Wither Baker Street?

If I remember right, my first reading of Sherlock Holmes occurred in the summer after my first year of college. I’ve read and re-read several incarnations of the detective’s exploits over the years and have also enjoyed nearly all of the filmed versions I’ve seen. If we aren’t currently experiencing a Sherlock Holmes revival, we’re at least experiencing the proof that he never really goes out of style. Authors as diverse as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (writing with Anna Waterhouse) and Anthony Horowitz have created their own versions of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in recent years, approaching the characters from various angles that add something new to the material while remaining faithful to the original in spirit.

I came across Mr. Abdul-Jabbar’s Mycroft Holmes two years ago and recently read the follow-up novel, Mycroft and Sherlock. The authors make Sherlock’s older brother, Mycroft, the main character, with the emerging detective (introduced as a teenager in this series) playing a co-starring role; there are also endearing new characters, such as Mycroft’s friend Cyrus Douglas, a merchant and philanthropist. While still within familiar territory, these stories reveal new aspects of Sherlock’s character by not only portraying him as a younger and more vulnerable brother but also by depicting him in relationships with characters other than Dr. Watson. The third novel in this series, Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage, will be released this fall and is already on my reading list.

Bonnie MacBird’s novels, Unquiet Spirits and Art in the Blood, are close in atmosphere and tone to the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Unquiet Spirits, in particular, with its Scottish setting, well-developed characters, and bizarre set of plot circumstances, is an impressive and uncanny evocation of the Holmesian universe; Art in the Blood weaves a series of disparate plot threads together in a tale of murder and a stolen artifact that stretches from London to Paris and the Northwest of Britain. I’m looking forward to reading Miss MacBird’s third novel in the series, The Devil’s Due, which is due to be released later this year.

Theodora Goss’s “Monstrous Gentlewomen” novels, while focused on a set of female characters, include Holmes and Watson as friends of the Athena Club. With their light-hearted tone (despite some underlying seriousness), her books go the furthest in placing a new twist on the characters of the two men, depicting both as more romantic characters than they are in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s originals. In Miss Goss’s hands, the well-intentioned protection offered by Holmes and Watson to a group of young females clashes with the determination of the young women to fend for themselves, sometimes to comic effect. And I don’t know how to break this to you, lest you think the universe is playing tricks on us with synchronicity (maybe it is), but Miss Goss also is releasing a third novel in her series this fall, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. My reading list is growing—maybe yours is, too.

And then there is Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk, which has Holmes and Watson investigating a mysterious and terrifying series of events to uncover the scandalous truth behind the titular house, whose true nature is concealed until nearly the end. I read this book almost two years ago, when I had just arrived in L.A. and had neither a dime to my name or a library card, so that I had to keep returning to the library to read it. In fact, I started reading it in one L.A. County Library and ended up finishing it in the library of another town. Though steeped in sadness (a widowed Dr. Watson is recalling the events of an earlier time when Holmes was still alive), the book is a page turner. Like the other Sherlock Holmes authors named here, Mr. Horowitz has created a series; his Moriarty was published in 2014.

So what is the import, Dr. Watson, of all this Holmesiness? Why are all these great minds thinking in the same direction? I think it’s quite simply the appeal of a great archetypal character. No matter the circumstances, Holmes always keeps his head and always gets his man. In a world of confusion, pain, sorrow, and injustice, his powers of deduction inevitably lead him to the truth in the end. He is a person in whom you can place confidence—no considerations make him waver from his search for facts. His world is not so very different from ours, so it’s no wonder that Conan Doyle’s readers have refused to let the great detective die, even in the 21st century. We could all use someone like that in our lives.

How It Came to Be

I usually try to post a little background on my fiction, but last week’s post was done in a few hours before I went to work, and I was still making small edits two days later. Suffice it to say that it started with a wish to pay tribute to Salt Lake City and a seed planted in my mind when I was last there about the nexus of the physical and spiritual in that particular place. I also wanted to write about a type of character I hadn’t really explored before (who was decidedly unspiritual), so I came up with the wedding guest. I’ve known people like him before, but he isn’t based on any one person.

I have actually taken the train into Salt Lake City twice (and it does indeed arrive around 11 p.m., though I believe it sometimes runs late). The experience that gave me the idea for “Salt,” though, was really the overnight visit I made about two years ago. It would be hard to get any idea of the character of the place just by passing through on the train and not wandering around at length. I drove into Salt Lake City one summer evening on the way to somewhere else, walked around, and saw some of the same sights the wedding guest saw—though, alas, no angels. I could imagine seeing them, though, and that was the germ of the story.

If you’re wondering where the salt came from and why it’s in the character’s pocket, you probably read very little mythology and fantasy. It’s a trope that you bring back a souvenir of some kind from an experience like this, and in this case, in particular, I had the sense that without tangible evidence, this boy might later talk himself out of believing that he’d had a very unusual time of it in Salt Lake City. If he’d been to the stars, it might have been stardust; if he’d been to fairyland, it might have been a gem from the fairy king’s mine.

Well, Watson, you know (or should know) my methods by now and should realize that I don’t write this blog for literal-minded readers. Anyone would think some of you had never been to school the way you carry on. Personally, I don’t like to have everything spelled out to me as if I cannot appreciate a story for myself, so I’ll say no more, just in case someone out there actually liked it and resists the notion of having everything explained to death. It’s good sometimes to sit with something and ponder it, but don’t expect it to suddenly reveal an underlying “this equals that” equation. If you do, you’ll never find what you’re looking for, at least not in this blog.

Salt

(A Short Story)

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It hadn’t been a bad wedding, which meant, of course, that there’d been plenty of beer at the reception. So much so that he now had a headache and was fuzzy on some aspects of the latter part of the night before. Now that he’d been accepted to law school, he was going to have to cut down on his partying. Sometimes, when your future was at stake, you just had to step up to the plate and take one for the team. He’d heard that once you made partner, you could pretty much do as you pleased, and since he was planning to be the youngest partner ever at a major East Coast law firm, he thought he could sacrifice present comfort for later bounty.

Right now, though, he felt like he’d been scoured dry from the inside out and that something was trying to crawl out from behind his eyes. Being on a train didn’t help . . . That rocking motion was enough to upset your tenuous hold on an already delicate stomach if it didn’t split your head in two first.

He was holding said head up with one hand, elbow propped on the tiny tray that popped up from a hidden slot somewhere beside his seat. He’d trapped his hand in the crevice trying to pull the damn thing up earlier and had had to call the porter, an irritating Colored man who had looked at him with disfavor before removing his imprisoned hand, with much more force than was strictly necessary, and setting the tray in place with a crisp, judgmental snap. He was considering having his father write to the president of Amtrak with a complaint against the fellow, especially since his hand was now an unbecoming shade of purple and black due—he was certain—to the mistreatment he’d received. His father had been college roommates with the Amtrak president, which was the whole reason he was riding for free. He was now weighing whether the satisfaction he’d derive from getting the porter into trouble was worth possibly jeopardizing future free rides. Perhaps it wasn’t worth all the questions that were bound to be asked. People were always trying to make mountains out of molehills.

Now, as the train pulled into Salt Lake City with a juddering sound that morphed into a drawn-out screech and then an ugly shudder that shook the whole train, our wedding guest, shocked out of his reverie by this latest unwelcome development, looked out the window. He was unable to see beyond the unaccountably bright lights of the station, but a few minutes later, there was a rap at the door of his compartment, followed in a moment by the appearance of the irritating porter, who informed him of a mechanical problem that would necessitate a delay of some hours. Indeed, he went on to say, it would likely be mid-morning before the train would be on its way again, and the passenger might want to consider a hotel for the remainder of the evening. Amtrak had arrangements with a hotel in the vicinity of downtown that was within walking distance—or perhaps a cab would be better?

The wedding guest waved away the porter, who seemed to be hovering. What did he want now, a tip? The nerve of some people knew no bounds. He stumbled to his feet, bumbling down the corridor of the train car in the porter’s wake. The distance from the top step to the station platform looked, to the wedding guest, to be a half mile at least, and he was wondering how he could possibly be expected to negotiate such a distance when he felt, or thought he felt, a firm hand on his arm, guiding him and propelling him forward and down, so that he found himself standing, alone, next to the train car, now silent except for a low-pitched hum and a ticking sound. The air seemed to be full of fog, but he discerned the outline of the station and headed inside, noticing, even in his compromised state, the gleam of marble and brass and the golden warmth of the light, though the place seemed to be deserted. He wondered briefly where the other passengers might have gone and concluded that perhaps he had been the last one to be notified and the last one to disembark. Typical, wasn’t it? The black hands of the station clock read ten minutes past eleven.

He was nearly out the door when a sound behind him made him turn. He saw that the lobby wasn’t deserted after all, but it was only a gray-haired cleaning woman, broom in hand, tidying up near the station’s coffee shop. She seemed to wearing some type of bulky coat that bunched up around her shoulders and hung awkwardly to near her ankles, an odd fashion choice even to the eyes of a heavily hungover college student. She paid no attention to him, going on about her task, but when he glanced back over his shoulder before pushing through the door, he saw the bunched material rise and unfold into what appeared to be a pair of wings. Oh hell, no way, man!

Trying to process what he had just seen, the young man had no sooner stepped outside when something flew at his head, flapping furiously. Backing into the wall, holding his wrecked head in his hands, he looked up, trying to see what had attacked him. It was a large seagull, sailing off down the street. Nervously, the student set off in the opposite direction, hoping the gull was not planning a return attack and unsure of how he would defend himself if that should occur. He realized that he had now forgotten the name of the hotel the porter had mentioned but thought that if he just kept walking he might see it and recognize it. He did not want to go back to the station for fear of encountering either the gull or the strange cleaning woman or both.

