Hemingway and the Bulls

It's been a while since I've read anything by Ernest Hemingway, though I have three of his novels on my bookshelf. When I read him in the past, I sometimes had an almost visceral sense of being pummeled, which may have derived in part from his prose style and in part from his themes. This week, however, I finally read The Sun Also Rises, and it all came about because I was reading a novel about his first marriage and his years in Paris. That novel, The Paris Wife, written from the point of view of Mr. Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, tells the story of the complicated personal relationships of the Hemingways and their friends and purportedly hews close to actual events.

The Sun Also Rises is, apparently, a barely disguised version of actual events described in The Paris Wife. As I finished the latter book, Mr. Hemingway's novel was literally sitting across the room from me, directly in my line of vision. It seemed like a good time to find out what he had made of events I'd just read about from someone else's perspective, but I was hesitant. Was I in the mood for literary punches and jabs? No, I wasn't, not really, but my curiosity had been piqued, so I decided to give Mr. Hemingway another try.

As happens to me with fair frequency, I found that I had a different reaction to the author than I'd had in the past. I can't speak to the rights or wrongs of the actual events, but only to the novel, which tells of painful circumstances and tragic characters with a surprising amount of humor. I enjoyed the careful descriptions of landscape, the sharp dialogue, and the vivid sense of place and time. In the time it took to read the novel, I was transported. I can fully appreciate how painful it might have been to be a participant in these events, but the work itself is graceful.

Mr. Hemingway's descriptions of the running of the bulls, the fiesta, and the bull-fighting in Pamplona made me realize something else. I've written before about an alternate outcome for the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, one in which the Minotaur is released from the labyrinth instead of being killed there. My thinking was that if the Minotaur is a disguised version of a sun god, his killing might be the key to the tragic events that follow his death. In the running of the bulls, one sees what this release of the Minotaur looks like in actuality. Though events are still, to some degree, choreographed (as they are in the bull-ring), the strength of the bull is at least celebrated and appreciated by the onlookers. The bull-fighters are judged, in part, against the size and ferocity of the bulls.

Mr. Hemingway made the bull-fights a central image in The Sun Also Rises, and to me, it seems he was very aware of the mythic import of the spectacle, which is also a ritual. Having seen so much death in the war, he must have been acutely alive to the ritualistic conquering of death in the bull-ring, where the bull-fighter "takes on" some of the animal's strength and vitality in the act of defeating it.

It seems to me that though the danger to the bull-fighter is real, the odds are still stacked against the animals. (In the bull-fights, at least as described in the novel, the animal invariably dies.) I don't think this was lost on Mr. Hemingway. Each triumph by a skillful bull-fighter is a temporary triumph, even when repeated many times. But to a character like Jake, shattered by a near-miss with death, the ritual of renewal, even if only temporary and somewhat conditioned, must have been very powerful.

Jake and the others of his generation who survived the war are mirror images of the bull-fighter, though less fortunate. They returned from the labyrinth alive but forever changed, aware of the futility of what they had been through and searching for a way to live with that awareness. As Jake tells it, his central project in life has become an accommodation to facts that cannot be changed. "I did not care what it was all about," he says at one point. "All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about."

It may be off the topic, but the metaphor of bull-fighting in The Sun Also Rises has given me an idea. What if, in the future, we settled all conflicts between nations in the bull-ring? Just send down the person or persons responsible for making the call to the ring and let them match wits with the bulls. It would have to be an even fight, though, so no sending in proxies or hiding behind the fences. If they came out of it still thinking that war is a good idea, then let them fight each other, if so inclined. It may sound crude and simplistic, but wouldn't it save everybody else a lot of trouble? If the bull wins, the whole thing is called off, and we have a two-week fiesta instead.

If I finished The Paris Wife feeling a great deal of sympathy for the first Mrs. Hemingway, I finished The Sun Also Rises with a new empathy for Mr. Hemingway. Glamorous and hip they may have been, but they had a lot stacked against them. Even with all the artistic fervor taking place in the Paris of their day, I don't think I would have wanted to be there, because too much of it seems to have resulted from pain and early loss that they could not surmount. Even though the war was over, they still seemed to be fighting it.

Medieval for a Cause

Last year I wrote about Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in April; this year, in keeping with that same spirit of spring, I read a prose retelling of the work. My online hours may have been spent keeping up with current events, and my walks may have entailed enjoying the flowers while tuning out modern noise, but my mind was in the Middle Ages. I wasn't sorry to absent myself, at least sporadically, from some of this week's sound and fury. Going medieval isn't always bad.

I think you need to read at least some of the tales as Chaucer wrote them to get the flavor of the language, even if it slows down your comprehension. One of the most memorable experiences I had in an English class was hearing Middle English verse read out loud while we mastered pronunciation in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other works. For the first time, I could hear the underlying rhythms of the English language--hear it clearly as music--with the sense of the words taking second place to the sound. However, if I were teaching The Canterbury Tales, I would also have the students read a modern retelling so that they could enjoy the stories as stories.

To fully appreciate them, it's true: you have to read the entire work, or the bulk of it, and that would probably only take place in a course devoted to Middle English poetry. It's an ambitious project to read them all but worth it. It's not just the stories in themselves, but what they say about the people who tell them, and their listeners, that makes the Tales so much fun. You have, among others, the opening story told by a long-winded knight, a series of unflattering and/or bawdy tales told with the purpose of annoying someone else, the unforgettable forthrightness of the Wife of Bath, the stark morality of the Pardoner's tale of the three wastrels, and the folksy humor of the Nun's Priest's tale of the sprightly Chanticleer who outfoxes the fox.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about "Chaucer's Retractions," which comes at the very end. This is Chaucer, still in character as one of the pilgrims, turning aside, just as the company is approaching its goal, to offer a private speech in defense and/or apology for all his works, including the Tales he has just concluded. In spirit, it's a little like the series finale of some long-running TV show in which of one of the characters wakes up, and you find it was all a dream. After so much irreverence, crudity, and satire, Chaucer in effect takes it all back, just in case there was something in there that might have offended God or man. Of course, his failing to do this until the last dirty joke has been told leads you to question his sincerity, but the seriousness of his prayer also seems to hedge his bets. After all, death could come suddenly, and there was no sense taking any chances. If there's humor in this retraction, it's a dark humor, as I read it, laced with a sense of mortality.

A medieval pilgrim stopping in the woods unavoidably makes me think of Dante's pilgrim, who lost his way in a similar place before seeking his salvation. I'm also jumping ahead a couple of centuries to Shakespeare's Prospero, who, having used the magic arts to regain control of his fate, gives them up in the end, saying, "This rough magic I here abjure." Although Chaucer's purpose, to instruct, seems very different from Prospero's, they are both in effect using their creative power to shape things to their will. All of Chaucer's characters are subject to his whim, just as the inhabitants of Prospero's island are subject to his, until they're released. There's an inevitability to this release, but it's also a little sad, a letting go.

April is a great time to read The Canterbury Tales. You can rest your eyes by looking out the window at the trees leafing out and the flowers budding and put yourself in company with the pilgrims setting out on their journey, which, by the way, begins with crossing a stream. (Is The Canterbury Tales, in some sense, an underworld journey? This is a question I would put to my class of imaginary students, who may someday be actual ones.) I let time elide like that the other day at the coffeehouse while finishing the Tales, and it was as if the fourteenth century and the twenty-first blended together and became one, a Frappuccino of centuries. It was as if no time had passed at all since the pilgrims first gathered at Starbu--, I mean, the Tabard Inn.

The Most Foolish People You'll Ever Hope to Meet

Dear ----,

I have said all of this to ----, in writing, without getting a response. I have thought about withholding part of my rent payment until I get a reply to my concerns and may consider doing that in the future, but first I want to relay these complaints directly to you to make sure you’re aware that this situation, which I have brought to your attention before, is ongoing.

I have had noisy and ill-mannered (to say the least) neighbors upstairs dating back to 2010, from approximately the time your company acquired this property. This problem continues with the current tenant. I talked to her (once) about heavy footsteps and miscellaneous noise, and she professed not to know what I was talking about. At first, she was not as consistently noisy as the other tenants have been, so it was easier to ignore, but I was bothered on the evening of Feb. 26 (as on other occasions) by tapping noises directly above my head while I was trying to relax in my living room. There is no reason I can think of why someone would be tapping on the floor unless they wished to annoy someone, an immature exercise at best, but I noted from the young woman's general demeanor that she was no more likely to be a good neighbor than any of her predecessors.

I'm not concerned about ordinary noise and realize that some is unavoidable. In years past, though, I had a rather heavyset neighbor living above me, considerably larger than the young woman in question, and I rarely heard him--just to give you a point of comparison. It’s impossible to escape the conclusion that the noise is deliberate (all of these tenants have been rather odd as well).

Secondly, on the afternoon of March 18, I found some trash (cotton swabs and a coin) on the back floorboard of my car that I definitely didn't put there; the only explanation can be that someone else has been in the vehicle, although it did not appear to have been broken into. I'm meticulous about locking the doors, so I'm not certain how someone could have gotten in. I threw the items away and called the ---- police to report the incident, but I was told that unless something was damaged or missing, I couldn't file a report.

