn toward spring, but apparently in some places of old it was considered the start of spring. That's hard to imagine here, since January and February are deep-dyed winter months, with typically nothing springlike going on. I recall a year when a mild spell at February's end lasted long enough that it seemed spring had come early, which was cause for much remark. That I remember it so well shows how unusual it was. Let's hope it remains unusual (despite its loveliness), because however much one dislikes winter, February is supposed to be cold, at least around here.

My birthday and the Super Bowl both fall close to Groundhog Day, though I had never really given it much thought before. I don't know if there is any significance to being born on or near a cross-quarter day, but having learned that in some blessed places February 2 signaled the start of spring, I now have a new way of thinking about my birthday. Just the bare hint of an association with spring so close to my date of birth is radical enough that I'm going to adopt it regardless of what the weather is actually doing. If I'd known this a long time ago, it would have helped me through many freezing, sleeting, blizzarding birthday celebrations, but that's no matter--I know now.

Regarding the Super Bowl, I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence or not that it falls near the February cross-quarter. Football seems to have no connection with candles, ewes, lambs, Saint Brigid, groundhogs, motherhood or any other cross-quarter traditions you could name, but you never know, there might be a hidden link, just as there's a connection between the November cross-quarter, harvest, and Election Day. Candlemas in the late Middle Ages was apparently heavy on candlelit processions and the intoning of chant, all very pious and reverent; football (and the spectator sport of consuming heavy food and drink) seems rather more Roman in style (though February in ancient Rome actually marked a time of purification). However that may be, it does seem somehow American to mark the deepest part of winter with a head-bashing contest.

As for me, I happened to be looking through some old calendars on the evening of February 1 (Groundhog Eve, if you will) when I came across the special edition newspaper I had totally forgotten I'd saved from President Obama's first inauguration. While I don't know if the January date of our presidential inaugurations (since FDR) signifies anything other than a date conveniently close (but not too close) to New Year's, it does fall fairly near the February cross-quarter. (Let me remark parenthetically that I looked at that newspaper in some consternation--speaking of head-bashing and headaches--before throwing it away with some old calendars I found in the same cubby.) 

The next day, as it happens, I found an article in which someone was discussing possible ways to celebrate Candlemas/Groundhog Day/Imbolc in modern times, and cleaning house was one suggested activity. Glad to know I was on to something, I took down my little Christmas tree (which I'd been saving for Candlemas), dusted, mopped, shook out the rugs, and took out the trash containing all the old calendars and newspaper. I often play music while cleaning, but this Groundhog Day I actually found myself singing along. Well, spring fever will do that to you.

Aristotle's Left the Building

This week, I've been watching a DVD course on philosophy and religion in the Middle Ages. It probably couldn't compete with the evening news on a drama quotient, but I found it entertaining. The course explored how various thinkers from Saint Augustine to William of Ockham incorporated or repudiated, as the case might be, ideas of Plato and Aristotle in their own writings on religion.

At this point you may be thinking, "That's what you do for entertainment?" It may not be to your taste, but think of it this way: there were no commercials, no preening actors, and no mentions of Super-Pacs, dark money, or dubious efforts to make America more secure during the entire twelve hours of viewing. You had to concentrate to keep up with the arguments involved, but it beat propaganda disguised as news or a dumb conversation you might overhear at Starbucks by a country mile.

Of course, the Middle Ages had its share of politics and foolishness, and the conversation on faith and reason took place against a backdrop of wars, power struggles, and other calamities. The views of various Church leaders played a part in some of those events, but this course focused on intellectual, not political, history. I personally am not a fan of institutions, the Church included, and generally distrust them, but the discussion of faith and reason on a purely intellectual level was very engrossing.

Some of the arguments left me scratching my head, though. Anselm, for example, apparently thought that saying there was something "than which something greater cannot be thought" was enough to prove the existence of God. I kept trying to figure out how that works and was never quite convinced. The argument seems to be missing something.

William of Ockham helped put the kibosh on the latter medieval tradition based on Aristotle, and I agree with the lecturer that in some ways that was too bad. Many medieval religious thinkers seemed to care very much about their arguments being rational and coherent and their religious ideas squaring with reason. We could use more of that respect for clear and systematic thinking today, in all realms of life.

Most entertaining to me was the discussion of the development of universities from the cathedral schools in the thirteenth century. Newly available translations of Aristotle in Latin seemed to set practically everyone on their ear, with Arts faculty members (who were basically teaching prep courses to younger students) going crazy for Aristotle, while the more senior Theology faculty tried to reign them in. The University of Paris was the epicenter of the conflict, which resembled the first coming of Elvis, or a food fight of beatniks versus squares.

Aristotle was the champion of definitions, categories, and arguments and of a theory of knowledge based on what our senses tell us about the world. The early Church fathers were heavily influenced by Plato, whose theory of the transcendent Forms dovetailed nicely with a mystical, spiritual realm inhabited by God and the angels. Aristotle taught that universal forms exist as concepts in our minds but that there is no "Form" of a horse, tree, turnip, or planet hanging out in the ether, existing as a blueprint. There are only particular horses, trees, turnips, or planets. He didn't say there was no Supreme Being, but he called his the Prime Mover.

Aristotle was down-to-earth on many things, and that appeals to me. I could picture those Arts masters looking around and rejoicing in the revealed beauty of a world of individual apples, turnips, stars, and horses, and their elders shaking their fists and yelling about Mysteries of the Faith. It all came to a head with the Condemnation of 1277, the Church's attempt to ban people from teaching aspects of Aristotle that it considered problematic. Good luck with that.

Although William of Ockham did, apparently on purely philosophical grounds, later pull the rug out from under the thinking of a lot of Aristotelians, he was no shrinking violet either. He declared the Pope heretical (on an unrelated matter) and got himself excommunicated. (The Pope apparently threatened to annihilate an entire town in Flanders if it didn't give Ockham up to church authorities.)

But that's straying into politics. For me, the beauty of this course was in the consideration of ideas for their own sake and in the image of generations of thinkers trying to hold their beliefs up to a standard of rational thought, undeterred by the fact that the great philosophers they struggled to emulate had never even heard of Christianity. The course was entitled Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages, and it was taught by Professor Thomas Williams. It is one of the Great Courses on Philosophy & Intellectual History of The Teaching Company.

Dramatis Personae

Last year I wrote about the State of the Union address and tried to analyze it in terms of John J. MacAloon's anthropological categories of spectacle, festival, ritual, and game. Having concluded that it was largely spectacle and game, without much substance, I wasn't sure I even wanted to watch again this year--I mean, why bother? If it's just yadda, yadda, yadda, what's the point? I'm in the middle of a Great Courses DVD on "Philosophy in the Middle Ages" this week, so wouldn't it be more profitable just to spend the evening with Saint Bonaventure?

After an inward debate, I concluded that possibly it was more responsible, as a mythologist, to watch the address and make a few cultural observations. So I decided to watch with the volume turned down. You might think I'm being facetious, but I'm not. I knew the speech would consist of a lot of well-considered, carefully sifted words, and I wasn't going to believe more than one or two of them, all told. More interesting to me was to watch the people in the room, see their reactions, and observe how the President conducted himself.