After midnight in Salt Lake City on a summer night, the streets were quiet but by no means, as he soon discovered, empty. He was vaguely surprised: wasn’t this place full of strictly religious people? Mormons or something? Shouldn’t they be at home, slumbering peacefully, or praying? And yet here and there he saw forms: walking, huddling in small groups, lounging. He’d say one thing for these Mormons, or whatever they were, they were quiet, even when they were out late. He heard not a whisper from any of them, which probably indicated, now that he thought of it, some kind of religious restriction. Maybe it was a vow of silence. After walking a short distance he realized that, unlike him, they were not coatless in the summer night but appeared to be wearing the same type of cape he’d seen on the cleaning woman in the station. Which could only mean—wait . . .

But he was right, wasn’t he? On looking as closely as his bloodshot eyes would allow, he realized that everyone he saw was endowed not with a cape but with a large pair of truly magnificent wings. Struggling to process this latest revelation, he was suddenly struck by a happy thought. It was obviously some kind of a celebration, like Mardi Gras. That was it! Shaking his head at the fright he had suffered a moment ago, he started to relax. If it was a party, he was all for it, and though a little while ago, he’d been considering total abstinence until the day he made partner, he now thought that perhaps just one more might have a beneficial effect on his splitting head and settle his stomach into the bargain. The hair of the dog, as it were.

His wobbling footsteps newly revitalized with purpose, he set off down the street, looking for an open bar. From time to time (for they were by no means boisterous), he saw people in angel costumes, taking selfies, riding the escalator in the town center mall, playing in the fountain, talking on cell phones, strolling hand-in-hand in the grounds of the great temple. There were angels in cars, angels on bicycles, angels in the crosswalks. No one spoke to him, but he was okay with that, he really was. Now that he knew just where he was, he was willing to get into the spirit of it. He’d heard that Mormons were a little stand-offish, anyway. No worries, man—let them party in their way, and he’d party in his.

In the event, though, he never located the party. After wandering for a couple of hours without finding much of anything open, only those infernal angels gliding around, he sat on a bench against a wall and fell asleep. He woke up with a gleam of sun striking his face, and when he squinted toward the source, the gleam disappeared behind a cloud. It was a foggy morning. He’d heard there were mountains around Salt Lake City, but he was inclined to think he’d heard wrong, because all he could see was mist. Thoroughly stiff now, he managed to haul himself upright. If only he could remember the direction of the station.

After nearly an hour of walking, during which he encountered not a soul, he realized that he was back on the street on which he had been surprised by the seagull, and yes, there was the station, half a mile ahead and on his left. He moved toward it nervously, scanning the air for any lurking seagulls, without, however, encountering any. Entering the station lobby, he saw that the time was not quite 7 a.m. He saw no one, passing through to the waiting room for his platform, likewise deserted. Relieved to find that the train was just where he’d left it, resting outside on its track, he sat down to wait, dozing off now and then. He woke for a final time when a bustle of activity revealed a returning coterie of fellow passengers, some of whom looked at him curiously, all presumably better off than he was for a few hours sleep in the hotel he had never found, damn them. They could keep their stupid looks to themselves.

Climbing back onto the train, with a mouth that felt like the desert floor and a hollow feeling in his head, he was greeted by the porter, who looked as crisp in his uniform as if he’d spent the night on a bed of down and silken sheets. He thought he detected a humorous gleam in the fellow’s eye, though his demeanor otherwise was solemnly professional. Damn the man, he’d report him for two cents just for his insolence. But the porter merely handed him a bottle of water and politely ushered him into his compartment. Once he was gone, the student slumped into his rather stale-smelling seat, wondering how he would get through the rest of the day and how long it would now take them to get home.

As he leaned against the window, something hard bit into his hip. Reaching into his pants pocket, he felt something cool and smooth, with jagged points and a bit of crumbly material adhered to it. He tried to pull it out, but it was stuck fast, as if it had been glued on; staring at it blankly, he wondered what it was and how it had come to be there. It looked like a crystal of some kind. On impulse, he put a finger to his mouth to taste what he had touched: salt.

Lark Metaphysics

I don’t know if this happens to you, but I sometimes get a lift without knowing why. That is, I sort of know why, in the sense of being able to describe the circumstance and its effect on me, though I may not know exactly why that particular thing affects me as it does. Last night, after dinner (and a good dinner, too, not consisting of a sandwich or fast food), I was driving to Starbucks. We’d had heavy rain earlier, the pavements were wet, and scraps of gray clouds were racing across a stormy sky. There was a kind of pearly light, for all that the weather was gloomy, which probably came from the reflections off all those wet surfaces. The sky looked manic and wild, as it often does here after a spring rain, and that was the key, I guess: I was suddenly looking at a spring sky rather than a winter sky. There was a feeling of cleanness, as if the rain had washed away not only the remnants of snow, but something more.

It had snowed just the day before, and the roads were so slippery then that I was afraid of an accident on the way to work. Now, suddenly, it was the moment that happens every year—though never in the same way or on the same day—when you suddenly feel things poised to change. The scurrying clouds, the tension in the air that comes with a thunderstorm, the difference in the light—all contributed to a feeling of movement and rebounding life. I could feel my spirits rising simply in response to that sky. I learned the importance of appreciating beauty where you find it a long time ago, but over the last year, I’ve become even more grateful for transcendent moments like this.

When you live in your car, you appreciate sitting under a solid roof and looking out at the rain from a dry place, as I did later in the evening at Starbucks. There were many times last summer when I had to sit up in the car until midnight before it was cool enough to go to sleep, but I was still enchanted by the sight of falling stars—and remembered to make a wish, you’d better believe it—during a meteor shower (for about two seconds, I imagined I was camping, but I couldn’t sustain it). I enjoyed the “nightlife” on whatever street I happened to be parked on: one night, it could be coyotes, the next night, it might be a prowling cat or a pair of opossums. I enjoyed looking at sunrises and the golden-leafed roof created by the autumn trees on one street. Most of the time, car camping is pretty miserable, so those fleeting moments of beauty stand out all the more. When you get a chance to try it, you’ll see what I mean.

This morning, the feeling of well-being persisted. I’m not normally a churchgoer, but I was stopped at a light and noticed a small red-brick church on the corner that I’d passed many times. In the mild sunshine (seemingly brighter and purer than it had been the day before), that little church looked so emblematic of Sunday morning that I wanted to write a story about it. It’s been a while since I had that Sunday morning feeling that’s an amalgam of peacefulness, restfulness, and a sensation of things having been freshly washed, but it was quite pleasant. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate that feeling.

There is a song from the musical Carousel that was sung at high school graduations when I was in school and may be still, for all I know. Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” has the lines: “At the end of a storm is a golden sky / And the sweet silver song of a lark.” I often think of the lark’s song when the sky clears after a storm, though I’ve never heard it. Last night, I could almost hear it. It was like that moment in The Polar Express when the hero boy rings the Christmas bell and senses he’s about to hear it for the first time. I’m not saying that there is any relation at all between this feeling and anything that’s about to happen: I’m only stating that I felt it and was glad I felt it.

Hey, Rodgers and Hammerstein? Songs of a lark? Hero boys and Christmas bells? I get it that it’s not hip and if you happen to be, say, a millennial, this is all hopelessly maudlin. (Maudlin itself being another old-fashioned word.) But if you ever find yourself suddenly on the edge of a dark wood after an extended sojourn within, you may remember reading this and have a different outlook. I’m not saying it’s certain, mind you. But it could happen.

I’m gonna have to say I think the good dinner had something to do with it, too, all those greens and that tilapia starting to course through my system. And then there was the vegan coconut pie . . . But that’s a different story entirely.

The Return of Wordplay

The way this blog post came about is as follows: I was doing something I’d never done, which was to play with Siri on my iPad. I was asking it things like “Show me a picture of Sam Neill” and “Play me the theme music from The Illusionist.” Then I graduated to facetious searches like “What’s the price of tea in China?” and “What is most Americans’ opinion of the CIA?” The first facetious search brought me an explanation of the derivation and meaning of the expression rather than an actual price (shoot, and there I was hoping to fool Siri into giving me a literal answer). The second facetious question brought back the following article: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/10/the-science-of-spying-how-the-cia-secretly-recruits-academics.

What started as playing around turned into something else as I read this article and thought about some of my experiences in academia, which include attending conferences. It also took me back to my reading of Ian McEwan’s novel Sweet Tooth, an eye-opening look at the methods used by British intelligence to recruit an unsuspecting writer to their ranks. The scariest thing about all of this is the deviousness of the methods used, which included a plant whose job was to subtly (very subtly) encourage the writer to express the type of views the spy agency wanted. His “handler” ended up falling in love with him, which didn’t prevent her from doing her job. Just imagine, you’re tooling along, doing your own thing (you think), when you find out that not only are you being used by the powers that be but that your lover, the closest person to you, is spying on you (while loving you at the same time, or so she says).

It so happens that I was also reading Theodora Goss’s novel, European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, which got me to thinking about the CIA in the first place. In this novel, a group of young women who have been victimized by the scientific experiments of such men as Drs. Moreau, Rappaccini, and Frankenstein end up banding together to fight the scientific society that has sponsored this research in the past and threatens to do so again. I started to stop reading the novel because I couldn’t tell where the author was going with such characters as Lucinda Van Helsing, who requires blood to feed (well, don’t look so squeamish—it doesn’t have to be human blood) and Count Dracula (and he’s one of the good guys). In this age of coded messages, fake news, and double entendres, one sometimes fears even to blink lest someone across the room mistake it as signal for God knows what. (It really is that bad. I take this opportunity to tell you in no uncertain terms that what I wear or what I eat or the way I walk has nothing to do with you.)