I'm telling you because I think this is most likely to have occurred at the apartments. I rarely take the car anywhere except to the coffeehouse and the grocery store, and I doubt if it happened in broad daylight. It probably happened overnight. There's nothing in the car that anyone would want to steal or that would make it a likely target for thieves. I usually park it underneath the light at the corner of the lot. The last time I had been in the back seat was on the previous Saturday when I put my groceries there, and I didn't notice anything then, so it must have happened sometime that week. I haven't discovered anything missing or broken in the vehicle so far, but that doesn't negate the fact that someone broke in, which I assure you I take quite seriously as a safety concern.

Finally, I never got a response last summer (2015) to my request for someone to service the air conditioner for my unit, which did not work up to par for most of the summer. When that happened, my refrigerator failed to work properly, and I had to throw some food out. I have already requested someone to take a look at it well in advance of the warm weather; I am told now that this will happen, and I hope that's the case.

All of this is to say that I am not really sure what I am paying rent for since I haven’t had proper use and enjoyment of my apartment for the last 5½ years. These issues go beyond mere annoyance, which would be bad enough, to the level of actual health and safety concerns. I am not sure that some of the tenants upstairs haven’t been (or are not now) engaged in criminal activity, based on my observations. I want you to understand that I’m not talking about pranks typical of college students. With previous landlords (I’ve lived here for almost 16 years), we sometimes had tenants who partied or came in late, though most of them lived in the other buildings. Some of them were undoubtedly problem tenants, but I never had an entire string of them living directly above me for years at a time.

I was unable to resolve this issue with the first problem tenants back in 2010 by telling them about it, and though I have introduced myself to subsequent tenants and let them know, more or less politely, about the problems they were causing, it has been to no avail. There has been a pattern to these issues extending over a period of years (and unprecedented in my many years of living in apartments). The least I expect of a landlord is to maintain a safe environment so that I can enjoy my own apartment in peace, and I am not getting that. I do not bother these neighbors, I take care of my own apartment, and I expect my concerns to receive a response.

I will also add that, though you may be unconcerned about your water bill (as evidenced by my inability to get my dripping kitchen faucet properly fixed), I hear water running so frequently above me that I often wonder what people are doing besides playing with the pipes. It seems rather excessive.

Sincerely.

Your Life as a Pop Song

It was such a beautiful afternoon in the park, with almost everything blooming, or beginning to, and I practically had the place to myself. There were redbuds, cherry trees, lilacs, viburnum, tulips, and--on the road leading up to the parking lot--a whole bank of daffodils. Although spring came early this year, it has backtracked a little, so that although everything looks like Easter, the air is chilly. Skies were cloudy this afternoon and threatened rain, and I was wearing my down jacket, but still, I have to say, it was lovely in the arboretum. I hummed a couple of show tunes from My Fair Lady.

I guess the big news this week is the Panama Papers, which could even turn out to be the story of the year. Those who worked on the investigation dubbed it the Prometheus project, which seems to acknowledge their sense of its importance. Prometheus, of course, was the god who gave the gift of fire to humanity and then had hell to pay for it from the other gods. I was thinking about that as I walked around this afternoon.

The first thing I noticed about the initial list of countries whose leaders were named was that it didn't include the United States. I'm just not sure that's going to hold up. I was glad to see a couple of U.S. senators calling for the Treasury Department to investigate possible links between U.S. entities and the Mossack Fonseca law firm. Interesting that they didn't seem to feel that the Justice Department probe, which has already begun, was enough--and I suppose they have their reasons. In a letter to the Treasury secretary, they cited the need to investigate individuals or entities with possible links to terrorism or money laundering who may be sanctioned by the Treasury Department. It sounded to me like they had something in mind already.

People sometimes talk about American exceptionalism and America's place in the world as if wrongdoing is something that only happens in other places, but don't you think that people in China, Russia, and other places sometimes shake their heads about things they hear about us? The thing about exceptionalism is that you actually have to be exceptional, not just say you are. It's one thing to live by your principles and another to get by on your looks. When it comes to the heroes and villains of this piece, we may all be surprised. It's also true that some of the people whose names are being thrown around now may end up being exonerated.

I was interested to see the list of news organizations involved in the project and noted that although the McClatchy newspapers were included, others, such as The New York Times, weren't. In my experience as a consumer of news, there do seem to be biases evident in the reporting of many major news sources, including The New York Times. There are people I wouldn't trust with sensitive information, especially in light of the fact that free press in America hasn't thrived under the last two administrations, making any investigative reporting that could expose American players very risky. (The U.S. is ranked 49th in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, a poor showing for a country that should be at the top.)

I think you get a mix of good and bad reporting across the entire range of media, and I wouldn't necessarily exclude McClatchy, the BBC, or anyone else from biased reporting. Perhaps the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists had a sense of which reporters it could trust, or perhaps part of the project was a test to find out. I'd be surprised, too, if attempts hadn't been made to hack the ICIJ servers, which could in itself be revealing. It will probably take this story some time to unwind, and there are undoubtedly many revelations ahead.

Well, that's a pretty heavy topic for an April day, so maybe I should end this post on a lighter note. I hope this isn't too awkward a segue, but I wrote about politics last week, and I've been thinking a lot about the personalities of the presidential candidates. I had some fun trying to pick a song that I associate with each of the five remaining in the race and imagining myself as the campaign manager who decides what gets played as the candidate bounces onstage (a whimsical thought--no campaign manager would ever select some of these songs). None of them are from My Fair Lady, but that doesn't mean anything. I had second thoughts about one or two of them, but I think I'm going to go with my first choice, because you can overthink these things.

Are you on the edge of your seat? Oh, come on, you know you totally are. Here it is, just for fun, as an antidote to the Panama Papers--Your Life as a Pop Song.

Donald Trump: The Eagles--"Take It Easy"

Ted Cruz: Peter Gabriel--"Sledgehammer"

John Kasich: Paul Simon--"Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"

Hillary Clinton: Paul McCartney & Wings--"Live and Let Die"

Bernie Sanders: Steve Miller Band--"The Joker"

Musing on the Newsing

Are y'all reading the same news I am? I'm just asking, because when I read the stated opinions of pundits, public officials, celebrities, voters, foreign dignitaries, and ordinary folks, I sometimes wonder how all of us can be looking at the same events and drawing such different conclusions. That's if people are being really honest and totally truthful in the things they're saying, because, you know, I sometimes suspect people of being disingenuous. No, really. I sometimes think, from their manner and the way they say things, that there's a certain amount of meta-narrative going on. If so, these folks are apparently going to a lot of trouble for nothing, because I'm not sure how much others are noticing it. Of course, some of that ignorance could be disingenuous, too. (Uh-oh, now we're really going down the rabbit hole.)

Take the election, for example. I've discussed my views on the Democratic candidates before, but I was reluctant to say much about the Republicans because I couldn't make head or tail of what was going on over there. Here at Wordplay, we have a rule that says, "First, do no harm." I was seriously afraid of putting my foot in it if I tried to analyze the situation prematurely--there was obviously something out of the ordinary happening, and it was eluding me. But don't conclude from that that I haven't been watching the candidates and noticing what they've been doing. Far from it. Here at Wordplay, we may have our own point of view on things, but we care about everybody. Believe me.

Someone was talking to me about Donald Trump last summer, telling me his reasons for supporting him, and I was skeptical. This person even expressed some concern over Mr. Trump's safety, to which I replied, "But people like that can take care of themselves." His response was, "Not necessarily." I really wasn't sure what he was talking about. I had, however, been keeping up with the news on Mr. Trump and was surprised to find that I liked his sense of humor, which I first noticed when he gave out Lindsay Graham's telephone number. I am still in stitches over that one (I trust it's OK to say that, because Senator Graham himself seemed to respond in good humor).

I would be laughing over something Mr. Trump said and then find myself alarmed (and puzzled) several hours later by some inflammatory statements he made about immigrants, Muslims, or some other matter. I am not altogether certain what he really means by some of the things he says, and this is what I mean by meta-narrative. It's clear that no one truly serious about becoming president should be quoting Mussolini or talking about punching people. On the other hand, I do not think Mr. Trump is a buffoon. I'm certain he has a motive for the things he does, though it's not easy to say what that might be. I've occasionally had the thought that Mr. Trump says things that other people would never dare to say, though in reality they have probably done much worse. Could he be slyly suggesting that? I don't know.

I don't think Mr. Trump is a saint, but I don't necessarily believe everything that people say about him. I suspect he may be rather different than many people think he is. Take for instance, the whole kerfluffle about Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump. People have been talking about how embarrassing it is and how bad it makes the Republicans look in front of everybody, etc. Call me irresponsible, but I don't believe for an instant that either Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz spoke without realizing how their remarks would sound to people. I'm just not buying the quarreling schoolboys thing.

In trying to "see through" this event, as James Hillman advises us to do, I started looking up information about Melania Trump (I already knew a little about Heidi Cruz). Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone, including Mr. Trump, was truly shocked that a racy photo of Mrs. Trump in GQ emerged as an issue in the Utah primary. Utah voters tend to have conservative standards, which is fine, and should come as a surprise to nobody. So what was all the yelling about? In reading biographical data about Mrs. Trump, I found out a lot of things I didn't know about her and stumbled across a description of the photo. That was the moment I started to wonder about that picture.