You may dismiss this as missing the point of an address, especially if you believe that the important information is always in the words. But don't forget, non-verbal messages are often just as important as the verbal ones, and maybe more so, especially if they conflict with the person's statements. In this case, I figured I could dispense with words. I've found it very useful to carefully observe people, whether they're speaking or not. Are you with me so far?

I didn't see the President looking directly at the camera much--he addressed his remarks largely to the people in the chamber. I didn't think he looked especially relaxed, though, as he neared the exit after the speech. Of course, the Vice President and the Speaker of the House were really in the hot seat since they were on view most of the time the President was speaking, and I have to say they both looked remarkably uncomfortable last night. As the camera picked out various people present, I was struck by how self-conscious some of them seemed. I noticed a range of reactions, from intent listening, to smiles, to amusement, to tension, to frowns, to sadness. I saw people who seemed to have tears in their eyes.

I admit that my own attention was not undivided. I decided the speech needed some musical accompaniment, so I played Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" and the theme from Star Wars, among others. I did a little interpretive dancing. I talked back to the screen and made faces (if you can't do it in your own living room, when can you?). I ended up watching a video of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech while the President was finishing and the GOP Senator was giving her response. I was really wondering what Dr. King would make of it all.

This is as much to say that I'm not pleased with the President, many of those in his administration, some members of the Supreme Court, and a number of our Congresspeople. I know there were hard-working, dedicated public servants in the room, and my annoyance is not directed at them. But, seriously, how do you expect me to take sitting down the remarks and stated goals of a President under whose leadership the United States has fallen to number 46 (as of 2014) in the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders? (That's right, folks, we were ahead of Haiti and Taiwan--just barely--but behind South Africa and El Salvador.) It's fine for the President to smirk while Chinese president Xi Jinping apparently refuses to answer a reporter's question (on 11/12/14), but he really should be more concerned about the dismal showing of his own country on issues of press freedom and constitutional rights. (Aren't you shocked at that ranking? If you aren't, you should be!)

With all this in mind, I've decided that the way to view the State of the Union is not as a straightforward outline of things to come but as theatre, pure and simple. If we're talking Shakespeare, I'd say it was most like Macbeth. It's not an exact fit, perhaps, but the rapacious, overriding ambition and hubris of that play's characters fit my idea of what I saw last night more closely than anything else I can think of. My only fear is that there might not be enough bad guy roles to go around for Joe Biden, John Boehner, John McCain, etc.

Let's see, the President as Macbeth, and that would make the First Lady, well, Lady Macbeth, and for the three witches, we have Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi, and well . . . you get the idea. Just use your imagination.

Winter Dreams

I don't keep a dream journal, though a lot of people interested in Jung believe that you should. I find it tedious to describe dreams on paper, since I often remember them in a lot of detail. I sometimes jot them down when they seem especially interesting, but I don't pretend to have a system for understanding them. That's a tricky thing even for Jungians. For starters, you have to ask: Was the dream personal? Or was it archetypal? Should you refer to your own associations with things, people, and events in the dream, or do they relate to larger, universal themes? Is it the images that are more important, or the emotions? Are all dreams the same, or do some involve wish fulfillment, others compensation, and still others some kind of problem-solving?

Sometimes I notice bits and pieces of recent events in dreams and recognize the presence of issues that have preoccupied me in waking life. Sometimes I look back on a dream I wrote down a couple of years again and think, "Oh, I know why I dreamed that now." It really does seem that a part of the mind recognizes certain truths long before they become conscious. Most of the time, this seems to relate to events in my own life, not universal concerns (though, of course, the universal and the personal flow into and out of each other for all of us).

For whatever reason, I seem to be in a particularly active dreaming period right now. Over the last month or so, I've had a few dreams that were especially vivid or memorable for one reason or another, and I noted them without making much of an attempt to interpret them. I'll try to do that now, though some of my attempts may be slightly satirical. In my experience, a dream either clicks for me pretty quickly or has to be left alone until it does--which could take a while. But in the interest of science, here goes.

(From last month.) I dreamed about the Twin Towers. I dreamed I was sitting in a parked car with someone I used to work with, and the towers were behind us and by far the biggest thing on the skyline. They were farther apart from each other than they were in real life, though. I told the other person we needed to move the car away from there; it was dangerous. The city didn't look like New York--we drove to an area that looked sort of like Printers Alley in downtown Nashville.

Interpretation: Two or three days after I had this dream, I saw in the news that it was the 14th anniversary of Al Gore's concession speech following the presidential vote recount in Florida. I was not aware of this pending anniversary before I had the dream, but I'm struck by the sense of being in Tennessee, Mr. Gore's home state, and the presence of "Printer's Alley," since Mr. Gore has a journalism background. Was my dreaming mind wondering if we'd be where we are now if Mr. Gore had won the election?

(A week before Christmas.) I dreamed I was at a library conference at a retreat center in Florida. The grounds were beautiful. The building was on top of a hill, and some hazardous stone steps led down to a lower level. When I looked south from the bottom of the steps, I could see a road winding through the trees and, in the distance, a snow-capped mountain. Not quite what you expect in Florida, but interesting.

Interpretation: In this dream, I was speaking on the phone to the same person I was talking to in the car in the previous dream. It seems to me that there are things I would like to say to this person but haven't. In this dream, I was actually in Florida, but it didn't look like Florida. The terrain was beautiful, and I could see a long way, but there were all those hazardous steps and snow in the distance. Could this dream be related to the previous one? (It came a week later.) Was I thinking about politics or merely hoping for a vacation?

(From the week after Christmas.) I dreamed last night I was still going to work downtown, except you had to enter the building through the garage, and it was on the other side of the building. Some people I knew at Pacifica also worked there, and one of them was studying to be an accountant.

Interpretation: This is another dream involving a former place of employment, with a surprising connection between two different areas of my life. I was entering the building "from the ground up," maybe a sign of a deeper level of understanding on my part. While the dream itself was matter-of-fact, I think it reveals a judgment about the person studying to be an accountant.

(Last week.) Dreamed last night that a deer gave birth in front of me after I came out of a store in San Francisco. The store was a real one I've actually been in (a CVS or something similar) in North Beach. I've never seen a deer on a sidewalk, though.

Interpretation: The deer was actually on the curb, and I was looking at it from the sidewalk. There was a lot of flowing water with blood in it, and I couldn't see what was happening at first. The birth itself was very lifelike. I associate deer in mythology with magical events, like the deer that a person pursues deep into the forest that leads to an adventure. This was a deer giving birth, which seems in some way propitious, though I can't say exactly why.

(Last night.) I dreamed I was in my college cafeteria. They were serving pork cutlets. When I asked for potatoes, the chatty server gave me two noodles instead, so I had to ask again. When I inquired about salad, she said there was a salad bar, but I never saw it. The soft drink machine was noisy and messy, and there didn't seem to be dessert. When I left by a back door, someone came along and started locking doors from the outside.