Maybe I’m wrong: maybe all the intelligence agencies, even the FBI, use these same methods. I can’t say that I can distinguish the methods of one agency from another, or even the methods of other countries’ spies from ours. I suspect a lot of them work in much the same way. My point is how horrifying I find all of this stuff. I can see subterfuge probably has its uses when you’re fighting crime, but it has no business intruding on the lives of private citizens. And yet, so much of what I read in this article seemed unsettlingly familiar to me.

How many times have I gone somewhere and had people talk to me as if they already knew me, dropping some small fact that they should have had no way of knowing? How often have I noticed someone sitting near me behaving erratically, with exaggerated movements or unnecessarily loud conversation as if everything depended on their getting my attention? How many years did I live in fear and discomfort due to the strange actions of my neighbors, who rode roughshod over my right to privacy and seemed not to recognize boundaries (up to and including a locked door)? How many times have I come out into a parking lot at night to face bright lights trained directly on my car? How many times have I noticed strangers lurking nearby? How many times have I been in fear of my life? How much has the quality of my life gone down over the last ten years? (Drastically—the normal life I remember from the past is as a distant dream.) How much time have I lost, how many things have I missed doing, how many people have I missed seeing, as a result of the way in which my life seems to have been hijacked with no explanation.

I’ll tell you what I have been doing: working at Home Depot and living in my car. Yes, I suppose I am a bit overqualified, but one thing I like about it is that I am dealing with tangible, verifiable objects. If someone is looking for a cabinet, I can point them in the right direction; I know where the shims are; I can explain the difference between an agitator and an impeller in a washing machine. When people ask me about these things, I answer them. The problem is I often feel that the conversation I’m having with them is not the same one they’re having, or think they’re having, with me. If you’re planning to come to Home Depot, let me save you some time: I sell appliances there, and that is ALL I do. I have no knowledge of any state secrets or any inside information on any crime investigations that may be or may have been ongoing. I have heard some strange rumors about things that may have occurred at my former place of employment, or more accurately, rumors of rumors. I have no actual knowledge and don’t want any; if you have information, take it to the authorities (of which I am not one).

I have not volunteered to work undercover, for any agency. I have not gone underground to write an investigative piece. I am not participating in a sting. I am not a candidate for the witness protection program, having witnessed nothing but a lot of B.S. and unconscionable behavior from people who seem certain they’re doing nothing wrong. I’m not planning on disappearing. I’m not insane (though it’s a miracle I’m not). I’m not getting married. I’m not looking to start a new life under a different name. I’m a writer and quite fond of my own name. I take experiences and use my imagination on them. I would object to having my work used, if I knew that was happening.

I’m looking to hold whoever is responsible for this mess to account and possibly to break their nose as well (the two goals not being mutually exclusive). My advice is not to act as if you know me if you don’t, not to pretend to be acting on my behalf, and not to call yourself my friend if you’re not. I have a long memory, and I don’t forget things.

I did finish Miss Goss’s book, and once I thought I saw where she was going with it, I approved. I believe her point about the need for personal autonomy and the importance of self-determination in one’s own life is a very salient one, though I winced at many points in the novel (a vampire is a vampire, people, no matter how nice his house is). Many of the characters are endearing, “freakish” though they may be. I suppose their state can be taken as a metaphor for many things, including the right to be different. I myself am an INFP, which means I’m used to being misunderstood. I used to think it was a tragedy, but I’m now inclined to think it a great blessing, as are perhaps one or two other of my other personal characteristics. People always think they have you figured out: they never do.

If My Boyfriend Was a State, He’d Be Texas

I realize I have missed writing my column for the last two weeks. Quite frankly, I have been dealing with the vagaries of not having a home, which involved traveling out of town and trying to figure out why things never seem to go the way I want them to and, in fact, go in the exact opposite direction every time. I’ve been the recipient of kindnesses as well as the receiver of some astoundingly unhelpful bad advice falling under the category of “With friends like these . . .” I got so disgusted with Lexington that I nearly lit out for California, traveled through Native American lands, visited friends in Texas, and decided I just couldn’t risk going through what I went through in California last summer again. I’m here in Lexington for now, may have landed a part-time job, and am hoping to get another one. Now, if you think it’s easy to keep producing a top quality blog week after week under conditions of homelessness and bankruptcy, I’ll be glad to let you try it. Otherwise, you’re getting no more from me. I will give you a freebie, though, before leaving you to your own devices. Your assignment is to read the Bhagavad Gita, if you haven’t done so already, without whining. Then, the next time you see me, I want you to tell me why you think I wanted you to read it. Then I’ll tell you the right answer.

By the way, the above title is not an indicator of any plan to move to Texas but merely an assertion based on my general impressions of that great state, the spirit of which even politicians and greedy bastards have not been able to kill. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this part of the conversation is not for you.

Get Your Butt Out of the Bardo and Come on Down

While driving around Lexington and environs lately, I’ve been fascinated by glimpses of streets and neighborhoods I don’t know well. I’ve been charmed by the number of small businesses and cafes popping up on North Limestone (NoLi, in the new local parlance, and aren’t we fancy these days?) and by views of numerous old houses with good bones that dot the city in offbeat locales. I admit to viewing any purportedly positive developments here with suspicion since I’m not a fan of the local government and have found life here challenging, to say the least, in recent years. Places, things, and people that used to seem simple no longer do, but still, I somehow manage to enjoy my old pastime of driving around neighborhoods and imagining if I could live in them. Since I moved from my old Nicholasville Road address, I’m constantly seeing Lexington from new angles.

I often ask myself: Do I see myself here? Or here? Or there? What about that street? I have a lingering fondness for the Arboretum (how can you not love such a beautiful place), but I balk at the idea of resettling in the neighborhood. I sometimes feel that I shouldn’t even be in Kentucky at all, having been cheated of my plan to live in California. When I see something about Los Angeles in the news or on TV, I feel something tugging at me. I like Kentucky, but it’s not what it used to be (was it ever?). I had hoped that a new job and a chance to experience another city, an idea long cherished before being acted on, would either cure me of the desire for change or show me that I was right all along. How anticlimactic to end up back in Lexington last August! (Though it was no doubt the wisest thing to do under the circumstances.)

I don’t believe all the people who keep talking to me about the changing workforce and economic conditions that have forced many people away from their intended careers. I always was an employer’s dream and still am. I deplore many of the current economic trends but do not think that accounts for what has happened to me. I was asked recently about my plans, and I was taken aback, since few of the plans that I have made recently, no matter how well thought out and prepared for, went the way they should have. But since I’m on the topic, I’ll just say this: If I could do whatever I want to do, I would be back in California with a plan to stay for at least a few years. I could always come back to Kentucky (or go somewhere else) if it didn’t take, and maybe by that time the bad influences here would have cleared out sufficiently to make life enjoyable again. Or perhaps I’d never want to come back here to live. I never got a chance to find out, but the question is still active.

There’s a good chance I wouldn’t even be working as a librarian if I could do whatever I wanted. I’ll always be a writer first and foremost, and it’s a shame I haven’t been able to make a living out of it since I left the newspaper years ago—though perhaps that will change. Here’s how I see myself in my ideal scenario: I’m continuing to write, but I’m making actual money from it. I’m teaching literature and writing, and I’m talking to people about my academic interests: mythology, culture, the written word, books, and information literacy. I’d love to travel like I used to. I’d like to study film and perhaps Irish and Welsh mythology (maybe now is the time to specialize). If I had the money, I’d like to live in California for most of the year, maybe coming back to Kentucky to teach a class in the summer, since summers are my favorite season here. I’d spend May traveling in Europe, doing research and eating pastries and chocolate. In September, I’d go back to California to work, write, and study. If I did come back to Kentucky in the summer, I might teach at U of L instead of UK. (Sorry, Lexington, but sometimes a change of pace is good; I’ve met my share of obnoxious undergraduates and law students here [and actually, people of all ages] so why on earth would I want to rinse and repeat if I didn’t have to?)

This is all pie in the sky right now. I’m staying with a friend in circumstances far from ideal and trying to figure out how to keep from losing my furniture, currently but-not-for-long safely in storage, and my bank account, currently empty. The thought of bringing everything back here, even if I could, roils my stomach. Since someone asked me, I thought I’d outline what I’d REALLY be doing if I weren’t stuck in the bardo. And it could still happen . . . you just never know, do you? Things can change in the blink of an eye, and I’ve seen it myself.

Rest assured that any changes in circumstance will be reported faithfully in this column, but right now, I don’t know when that will be. People are talking to me about moving into Section 8 housing like I’m supposed to be excited about it (sorry, I’m not, no more than I was a year ago). In the meantime, I try to maintain a positive attitude, and even though it’s not always easy, it’s perhaps not as difficult as it ought to be. You have no idea how hard it is to rattle me these days.

Reader’s Guide to a Headlong Flight

After years of studying the writings of others, I now have the experience of sending my own out into the ether. I know now that some of the questions I was used to asking about other writers’ influences and inspirations are, in my case, relatively easy to answer, while others are not. The question of what I might have been thinking about when I wrote last week’s blog post, “The Illustrated St. Agnes Eve,” goes back as far as my first reading in the early 1980s of John Keats’s famous poem on that same subject, although the entire answer isn’t that simple. I think it was a dream I had several years ago—recounted in a 2014 post called “Madeline’s Casement”—that first gave me the idea of writing a modern version of the Keats romance, loosely based on the superstitions surrounding St. Agnes Eve. But there is more to it than that.

I know I came up with the idea of setting my version in a modern urban skyscraper instead of a medieval castle sometime after having the dream, and I’ve been thinking about it for at least a couple of years. My original conception included the dinner party and the nightmarish escape of two people down the stairwell and out into the snowstorm; at some point, the little boy in the lobby appeared and wouldn’t let go of me, even though there is no character like him in Keats’s poem. I played around with the idea of both main characters arriving as guests at the same time, but I eventually decided that my first instinct to make the female character, at least, a long-term inhabitant  (or guest) was necessary to the story. She has been trapped in the place for some time, which creates a pent-up energy to escape that wouldn’t be there for someone newly arrived. Ralph is a catalyst to the action but doesn’t “belong” to the scene in the same way Estelle does; he instantly recognizes the danger, though, and joins forces with her.