I hadn't seen the picture, but the description said she was photographed in Trump's private jet, stretched out on a rug (to be precise, a bearskin rug) and chained to a briefcase. (I just looked the picture up to verify this. Heck, it's all over Utah, thanks to Ted Cruz or whoever did it (I'm not taking a stance on that), so I don't feel I'm making a bad situation any worse. To tell you the truth, I was bothered from the first time I read the description, though maybe not for the same reason the voters in Utah were. The photo came out in British GQ in 2000, and I'm just thinking it doesn't make for good optics; I dunno, maybe it's just me, but someone chained to a briefcase, in a jet, in a scene speaking of opulence and wealth. Just not good optics, to me.

There are many things in the news I've wondered about recently. (What, you mean you haven't?) I'm just pointing out that sometimes everyone gets really excited about certain aspects of things while possibly missing others. Here are some examples of things I've wondered about:

--What happened to Sarah Palin's husband in that accident?

--Who is really behind the Stop Trump movement?

--What happened in the Arizona election? Are we sure it hasn't happened in other places and just gone unnoticed? (I felt a little sorry for Helen Purcell, the Arizona election official who has taken responsibility for the long lines and other snafus, and I'm not negating the seriousness of what happened at all by saying this--I just feel there's some deeper story here.)

--If Hillary Clinton did so well in the Benghazi hearings, why did Huma Abedin look so ravaged in the photo I saw of her that was taken during the testimony?

--How come Gary Shandling's doctor wouldn't sign that death certificate? (It could turn out to be merely an overabundance of caution on his part, naturally.) Coincidentally, I read another item about the time Gary Shandling attended the Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, "ran into" President George H.W. Bush and Barbara while touring the White House, and got co-opted into speaking during the event. It was kind of a weird little story.

While I'm on the subject, I do wish people would get over this Democratic/Republican split as the primary viewing lens for events. No, no, no! Just stop it. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I don't think that's where it's at. Really--I don't think that's where it's at.

Latin for Coffee Drinkers

Just for fun, I decided this week to pick up a book I bought many years ago on teaching yourself basic Latin. I did part or all of the course some time ago but didn't retain much of it; thinking it might be useful in the future, I decided to make another go at it.

I've taken the text and a notebook with me to Starbucks a couple of times, and I've got to say that that hasn't been the best environment for conjugating verbs, which is mostly what I've been doing. Reading, making notes, and even writing haven't been much of a problem for me in noisy coffeehouses, but trying to switch from one language to another in your head and on paper is a different story. It obviously draws on a different area of the brain than do reading and staring off into space occasionally, which is what I usually do at Starbucks. This feels more like programming or doing math.

After wrestling around today with such verbs as "dicere," "videre," and "habere," I was ready to throw the notebook down and go for some light summer reading. I was doing pretty well on the translations, except for figuring out which vowel goes before the endings, but it wasn't that much fun. I tell you this in case you ever wondered whether going to Starbucks to do a little Latin grammar might be an easy way to pass the time. It isn't. For this type of study, I think you need a quiet room.

To make it a little more lighthearted, I tried coming up with sentences of my own, which may or may not mean what I think they mean. One of the things I learned the other day was the word "quia," meaning "that." I put together the sentence "quia interrogo," which I was rather proud of, and I hope it means "I question that" (though maybe it doesn't). Today I tried to put together a sentence describing something I saw, but my book isn't really that great on lists of vocabulary words. I can vouch for "video" ("I see"), but my attempts to render "I see an annoying person" fell short. I just couldn't get there.

While all of this was going on, I started thinking of the movie title Quo Vadis. I thought at first that "quo" means "what," but apparently it doesn't: "what" is "quid." I know that "vadis" is the second person singular form of a verb, but what verb? I haven't gotten to it yet in the book, but I know it's a common one, and it seems similar to the French verb "to go." A quick Internet search yields "where" as a possibility for "quo," which I had considered, since "Where are you going?" or "Where do you go?" makes sense. Unable to stand the suspense, I just looked it up. Quo Vadis does indeed mean, "Where are you going?" (From all of this, it's probably obvious that I haven't seen the movie, or if I did, I didn't retain it.)

The other thing that really gave me fits was the right way to conjugate the verb "to give." A drawback to the book I have is that it gives you the first person singular conjugation but forces you to do the others yourself. So I had a lot of trouble with "dare," and just to settle the question, here are the right forms, hot off the Internet: "do," "das," "dat," "damus," "datis," "dant." I was way off on that one, having ended up somehow with an extra syllable in the middle, but at least now I know.

My memory of doing introductory Latin the last time is that things really got complicated once you left the present tense. There may or may not be a future in trying to make that leap at Starbucks, but at least I got past the "quo vadis" thing, and I know that "ignoramus" is the first person plural form of "ignorare" (to not know). I was practicing the conjugations aloud in the parking lot at the grocery store the other night, and though it turns out I had the infinitive wrong (I was working backwards from conjugations), there was some fun to be had from saying the words "ignorant" and "ignoramus" aloud--and to have a perfectly innocent reason for doing so. They'll tell you in school that there are many benefits to be had from studying languages, and they could be right.

Forgetting to Be Irish

I can never quite get off the ground with St. Patrick's Day. I know a lot of people love it, but for some reason I nearly always forget to wear green, and the holiday ends up as sort of a nonstarter for me. It happened again today: ahead of time I was thinking, "I'll bet I forget to wear green again." By the time I got dressed, I forgot I'd been thinking that, but I also forgot to wear anything green. Maybe it's just that I'm not overly fond of corned beef, cabbage, and green glitter, but for whatever reason, the day usually slips by me.

There have been a few St. Patrick's Days that were more memorable than others. For several years, I was in the habit of taking a vacation in March that often led me to NoCal so that I was in San Francisco for St. Paddy's. The first time it happened I actually went to a restaurant for an Irish meal; my friend Jot and I somehow ended up at this place in the Mission that was celebrating the day with traditional Irish food. I don't remember what I had, but considering my cooked cabbage phobia, I'm thinking it must have been something more like stew or potatoes. I do recall that we were regaled non-stop by a character seated near us who just could not stop talking. I've met some overly chatty strangers in my time, but this man was the very King of Chat, bar none.

You do meet some personalities in San Francisco, and sometimes you just have to roll with it, but I've never before or since met anyone so determined to insert himself into the conversation of complete strangers (and few people more immune to hints). As Jot and I were walking down the street afterward, I said to him, "I guess that's what you call the gift of the gab." And he said, "I think it's more like a curse."

I was in San Francisco for St. Patrick's Day the next year, too, though I had been in Sonoma most of the week and only drove into the City that day. I'd been intending to meet people, but they were called out of town, so I spent the afternoon and evening in North Beach. I had stopped by the Tosca Cafe, which didn't seem to have a lot going on, and then soaked up the street life on my way back to my hotel. My most vivid memory is of passing, on Columbus Avenue, a young, laughing man--definitely of Asian heritage--sporting the loudest Top-to-Toe All-Green leprechaun attire I have ever witnessed. I didn't even know they made outfits like that. He was well pleased with himself, and I don't blame him: the whole street was gaping at him. Well, there was no topping that in the Irish sweepstakes, and I finished the evening with pasta and panna cotta in the Italian restaurant next to my hotel. It was a very San Francisco St. Patrick's Day.

Then there was the time many years ago when I was passing through Chicago on the Saturday before St. Patrick's, and while walking by the river (in between trains), saw that it was dyed green. This is evidently a tradition in Chicago, as is their St. Patrick's Day parade, which had been held earlier in the day. I don't know if it was then that someone told me they'd been filming a movie or if I found out later, but it turns out that a scene in The Fugitive was filmed during Chicago's St. Patrick's Day parade (Harrison Ford, on the run, blending in with the marchers). I was never for sure if it was this film or another, but I always assumed The Fugitive because it came out the following year. So I count that as the time I just missed seeing a movie being made and Harrison Ford in a green hat but got to see what a river looks like with a bunch of green dye dropped in.

Today was nowhere near that exciting, but it was sunny, which makes a pleasant change in this place at this time of year. I didn't do anything in particular to celebrate St. Patrick, but I did have a hobbity sort of dinner that included potatoes and onions. Contrary to the pattern of the last several years, spring seems to be arriving early this year, with things already greening up outdoors and the trees beginning to blossom. That's celebration enough for me. And may the road rise to meet you.

Drinking the River Styx

With the Michigan primary being so much in the news this week, the Flint water crisis has also been front and center in public awareness. I watched news clips of Flint residents talking about their experiences and also saw part of the Democratic presidential debate held there. When I started reading about the background of the problem, I began thinking about addressing it in this week's post, though I hesitated after hearing the remarks of some of the people who live there.