Interpretation: The server seemed friendly but was actually rather passive aggressive. I left the cafeteria with my tray but didn't eat any of the food. I seemed to be rejecting what had been given to me, and seeing the doors locked added some finality to the process. This dream seems to involve recognizing dissatisfaction and saying no to the source of it. I interpret this dream, too, as positive.

Once More for Middle-earth

I don't know what you did on New Year's Eve, but I was in the middle of a Lord of the Rings home video screening, which seems as good a way to spend it as any. LOTR has always seemed to me to be a winter story, possibly because I first encountered it as a boxed set of books--including The Hobbit--as a Christmas present in my senior year of high school. I'm looking at it right now; although the books are threadbare from much handling, the box, with it shiny gold foil, is in good condition. It's covered all over with Elvish symbols that, now that I look at them, are not unlike something you'd see in Jung's Red Book, with their wheel shapes flowing around central stars and flowers. Very mandala-like, these devices are.

Of course, all of the movies have been holiday releases as well--but I'm thinking back now to my first introduction to Middle-earth all those years ago, when I spent most of Christmas break absolutely immersed in the books. I can see myself now in the small bedroom I shared with my sister, sitting up in bed, eyes intent on the page, completely absorbed in a world of Tolkien's making. I remember how strongly the characters, the settings, and the events of this strangely compelling other world impressed themselves on my imagination and how nearly impossible it was to stop reading.

I used to re-read the books periodically but fell out of the habit some years ago, though I think it may be time now to re-visit the tradition. It will be interesting to see how the intervening years, and Peter Jackson's films, have changed my reactions to the stories on the page. I've written recently about the ways in which Mr. Jackson's Hobbit films (especially the final one) seem to part company with the book, but his LOTR has always seemed remarkably close to Tolkien's vision.

In the three years since I bought the video trilogy, I've probably watched the movies once a year. Even in that time, my way of looking at them has changed from one viewing to the next. Interestingly, The Fellowship of the Ring, which was formerly my favorite part, no longer is--at least not in exactly the same way. I linger over scenes in the Shire, which used to seem merely a prelude to the action, and Rivendell, both of which I find it increasingly hard to imagine leaving on such a task as the hobbits had. The Shire, in its innocence, and Rivendell, in its elegance and otherworldly beauty, are of course as under threat as any place else in Middle-earth until the quest is done . . . but the feeling of safe harbor, ease, and peace is strong in both places.

I find myself mentally speeding the company through Moria and down the river to the place near the falls where the Fellowship breaks up. While this is a major break in the story, and a sad ending to the companionship of the nine, it's almost a relief to me to see Frodo and Sam slip off to the eastern shore. I now find myself enjoying the scenes in both The Two Towers and The Return of the King in which the remaining members of the Fellowship look for and are reunited with one another and become deeply involved in the affairs of Rohan and Gondor.

In reading the books, I always considered these aspects of the story less interesting, dealing as they do less with enchantment and more with strategy, politics, and the role of humans in events. Now, I find the people and their problems much more engaging than I did as a teenager, and the courage of not only Theoden's people but those of Gondor, along with the bravery of the companions who aid them, is very compelling to me. I like Theoden's seasoned, no-nonsense authority, Aragorn's valor and calm intelligence, Gimli's sense of humor, and Legolas's steady eye. I like the way the two younger hobbits, Pippin and Merry, seem to grow up in the course of their dealings with Ents, wizards, and warriors, while remaining essentially light-hearted and free.

While the quest of Frodo and Sam to destroy the ring is protracted and wearying (as in the books), the doings of the other characters, even though they involve a constant succession of either major battles or preparations for them, include many scenes of everyday life, love, jealousy, secret hopes, failings, renewed purpose, and tragedies of an all-too-human nature. The story in its latter stages becomes more character-driven than it was in the beginning. In the face of the big events taking place both in Mordor and the kingdoms of men, small incidents revealing the character of the players bring events back down to earth and are rewarding to watch.

One of my ideas about why this is so has to do with the fact that I don't see as much distance between the concerns of Middle-earth and those of the real world as I used to. Far from seeing it as an escapist fantasy, as I did as a teenager, I now see its contours as much closer to a map of the world as we know it. Like a true myth, LOTR gets its power not so much from its fantastic elements as from the way it resembles reality. It's a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.

New Year's Eve, Two Years Later

Two years ago on New Year's Eve, I was drinking a mug of hot vanilla and writing the proposal for the paper I'm linking to here. The article is the result of not only several years of work on my dissertation but also a year and a half in which I explored the question of why the symbolism of the labyrinth might matter in contemporary America. In other words, what accounts for the current popularity of labyrinths? Is it something more than a trend? The paper picks up where the final chapter of my book leaves off and extends a literary-philosophical question into a social-political one.

The link will take you to the home page of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies. To find my article, go to Publications, then Journals, then Journal 9, 2014, of the Jungian Journal of Scholarly Studies.

My Ph.D. is in Myth Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. A background in psychology and English literature also contributed to my thinking on the topic of labyrinths.

Happy New Year to everyone.

When Midas Came to Town

Over the holidays, I read a Jane Smiley book I really liked called Good Faith. The wonder of it is that I liked it so well considering it was actually about bad faith, greed, dishonesty, and infidelity, but I think that's a tribute to the author's talents. She seems to have a knack for looking at human weaknesses without losing her sense of humor, and she writes so well that you're entertained just by dipping into her sentences. I admit that I didn't enjoy her Pulitzer Prize winner, A Thousand Acres, which was rather grim, but I've found some of her other work to be very rewarding.

Good Faith is about Joe Stratford, a small-town realtor in an unspecified mid-Atlantic state who has a good though unexciting life when the story opens. He's good at his job, conscientious, and well regarded by others in the community, most of whom he's known his entire life. He's divorced but neither bitter about it or in a hurry to get remarried. He's a devoted son. His circle of friends includes a developer who is something of a father figure to him and whose family is like an extension of his own. He enjoys his work.

Things begin to change when a newcomer to the community, Marcus Burns, breaks into Joe's circle and shakes up business as usual with some rather ambitious ideas about real estate development and other investments on a grand scale. With his impeccable attire, smooth manner, and winning ways, he's soon able to convince Joe and his partners that they can all get rich if they'll only start thinking "big" and forget about the way they've always done things. It's entertaining but sad to see the way they let go of their doubts, one by one, and succumb to his get-rich-quick schemes despite knowing little about him and even entertaining doubts as to his credibility.

The reader can both foresee the likely result and also understand some of the reasons Marcus succeeds in getting others to invest in his schemes. He's a consummate motivational speaker and has just enough knowledge (along with oratorical ability) to lend conviction to risky projects simply by suggesting that times are changing and that ways of doing business must change along with them. Winning over Joe is a big part of his strategy, since everyone trusts Joe and believes that if he's involved in something, it must be OK. Joe is so intrigued and entertained by his new friend that he manages to stifle his own doubts, especially as most of those who voice concern about risky new real estate ventures are people he considers out of touch.