There’s a certain vagueness in the way the tower is presented that’s not accidental: it seems at the same time to be an office tower and a place in which people live. It encompasses the lives of many people and not just a single family. Estelle knows that she has a long history with the place but that it has fallen under an evil influence that baffles and troubles her; it is as if, she, too, is under a spell whose power is partly broken by the arrival of Ralph, an outsider. The other inhabitants of the tower are either unaware of or untroubled by the peculiar miasma that enshrouds the building but is almost invisible.

In my story, Estelle dreams not of her future husband, as per tradition, but of her fellow dinner guests, a dream that encapsulates her feelings about the surreal atmosphere of the proceedings. I was inspired to put animal heads on the dinner guests by an exhibit of animal portraits I happened to catch from a bus window while visiting San Francisco some years ago. I still don’t fully understand why that exhibit affected me so strongly, although part of it must be the peculiar intelligence with which the artist had imbued his subjects. There was something almost human in their gazes, at least to my mind. I got the horses’ heads from an actual dream of my own in which statues of horses came to life, and I must have been thinking of Egyptian mythology when I put dogs’ heads on the rest of the guests.

My story is not a traditional romance in the way of Madeline and Porphyro, who run away to be together, but more of an instant attraction that becomes the vehicle for an escape from danger. Perhaps it will blossom later, but the immediate need is to get the hell out of Dodge. Estelle has the knowledge and the will (and a flashlight, modeled on one that I actually own); Ralph has the clear view of someone newly arrived on the scene and is more certain of the way out. He is a sort of “Virgil” to Estelle’s “Dante,” and the extended vertical escape is in some ways more reminiscent of The Inferno than of Keats’s romance. I have long been captivated by the Dantean geography that begins in a dark wood and ends in a climb out of hell to a view of the familiar night sky: “E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” (“and so we emerged, to see—once more—the stars”) [Mandelbaum translation, Inf. 34.139]. It was from this line that I derived Estelle’s name, after considering several others with celestial connotations. Ralph’s name is a derivative that is probably a bit more obscure but may be a story for another time.

Estelle’s “suite” is loosely based on my memory of the rooms in my “Madeline’s Casement” dream, although none of the other particulars of that dream have made their way into this story. It was more the feeling and the tone of the dream, rather than its details, that survive here. When I started typing, my caps lock feature came on accidentally, which gave me the idea of playing a bit with the typeface in a manner reminiscent of John Barth in “Lost in the Funhouse.” I also had Franz Kafka’s “The Hunter Gracchus” in mind both for its existentialism and its brevity. The main rule I had in mind while writing the story was to keep things simple and not over-complicate matters.

So if this isn’t a romance, what is it? That seems like a good question to leave up to readers. To me, it’s a short story of epic proportions, but that’s probably just because it has so much personal resonance, deriving in part from dreams and in part from other poems that have loomed so large in my imagination—and maybe in no small part from the time in which we live. The illustration is from the Tarot of Marseille, which bears no real relation to superstitions surrounding the Eve of St. Agnes but that came to my mind as representing the urgency of an escape (or a fall) from a high place. It is probably both. These Tarot images are not only in the public domain but have the advantage of carrying an archetypal energy that suits the movement of the story.

The Illustrated St. Agnes Eve

(A Short Story)

It’s a dinner party, but she isn’t sure how she came to be there. It seems to have been going on forever, as if she had strayed into the Mad Hatter’s tea party and is unaccountably unable to find her way to daylight EVER AGAIN. Much nonsense is spoken by various guests, and little sense, BUT SHE SUSPECTS A METHOD TO THE MADNESS. What that may be, though, she does not know.

The dining table resembles a conference table, around which the guests are assembled. Does she live here? Was she invited? The answers to these questions are vague, though she has the sense that what was once a familiar place has suffered a sea-change, becoming nearly unrecognizable. It’s difficult to say what’s different, but the atmosphere is no longer welcoming. The house is cold, and a mist seems ever to creep from the corners, hanging in the air like a gray film that impedes clear sight. No one else seems bothered. They all speak loudly, some with high-pitched voices, and they all seem to know just what they are about, though no doubt some of them, at least, are wrong (confidence not always being commensurate with correctness). She once lived here, she thinks, but she walked through an invisible door one day and came out the other side to a place where everything had shifted an infinitesimal degree. That has made, as the poet said, all the difference.

She is on the 52nd floor of the mansion, that she knows. The dining room is in the center of the building and has no windows. Her bedroom is dark, with expensive tapestry hangings and heavy wooden furniture, but she can see the road below. Her car, looking like a Matchbox toy, is parked on the other side of the street, next to a greensward filled with leafless trees. If she could find her way down, she could leave, but she can never remember where the door is, and any time she asks about it, it is as if no one can hear her.

“Kindly point me to the nearest exit,” she might say. “Please pass the salt,” responds her neighbor. “Do you think it will rain tomorrow?”

(Of course it will rain. It rains nearly every day. Not to be unkind, but you know, that’s a really stupid question.)

Tonight, though, she sees a face that she may or may not have seen before. He sits at the other end of the table and may have been there for a while. She isn’t sure. He looks a little out of place among the company. HERE’S WHY: his face is stern and lined, but his eyes look alive. He does not look as if he is dreaming, like the other guests. He looks as if he is aware of himself and everything around him.

Here is a brief description of the company: a woman in an evening gown wearing a tiara tilted at a rakish angle; a suave gentleman with highly brilliantined dark hair, parted in the middle; a pale woman in black with red lips and scarlet nails who speaks in cultured tones and drinks champagne from a tea cup; a dandy with magnetic eyes and a foppish air; a soft-spoken, dark-skinned man who sports brightly colored ties and smells of expensive cologne; a drunken priest who may actually be an archbishop; a plastic surgeon with the whitest smile imaginable and beautifully manicured hands; a fast-talking man with a huge appetite who talks incessantly of real estate; a government man with big ears, a black suit, and a black tie who cracks his knuckles occasionally. And of course, herself, and the man with the lined face, who wears dark pants, a white shirt, and a leather jacket. Without moving a muscle, he is instantly more masculine than the other seven men combined. How does that work?

She would not mind talking to him, but he is several seats away from her. The evening passes in a blur.

That night, in her room, she looks out upon a world consisting entirely of a swirling snowstorm. (When it doesn’t rain, it usually snows. Fog is also a possibility in these parts.) The wind whistles around the corners of the building, occasionally rising in force to a near-shriek and then subsiding. It has been winter for as long as seven years now, she is nearly certain. The moon is a pale luminescence barely visible through the storm. She gets into bed and dreams.

Here is what she dreams of: her fellow dinner guests! (Proof positive that that St. Agnes superstition stuff doesn’t work.) One has the head of a wolf; another, the head of an owl. Still another bears the face of a tiger, and the next one, a gorilla. The rest are an assortment of horses and dogs heads. Huh? She does not see the man with the lines in his face and has a feeling (in the dream) that he has never really been there. It’s a sad thought. But she’s only dreaming.

Suddenly, she is awake. Just like that. Her eyes are open, and she is looking at the ceiling, a wilderness of tracery in an old-fashioned room. She gets up. I have to get dressed, she is thinking. She knows with a certainty that she should. She goes into the fussy, well-appointed bathroom and washes her face, even applying lipstick. She goes back to her room and puts on the clothes she had left out for the next day, noticing that her bag is already packed. I seem to have already decided to leave, she thinks. Then she remembers: the bag has been packed for a long time.

There is a knock; when she answers, the man with the lined face is standing in the hallway.

“I want to get out of here,” she says, without preamble. “My bag is packed, but I can’t find the door. It’s like ‘The Hotel California’ with inferior weather.”

“I know where the door is,” he says, “but my cell phone doesn’t work here, and I can’t imagine getting a taxi in this storm.”

“I have a car,” she says. “But how did you get here?”

“I was invited. But I only arrived yesterday.”

“There’s something wrong here, but I’m not sure what it is. I’ve been trying to understand it.”

“I agree with you,” he says. “Is there an elevator?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t work.”

“Then the stairs it is. Shall we go?”

She picks up her bag. They TIP-TOE DOWN THE HALL. At the end of a long corridor, they turn right into a small alcove in which a heavy door is set. At that exact moment, the dim light in the ornamental sconce next to the door goes out. Standing there in darkness, she says, “Wait, I have a flashlight.” There is a noise of fumbling. Then a whirring, mechanical sound. Then there is a small light. She is holding a pink plastic flashlight shaped like a pig. “I have to crank the battery to charge it up,” she explains. “I’m surprised it still works.”

He winks at her and pushes the door, which opens into a concrete stairwell with a metal railing painted blue. The door closes softly behind them, and they listen for a moment. All is silent. NOTHING IS STIRRING, or so it seems.

“I have a feeling,” he says to her, “that it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

“Probably,” she says. “But the only way out is down. We may as well start.”

So they tread lightly down the stairs, guided by the tiny light of the plastic torch. There are no floor numbers on the landings, but sometimes there are noises—cries, whispers, shouts, explosions; sometimes there are snatches of music, sometimes there is a rumbling in the walls, as if they are just outside a theater with an action feature playing at top volume. She feels that to open most of these doors would be to risk heartbreak, even the ones that are ominously silent, so they press steadily on, placing their feet cautiously. It seems to take hours. She is beginning to wonder if the staircase goes all the way to the center of the earth when they come to a place where there are no more stairs. He pushes the door open, and they are faced with a grand marble lobby with a ticking clock, a checkerboard floor, and mullioned panes on either side of a massive front door. The expanse of the lobby seems endless, as if they are contemplating crossing the prairie instead of an entrance hall. They hear the wind howling faintly beyond the building’s heavy walls.