I was struck by the comment of one resident who said she didn't want to participate in the debate because she was wary of allowing presidential candidates to politicize Flint's crisis; another woman said she thought the time to start assigning blame for what happened would be after the problem is fixed. I see the wisdom of both perspectives and initially wondered whether I should hold off on writing about Flint since, after all, I don't live there. But since both the debate and the primary are over with, and Flint is still suffering, I decided that throwing in my two cents' worth couldn't hurt. Everyone from Hollywood actors to sports figures to public officials has been vocal on this topic (and rightly so). However, I don't know if any mythologists have weighed in, so I'll take that as an opening.

Flint, Michigan: formerly thriving auto industry hub and the hometown of filmmaker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11). Don't you have the feeling that it's time Flint caught a break? First the loss of much of its industrial base (chronicled in Mr. Moore's film Roger & Me), and now this. Water, of course, is synonymous with life, and to be poisoned right in your own home by something you took for granted as not only safe but vital to health must be especially hard to deal with. Poisoning the well, as it were, is hitting people at a very basic level, not only physically but psychologically, especially when they're already living through tough times.

One of the signs in mythology that you're entering the underworld is the act of crossing a river--not that every river crossing is that dire, but it certainly fits in this case, since a switch from the Detroit water supply to the Flint River was the beginning of the problem. What I don't understand is how officials could have neglected to add the proper chemical (orthophosphate) to the river water--as required by the Federal government's Lead and Copper Rule--that would have kept the pipes from corroding in the first place. Other people have blamed the water crisis on government mismanagement, racism, and misguided efforts to save money. To me, the heart of the matter is the unlawful failure to treat the water. It almost sounds like building a house and neglecting to put a roof on. Why would you do that?

EPA analyst Miguel Del Toral, who outlined his findings of the high lead levels in Flint's water in a report to Michigan officials last June, said he was "stunned" to find no corrosion control in place. In a recent interview with Michigan Radio, Mr. Del Toral said that "it's just inconceivable that somebody would not require the (corrosion control) treatment in the first place. So that was kind of the biggest shock if you will. . . . it just, it was really surprising to see a government agency saying the things that they were saying I guess."

Yes, very surprising. While the city of Flint continues its efforts to replace its old pipes and to take care of the people affected by the debacle, I hope someone remembers to ask, "Why did this happen?" It seems the "how" is understood, but what about the "why"? Is everybody buying that it was just a bureaucratic oversight? Hopefully, it wasn't a case of someone playing political games with Flint's water supply, because that would take it out of the territory of mere government bungling into something far more serious than it already is. It may be no consolation to the people of Flint one way or the other whether their suffering is the result of incompetence or something more akin to political terrorism--but, still, I think they would want to know.

Stay Loose

Sometimes, it's the little things. The other day, I was sitting in my living room in the early afternoon, just sitting on the couch with the blinds open and the sunlight pouring in. I was looking at my rug, which I had vacuumed the day before, and at the floor, immaculate and gleaming in the light. I was thinking how good it felt to be sitting in a clean room, with no visible dust, thanks to my (sometimes imperfect) efforts to stay on a cleaning schedule. Unexpectedly, a feeling of contentment and serenity came over me, and it was all on account of not seeing any dust bunnies under the coffee table.

I've never really enjoyed housework (and am not crazy about it now), but I do like the way I feel once it's done. When I worked full-time, it seemed like a real chore to mop and dust, but now that I've been spending more time at home, I've come to appreciate more closely the Zen of a clean room. Adding to the pleasure was the fact that I had done the work myself. If someone else had done it, I'd probably still enjoy the idea that the room was clean but might be suffering some residual guilt over the fact that I'd had to pay someone to clean up after me. I'd be totally missing the happiness of giving myself the gift of a clean room.

It doesn't sound like much, but believe it or not, it was probably the highlight of my week. Peak experiences come in all strengths and flavors, I guess, from the barely there to the resoundingly dramatic. Watching the light shine on a wooden floor may seem to have little in common with something like, say, reaching the top of a mountain, or even just watching a mountain reveal itself to you from different angles as you drive past it, but they're just different points on a journey.

Actually, I had the mountain experience recently on the interstate out west, and part of the marvel of it to me, then and now, was the fact that I had the capacity to see and respond to the moment regardless of anything that took place on the way to it. The mountain itself seemed to be saying something like, "Be hard, be immovable, be adamantine when you need to be," but there was also a whisper of something else, something like, "And remember how blue the sky was when you saw me, and how free you suddenly felt. Remember how my slopes gleamed in the sunshine. Don't forget."

Well, as Wendy Doniger has said, a mythologist needs both a microscope and a telescope. Sometimes you're looking at a grain of sand and sometimes you're looking at a mountain, but the important thing is to stay open, to retain the capacity to marvel, even though you won't feel it all the time.

Stay loose, everybody.

Stormy

We have been sitting under clouds here for the last several days, although it's nothing to complain about compared to the recent weather south and east of us. Within the last week or two, we've gone from whirling snow to sunny warmth to thunderstorms--and back again. Yesterday, I had to decide whether to go out for a walk in the face of a forecast calling for rain and wind, including gusts of 30 to 40 miles an hour. It was the wind that really concerned me, because I wasn't charmed by the thought of flying debris. In the end, I bundled up, grabbed an umbrella, and went, motivated by the principle that if I couldn't actually see flying houses or garbage cans from the window, it was probably best to get some exercise.

I know some people lost their lives in storms this week, so I'm not making light of the subject. I felt the same way I felt on that hot night at the end of July, when I had to judge whether it was better to stay in or to go out on a muggy evening with heat lightning causing a major ruckus in the distance. (I elected to go out on that occasion, too, and have a clear memory of nervously circling the Arboretum while a spectacular light show illuminated the horizon north and east.) Yesterday (as on that other occasion) I was somewhat reassured to see a number of other people out and about, although it's true that you can't always go by the safety in numbers thing. We could all have been swept up by a wind shear and deposited somewhere unlikely like Oz--but it turned out that the wind, though cold, wasn't that fierce. It was unrelenting but no more than you might expect from a typical day in March. We were fortunate.

It certainly looked more like March than February, with some new grass and even a few crocuses poking up here and there. The sky was very stormy, though only a few drops of rain fell while I was out. The most startling thing I saw was someone walking down the street wearing shorts, which I did think was pushing it a bit for such a blustery day. I was wearing down, ear warmers, a scarf, and gloves and felt comfortable except that the wind kept pushing my hair into my eyes. My fears of getting caught in a downpour were never realized, and I got home without having had to open my umbrella.

There is something invigorating about being outside when Nature is asserting itself as it was yesterday. An ordinary neighborhood walk takes on a heightened air of conflict, since you're no longer strolling easily along under calm skies but are actually pushing your way forward. The landscape that had seemed so tame the day before is suddenly, unmistakably alive all around you, rushing into your eyes and ears and forcing you, in turn, to assert yourself against it. Crossing a bridge over a ditch swollen with rainwater suddenly brings to mind a mountain stream, and while it's not nearly as dramatic as climbing a mountain, it'll do for the suburbs.

So I was glad I went, not only for the exercise but for the sight of that turbulent sky, full of dark clouds when I set out, and transformed into a tent-like covering by the time I got home. It hung over everything like a gray canvas tossed by the wind, only revealing regions of pale blue at the margins. It was an arresting color of blue, and I had to think of what it reminded me of. I finally decided it was like the blue soap of a steel wool pad, clean and metallic but very, very cool, as if the weather were washing the sky clean. It's just too bad it's not that easy to take care of things here on the ground.

Sweets to the Sweet

Just before Valentine's Day, there was a news article online summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of married vs. single life in several categories, including health, finances, and emotional well-being. It was--if I may say so--notably even-handed in pointing out that there are ways in which being single can be superior to being married, something that's worth remembering. You'll get no arguments from me against the idea of wedded bliss, except that achieving it seems so darn tangled up in issues of human frailty and other variables. Of course, if you're married, you don't need to be reminded of that.

Would you agree that it's better to be alone than to be with the wrong person? I think of it along the same lines as the home owner's vs. renter's argument, which I have also had presented to me as a fait accompli on the side of buying, as if renting were merely the same preliminary and temporary step on the way to home ownership as singlehood is to marriage (though some financial advisors, in fact, say that home buying is a lifestyle choice more than anything). I'm never quite sure why people are so dead set on getting others to embark on a course which has little more than a 50-50 chance (according to some estimates) of succeeding. I sometimes think that if more people managed to get out of their 20s, as I did, without tying the knot, they might have a different outlook on the whole question. I was miserable during most of my 20s while everyone around me was getting married, but for some reason, once I passed the 3-0 threshold and took a deep breath, it was kind of fun (though scary) to be a holdout.

Yesterday I was reading a biography of William Shakespeare in which the author, Stephen Greenblatt, recounted the evidence regarding the playwright's married life, particularly the issue of whether he was happy or not. The biographer admitted that assessing this is very hard to do, but he pointed out that there are few signs evincing a happily married state in Shakespeare's portrayals of married couples. Greenblatt didn't address the love sonnets in that section, but he did say there was plenty of poetic precedent for keeping marital expectations low and directing your longing toward someone else (as in the case of Dante, who was never married to Beatrice). The idea of looking to your marriage for true companionship really took hold later, Greenblatt says, as part of the new sober-mindedness swept in with the Protestant Reformation.