Without fully realizing what they've gotten into until it's too late, Joe and his partners end up taking a wild ride fueled by visions of the billions of dollars they're assured are theirs for the taking. Joe gambles away nearly everything on the charismatic nature of his new friend and takes several of his old friends down with him.

I think the story appeals because it's about people who seem quite human and ordinary; I feel that I've known people very much like the ones in the book and, without exactly wanting to be them, could step into their world without much strain to the imagination. In addition, the microcosm of the story mirrors larger events in our country's economic history. While set against the S & L catastrophe of the 1980s, it's also a reminder of more recent economic disasters that resulted from throwing all caution to the wind. It's a bit of an "emperor has no clothes" story.

Although things end rather badly for some of the characters, Smiley inserts a bit of optimism at the very end after you've stopped expecting it. Having lost a lot of other things he once had, Joe finally finds love. I liked the way Smiley has Joe describe this experience in terms his very religious mother always used but that he never really understood as "grace acting in the material world." His epiphany seems to make the sun come out once again after a sad season of greed and loss without seeming at all like a sentimental or maudlin conclusion.

Reading this story is a little like watching the unfolding of a Greek tragedy in which hubris plays a large role, except that the ending is more optimistic. It's classic tragedy by way of American optimism, maybe. The characters in Greek drama rarely seem to get a second chance, but in America, if they persevere long enough, sometimes they do.

Speaking in Tongues at the Lonely Mountain

Certainly, I'm not the only one who walked into the theater this week to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies with mixed emotions, including anticipation, curiosity, and sadness at the thought of this being the last film. Having seen Peter Jackson's approach to Tolkien in the first two Hobbit movies I was somewhat prepared--but not totally--for the way he closed the trilogy.

Mr. Jackson's Hobbit is not your mother's Hobbit (or in some sense, even J.R.R. Tolkien's). The characters, the setting, and the plot are there, but the theme, the emotional import, the direction, and the tone have all undergone a sea change. Knowing the great love fans of Tolkien have for the original material (I share the feeling), I think it was risky for Mr. Jackson to take the road he took. If you come to the last film expecting a warm farewell to beloved characters, I think you'll come away baffled. Rather than sticking to the agenda of beguiling children's tale, the last film in particular seems to me to have outgrown its genre. Personally, I wouldn't take a kid to see it.

I'm guessing many fans are shaking their heads and wondering why this had to happen. Considering what the book is really about--a company of adventurers in search of treasure and territory who run afoul of enemies and end up fighting over it all--I wonder if there even was a way to keep the tone light without seeming at least a little disingenuous in view of the world we're living in. Is there a day that goes by when we don't read about territorial disputes, ambition, and the bloody consequences that ensue when they aren't held in check? In the real world, none of this is good news, so why would it be in a movie? Still, we seem in some ways very far from Middle-earth here. It is more as if the film is really about something else.

My sense of the three Hobbit films is that the first one is closest in tone to the book, with all the bonhomie and excitement of a shared adventure as the companions set out on their quest. They actually do have some claim to the territory and treasure they're seeking, they seem like good fellows, they have a wizard on their side, and Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit of unimpeachable character, falls in with their plans. He is undoubtedly reluctant at first but more from a sense of the inconvenience and bother of it all than from any moral concern. The companions meet some nasty enemies, fight their way out of tight corners, and display a becoming sense of loyalty and courage.

It's in the second film that the moral ambiguity really surfaces. Elves and dwarves are revealed to be at one another's throats; greed and antagonism make the entire enterprise seem less noble than it did at first. Even Bilbo, who now possesses the ring of power without fully understanding its effects, discovers in himself an unexpected viciousness. In Lake-town, to which the company eventually makes its way, a self-serving leader lords it over the population. In the end, the dwarves' efforts to recover Erebor awaken the dragon, a consequence everyone seems to have expected without considering the danger this might pose to the innocent inhabitants of Lake-town.

In The Battle of the Five Armies, the strain shows most tellingly in the disagreements among the members of Thorin's company. Thorin angrily asserts that someone is hiding the precious Arkenstone from him; he's actually right, but his bitterness over this assumed betrayal begins to consume him. The mayor of Lake-town abandons his people to Smaug's wrath and dies, smote by the falling dragon, creating an opening for Bard to take over. When Bard comes to Thorin to demand Lake-town's promised share of the treasure, Thorin goes back on his word--nor will he share any of the treasure with the elves, who also have a claim. While the elves and the people of Lake-town prepare to battle with the dwarves, the orcs and their allies show up, forcing alliances to shift again as the erstwhile enemies prepare to battle a common foe.

This is pretty much in line with the book, but the battle itself is much less sanitized than in Tolkien's handling of it. There is great courage shown in the battle, and there is also a sense that some enemies, like the orcs, are truly dangerous and must be stopped. The fighting itself is fierce and bloody. In the end, several of the company die in a nasty and protracted fight with the orcs on top of Ravenhill, including Thorin. The effect of the finale is not so much heroic as disheartening.

By this time, I was not so sure the dwarves had done the right thing by returning to Erebor or that much had been accomplished aside from some people getting richer. Who was having a good time on this quest? (Nobody, by now.) The ring of power is now abroad in the world, the company is diminished both in numbers and moral standing, many lives have been lost, including that of Kili, the sweetest and most valiant of the dwarves, and the certainty of more war looms on the horizon. Of course, this all leads to the War of the Rings, a contest in which the moral certainties seem to be much clearer than they are here.

I wonder what that trilogy would look like if Mr. Jackson were making it now instead of a few years back, but fortunately it's already been done. The Lord of the Rings depicts the hero's quest as a way to conquer one's own shortcomings and to sacrifice for the common good. The battles are not only with one's enemies but with one's self, and we need that kind of story, even more so than this kind. The Battle of the Five Armies shows the tragedy of war, its senselessness, and the too frequent result that it leads to more war. The film also has a marked sense of suspicion about the uses of power. Even a seemingly "good" figure like Galadriel is transformed by it. (Actually, I found her to be the most terrifying thing by far in the battle to vanquish the Nine and can only think that was the intention.)

The Lord of the Rings deals with the results of events enacted in The Hobbit and shows the good that can come when disparate parties realize they must overcome their differences to preserve what's good and useful in their world; as depicted by Jackson, it's the more optimistic of the stories. It's ironic that The Hobbit, which comes across as something of a lark in its original form, has become more somber than The Lord of the Rings on film. Perhaps Mr. Jackson is trying to point out the difference between a quest based on the desire for wealth and advancement and one in which the key theme is sacrifice and endurance.

In my essay last year on The Desolation of Smaug, I talked about my sense that the film's characters sometimes played more than one role and that that fluidity was in tune with the ideas of James Hillman, who believed that we all play multiple roles in life. I had an even stronger sense of that happening in this film. When Smaug attacks Lake-town, we see Tauriel looking up at the dragon from the boat in which she is escaping with a curious smile. A strange thing perhaps, unless (just for an instant) Smaug represents something other than an enraged dragon. Or is it rather that Tauriel herself is someone other than she appears to be?