They have just stepped into the hall when they see that they are not alone. A young boy, shivering, looks up at them from the shadow of the grand staircase that sweeps up to a mezzanine. He is about eight years old.

“Can you take me home?” he says. “Please, I want to go home.”

“Where is your mother?” she asks. “She wouldn’t want you to go with strangers, you know.” (But she sure wouldn’t want you here, either.)

“She isn’t here,” he says, insistently. “Please. She lives in Brooklyn. I know she’s wondering where I am, but I can’t get to her. I can tell you how to get there.”

The man looks at her. He is deferring to her, since she is the driver.

“Yes,” she says. “We’ll take you home. Though it would be better if your mother came to pick you up.”

“She could never find her way here,” says the little boy. (Which may be true.)

There is a lull in the storm, and it is as if the building is listening. The three of them hurry across a marble floor so highly polished that it is almost like a skating rink, and the big front door seems miles away, and someone is sure to stop them, but no—they scramble across the expanse, the door opens, and they are out in the storm, disappearing into it the moment they leave the threshold. On the other side of the street, her car is buried in snow, but they knock the worst of it off. She puts her key in the ignition, and the car starts, a reassuringly normal sound in the Stygian darkness. As they scrape the ice off the windshield and the boy climbs into the backseat, the man says to her:

“We haven’t been properly introduced—my name is Ralph.”

And she says, “I’m Estelle. I’m glad to meet you. Now let’s go.”

Then they get into the car and drive away, the mansion disappearing behind them like a mirage in the storm. They find a good indie rock station, and life instantly gets a lot better. (This version does not record what happened to the old beadsman or Madeline’s nurse, since they are not in this story. We presume the hare hopped off to a warm fireside.) OK?

Watching People Multitask at the Oscars

Sunday night I watched the Academy Awards, despite not having seen any of the nominated films. In years past, I found the Oscars occasionally entertaining but mostly annoying (and often embarrassing). I often wondered why the Oscars came off in such a clunky fashion when they’re meant to celebrate the movie industry—shouldn’t the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, of all people, be able to pull off a polished awards show? In the end, though, I guess some people are more comfortable than others in front of live audiences, and some people do better than others at reading jokes they didn’t write. Sometimes, I watched with the sound turned off so I didn’t have to listen to people limp through lame jokes and look ill-at-ease. All I really wanted was to see who was there, what they were wearing, and who would win the big honors.

Now I look back at those days with longing. This year’s awards show was groomed till it barely had a hair out of place—everything seemed to have been calibrated to within a millionth of an inch, but any sense of fun or spontaneity appeared (to me) to be lacking. I longed for someone to fumble their lines and appear to be something other than an automaton or a walking billboard. Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoyed seeing who was there and admiring the gowns, which, if anything, are distinctly more tasteful than they used to be. My problem is that instead of movie stars being movie stars, everyone seems to be busy representing something. I’ve got no problems with people speaking up about issues that are important to them, especially when they affect the movie industry, but I mainly watch the Oscars to be entertained, and I thought everybody else did too (but maybe not).

There are probably just as many fine people in the film industry as there are anywhere else, and I feel that most of them are well-intentioned, but that doesn’t mean their opinions about the state of the world today are any better informed than anyone else’s. I feel that most of the media and entertainment outlets today are the source of misinformation that at its worst is no better than propaganda and that some of the people propagating it may not even be aware of what they’re doing. They are passing along information or putting out ideas that they may or may not have formed in good faith but that in any case go beyond the purpose of entertainment and/or the creation of art.

I had this discussion with someone the other night. Plainly stated, I feel that any artist, no matter what his medium, is only responsible for doing the best artistic work he or she is capable of. I don’t think all entertainment rises to the level of “art,” and that’s perfectly OK. Some people aspire only to entertain but occasionally rise to the level of art because they transcend the limits of the ordinary. Sometimes art has a “message,” but not always. Sometimes, you’re just looking at what happens when someone sets out to create something, and whether it “means” anything or not is an open question.

There’s a poem I first read in graduate school in the form of a note of apology from someone who ate plums someone else had left in the refrigerator. It reads very much like a note you might actually leave for someone in such a circumstance, except for the cadence of the language and the placement of the words in lines. So what does it mean? In my opinion, it doesn’t so much “mean” anything other than to reveal that by looking at ordinary things in a certain way, you can transform them into art—or maybe the art is already there and all you’re doing is cutting away the extraneous material to reveal what’s already present. I’m not an art theoretician, but I can see it working either way.

What I do know is that art is one thing and advertising is something else (not that advertising can’t have great artistic merit, because it can). What’s different is the underlying purpose of art versus advertising. Art exists for its own sake, though it may also delight you, horrify you, or make you think. Advertising is an attempt to sell you something, and propaganda is a particularly sneaky form of it. My wish is that people would just go back to what it is they are good at doing and leave off the propaganda. I think propaganda has long had a place in popular culture, so it’s really nothing new, but its uses have been especially egregious in recent years. How about if we left advertising to ad people, news to news people, entertainment to entertainment people, and art to artists? My feeling is that everyone is so busy multitasking that news, entertainment, literature, and many other things have been muddied so that you no longer know what you’re looking at. Occasionally, an authentic voice breaks through the fog, if it can manage to make itself heard in the din, but we’re living in a very noisy world.

I’m not against movies (or books) with messages. What I’m against is propaganda masquerading as entertainment and news, and people running around saying things when they don’t know what they’re talking about. Rather than asking for “more matter with less art,” like Hamlet’s mother, I think what I’d really like to see, at least from Hollywood, is more art and less matter. Then it might be fun to go to the movies again (if I could afford it). What Sunday night’s Academy Awards really needed, in my opinion, was for Cher to show up in one of her trademark over-the-top outfits and throw everybody on their ear, as in days of old. On the other hand, if more journalists were out there actually doing their jobs, perhaps people in Hollywood wouldn’t feel as if they had to do it for them, which I suspect is what happens on occasion. So maybe it’s really the journalists I have a beef with, and not the movie people (or at least, not all of them).

Don’t mind me. I get cranky when I’m in the bardo for years at a time. But could somebody see about getting Cher back into the loop for next year’s show? Or at least the girl with the swan outfit?

The Glamorous Life

This past week, I finished reading Therese Anne Fowler’s Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, a fictionalization of the lives of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, as well as Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, his own novel based on actual events from the couple’s life together. It was a similar experience to my reading a couple of years ago of The Paris Wife and The Sun Also Rises (the former a novel about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife and the latter Hemingway’s fictionalized account loosely based on the marriage). I’m not sure I have anything more profound to say about it than the fact that, 1.) yes, your perspective of events really does shift depending on the point of view of the person telling the story; 2.) being a world-famous literary figure ain’t all it’s cracked up to be; 3.) marriage sounds like a pretty tough bargain even for (and maybe especially for) the rich and famous; and 4.) those people sure did drink a lot.

I felt rather sorry for Zelda as I was reading Z; she is portrayed as a woman with talents and aspirations of her own who languishes in the shadow of her husband’s literary fame, loving and resenting him at the same time. I don’t know how closely this hews to the actual truth of the matter, but one can sympathize with the fictionalized Zelda’s concern about preserving her own identity. Mr. Fitzgerald comes off rather badly, appearing to be insecure to the point of jeopardizing his wife’s mental health for the sake of maintaining his hold over her. Mr. Hemingway is also portrayed unsympathetically in this telling as a friend to the couple who is really a friend to neither.

But here’s the thing: in both The Sun Also Rises and Tender Is the Night, I was awed by the artistry that enabled each author to use painful (one presumes) personal events as the raw materials of a great work of literature. It seemed to me that, regardless of how closely the events of the novels matched reality or how self-centered or egotistical each author may (or may not) have been in real life, both writers became selfless in the process of writing. Both Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hemingway “disappeared” inside their works, which seemed not so much self-referential as the result of a transmutation of lived experiences into art. In other words, I didn’t see either novel as an attempt at self-justification; both of them are tragedies that transcend the personal to reach the level of the universal.

Aside from that, of course, are the personal reactions of the authors’ acquaintances who may have seen themselves reflected in the novels and been hurt or dismayed by what they saw there. As I read The Sun Also Rises, I wondered how the first Mrs. Hemingway might have felt about her husband’s alter-ego, Jake, being portrayed as impotent and whether or not she took that personally. I also wondered whether Mrs. Fitzgerald would have resented the way in which her struggle with mental illness was incorporated into the events of Tender Is the Night, in which the wife becomes, in part, the instrument of her husband’s undoing. Finding oneself transformed into a literary character, no matter how celebrated, isn’t necessarily a cause for celebration. I’m not sure I would take too well to it myself.

Those of us reading the novels of Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hemingway at a distance may not be aware of the interplay between real life and imagined events that may have been a cause of joy or sorrow for the participants, but we can imagine the discomfort of finding oneself in the spotlight as a result of proximity to famous writers. So does the creation of a great work of art justify offending someone or possibly invading his or her privacy? It’s a real question but not one that’s easily answered. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t envy the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, or those within their orbit. Glamorous, well-traveled, and well-connected they may have been, but their lives did not seem particularly happy to me. It’s certainly possible to live both a creative life and a happy one, but I don’t look to these folks as examples of that. A life with less glitter and more happiness seems to me infinitely preferable.