I do wonder sometimes whether people today put too many expectations on marriage, but as someone who's never (yet) done it, it's nothing I can speak about from personal experience. In a spirit of bipartisanship, let me just say that I believe very much in personal choice on the married/single question, though choice should be leavened with wisdom whenever possible.

What I can speak about with authority is the best Valentine's Day cookie recipe I've ever come across, guaranteed to bring you, married or single, a few stolen moments of bliss, for as long as it takes to eat one. I offer the thought as a gift to my readers, a little late, though if you're one of those who think of every day as Valentine's Day, that doesn't signify. Now, pay attention, because it's not often that I give out recipes and practical hints, and this one is a keeper. I got the recipe from Delish online (they credit Martha Stewart), so if it's precision you're after, go there and look up Chocolate Sweet Hearts.

Even making these cookies is fun, because it involves melting chocolate, brown sugar, and butter over a saucepan of simmering water until you have, basically, a bowl of molten chocolate. How many things under the sun are as delectable as that? You stir an egg into this and then combine it with a flour-cocoa-baking soda mixture. Where I part company with the recipe is in using my special Valentine hearts pan, which has six large heart-shaped cavities into which you press the prepared dough. After you bake them for 12 minutes or so, they come out of the pan in lovely heart shapes, no two alike, some with scalloped edges, some with little x's and o's, and some with hearts within hearts.

Here's the only caveat: you have to watch the timing. Last year, I left them in a little too long, and they were too crisp around the edges. This year, I took them out a little too soon, and they were a bit soft, though still delicious when they cooled. When you make them into big cookies like I do, they have the texture and taste of brownies. I eat one with a glass of milk after dinner, and it's perfectly wonderful. In fact, I still have some chocolate to use up, so I may have to make another batch once this one is gone.

Just one woman's idea of a great way to celebrate Valentine's Day, sans recriminations, sans jealousy, and sans hard feelings to ruin the holiday. Of course, one advantage to being single in this case is that there's more for you and you don't have to share. You may, quite rightly, point out to me that sharing often makes things more fun--and I agree completely. So if you're married, I simply advise you to double the recipe. That way, you and your partner can enjoy six full days of chocolate bliss, just as I do. I've still got one cookie left, and it's going to taste just as good as the first one did.

Sweets to the sweet (and that is Shakespeare).

Ghost in the Machine

Do you ever have times when you feel you just can't get anything done? On such occasions, do you blame Mercury in retrograde, the weather, raging sunspots, or something else altogether? Whatever it is, the communication slow-down I've seen lately manifests itself in peculiar ways.

The two areas giving me the most trouble are emails and customer service. For example, I've been trying to make a change in my student loan terms since early November, and I'm beginning to think the people there are on the other side of the looking glass. First, I failed to get an important notification about my loan status, forcing me to seek the information out for myself. Then I got a customer service rep who gave me false information over the phone, just plain wrong. When I corrected her, our connection was suddenly cut off (I'm not going to say she hung up on me--all I know is that the line went dead). Since then, I've been waiting for a paper copy of a form that I requested and still haven't seen. Did the last rep I talked to really not understand that I wanted a paper form when I said, "Please mail one to me"?

I also had trouble getting my health insurance premium to post as "paid" when I used the company's online system, although that corrected itself shortly after I sent a message of complaint. Whether it would have corrected itself if I hadn't complained is more than I can say. Then there's the trouble I've had in finding out how a library in Australia got a copy of my dissertation, which is listed in their online catalog. This is a story that began months ago when I contacted ProQuest to ask whether I was due any royalties for sales. I knew the amount would be minimal, but I didn't fully understand how the system works, so I thought I'd better ask.

If Mercury really is in retrograde, he must be getting tired of back-peddling; I first contacted ProQuest with this question at the end of August. The person there told me my question about the number of copies sold would have to be researched and that the person who could do it was out. I was moderately surprised since I pictured ProQuest as somewhat bigger than a mom-and-pop operation, although I don't really know since I've never been there. Maybe it really is a small organization with a few people doing a lot of things; I've worked in places like that. However it is, I never got an answer to what I'm sure must be a very common question.

Last month, it occurred to me that I'd never heard back from them, so I tried again, and this time I got a quick response, but the person who emailed me said ProQuest had no record of any sales of my dissertation and that she didn't know who would have told me they could "research" the situation. She seemed to think that WorldCat (which merely lists libraries holding a particular work) was somehow to blame, and that I should be talking to them. I told her that WorldCat was just a giant catalog. I was a little surprised that ProQuest people wouldn't know about WorldCat . . . but the exchange was turning into sort of a "Who's on First?" conversation, so I thanked her and said I would contact the library in question at the University of Melbourne.

I contacted the library and asked them by what channel they had acquired my work, since ProQuest said they didn't make the sale; I asked if, by chance, what they actually have is the book version, published independently, even though their catalog lists ProQuest information. I didn't say they shouldn't have it (of course I want people to read my work), but naturally I'm curious as to how they obtained it--just trying to look out for my intellectual property. There's been no answer at all from them, though the email went out two weeks ago. Perhaps they haven't had time to look into it, but for me, it's a question I've been trying to get answered since July 22, when I first contacted my school about it. Is it such a difficult question that it can't be answered in a seven-month time frame?

Then there's the job application at UCLA. I went through the same automated process a couple of years ago with no technical issues that I know of. Having decided recently to reapply, I updated my materials and got everything in order except for one remaining letter of recommendation. This person readily agreed to write on my behalf and then suddenly dropped off the map, totally incommunicado; someone else offered to do it, and thence began a series of emails that have apparently disappeared either into the ether or a giant black hole.

I have applied, over the last couple of years, for jobs in 15 different states, all over the country, and this is one of the few times I've had direct contact with my references at the start of the process. If any of my potential employers had as much difficulty as I've had in communicating with references, it's no wonder I didn't get more interviews. (I'm not saying they did have trouble--I likely wouldn't have gotten calls on some of those jobs anyway--but if the part of the communication process that's visible to me is this fraught with difficulty, I have to wonder about the part that's not visible.) I'm sure I'll find a way to make this work, though it's been much more time-consuming than it ought to be.

There was a letter that I did get an answer to (so success, of sorts), from a government official, on a separate matter, which just arrived today--so that at least I know some channels of communication are open. It wasn't really a satisfactory response, but it wasn't the only avenue of inquiry I took, so it's not the last word. The only good upshot in this instance is at least getting a response, a commodity that seems to be hard to come by.

Mercury is the god of communications, so might as well blame him as anybody. He's definitely got the lead foot lately, but you know how busy he is. He's sly, too, so that you can never really tell what he's going to do. They even say he can walk through walls, though that's more than I know. I was reading about Einstein's theory of gravitational waves and the bending of space-time only today, so perhaps it has something to do with that. Maybe Mercury is, after all, a giant wave--though personifying him at least gives you someone more concrete to shake a fist at than a mere ghost in the machine. I'd take Mercury any day over a faceless bureaucrat, though who knows: maybe that's all he is.

Start Making Sense

In the course of organizing my papers and so forth (which I blogged about recently), I came across a piece of journal writing I did the weekend I started my dissertation research. It really got me thinking. I've written about that weekend before, about the way a highly intellectual process got an unexpected jolt that turned my labyrinth walk in St. Louis into a more emotional experience than I had counted on. Looking back, I'm still amazed at how bizarre it all was.

Besides doing research, I was also in town for a concert. I know the band leader slightly and had actually seen him and his band a few weeks prior, a little closer to home. I enjoyed that show, in West Virginia, so much that I was eager to have another chance to see them before the tour moved out of the region. Since St. Louis boasts several labyrinths, a maze, and a major labyrinth-building enterprise (and New Harmony, Indiana--home to a famous historic maze--was on the way) it seemed like a decent plan. I believe I asked my sister to go with me, but I ended up going alone.

The hotel was new, in a section of St. Louis called the Delmar Loop (on Barack Obama Way, no less). It had a moon theme, from the decorations in the room to the names of the cocktails and the items on the restaurant menu. It was kind of quirky and fun, and it was the closest hotel to both the concert venue and the first labyrinth I wanted to visit: all were on the same street, an odd bit of synchronicity.

As I recall it, I was leaving my room, probably for dinner. My room was almost at the end of the hall, which was quiet; there didn't seem to be a lot of guests. As I was coming out, the person in the end room also came out, and though I didn't get a clear view over my left shoulder, I noticed that he stopped suddenly, apparently startled. I had the fleeting impression that it might have been Dave, the leader of the band I'd come to see, and I suddenly felt embarrassed. It's one thing to go see someone at a show and another thing to find yourself in a hotel room next to them at the end of a hall. I had always thought traveling performers were segregated from other guests for the sake of privacy, but in this case--maybe the hotel put all its guests on one floor for convenience? I had the impression that the staff was still working out the details of running things, so it seemed like the kind of thing that could happen.

So I had a gourmet pizza across the street, went back to the room with leftovers, and later went to the show. To my dismay, when I got there, I sensed a rather peculiar energy on stage. Dave seemed uncomfortable, I seemed to be getting some strange looks from the female band members, and I pretty much felt that I was persona non grata for the evening. Now, I'm here to tell you that I would likely have chosen a different hotel if I had known the band was staying there . . . and I started to feel really stupid for having come. 