In another scene, the rather horrifying battle on Ravenhill, the orc Azog pauses for an instant with an almost kindly smile. There are several instances like this throughout the film, in which a different personality unexpectedly appears in place of the one you were just looking at, causing a bit of discontinuity, a shift in energy. What you thought was happening a moment ago then seems to be called into question. I read last night that even Peter Jackson used a double in his own cameo scene, so that from one angle, you're seeing Peter Jackson, and from another, you're seeing a stand-in for Peter Jackson. I don't know if that was merely a coincidence or if it says something about what's going on in the film.

To what end, you may wonder? The effect is jarring, and I confess to being mystified. If the purpose was to demonstrate that a character can have more than one side, I'm sure Mr. Jackson could have handled it with more subtlety and conviction. In the end, I was left with the feeling that I no longer knew who the characters were or what they represented. It was a little bit like the film had been made in a foreign language and translated awkwardly, so that the lips were moving but didn't match the words being spoken. That's surprising for a director of Mr. Jackson's ability.

On the Rails at the North Pole

The other night, I watched Robert Zemeckis's The Polar Express on DVD. I had sort of a tradition going for a few years in which I watched it every Christmas Eve, until the feeling that it was actually a little too spooky for Christmas Eve made me stop. It's a very layered film, something along the lines of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It started as a book, an enchanting, much-loved children's story by Chris Van Allsburg. In the process of becoming a film, it, like The Hobbit, gained additional layers of meaning, while remaining true to its origins.

While telling a simpler story than The Hobbit films, The Polar Express shares their sophisticated ability to speak to several audiences at once. The story concerns a young boy who is beginning to doubt that Santa Claus is real. On Christmas Eve, he is awakened by the astonishing sound of an approaching train on the street outside his house. The conductor offers him an opportunity to board for a trip to the North Pole; after some hesitation, he jumps on at the last minute, finding himself in the company of other children all going to the same place. It is, as the conductor puts it, the boy's "crucial year": as a "doubter," he's running out of chances to have his faith in the magic of Christmas renewed before it disappears completely.

The magical night journey involves several crises, including a lost ticket, a child from a poor family who doesn't fall in with the others, a caribou crossing, mechanical malfunctions, and some very steep tracks. Once they reach the North Pole, adventures keep coming for the hero boy and a few of his companions, who get separated from the others. They make their way along perilous tracks and through back alleys to the nerve center of Santa's operation, the distribution point from which presents are routed to their destinations. They eventually make their way to the main square in time for the appearance of Santa and the reindeer, and the young "doubter" is selected to receive Santa's first gift of Christmas--a bell from Santa's sleigh that he's finally able to hear when he puts his doubts to rest.

As a story about the magic of Christmas, the film succeeds both for children and for adults who remember what Christmas was like when they were young. But the real theme of the story is the importance of belief in something good--love, friendship, generosity--that Santa is only the symbol of. The film wants you to keep that spark of belief alive.

As to the reality of the train, the journey, and the destination--well, that's left in some doubt. The boy encounters a mysterious hobo on top of the train who seems to be both part of the trip and independent of it. When the question of Santa's reality comes up, the hobo doesn't exactly offer assurances; on further questioning, he allows that the entire journey could indeed be a dream. He is glad to entertain questions of doubt, unlike the conductor. The other issue on which he gladly assists is the boy's efforts to find the girl who befriended him so that he can return her ticket. That unselfish act, he seems to feel, is worth going to considerable trouble for.

So there's the putative journey, and there's the meta-narrative about the journey--only available to one who climbs outside the framework--in this case, to the top of the train. The hobo, who admits that he himself is probably a ghost, nevertheless offers some trenchant observations, suggesting the possibility that what really matters is not the particular form of belief, but its substance, the matter that underlies it. Since Tom Hanks portrays not only the conductor but also the hobo, the boy's father, Santa Claus, the boy himself as an adult looking back, and one or two other characters, it starts to look as if the real point (if you choose to go there) is not whether Santa is real or not. Christmas Eve merely provides what you might call a teachable moment about deciding what you do believe in and holding on to it.

As for Santa Claus himself, in this movie he is not quite the jolly old elf portrayed elsewhere, but considerably more solemn, almost wraithlike. My friend Jot has said he liked The Polar Express but didn't like its Santa Claus, and I agree that there is something a bit off about him. He is less an elf than a judge, and a rather stern one; his countenance almost suggests that whatever miasma you've fallen into, you might want to snap out of it, and fast. The entire North Pole sequence has a more dreamlike quality than the beginning of the journey, as if self-consciously calling its own solidity into question. The Christmas carols blaring from speakers throughout the town are piped in and have the dragging quality of a tired record player. The town itself has deep crevasses under the train tracks, visible only to those who get off the guided tour, and they are traversed with great difficulty on foot.

This is not only scary but suggests a couple of things: 1.) that a world of total fantasy has its own perils and 2.) that even though the children have been selected for the trip to encourage their belief in Santa Claus, their time is already drawing to a close. One slip through those hazardous tracks, one imagines, and they might very well . . . wake up in their own beds at home.

None of this means, however, that the journey had no meaning or was a foolish enterprise. Far from it. Beyond just telling a Christmas tale, the filmmaker seems to have wanted to say--to those who believe in magic as well as to those who don't--that the real gift lies in what you take from the journey. What did you find out while you were on that train? Are you a better friend? Has your belief in yourself grown stronger, if it needed to? Do you now understand humility, if you needed to? Can you find the courage to make your life better than it has been? Are you now more discerning? None of these are small matters, as we know.

The Polar Express somehow does all this while leaving the magic of Christmas intact for those who do believe. It's a children's story, a coming of age story, and a hero's journey rolled into one, and like any great story offers the possibility of new insights the more you revisit it.

Understanding the Fisher King

The other night, I posted a link on Facebook to a clip from a speech Hillary Clinton had given in Boston the day before. In the speech, she was talking about imbalances in our criminal justice system and the need to address them. I was struck by how stiff the former Secretary of State seemed in her delivery and how ineffectively she conveyed sincerity. In short, to be truthful, I didn't believe a single word she said, though there was nothing actually wrong with the speech itself, beyond seeming calculated. There was something in it for everyone, that's for sure.

I posted the clip and made the comment that I didn't find her credible, that I'd thought so for a long time, and that--speaking as a lifelong Democrat--I wouldn't vote for her for president. (I don't think I'd vote for her for dogcatcher, either, not to put too fine a point on it.) I'm used to posting things that reflect my opinions and not getting much of a response, so I wouldn't have been surprised if no one had said anything. I got a "Like" from someone, turned off the computer, and eventually went to bed--and then found I couldn't get to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. I had to get up in the wee hours and read a book until I finally felt sleepy.

I asked myself, "Why am I so restless?" It took me a little while to realize that a lot of it had to do with that posting and the feelings I had about its subject, the state of our country, and the "leadership" we're stuck with. I was angry, and part of the anger, I realized, stems from the fact that I believe we, the public, have participated in creating a leadership crisis in our country by our complacency, reluctance to question our own cherished assumptions, and refusal to ask hard questions. As I was tossing and turning, I thought to myself, "If only, for once--just once--someone would ask me, 'Why do you say that about Hillary Clinton?' or 'What makes you feel that way?' I would feel so much better. A discussion beats silence any day, in my book.