A Wordplay Travel Column: Know Before You Go

Salvation Army Shelter
Caters to: Single Women, Families
Number of Stars: 1
Dining Facility: Yes
Amenities: Laundry on Premises; Free Parking; No Swimming Pool; No Wi-Fi

The Salvation Army isn’t quite what I expected. It starts with the other residents, who in many cases don’t match my idea of folks you’d expect to meet in a shelter. It’s a bit like the experience I had last spring when I jumped through the social services hoops to get a Medicaid card: many of the people in the agency office looked like they’d been sent over from central casting. I’m serious. I’m not making fun of the plight of homeless people in any way when I say this but am merely observing that doing double-takes is a nearly daily occurrence for me. There could be several reasons for this, but I’ll allow you to make what you will of it. After all, if I’m in a homeless shelter, nearly anybody could be, and it seems likely that they are, based on what I’ve seen.

The SA differs from your typical lodging experience in the number of rules and regulations imposed on residents. It has almost a quasi-military flavor, as if you were lodging in a barracks rather than a shelter. I won’t say there aren’t reasons for some of these rules, but they seem to be applied somewhat haphazardly, so that you might get dinged for something someone else does on a regular basis. The main complaint I hear from other residents regards this inconsistency.

My main complaint in the first few days was about how seriously people seemed to sweat what I considered to be small stuff, and how disrespectfully some of the staff and other residents acted toward me regarding things that didn’t really seem to matter. I have one roommate who was apparently unnerved by the presence of an opened (dry) umbrella I had placed on my bunk to keep it out of the way, an episode that escalated into a threat of expulsion for yours truly. I don’t know if my experience is typical, but I can imagine someone coming in here with fewer inner resources than I have ending up bullied and depressed very quickly. This seems like the opposite of what a social services agency ought to be doing, because don’t you want to build people up rather than tear them down? Again, I’m not sure how typical my experience is, but I have been leery of getting too involved with the culture or resources on offer here.

Some people say they don’t like the food, but although it’s a bit too heavy on the starch, there are days when it’s rather tasty. I haven’t been poisoned yet, though I do avoid the Kool-Aid flavored drinks. We’re not talking about Dinner at Antoine’s, after all. It’s communal dining typical of a school cafeteria. I eat a fair amount of doughnuts for dessert and must assume the SA has a generous donor from that industry. I don’t make a big deal out of what’s on the menu, I just eat it; from past experience, I know food service isn’t the easiest job in the world.

The lack of privacy is one of the worst aspects of being there. There just isn’t any place to go to be really alone, but as I told someone, in some ways it’s not much worse than my last apartment. I never really felt I was alone there, either, with the intrusiveness of my neighbors breaking in on me even when I had closed my own door behind me. There is something in the SA experience that reminds me of the almost cult-like place my apartment building had become in the last few years I was there (due in part, I felt, to the presence of several members of a Christian youth organization who lived and/or worked on the property). I seem to get a whiff of the same quasi-religious, quasi-military atmosphere at SA, and if I were an investigative reporter, I would probably dig into it a little further. Could be a story there.

The worst aspect for me has undoubtedly been the people I have in my room. It’s as if someone took all the worst neighbors I had on Nicholasville Road and handed them to me for roommates. Now, you know Wordplay doesn’t like to exaggerate, and furthermore I am not a mental health expert, but it doesn’t take one to know when someone has boundary issues that are serious enough to indicate possible psychosis. I’m not saying, though, that I would necessarily do better by trading some of them out. I’ve encountered other guests who seem to be a couple of pencils short of a pack as well. I’m not talking about the type of personality clashes you always see when people live together but something more troubling, something that goes beyond the simplistic notion of just getting along with others. Do you, after all, really want to get along well with someone with criminal tendencies? Well, do you?

I actually like some of the people, although I have a suspicion that many of them are other than what they appear to be, and I tend to think this is not a good thing when I myself am exactly what I appear to be. It gives me the feeling that I’m a part of something that I never signed up for, and that is disheartening. I wish you could see some of these folks; they run the gamut from a girl who looks like a sorority sister fresh out of the Chi Omega house to a woman who resembles just the sort of person you’d meet at a Pacifica cocktail party or soirée at the Getty Villa to someone reminiscent of your grandmother or great-aunt. There are also a number of mothers with young children, people with tattoos, and some who really do resemble what you probably think a homeless person looks like, though some of them are surprisingly sharp dressers.

Customer service runs the gamut from harsh to indifferent to friendly, but again, things are not always what they appear to be, so take it as you will. Obviously, it’s not a five-star experience, and it’s surprisingly difficult to get paper towels in the bathroom, something that is of more import to me than, say, free tickets to the Met, but I try to make the best of it. Based on my experience so far, I am likely to leave the place with fewer items than I went in with (who steals underwear, for God’s sake?), but it is what it is (whatever that is), and perhaps my next hotel experience will be more to my liking.

Is He or Isn’t He?

It’s funny, I remember when I first started going to Los Angeles, I felt I was somewhat deficient in the celebrity-spotting game. I mean, I never recognized anyone. I wasn’t sure whether I just wasn’t going to the right places (which seemed probable), whether celebrities out and about had ways of disguising themselves, or whether I just really didn’t have an eye for it. I finally had a little success in that area when I thought I spotted Martin Short at LAX after one of the flight attendants said he was on our plane. Another time, I thought I saw Justin Timberlake in the first-class cabin of the flight I was on (if it was Mr. Timberlake, I actually spoke to him in the boarding line without knowing who he was). Then, at last, a positive ID on Steve Martin, who was having dinner in a Montecito restaurant one evening when I was there with some classmates (though I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to spot him if someone else hadn’t pointed him out first).

Since then, there have been a number of instances when I thought I saw someone famous, but in almost every case there was something a little odd about it. You no doubt remember Inception, the film about labyrinths within labyrinths inside the multiple layers of reality of a consciousness experiment. This was a little bit like that, only more amusing. For example: there is a coffeehouse I sometimes went to in Santa Monica, a funky place with very little (let’s say no) gloss to it. I was in there one day some years ago and saw someone who looked so much like Frances McDormand that I was almost positive it was she, the only problem being, she was dressed like a bag lady. I looked on in wonder, a bit bemused by what I was seeing, not sure what to make of it. Was she in character for a role? Was that what’s considered “method acting”? Did she ever make that picture?

I didn’t know, but that’s not the only time something like that has happened. On that same trip, in the spring of 2011, I thought I saw Viggo Mortensen (you know, “Strider”) one night while I was waiting to cross a street near downtown Santa Monica. I was minding my own business when a large group of cyclists came cruising down the street, and in the middle of them, with blond hair shining like a beacon and eyes bright as stars, was a fellow who looked remarkably like Mr. Mortensen—not that I have ever met him—if he had bleached his hair blond and cut it short. The strange thing in that instance was that he did look at me as if he knew me, and as I remember even called out a greeting. Maybe he’s just a friendly person, if he was the genuine article, but the point is, there was something cinematic and a little bizarre about the whole experience.

Finding yourself on a sidewalk late on a balmy spring evening in L.A. and seeing an entire peloton suddenly appear, bearing along a smiling, fair-haired, mischievous-looking elven king in their midst, is the type of thing that you can almost count on happening in L.A., and that was one of the things I once enjoyed about it, in small doses. Life at home seemed to lack this cinematic quality. It was like a little movie playing out before your eyes, so quickly that if you blinked you’d definitely miss it, and even if you didn’t blink, you still wouldn’t be quite sure of what you had seen. It was magical realism at its best.

Now, last summer, the very first thing that happened when I got off the final freeway on my trip to L.A. was that I saw a crowd of people waiting to cross a street. I believe I was officially in Atwater Village when this happened, not Hollywood, but I heard a voice I thought I recognized. Looking over, I thought I saw John Cusack in the midst of a group of young people. I’ll admit I was sort of staring because it just seemed like peculiar timing to exit the freeway after driving cross-country and immediately fetch up against a celebrity. They’re not that thick on the ground. Mr. Cusack didn’t look in my direction, but one of the young people with him did turn his head and smile at me with what I would almost have described as a complicit smile. It gave me the feeling that my summer was going to be cinematic in that wonderful way I remember experiencing occasionally on past trips. Wrong. This past summer was anything but that. I felt I was lucky to get back to Kentucky in one piece, which only happened because I sized up the situation and faced the facts: I didn’t want to be broke in L.A. (By the way, the film I most associate with Mr. Cusack is The Grifters, if that means anything to you.)

But that was not to be the only cinematic experience I had. There was the day I was riding the Metro Red Line and sat down across from a fellow that I could have sworn was Robin Williams. Yes, I know he died. But here’s my dilemma: I am forced to make a choice between believing in two different versions of reality, both of which cannot be true at the same time. Either Mr. Williams is really dead and has an Asian doppelgänger who rides the L.A. Metro smiling mysteriously at nothing, or Mr. Williams is not dead and rides the L.A. Metro disguised as a highly amused Asian commuter. You’ll have to decide for yourself which is more likely, but since I was there, I have to tell you honestly that at that moment I was sure I was looking at Robin Williams.

But to what end, you may ask? That’s a good question. I will say, apropos of this experience, that I remarked to someone a couple of years ago that there seemed to be an awful lot of major celebrities dying right and left. There were so many of these deaths that I almost wondered if some of these folks might be working for the government. Both the FBI and the CIA have a presence in Hollywood, which would naturally include undercover agents. A few years ago, I was disturbed by a presentation at a professional conference that detailed the ways in which Hollywood partners with the CIA to market the agency’s work. Now, I’m not saying the CIA doesn’t do some good things, but what bothers me is not only the propaganda angle but the fact of secrecy and disguises. It’s the whole Inception phenomenon: what’s real here, and what isn’t? For that matter, spies could be working for another government, which would make it even worse. Just because someone looks and sounds like an American doesn’t mean he or she is one. It’s a picture show, right?