The energy had been quite different at the West Virginia show, although I did sit next to some mildly strange locals who encouraged me to check out a nearby bar afterwards, where, they said, the performers were likely to show up. (I didn't go, but I did run into the same people in the parking lot outside the performance hall, where they seemed highly startled to see me going back inside. I actually had to explain that I was heading for the rest room, but whatever.)

So, there I was, in St. Louis, feeling mortified, without being completely sure why I felt mortified. I knew that a lot of Dave's fans attended shows whenever they could, traveling great distances at times, and I sort of felt that he welcomed that. I had a great regard for Dave and was quite crushed, so even though it was, I have to say, an excellent show, I walked back to the hotel in a very sad frame of mind. A while later, I heard people in the hall and thought I recognized Dave's voice saying goodnight. I didn't see or hear anyone after that but had one of the worst night's sleep I've ever had. 

This is what I wrote in my journal the next day: "I had a really bad dream last night. Dave was in the middle of it. Bad things just kept happening, medical emergencies, accidents. It was one thing after another, like a Shakespeare play or a Greek tragedy. "Judith" (a nurse I know) pulled up in a car, and I thought, thank God for some medical help. I can't even remember exactly what was going on, or to whom, or why. It was like a domino effect."

I left the hotel the next morning for my labyrinth walk feeling gloomy, though it was a bright and fresh Sunday morning. I persisted in feeling like a groupie all through breakfast, while checking out of the hotel (as expeditiously as possible), and while walking around the Missouri Botanical Gardens. I started to feel better after a couple of hours of walking around, regaining the proper "The hell with these people" spirit and reminding myself that I had a lot of research ahead of me. By the time I got home at the end of a long day, I was pretty well recovered.

I didn't know any of Dave's band members and was surprised about six weeks later to hear of the suicide of his fiddle player. While it surprised me, it really didn't seem to be any of my business. In videos I later saw of the band's performances that fall, everyone looked devastated. But it wasn't long after that that I started having peculiar experiences of my own: feelings of being followed, strange encounters on the streets to and from work, sudden appearances of cars with tinted windows, a greasy-looking man pulling into the gas station next to me at night, and other things too numerous to mention.

Well, I had no idea what this was about, but I called my brother and a friend and let them know what was going on, complete with a history of some previous things that had happened at work, to which I assumed all of this strangeness was related. I wasn't sure if either my brother or my friend really knew how scary all of this was, and how disorienting. My brother asked a lot of questions and seemed to think that if I had an enemy at work (which was my conclusion) it would have to be a "rogue" employee. Beyond that, he didn't offer any conclusions. I had my own idea of what was going on, though I wasn't sure what the latest spate of events had to do with what had happened before.

I also felt that I needed to let someone else know what was happening, someone who wouldn't want anything bad to happen to me, since everyone else I talked to seemed to be at a loss or in denial. The only person I could think of was Dave, whom I had formerly thought had some regard for me. I sent him a note on Facebook without much detail in it, just indicating that something bad was happening. 

I sure got some strange looks in the office the next day after sending that note, and most of the weird encounters on the street instantly stopped. In fact, everything seemed to go back to normal for quite a while. I started my blog and my dissertation clock at the same time, things settled down at work, and I assumed (rightly or wrongly) that it was Dave who had stepped in on my behalf. I saw a few of his shows that spring and summer, and while he never said anything, I assumed it was because he wanted to remain in the background. He always seemed glad to see me.

The respite from weirdness only lasted until the fall. I remember a gradual sense that things were getting strange again: that creepy guy at the World Equestrian Games who seemed to be taking my picture; the sudden appearance of cars with skull decals, often directly in front of me as I drove to work, morning after morning; the suicide of someone I didn't even know, a graduate student in history, that seemed to unaccountably unsettle our library assistant (who did know him); the sudden onset of noise, complete with loud sex and some rather evil-sounding music, from the neighbors upstairs; that Facebook connection, supposedly a Pacifica grad, who began posting increasingly peculiar and suggestive messages; a comment by a coworker about how surreal the atmosphere in the office had become; a rather uncomfortable visit to San Francisco before Christmas; people on Facebook who seemed to be speaking in code; a friend who was surprisingly calm when I started telling him about the strange state of affairs in the office (I would have run for the hills if someone had started telling me things like that); a pedicure from hell in which I had the sense that the stylist was trying to cut me (fortunately, no hepatitis, though); and a raft of other things, too numerous to mention.

To what end? Well may you ask! That's what I wanted to know, but if anyone knew, they weren't saying. I actually have a pretty high tolerance for stress, but this was something I had never seen before. I was so stressed that I began to have occasional feelings of disassociation, that my actions were not my own. I didn't even know why that was happening, but I knew it wasn't good.

But proving, I guess, that the show must go on, I somehow managed to get my dissertation proposal finished and turned in. Unfortunately, writing about labyrinths isn't the most comforting thing in the world when you feel you're in one, so I can't say the writing was therapeutic in any sense, just that I got through it. By January, the atmosphere was so strained at work that it was like walking into a battle zone every day. It felt completely unsound, physically and emotionally. Concentrating on anything became nearly impossible, and one day, I just decided I couldn't do it any more. If I stayed there, I was going to lose my mind--if something else didn't happen first. My brother seemed supportive when I talked to him, but I couldn't tell how much he really knew. He never alluded, at least directly, to the things I'd told him the previous year. But no one was being very direct about anything.

After a short stay in the hospital, I went home. The doctor told me what I had experienced was a normal reaction to a very abnormal situation--but then no one ever talked about the "situation" after that. What situation was it? Hilariously enough, I actually considered going back to work, but how could I do that when it was the toxic environment that made me sick in the first place? I used up all of my many accumulated sick days, used my disability insurance, and traveled, hoping to clear my head of the evil memories that lingered from the fall and winter. I spent a lot of money and did a lot of things differently than I normally do; I found that I still had trouble concentrating, a problem that persisted until late in the summer, when the enthusiasm for my dissertation returned. Once I started writing again, it took on a rhythm of its own, and I began to enjoy it.

Throughout that summer and fall, I took in a lot of Dave's shows, in the course of my travels. I still assumed it was he who had intervened on my behalf two years previously. He always seemed glad to see me. There was this, though: I was at a show in Somerville, Massachusetts, that summer, and a man I had never seen before, someone in the audience, came up to me after the show and said, "Mary, we've got you covered." Huh? (I'm not making this up; I know I didn't know him, and I know that's what he said.) If that happened to me now, I'd ask him who in the world he thought he was and what he was talking about. It still happens to me that people I've never seen before will sometimes behave overly familiar toward me, but that was a particularly egregious example. He actually knew my name.

I always maintained that if someone had told me what was going on, my stress would have disappeared, but no one ever did that, and I gradually had to try to put it all together myself. It's a peculiar story, to be sure, but all true, nonetheless. Someone said to me that writing about the labyrinth seemed to have constellated it in my life. I'm not actually sure I know what "constellated" means (it's Jungian jargon), but in any case, I don't think that's what happened. It was a coincidence that my topic was labyrinths; I could have been writing about flower gardens, and the same things would have happened.

I see that Dave has a show in our area next month, but I haven't decided if I'll be there or not. I noticed he's got a fan group on Facebook that, to me, has kind of an inappropriate tone, but no one else commented on it when I said so. If those are the kind of people who show up for concerts these days, I'd rather stay home. My pecuniary circumstances don't allow for spending money to sit around with a bunch of louts and neither does my patience.

I get tired of people who act as if they know more about what's going on with me than I do. If there's one thing that makes me cranky, it's a know-it-all, and I've seen a lot of them. You may be thinking: "remind me never to write a dissertation." Oh, well, I wouldn't go that far. I think the real moral of this story is that you have to resist the attempts of other people to tell you what your story is. I've found that telling that story, whether face-to-face or in writing, is the best way to stitch together a seemingly incomprehensible series of events. The art of narrative, for me, really is the art of meaning.

Think I'm Kidding? (Alas--No)

Dear ----,

I received your phone message regarding my response to this month's ---- event. I thought it might be easiest to forward the email I previously sent to ---- and ---- containing the complaint I mentioned to you. ---- responded that, with my permission, he would share the email with ---- and ----, but since you're the head of ---- and say you hadn't heard about it, I think I ought to inform you myself.

My complaint against ---- is, I realize, a serious one. As I told ----, I was at the point of dismissing the problem I had with her at school after our coursework was finished and some time had gone by. That might have been the end of it, except that in 2011, I did quite a bit of traveling and thought I saw ---- several times, though her hair was dyed. The first time it happened was when I attended the ---- event in ---- and thought I spotted ---- in both downtown ---- and at the airport as I was leaving. I had done something I normally don't do and posted to Facebook in advance of attending saying that I would be there. I don't think at that point that I was even connected to ---- on Facebook, but the event invitation was probably publicly viewable. ---- is a large event, and it wasn't out of the question for someone from ---- to be there, though it struck me as odd.