The next day, when I got online, I saw that a couple of other people had agreed with me, and--lo, what wonder is this!--someone had actually asked me what kind of problems I had with Clinton's credibility. Someone actually wanted to know! Stop the presses! A Christmas miracle! In that moment, I thought I knew what the Fisher King, in the Grail legend, might have felt like if only Perceval, instead of hesitating, had asked him the right question: "What ails thee?" Shackles, peculiar enchantments, rotting castle walls, festering wounds, and all would have fallen away in a flash if only the Grail Knight had had the courage to ask the obvious.

In fact, I was so taken aback that someone asked me a plain question that it took me a minute to realize that the person was quite serious. I'm so used to the rah-rah treatment the Clintons get in our state, the seemingly unthinking endorsements the former Secretary of State gets from so many feminists, and the too-frequent assumption by the media that she's the one to beat in the next election. My feelings of discomfort with Secretary Clinton actually go back a way and have several sources, but not least among them is, it must be said, Benghazi.

As I said to my questioner, I realize that Benghazi has been made into a political football. I realize, too, that the investigations that have been done so far largely absolve the government of wrongdoing in the aftermath. But all of the accusations and counter accusations as to who said what when on TV afterwards seem to me to focus on the wrong issue. What I find incredible is the fact that the State Department did so little to defend the consulate, considering its location in such a dangerous place. I just didn't believe Ms. Clinton when she said she didn't know about the requests for more security and that it was all an unfortunate oversight. Not only did the explanation not make sense, but her demeanor during the Congressional hearings bothered me. In short, I still think that the government, including the State Department, is culpable in the deaths of those Americans.

I'm constantly amazed at people's willingness to lionize people who have done little to deserve it. If you think talking a pretty good lick about this and that is enough of a basis to make someone president, I think your standards are way too low. You realize, of course, that many politicians, including Ms. Clinton (and our president), are lawyers, and that talking is one of the things they excel at. This is not a slur against lawyers in general--I know quite a few who are fine people--but you know, making a good appearance is an art, a craft, and a science with them. If you're ever going to know who they truly are, you have to look way beyond the surface. Forget about this "It's high time we had a woman president" business. It may be past due, but that's a very poor basis for selecting someone for the job. Are you going to make me ambassador to Liechtenstein because they've never had one from Kentucky?

Do you want to elect someone who's worthy of your trust rather than someone who merely spends every waking moment trying to cultivate an image of someone you can trust? Start by asking the hard questions and checking your assumptions at the door. I've stopped assuming that because someone thinks like me (or says they do), that they must be a good Scout. (The reverse is also true; it's possible that someone who thinks differently than I do isn't a miscreant; in fact, they may be right about certain things.)

By their deeds shall ye know them. Not by what they learned in law school about selling themselves to a jury or by what an image consultant told them they should say to get elected or how good they are at figuring out what your values are so they can twist them around and trip you up with them.

Madeline's Casement

Does the unconscious have a sense of humor? I'm only asking because of the dream I had the other night, which seemed in some way a response to my blog post of last week, in which I talked about two previous dreams I had eight years apart. My dreaming mind wasted no time in coming up with another installment of the cliff's edge/oceanic/sea creature saga that sprang to life so vividly in the first dream and turned sort of Moby-Dickish in the second.

First off, I have to say that the latest dream was in no way as dramatic as the previous two. There's no rapidly rising tide and no sea monster. In the beginning, the dream didn't even seem to be taking place near the sea. I worked for someone who lived in a large house and was apparently a wealthy invalid. I was in the role of a personal assistant and went into an upstairs bathroom to check on a bottle of medicine; then I went into my own room, which opened out of it. There was a small desk in front of a tall window, and I opened the drawer.

To my surprise, opening the desk caused the bottom to slide out and tilt down at an angle. There was no glass in the window, though the bottom of the desk drawer appeared to be glass--and its contents were hanging precariously over a rocky cliff that plunged into the ocean about 50 feet below. I could see a man cliff diving from the rocks, and I wanted to slide the bottom of the drawer back in so as not to drop anything into the water. There was a long, cylindrical object on the right side of the drawer, but as if it had a will of its own, the drawer slipped further down, tumbling the contents into the water.

The cliff diver had just made another dive, so he and my projectile hit the water at about the same time. I waited to see him come up, and he did. I was glad I hadn't inadvertently drowned him, but it was a near thing. After that, I noticed other people of various ages swimming nearby, none of whom seemed to have noticed that contents were raining down on their heads from an open window. I hadn't knocked anyone out, but on the other hand, wasn't their carefree attitude a bit surprising? I stood looking in some perplexity at the desk that turned gravity into a launch pad.

In this dream there was no sense of danger to me. I was an actor--though an unwitting one--not a reactor. The ocean posed no threat, I did not mourn the loss of the contents, and I was more concerned with the safety of the people in the water than they appeared to be. Above all, I was mystified by the trick drawer that seemed to have been set up to act as it did. There was an inevitability about the scene and a feeling of a sly sense of humor at work.

If you're interested in setting, I will say that the house, while having a more or less 20th-century look (and an up-to-date bathroom) had the heavy atmosphere of established wealth. I believe I had driven there in my car, which was parked on the street. As for the room with the desk, it was something like Madeline's chamber in Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes, except for the fact that it wasn't winter (or even nighttime), there was no stained glass, and in fact no feeling at all of anything medieval. I'm not sure there was even a bed. 

If you're thinking, "That doesn't sound much like Madeline's chamber," all I can say is it must have been the slightly ponderous air of the house, the feeling of looking down from a height, and the unexpected drama of the window treatment. Her window was pretty to look at, but mine was notable for its absence, the difference between a romance and the dream of a modern writer, I suppose. At least I was dry this time.

Mythologist Dreams of a Blue Fish

I don't know why I dreamed this week about a giant blue fish jumping over a house, but I did. A few nights ago, in my dream, I was sitting or leaning on the porch railing of a white frame house very much like one I actually lived in when I was young. It was an overcast day in a small town neighborhood, and there were a number of people standing in the yard between our house and the one next door. All of a sudden, an enormous blue fish rose out of the depths, leaped over our house, and landed in a pool in the front yard.

Where the fish came from is an open question, since we were nowhere near the sea but in about as landlocked a situation as you could imagine. Not that that matters in a dream, of course. The sudden appearance of this enormous creature was extraordinary, but the lack of an ocean didn't seem to signify. Perhaps there was a subterranean ocean underneath the house.

My first thought was, "It's a blue whale." However, it was not a whale, but rather a large, flexible flatfish with a big head. It was not a kite or a ray--its shape was elongated and sinuous. It turned itself around in the pool to face us, and it may be anthropomorphizing to say so, but it did not have a friendly look. (Actually, I'm not sure it's possible to anthropomorphize in a dream, even if it sometimes is in waking life.)