What if you were married to an undercover agent? Would you even know it? Could you go your entire life being married to someone who wasn’t really who they said they were at all? Is that right? Is it ethical? I’m sure the government could present a list of reasons for having to work this way that would sound reasonable. I’m also aware that the majority of their employees do not work undercover but live rather ordinary existences and have desk jobs. I personally couldn’t stand to work undercover, not that I have much talent for it. Honesty in relationships is too important to me for anything like that to have the remotest possible appeal, and if you think about it, I think you’ll see what I mean. How would you feel if you’d been married to a spy (and possibly not even an American spy), duped so that everything you thought was solid in your life was nothing but an illusion? How disorienting and confusing would that be? How cheated would you feel? Would you ever be able to trust anyone again?

I gather I am not the only one who looks askance at the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies over this type of thing, because not long ago I saw a list of Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies ranked according to the level of trust the American public had in them, and the CIA was at or near the bottom. Espionage is just too spooky for most people, and I include myself among them. I associate espionage with getting thrown off the back of a train or having to escape hotel rooms through a back window just in time to avoid an explosion—the kind of stuff you see in movies, but not the kind of movies that generally appeal to me.

I can’t imagine giving up my identity to take on an entirely new life. Whether that is the explanation for the dead celebrity phenomenon or not, I have no idea. I do know that the magical moments I’m speaking of no longer seem restricted to L.A.: the separation between life in California and life in Kentucky no longer seems to hold, as I’ve found myself doing double-takes here more than once. Was that Benedict Cumberbatch I saw? Was it Rosie O’Donnell? Was it Prince? Here in Lexington? As actors, they would certainly be naturals for taking on undercover assignments, or perhaps it would be the other way around—they are undercover agents first, so that’s why they’ve become entertainers. I am only using these instances as examples; I don’t know why the celebrity phenomenon seems to have descended on Lexington, only that I have had some strange encounters.

See how confusing it is? By the way, I make no claim to knowing whether any of these people are living or dead, employed by the government or not. If someone is reported as dead, I assume that they are. Otherwise, life just becomes too confusing. My recommendation to you is that if you think you see someone who really shouldn’t be there, be careful. Makeup, plastic surgery, disguises, and imagination can create some powerful illusions. Maybe Robin Williams really is working undercover, but you know what? If he is, I don’t want to know about it. Save that kind of thing for the big screen . . . Ordinary life, I have always found, is challenging enough, the caveat being, if I turn out to have some kind of history unknown to me (if it turns out that I really am related to British royalty, not a development that I would welcome, but if it happened)—you would not see me moving to Britain and assuming the throne. I’m an American, after all, a Democrat, a Southerner, and a writer, and I have my own life. I probably shouldn’t tell you in advance what I would do, but since we’re speaking of play-acting and all that goes with it, it would not involve listening to other people whispering in my ear all day long and taking their suggestions. It would more likely run to selling off a few castles to pay for my retirement, sending people to gaol, that type of thing. It would, in fact, probably make pretty good cinema.

Isn’t play-acting wonderful?

See You In Court

You know us here at Wordplay—we try to take things in stride. Sometimes, though, it becomes difficult to say, “Oh, well” in the face of yet another run of inconceivable bad luck. I am now at the point of inflicting myself on the charitable organizations of Lexington. You may find it hard to believe that anyone with Wordplay’s credentials could be unemployed for so long—I find it difficult to believe myself. If I post one more update to Facebook about my job search, I run the risk of boring myself to distraction, but I continue to do it because I’m still looking.

I have had a number of bizarre things happen to me in my job search, including being told by more than one public library system that I didn’t score high enough on their tests to be a viable candidate (essentially an impossibility for someone with over twelve years of professional experience) and having someone hang up on me during a telephone interview with a university in Montana (true story). I have seen jobs I applied for and didn’t get either go unfilled or get re-posted several months later. I have been turned down by fast food restaurants. I had a temp agency all but refuse to take my resume (that was here in Lexington). I had another temp agency in one of the largest cities in the world tell me that they just couldn’t help me because they didn’t have enough job orders (during the summer, no less).

I was telling someone the other day not only how strange it is that I’ve been unemployed so long but how incurious most people are when I tell them—no one will admit to it being strange, or very few of them, anyway. I occasionally run across a clear-thinking person who shakes his head or looks incredulous, though I’ve also had people act as if I’m asking for something unreasonable in wanting a normal working life. When someone at my hotel said something to me recently about being a “special guest,” I had to go back and ask what that was about because it puzzled me. Why did they think I was “special”? I know nothing about it. I’m not royalty (any more than you are, I suppose), I’m not in the witness protection program, I’m not working undercover, and I don’t have anyone else paying for my expenses. If I did, I wouldn’t be in debt as far as I am (a situation I’m unused to).

It’s possible that something could still open up, possibly by the time I’ve lost all my belongings because I can’t pay the storage fees or have ruined my health by catching the flu or something worse in a homeless shelter. I remain positive because that’s the way I prefer to be, despite being giving absolutely no reason to stay positive by external events. I am occasionally startled to get a notice about the status of a job I applied for months ago, so who know, maybe I’ll be surprised one of these days by a positive response. It’s ironic that I’m right back where I was a year ago after all the effort it took to move myself and my belongings to Los Angeles (no job for the faint of heart, let me tell you). I’m not opposed to going back; I’m not opposed to staying here. I would like to know, though, why so many otherwise sane-seeming people persist in thinking Limbo is a good place for me to be.

I suspect this will all end up in court one of these days, so I’m prepared for that. I will tell you one thing. I applied again and again for positions here at the Lexington Public Library over the years and didn’t get a peep of interest from them, even when I was willing to take things below my pay grade. While I need a job (and have been reasonable in my expectations), I’m kind of glad that one didn’t work out. As a patron, I’ve seen so many examples of unprofessionalism here that I don’t know if I could bring myself to work with these people. As a librarian myself, I’m a good judge of that, but a blind person could see that there’s something wrong with a place where librarians think they can abuse patrons with impunity. I sometimes wonder if some of these people even are librarians; I kind of doubt it. If they are, it must be the case that they’ll let anybody into library school these days.

Another thing I’m unwilling to do is work for another law firm. Although I liked many aspects of my job and most of the people there, it did not turn out to be a safe place to be, and I’ve had my fill of that. (I do have some standards, a concern for personal safety being chief among them.)

I read a good book this week and was considering doing a review of it, so I may do that next week, if I haven’t caught some dread disease at the homeless shelter . . . or I may regale you with tales of life at the bottom of the barrel. It’s hard to say at this point. But whatever happens, you can be sure I’ll tell you what I think.

Well, That Was a Mistake

Haven’t we been here before? I wasn’t going to watch President Trump’s State of the Union address because I didn’t have much enthusiasm for what he might say, but in the end, I felt it was my duty as a citizen (and also, I was a little curious to see the reactions of the others in the room with him). When I turned the TV on, the President was still shaking hands with people and hadn’t begun speaking yet. When he did begin speaking, I listened intently for a while before the “yada, yada, yada” just became too much, and I couldn’t take it seriously any more. Just one more politician full of pretty words and short on substance, and it’s a tragedy.

Since I was critical of President Obama when he was in office and didn’t hold back on what I thought, I think it’s only fair to say that having given President Trump the benefit of the doubt for a while, I’m no longer doing so. In fact, by the end of his speech, I was calling out to the people in the room with him, as if they could hear me, “Don’t believe a word he says!” Despite not agreeing with his rhetoric, tone, or policies, I had been hoping that the President was actually intending to use his power to achieve some good. But a long year has come and gone and I’ve seen nothing but events and actions that alarm me, so I’ve had to conclude that his story is, unfortunately, one of Might makes Right. Mr. Trump evidently undertook to become president for purely selfish reasons, and I don’t see a good end to this story.

I told someone last summer that I was hoping Mr. Trump’s presidency would run more along the lines of an Oskar Schindler story than Lord of the Flies—although it had already begun to resemble the latter. Having seen so many examples of people who looked OK on the outside but were no good inside, I was hoping that he might turn out to be someone who went against type and tried to accomplish something good despite looking like a blowhard. It would have made a much better story if the brash and egotistical businessman had turned out to be a doer of good deeds in disguise, but I’m afraid the only way I’m going to get an outcome like that is to write the story myself. It’s a pity, because it would have been such a good one had it turned out to be true.

I’m glad I watched the address because the contrast between what the President was saying and reality as I know it was so strong that the dissonance eventually became too much, and that was very telling. I had started to wonder what the President was up to when FBI Director James Comey was fired last spring, but since it was only a few months into his term, I decided to wait and see. That was a strange thing to do, it seemed to me, and the reasons Mr. Trump gave for doing it didn’t make any sense, but having been disappointed by politicians of my own party for so many years, I was hoping that someone else might have something to offer. Alas for that.

As in times past, I ended up creating an impromptu soundtrack to go with the address, though I only started doing it during the latter half, so it’s a fairly short one. I especially enjoyed holding the iPad screen up to the TV so that Jimi Hendrix was wailing on his guitar while Mr. Trump was speaking—probably the best split screen video pairing ever, though it may be just as well that poor Jimi isn’t around to see what the world has come to.

Here’s my set list:

Jimi Hendrix—“The Star Spangled Banner”
Simon and Garfunkel—“American Tune”
Dave and Phil Alvin—“World’s in a Bad Condition”
The Grateful Dead—“Touch of Grey”
Lorin Maazel, Sinfónica de Galicia—Mozart, Symphony No. 41 (“The Jupiter Symphony”)

Fighting the Battle We Know

A few days ago, I read about a book in which author Colin Woodard, a journalist, attempts to explain cultural divides in the United States by identifying the characteristic attitudes and beliefs of various regions. I haven’t read his book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America, but the premise is fascinating. His theory not only identifies eleven cultural nations that make up North America but also explains how this affects political polarization. In case you had the idea that modern American life has been homogenized coast to coast to a monotonous sameness by pop culture, media, advertising, and commerce, Mr. Woodard is prepared to propose that underlying regional differences, some as old as our nation’s origins (and even older), are real and persistent and continue to shape our outlooks to the present day.