Later that summer, I thought I saw ---- again, and I think it was in ---- at a concert. It looked like her, but her hair was different. Still, I believed I must have been mistaken. During the 2011 holidays, I even corresponded with nearly all of my classmates, including ----, getting and receiving cards from many of them, including her. I had no reason to think I was going to see most of them again.

The last time I communicated with ---- was in the spring of 2012 when another classmate emailed those of us who were completing our ---- to ask about attendance at ----. Because of the unsettling experience of the previous summer, combined with the problem I'd had with ---- at school, I ultimately decided not to attend and emailed back saying I wouldn't be there. A couple of classmates, including ----, emailed me and asked why, and I indicated that I'd had peculiar travel experiences.

In the autumn, I drove to ---- from my home in ----; I saw ---- several times during the trip. Her hair was dyed, which altered her appearance, and she didn't acknowledge that she knew me, but I recognized her. This happened in ----, in ----, and in ---- on the way out. I may have seen her on the way back, too, though I'm less certain of that.

I have told a number of people about these strange experiences, and in many cases they dismiss it or don't know what to make of it. I can't, because it happened to me, and what seemed to be a case of harassment only got stranger when I tried to dismiss it. If I'm not mistaken, ---- works with young people as a ----, and I don't think it's appropriate at all for someone with such poor boundaries to be in a position of trust, especially with adolescents (or really, with anyone).

If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. I expected some sort of response after I emailed ----, and simply to get a call from an intern asking if I intended to RSVP for the event after everything I had said in the email was not the response I was expecting. I should add that even after getting your acknowledgment that I was declining to attend, I got yet another call (from yet another intern) asking me for an RSVP. Her tone even suggested a certain amount of surprise that I wasn't interested in being there, from which I derive the reasonable conclusion that my complaint isn't having the proper effect. I hope that ---- takes the safety of its community (and those beyond its community) seriously, because to do otherwise would not only be irresponsible but negligent.

(Abridged version of original complaint follows.)

On ---- 2015, at 11:23 AM, ---- wrote:

I recently received an announcement about an event for ----. I believe a similar event was held last year in conjunction with ----. I didn't attend last year and have no plans to attend this year or in the future, and I thought it important to give you some feedback on my reasons. I place a high value on the academic and intellectual experience I had at ----, which is why I'm taking the time to write to you.

I'm sure that your office does good work in helping graduates. . . . The ---- event may or may not be beneficial to others, but I don't see it as likely to offer any benefit to me as it seems to be more of a "vanity" event. It seems more useful to me to look beyond the ---- community in promoting my writing and thinking.

I have given one professional presentation to a ---- organization but felt that was only a first step. Last year I presented a paper at the ---- conference, which as you know includes scholars from a variety of fields. I believe communicating to a wider audience was actually a more fruitful experience than simply talking to others of a ---- bent. I actually had some correspondence with another presenter after the second conference; nothing of that kind occurred after the ---- presentation or has done so since then, in spite of the fact that I published what I regard as a very good paper in the ---- journal. I've always believed in the interdisciplinary approach, which the ---- program certainly employed. Staying too narrowly focused seems to me unlikely to result in any new thinking.

Lastly, I have to say that the ---- lost most of its credibility for me when I heard about last year's recipient of ----, ----. I consider her character and ethics to be highly questionable, having experienced harassment from her for most of my years at ---- and knowing of an instance in which another student believed she had ----. I was willing to believe after I left ---- that I might have imagined some of what I experienced as a student, but since then I have seen her several times at places she had no business being, to the extent that I now feel I've actually been stalked. I'm sure that doesn't coincide with the image many people at ---- have of her, nor would I have imagined that possible of her when I first met her. I'm really only speaking for myself right now, but I believe others have also had negative experiences with her.

Since she represents ----, I feel obligated to tell you about what happened to me. In my experience, she is completely lacking in boundaries and morals and not at all someone I would want representing my organization. I attended some programs at ---- within the first few years of graduating but no longer feel safe doing so knowing of her involvement with you. I regret that that's the case, but it is.

Very Sincerely.

What's With All the Beards?

What passes for a typical day in the life of a blogger/mythologist? You may be wondering, in case reading my blog has ever made you think of trying out the lifestyle for yourself. Just in case, as a public service, I'll share some of my experiences with you so you can decide if it sounds like something you'd ever want to do. (If you do, I'm going to be shocked, but I'll let you make up your own mind.)

Might as well use today as an example. I don't always get online first thing, but today I did, since I had an email to answer and have also been keeping an eye on my wireless connection, which--for reasons the telephone company cannot explain--keeps getting dropped. I was glancing at the Internet news headlines, reading articles here and there, when I saw a Reuters item about the investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB officer who became a British citizen and was working with authorities to uncover the activities of the Russian mafia. You may remember that he died in 2006 after drinking tea poisoned with polonium-210, which he said was the work of Russian agents.

In terms of human interest, that story stood out. According to the article, the British government believes his claim was true, that he was in fact murdered, and that Russian authorities are responsible. I got a little lost after that because, even though Britain is acknowledging that this man was murdered in cold blood, there doesn't seem to be any big move to arrest anyone due to the political situation vis-a-vis Syria, the importance of Russia's role there, etc, etc. Russia is making noise about how pushing the matter is going to poison the waters (pun intended, I guess), but if there's such a thing as international law, I don't see how that prevents British authorities from arresting the men they say did it and pursuing justice. That's if they're as committed as they say they are to punishing the guilty. For the sake of argument, let's assume they are.

Well, that's a disturbing story. Actually, it put me in mind of how, a few years ago, I seemed to have all of these Slavic-looking neighbors upstairs. There were two couples, both consisting of a short blonde woman and a tall dark-haired man, and for the longest time I thought there was just one couple, since they were similar in appearance and both had dogs. That was around the time things got kind of weird in and around my building, back in 2010, and I had to go up several times to ask the one couple (who lived above me) to cool it with the excessive noise. Asking did no good, but eventually they left on their own, sometime the following summer.

Going up to complain is how I found out there were actually two couples. Once I was up there talking to the man, and I could see this little blonde chick through the crack in the door, standing behind the man, though she didn't show herself directly. I had seen the other woman in my hallway once, talking to someone on her cell phone about, of all things, 9/11. She had a rather rude and peculiar manner in my brief encounters with her. Actually, she reminded me a lot of--well, I guess I shouldn't mention any names. I'll just say she reminds me of someone connected with the Western branch of my family. They could actually be sisters.

But I'm getting off track a little. Today, after reading the news, eating lunch (a pear salad with yogurt, a hard-boiled egg, cottage cheese), and taking a shower, I got ready to go out. I was dusting off my snow boots--which hadn't seen action since last winter--in the hall and decided to go back in for my lint brush. When I went back out into the hall, there was someone in the vestibule at the other end, knocking and smiling for all she was worth, and gesticulating that she needed to get in. I proceeded to ignore her. Our door is opened by a security code known to all residents, and if she didn't know it, my assumption is she didn't need to be here. (I couldn't tell if she looked Slavic from where I was standing, but heck, who knows who's keeping track of people reading articles about former KGB agents. Ha, ha--just a little humor!)

I wasn't going anywhere unusual today--just Starbucks. We're expecting snow armageddon, or something close to it, and I had decided to go today because the weather is predicted to make travel risky for the next couple of days. Before leaving, I tried the phone company again to let them know that their re-set of my channel hadn't helped my connection, and I was asked if I have a microwave (I don't) and then told that for a fee, I could get additional technical assistance. Huh? You want me to pay extra to get to the bottom of a problem with the service I'm already paying for? I told the service guy, Ron, that that wasn't my idea of a solution. I guess now I'll have to write to someone on top of making the phone calls--but we'll leave that aside for the moment.

I put on my newly brushed boots, bundled up, and went out to meet the cold. The sun tried briefly to come out while I was cleaning the snow from my car, and it wasn't much, but it was nice to see a little brightness. I drove to Starbucks on streets that were pretty clear but kind of dirty, especially near campus, and had to detour around a traffic jam on Euclid Avenue. Starbucks was less crowded than usual (I was surprised, as it seemed like the kind of winter afternoon tailor-made for a long coffee break) but no complaints about that from me.

I do have to observe that, as is often the case, there were a number of what I call "characters" hanging around. As much as you might want to sit with normal people and just enjoy a simple cup of coffee, the atmosphere there often goes against it. I jokingly refer to the place as the CIA Starbucks (inspired by an article I read about an actual Starbucks in the DC area)--and there certainly is a markedly international flavor to the place.

Hey, I'm not there to make any political statements; I usually just opt for any open seat. Today, I had the misfortune to sit near someone, who, I don't know, struck me as a little out of place, but what do I know? I hadn't been there long, sipping my coffee and looking out the window, when he tried to get my attention. I tried to ignore him, but he persisted, and when I finally looked at him, he said, "Is my music too loud?" (What music?) I pointed to my ear warmers, which I hadn't taken off, and said, "I can't hear anything." I thought of pointing out to him the illogic of asking someone who's obviously not responding to you whether or not you're bothering them, but in the interest of not prolonging the interaction, I decided not to.