It may be good to mention that Jung compared the stages of consciousness with the chakras of kundalini, so that the Leviathan that swims in the unconscious is associated with the second chakra, svadhisthana. In this stage, Jung said, one moves from lack of awareness to a confrontation with unconscious contents, a tricky undertaking requiring considerable courage since the flooding one experiences can threaten equilibrium. It's no minnow you're facing; certainly the fish in my dream had the menacing aspect of a Leviathan as it turned to look at us.

Everybody seemed to know the fish was going to make another leap and probably land on the house. There seemed to be a collective impulse to move out of the way, even a surge of panic. But for some reason, no one really did anything except stand and watch. I remained on the porch, oddly disinclined to move quickly, though part of me thought it was a grand idea. The fish did leap and actually landed on the house . . . but all that came down were a few splinters.

This dream reminds me of one I had some years ago (and have written about before) in which I was lounging on a cliff high above the sea, a brief idyll that ended when the water began to rise. It was not a single creature but rather the ocean itself that threatened. Interestingly, it was not so much physical danger in that dream but the damage to my belongings that concerned me; I was urging people in the house on the cliff to help me move things inside before they got wet.

In the fish dream, there was no water visible except in the pool, which was somewhat shallow, and though the fish carried through on its destructive leap, the result was anticlimactic--though there was still some talk of adjourning to the neighboring house for safety. The situation seemed unresolved, some feeling of uncertainty still remaining.

Maybe it's too much to pair two dreams occurring eight years apart, but I do seem to see a kind of progression from one dream to the next: from a diffuse but overwhelming threat to a specific, visible one; from a beautiful but exotic location to homely, familiar ground; from a frustrated feeling of trying to rouse others to a shared (but measured) sense of danger. The contrast between the urgent activity of the first dream and the watchfulness of the second dream is also striking, though I am not sure what we all were waiting for. A fish fry, maybe?

Natural Phenomenon

I have a memory of sitting in a car with my brother in downtown Fort Myers, Florida, when I was about seven or eight, and he was nine or ten. If I remember right, our Dad had gone into the insurance company to pay a premium or take care of some other business. I'm not sure why I recall that, but I do. Anyway, it was a mostly cloudy day, late in the afternoon, and while we were sitting there, looking toward the roofs at the other end of the street, an unusual cloud formation filled the spaces between buildings to create a shape that looked, for a brief time, uncannily like the state of Florida. To my eyes, it was quite incredible.

It was my brother who pointed it out to me, and I can still remember him saying, in an authoritative, scientific sort of way, "That's what you call a natural phenomenon."

I'm bringing this up because of what happened when I was out walking Friday afternoon. It was five o'clock, probably pretty close to the same time of day as that long-ago wonder. It's also a bit of a coincidence because I wrote another post about something that happened at five o'clock a while back; if there's a quota on five o'clock phenomena, I seem to be running through it rapidly.

I had put my sunglasses on when I left home, appreciating the blue sky and bright afternoon but doubting whether I really needed them; it was partly cloudy, and, anyway, the sun was rather low in the sky. It kept peeking in and out of the clouds, but by the time I'd gone nearly all the way around the Arboretum, it was shining directly in front of me.

That's when it happened. Due no doubt to moisture in the air and the layers of clouds above and below, the sunlight shaped itself, briefly, into a column of fire, dead center in the sky. It was so remarkable that the first thing I wondered was if anybody in rush hour traffic was seeing it, too. It looked like something that, in ancient times, would have been taken by astrologers or prophets as a "sign," as in, "Yo, a plague of locusts is at hand," or at least, "It's time to harvest the persimmons."

I'm cynical about "signs," which seem to me to be overdone these days, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," but the event was beautiful and striking and certainly fit into my brother's category of natural phenomena--so I have another to add to the list of the many I've seen. I know there are names for almost any atmospheric occurrence you can think of, but I don't know what the name for a column of light is. I was mainly just happy that I had my sunglasses on so I didn't have to squint at it and also that it happened when I was facing in the right direction. It did occur to me that there's no telling how many wondrous and amazing things happen around us all the time when we happen to be looking the other way.

Berlin Adventure

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That means it's been 25 years since my friends and I undertook our three-week whirlwind European vacation (nine countries in 20 days). What was happening in Berlin actually affected us because we had a friend living there; going to visit her was part of our itinerary.

There were probably several times for each of us on that trip when we felt ourselves especially far from home. I had been to England before and was familiar with London; one of my friends found it unfriendly and didn't care for it at all. One of us had already been to West Germany and considered it a "been there, done that" item; I found Amsterdam to be rather scary (but fascinating). I think all of us would agree, though, that crossing the border from the West to the East in Germany (a border still being maintained even as the Wall was coming down) was both unforgettable and Kafka-esque.

It was like slipping into a time warp and landing in the barbed wire and searchlight days of World War II. Both were in evidence from the train windows as we showed our passports to an extremely grim-faced guard. A brief, unexplained stop once the train started moving again caused someone to quip, in a whistling past the graveyard moment, that perhaps some unfortunate soul had been thrown from the back. It seemed remotely possible. It was November, and East Germany was cold and dark, with a twilight, industrial sort of darkness even during the day. By contrast, Berlin, once we arrived there, reminded me of New York: though gritty and gray, it was edgy, electric, and sophisticated--a world-class city.

Our friend was expecting her first child, and we spent the first couple of days close to her comfortable home, catching up on news and going with her to a doctor's appointment. On the third day, we took the train to Kochstrasse, which I believe was the last subway stop before East Berlin, and walked to Checkpoint Charlie. We were immediately enveloped in the mood of excitement that seemed to have gripped everyone in the vicinity (if not the entire world). The Wall hadn't been torn down yet, but it wasn't for lack of trying. People who weren't taking photographs were renting hammers and chisels for a few marks to do their part.

I have pictures of the three of us at the Wall, hammering, chiseling, and looking cold. I was taking a picture of one of my friends chipping away, and something was said about the angle or posing. I said, "Just keep doing what you're doing." At that, a young man who was passing, apparently British from his accent, paused, laughed, and said, "You have a long way to go!" True enough for one person, but of course in the end the Wall--as solid as it was then--came down. I have some pieces of it still, packed away with other mementos.

My most vivid memories of that visit to Checkpoint Charlie, other than the graffiti and the pervasive excitement in the air, are of my friend attacking the Wall valiantly with a Swiss Army Knife and the exhibits in the Wall Museum that dealt with people's escape attempts. One woman had hidden her four-year-old in a shoulder bag and escaped via subway to Kochstrasse Station; someone else had a false bottom in a car and hid underneath it. The consequences were grim for those who were caught, but it didn't stop people from trying.

In the end, you wonder what it's all about. Politics, wars, international agreements . . . and the end result was a city divided in two. I was reading an article by a diplomatic expert earlier that said not all the results of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War were favorable. He may have been right about some of the things he said, but to me a lot of the events that have happened since 1989 can be interpreted as missed opportunities to create a more stable world.