The eleven nations are Yankeedom (New England, the Great Lakes Region, and the Upper Midwest); New Netherland (New York City, Northern New Jersey, and environs); Tidewater (the Mid-Atlantic coast, including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina); the Deep South (from South Carolina down and as far west as East Texas); Greater Appalachia (which begins in Pennsylvania and includes much of what I would consider the “Upper South,” as far as Texas); the Midlands (starting in New Jersey and encompassing much of the traditional Midwest); New France (centered in New Orleans and Quebec in Canada); El Norte (the Southwest, including Southern California); the Far West (stretching from the Southwest up into the Rocky Mountain states); the Left Coast (coastal Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Western Canada); and First Nation (the vast territory of Native Americans, with most of its population living in Canada).

That’s it, as I understand it. The nations don’t stop at state lines, of course, so your state may feel the cultural pull of three or four different regions. Most people in Kentucky, where I live, probably think of Appalachia as a particular region in the eastern part of the state, but I agree with Mr. Woodard that its culture is very influential outside the mountains proper. I also think the presence of regions near Kentucky, including the Midlands and Deep South, can be felt here. No doubt Mr. Woodard covers cross-influences and other complexities in his book, but the article (by Business Insider’s Matthew Speiser) just touched on the highlights.

The most interesting aspect of the Eleven Nations idea is the underlying “personality” of each region. You would probably not be surprised to hear that Yankees value education and citizen participation in government, that people in the Far West tend to resent intrusions by the Federal government and outside corporate interests, that Tidewater was settled by aristocrats and continues to reflect some support for tradition, and that Left Coasters maintain a mix of Utopian ideas and a yen for creative expression. I was a bit surprised to see that Southern California belongs to El Norte rather than the Left Coast, which seems to indicate that Mr. Woodard views the hard-working values of Latino culture as taking the upper hand there (I have to think that L.A. is at the confluence of these two nations; it definitely seems part of the Left Coast to me).

I was surprised to see the Midlands described as being very culturally diverse and welcoming; in many areas, I’m sure that’s true, but I have always thought of certain parts of the Midwest as being very “white bread.” The United States is becoming increasingly diverse, so perhaps this is an outmoded notion of mine that is true no longer. I was also surprised to see that the Left Coast is supposed to include strong influences of both Yankeedom and Appalachia; I wonder if that’s actually how Left Coasters see themselves. If there’s truth in this, Appalachian culture in Kentucky is of a quite different variety than I have seen out west, being somewhat more “grounded.” I get the Utopian leanings and emphasis on self-development in a place like San Francisco, but I have always experienced it as much more caught up in fantasy and play than the down-to-earth concerns that are pervasive here.

Interestingly, New Orleans is one of those places that operates almost in a world of its own, a sort of anomaly in the conservative Deep South around it. I’ve only been to New Orleans once, but I have to say it struck me that way, as a place in which I sometimes marveled to think that I was in the United States at all. The culture of fast food, chain stores, and suburbia almost seemed non-existent in the face of a very distinctive cuisine, evidence of refined tastes in everything from shopping to architecture, and a pastiche of cultural influences. Similarly, South Florida, in Mr. Woodard’s scheme, is allied with Caribbean culture, not the Deep South. In my experience of having lived there, long ago, this is true. It’s the tropics; you have to travel north in Florida before you begin to feel that you are entering the South. To move from South Florida to Kentucky, for example, is to experience profound cultural shock.

I was trying to think of a way to line up these Eleven Nations with some sort of mythological idea peculiar to each, and I’m sure there is one, though it also seems to carry the danger of over-simplifying things. Sure, the Tidelands respect for established ways and authority is a very Zeusian thing, and the El Norte identification with hard work and self-reliance might be thought of as Hephaestian, and the New Netherland preoccupation with business and trade might fall into the realm of Hermes, but when I think of the region I live in and know best, it’s hard to think of just one entity that really covers it. If pressed, I guess I might go back to the patron saint of bourbon I imagined in a post from several years ago, a sort of plain-spoken Old Testament type with a penchant for cussing and spitting and fiery speech. I’m just not sure where he fits in the Greek pantheon, which despite its variety doesn’t quite supply a deity for every occasion you might think of.

Finally, Mr. Woodard explains that the most profound political influence coming out of the Eleven Nations is the conflict between Yankeedom and the Deep South, whose very different ideas and attitudes are tough to reconcile. It almost sounds as if we’re still fighting the Civil War, doesn’t it, at least on the political level, Blue against Red. With the nation becoming so much more diverse than it used to be, it’s interesting that this old dynamic is still so strong. The research I’ve done on political divisions indicated that polarization has increased over the last couple of decades, which means that there is an ebb and flow to it, and its strength is dependent on many factors. Perhaps the rapid rate of change has been partly responsible for the nation falling back on this earlier pattern of conflict; it’s certainly a fight we know. It surely seems possible that the influx of new groups and changing demographics might re-shape this conversation over time, though it might be a slow change. It seems to me that the United States, to all appearance a 21st-century nation, has never really healed from the battles of the 19th, and that it is holding us back more than we realize.

To put a mythological face on this aspect of it, Yankeedom’s values, in my mind, align most closely with Athena, goddess of wisdom and intellectual strategy. The values of the Deep South favor a fixed social structure and independence from government control, a sort of authoritarian, self-governing paradigm that speaks of Zeus. Zeus was the father of Athena, who supposedly sprang from his head fully grown, and in that sense perfectly fits the paradigm of this conflict the way I see it. The Deep South traditionally has had a patrician cast to it, and it makes perfect sense that it would resent any “upstart” attempts at influence from a perceived youngster, even if she is a chip off the old block—in some ways, that actually makes it worse. The Deep South rarely responds well to being told what to do, and Yankeedom has its own innate pride in its intellectual attainments and accomplishments. Nevertheless, there will always be goals these regions share, points of common interest, since they are part of the same country. Finding the place where their interests meet most closely seems like the place to start. Of course, that is easier said than done.

Pauvre vs. Pobre

I may have mentioned that I was trying to brush up on my Spanish before I went to California. It’s true; I took Spanish as an undergraduate, but it was the reading approach only, and I don’t remember most of what I learned. According to an online test I took one time, my Spanish is at an intermediate level, but that’s a vastly over-generous interpretation of things. I never understood spoken Spanish well, and my reading skills have grown rusty over the years. I was hoping to attain a moderate level of speaking ability in California.

That sounds like a modest hope, and I believe it is, but the first thing I noticed was that I felt shy about trying to speak Spanish once I was actually in So Cal. I guess I knew how shaky my skills were and didn’t want to embarrass myself by acting too gung-ho. At first, the only native speaker of Spanish I came in contact with was the housekeeper at my hotel, and she spoke English, so we conducted our conversations in that language. I didn’t come across anyone in my admittedly limited social sphere who didn’t speak English until I was downtown one day. On Olvera Street, I tried to talk to a shopkeeper, and it took me a minute to realize that she only knew a few words of English. I had gone from assuming I’d have lots of chances to practice my Spanish to making the opposite error of assuming a knowledge of English where none existed.

I summoned up enough Spanish to go back and apologize to her once I realized what had happened. “Mi español es pobre” was a helpful phrase I pulled out more than once, so while I was disappointed that my Spanish skills didn’t advance much all summer, I was kind of proud of being able to make myself understood in that one instance. I only wanted to be respectful of the culture I was in and was very aware that textbook Spanish is a good start but that immersion in the language is the only way to become really fluent.

Somehow, once I came back to Kentucky and realized that a lot of the staff where I’m staying are native Spanish speakers, my shyness about speaking the language went away. I guess I just felt less pressure here to make a good showing, as Lexington isn’t quite the multicultural melting pot that Los Angeles is. I started making lists of phrases and discovered that it’s quite possible to conduct an entire conversation as long as you have recourse to Google. I told someone today that I speak “Google Spanish.” I’m never certain whether I’m pronouncing the words correctly and whether some of the phrases are idiomatically correct, but I seem to get my meaning across most of the time. I don’t feel comfortable not speaking to someone who’s doing something for me, and it’s good practice. Occasionally, someone will even tell me I’m saying something the wrong way, which is actually more of a compliment than anything. It makes me feel that my efforts are being respected and that I’m not just being humored.

Of course, you know the Wordplay mantra of “Do No Harm”: the last thing I want to do is to create any cross-cultural misunderstandings. I vividly remember the time I was in Germany and tried to ask for a carton of milk to go. I was certain I was pronouncing the phrase just the way I was supposed to according to the phonetic German phrase book only to see the server double over in an apparently difficult attempt to hold back laughter. OK, so I don’t know any German, and it was a brave attempt to break new ground. But there was also the time, on the same trip, that I asked for hot tea with milk in a Paris restaurant (a phrase I was certain I knew from my French course) only to have a very confused looking waitress produce a glass of lukewarm milk with the air that she was certain this wasn’t what I had asked for but she was darned if she knew what to do about it. And I had been brushing up on the language for weeks just prior to the trip, so I still haven’t figured out how that happened.

With Written Spanish for my undergraduate language and Written French in graduate school, I probably know just enough to confuse the heck out of people in two or three different languages. Sometimes I’ll think of a phrase and know what it means but am not sure whether it’s Spanish or French. Just yesterday, I had a simple, impromptu, “Good Day, How Are You?” conversation with someone, and was feeling kind of proud of myself until I thought about it afterwards and realized that while the other person was speaking entirely in Spanish, I had replied to her inquiry of how I was doing with a confident “Très bien!”—which isn’t even Google Spanish but undeniably nothing other than Pure French.

Oh, well, as the French would say, “C’est la vie.” It’s not as if we started a war or anything. And in case I run across any French-speaking people at this establishment, I know just the phrase to smooth over any occasion: “Mon français est pauvre.” At least, I think that’ll do it.