Some people don't believe such stability is possible, I know. But if you were to ask some of the people who were divided from one another by the Wall that broke their city in two (or the loved ones of those who died trying to cross it) what they thought about its demise, I bet you'd get a different opinion from that of the diplomatic expert. People living with the results of decisions made by the great powers ruling the world often have a different outlook than any number of diplomats do. And their outlook may be truer.

Reason for the Season

The weather's been veering, as it does in October. You get the feeling, with the way the wind changes, that Mary Poppins could drop in any minute. Yesterday, snow was in the forecast for the evening. I didn't see any, but apparently a little fell overnight, though not enough to show for much. I was trying to imagine what an autumn day would look like with flaming orange, red, and yellow leaves glowering under a layer of snow, but we didn't get to find out.

This conjured up an incongruous but picturesque image, like the time I was in Berkeley in the fall and walked down a neighborhood street where deciduous trees shedding leaves alternated with ever-blooming varieties and bright fruits and flowers that seemed to belong to spring and summer. The effect reminded me a little bit of a painting I've seen in which a motley group of buildings, including an Egyptian pyramid, a Greek temple, and a Gothic cathedral, are all lumped together in a fantasy spot by the sea: it's more or less impossible, unless you're in Disneyland, but it's fun to look at. (The painting is Thomas Cole's The Architect's Dream.) That street, where three seasons seemed to coexist at once, was a little like that. All that was missing was a snowdrift.

But I'm digressing. I was really thinking about an article I once read in The Old Farmer's Almanac about something called cross-quarter days, of which yesterday, October 31, is one. The others occur on February 2, May 1, and August 1. These originated in British and Celtic customs, and the article explained how other traditions, enduring even in America, are attached to these dates, which divide the intervals between the quarter days (the two solstices and equinoxes) in half.

October 31 is All Hallow's Eve (Celtic Samhain), February 2 is Candlemas (Celtic Imbolc), May 1 is May Day (Celtic Beltane), and August 1 is Lammas (Celtic Lughnasadh). Most people are aware of the connection between Halloween and the Celtic traditions relating to the dead; American customs like pumpkin-carving and trick-or-treating have their counterparts in Samhain. What I didn't know was that other customs, like Election Day--which seems totally unrelated to Halloween--are actually a part of this post-harvest celebration. What better time to hold elections than when all the work in the fields is over?

Our version of Candlemas is Groundhog Day, when we're looking forward to the spring equinox still some six weeks away (and trying to hurry it along). Less well-known (at least to me) was the Celtic Imbolc, which refers to sheep and lambs, whose season is the latter part of winter. Even I, a town girl, was able to make a connection to this ancient tradition when I remembered a college roommate, an agriculture major, who was always getting up in the middle of those frozen February nights to check on ewes about to give birth. It sure didn't sound like something I wanted to do in the wee hours of a cold, dark month, but I suspect your perspective is different if you're a farmer.

Beltane, of course, is May Day, a spring and fertility celebration. We don't do much with May Poles and mummers, but in Kentucky, we hold the Derby on the first Saturday in May, a bourbon- and equine-infused version of a spring fling, complete with elaborate hats. Lammas or Lughnasadh, probably not that well known in America, signals the start of the harvest and early crops. The thing to do on that day might be to bake a loaf of bread or a fruit pie. Lughnasadh commemorates the Celtic god Lugh, whose emblem was a spear that supposedly always hit its mark. (I've forgotten why he's celebrated in August, but I do remember once knocking on my ceiling with a broom handle to alert a noisy neighbor and later laughing when I realized it was August 1, the day of Lugh. A broom handle isn't much like a spear unless you're annoyed, I guess.)

This cross-quarter weekend, we're celebrating Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls Days, changing from Daylight Time to Standard Time, and getting ready for Election Day on Tuesday. In calendrical terms there's quite a bit going on, which might explain the restless energy in the air (it could also be the zing of unseen money changing hands as candidates continue to vy for votes).

If it's any consolation, the next time you're annoyed by a robocall or political advertisement, or if you forget to change your clock and end up at work an hour early on Monday, or if you get indigestion from too much Halloween candy, just think about being part of a tradition that stretches back to ancient times and started on the other side of the sea. Young or old, tricker or treater, candidate or voter, we each have our part to play. Exciting, isn't it?

Song for the Corner of Broadway and Vine

I was in the grocery store the other day when Billy Joel's song "New York State of Mind" came on, with that familiar fall of tinkling piano keys, over the in-store radio. There I was, innocently shopping for vegetables and milk, when I heard the line, "I know what I'm needin', and I don't want to waste more time." A wave of emotion, sad and imperative, washed over me, which I don't usually associate with that song. I like a lot of Mr. Joel's material, but that song has always been just one of many, never a particular favorite.

But you know how it is with these things: sometimes a book or a song takes on a different meaning as you live with it over time, just as it almost certainly has for Mr. Joel, who, I believe, wrote it long ago on returning home to New York after living on the West Coast for several years. It's a slice of life story that, in its gentle, elegiac tone, has risen above particulars--especially post 9/11--to become a love song to a great city. It has taken its place as a standard in the great American songbook, where I'm sure it will remain.

A lot of people don't know this, but I've had fantasies since childhood about being a singer, out there on a stage, just singing my heart out in front of a thousand people. I used to have recurring dreams about returning to my high school and singing in front of an assembly, dreams that stopped after I found my voice as a writer. I find, though, that the urge for singing has remained for some reason. Maybe I was too quiet as a child and am still trying to make up for it.

You know what I wish? I wish I could transport Mr. Joel, his piano, and the sax player of his choice down to the corner of, say, Broadway and Vine in downtown Lexington. There's a plaza in front of the Triangle Park fountain, and the street corner there would do nicely for a stage. You know the old adage: Location! Location! Location! Well, everybody passes by there--and people from the nearby office towers would have a birds-eye view. I know it would do nicely for an evening concert (Lexington is always looking for new ways to get people downtown), but there's just not enough going on, in my opinion, in the morning hours, between 8:45 and 9-ish, when people have had time to get their coffee and are just getting started on their day.

Picture me in a long, black dress, with elegant earrings and an up-do. Mr. Joel plays the jazzy introduction as people start to stop and look, wondering what's going on. I'm leaning just as cool as you please on that baby grand, in diamonds and glittering heels, and when he gets to the verse and pauses, I pick up the microphone and enunciate, in my sexiest voice, "Some folks like to get a-waaaay, take a hol-i-daaaay from the neigh-bor-hooood . . . "

Could a Kentucky girl pull off a love song to the Big Apple? Well, come on down; you might be surprised.

I haven't shared this plan with Mr. Joel, but you never know, he might fall in with the spirit of it sometime. We would be very close to Rupp Arena, where I have seen him perform energetic shows twice in years past . . . and that has kind of nice, round sense of completion about it, doesn't it? Also, he's very fond of New York, I think.

By the way, leave your money at home. This is a concert for the people, and no admission is required. We may have to pass a hat to pay the sax player, though.

Here's something to get you in the mood.

http://youtu.be/UFlsXgw_SFE