So I read a little, watched the world go by, drank my coffee (which I trust was polonium-free), and enjoyed, so far as possible, a little fresh air in the hope of warding off any cabin fever that might ensue over the next couple of days. After that, I came home, fixed dinner (a scrambled-egg panini), and jumped online to check my connection (still not working properly). The rest of the evening will consist of: proofreading my blog, washing the dishes, fixing a cup of tea, and possibly watching a few more sessions of The Fall of the Pagans, the latest Teaching Company course I've been enjoying, before going to bed.

So, a day in the life of a blogger. Not my ideal life (far from it, actually), but I try to record things as they are, not as I wish they were. If you've been eaten up with envy, thinking, "Wow, I wish I could be just like Wordplay--she must have it made!" maybe this will serve as a reality check. I count my pennies and worry about the future. I've always lived a fairly ascetic life, but this is getting into monastic territory. There's very little glamour to it and a lot of aggravation. I enjoy blogging, but it doesn't pay much.

As for the world events mentioned here, I'll point out that I do have an unusually high number of readers in Russia (as I've said before), so I'm not unnaturally taking an interest in them. If I wanted to write a spy thriller in the current climate (I don't want to, but if I did), I might start with the Russian royal family--remember them? The Romanovs. Nicholas and Alexandra were cousins to half the European royals, including George V of England. I learned long ago in World History that they all died, but what if there had been a surviving member somewhere? That would be the stuff of real international intrigue.

Perhaps it's the feeling of living a secluded life that gives me a little sympathy for their final plight. Nicholas was not, apparently, a capable ruler, and as an American, I have no admiration for inherited power. We may not always do well by our leaders, but at least we get a chance periodically to change them and give someone else a try. What makes an accident of birth suitable qualification for leadership? Nothing that I can see. To me, it's a little unseemly for Americans to get too starry-eyed over royalty, when we fought a revolution to get away from all that and to start over with the premise that all men are created equal (glaring failures to put it into practice notwithstanding). Never forget what a quantum leap forward that was. If other countries have a different view of things, that's up to them to work out.

It's probably the fact of all the Russian beards I keep seeing that brings all this to mind, along with those mysterious neighbors of mine and the news in general. The Russian look seems to be very much in vogue these days, and not a day goes by when Russia isn't in the news. I don't write the news, but I do read it. And sometimes I blog about it.

"The Truman Show" -- A Fairy Tale for the Media Age

I've been thinking this week about Peter Weir's film The Truman Show. It's been so much on my mind that it seems right, without further ado, to share an analysis of the film that I once wrote for a class. I actually did two papers, one from a Freudian and one from a Jungian perspective. I thought both were good, but I got an A on one and a B+ on the other; the B+ paper is the one I'm excerpting here, with an ending taken from the other paper.

Director Peter Weir's captivating and quirky tale, The Truman Show, tells the story of Truman Burbank, the hapless hero who's totally in the dark concerning the truth of his own life. He's the subject of a 24-hour-a-day television "reality show" dreamed up by director-genius Christof. Truman's parents, his wife, his best friend, everyone around him, are all actors, and his life is a set-up. Viewers all over the world tune in to see Truman deal with such situations as the "death" of his father, his school years, his marital tensions, his job, and his escapades with pal Marlon, all of which are carefully scripted episodes. The real story begins when Truman starts to wake up to what's happening and tries to break out of the role that's been written for him.

At first, it's the dullness of a round of days in which each seems much like the one before that begins to wear on Truman. In the time-honored tradition of a situation comedy, he endures endlessly repetitious set-ups and pratfalls involving the neighbors, the local grocer, his mother, and his wife. Eventually, a series of mischances gives him an alarming realization that things revolve around him in a peculiar way. He's nearly hit on the head by a falling stage light. He tunes into a frequency on his car radio in which technicians and stagehands seem to be talking about him. His unscheduled appearance in a building leads him to a backless elevator and a glimpse of things behind the scenes, including caterers. He begins to put together odd incidents from the past in which bits of the truth are apparent. One day, he sees the man he thought of as his father, supposedly dead, now in the role of an extra walking down the street.

As the director tries more determinedly to keep Truman in the dark, Truman becomes bolder about testing reality for himself. Despite the attempts of the other actors to convince him that things are what they seem to be, Truman executes an escape plan leading to the last place Christof thinks of looking for him: the sea. For Truman's long-standing fear of the water, engineered to keep him from roaming off the set, seems to negate the possibility of his ever attempting to leave his island. Once he manages to break out, he finds that the world is both larger and smaller than he realized--larger in the sense that his life is his own if he chooses to seize it, and smaller because (literally) he has been living his life on a Hollywood set whose horizon is a painted backdrop.

Truman is a stand-in for each of us in our journey toward Selfhood. He suggests the archetypal Divine Child in his obscure beginnings. Though to himself Truman is nothing special, his smallest doings are followed by millions of viewers around the world, so that his power and reach are almost supernatural. He has retained a childlike quality even in adulthood, a sunny innocence in the face of the deceit practiced all around him. If, as Jung said, the Divine Child represents the future, Truman personifies unawakened potential in its purest form.

Truman's push toward Selfhood is nearly dormant in the beginning as seen by his acquiescence to the subtle and not-so subtle manipulations of the director and actors. He has been content to live in Jung's "unconscious identification with the plurality of the group." He is so far from knowing himself that when he looks in the mirror every morning, he doesn't realize he is looking into a camera, on the other side of which are the technicians and directors who are actually running his life. "Do you think he can see us?" asks one abashed technician when confronted by Truman's steady but unknowing gaze.

There is no fear of that yet, since Truman's ego is so split off from his unconscious that he is totally identified with his social role. There's an implication that any mild attempts Truman has made at independent growth or assertion have met with disapproval or even disaster in the past. He is oblivious to all the signs that indicate his predicament until he meets Sylvia, who goes against the script by falling for him.

Before being booted from the show (the director has recognized Sylvia's power over Truman), Sylvia tries to tell him the truth about who he is and what's happening. This scene takes place near the ocean, symbol of the primordial source of life and the unconscious. Truman is afraid of the water to the point of being unable to cross a bridge (representing both initiation and its hazards), and this fact has been largely responsible for his failure to realize that he is living on a set. Even though he and Sylvia are parted, he thinks of her constantly, and spurred by an intense desire to be reunited with her, he begins to dream of leaving Seahaven.

When Truman hatches a plan to escape the set, he goes to the basement of his home, where all of his childhood treasures and relics of the past are kept. It has been obvious for some time that Truman is most himself when he retreats to this private world, and it now becomes the springboard for his escape. Out of view of the camera, he makes a break for it by climbing a ladder. A means of egress between the unconscious, "basement" part of himself and his "daylight" ego has been found and moves Truman toward greater consciousness. But to truly change, he still has to cross the ocean that has always terrified him.

For years, Truman believed himself responsible for the death of his father in a boating accident. His realization that this is false now enables him to see a boat not as a symbol of guilt but as a transport that can take him to freedom. In crossing the sea, he is reborn to a more self-determined life, and the boat becomes a womblike vessel of safety that carries him through a special effects storm. Once he weathers the crisis, he realizes that the sea--as well as the painted backdrop he eventually crashes into--represent only the early stages of his journey. The ocean had seemed limitless to Truman when he stood on the shore, but he is just beginning. When he reaches the stage door, it leads into darkness.

In the act of passing through it, Truman enters the unknown territory of authentic life, where nothing is guaranteed. Sylvia, however, has been watching in suspense along with everyone else, and leaves her television, running out of the house to find him. Truman is about to enter her territory.

Though the imaginary television audience in the film--and we viewers of the film--have been complicit in the conspiracy against Truman by the very act of watching, another truth is revealed at the end of the story. We are each Truman in our own way, and our glee at his triumph expresses our own deep yearning for Eros and a more vital, authentic existence than the one we may have settled for. After all, if Truman can do it, so can we.

Mnemosyne's Rules for Making Room

Some people think spring is the best time for cleaning, but I say, why not winter? You're going to be inside anyway, and inclement days provide an ideal opportunity to tackle jobs like clearing out clutter that you wouldn't dream of doing on a nice day (or at least, I wouldn't).

I've written before about the complications that arise from having too many objects sitting around. Lately, I've actually been getting rid of some of them, and while it may not free up that much space, it just feels better to have them gone. The television, for example, I never watched--and to my surprise, you apparently can't even give a TV away, so I just had to throw it out. My old typewriter, which was taking up real estate on a crowded table in the back room, now has the niche the TV formerly occupied. There was also the space heater I never used, and even though I had it tucked away, that's one less thing I'll have to move when dust-mopping.

Last winter, I had gotten my files mostly in order, but there's still some clutter, so I've started going through that, too. Old bills, cards, pictures . . . anything I'm pretty sure I won't be looking at again is a candidate for the dust bin. Several times in the past, I've started to throw out old boxes of letters and cards and found that for sentimental reasons, I hesitated to do so. My feelings about that are a little different now, as I realize that I truly never look at those things, that they are gathering dust, and that dust is itself a hazard.

Last night, for example, I found an old Christmas card in which someone berated me for not including any news in my card and then went on to tell me that they had been in Lexington not long before. The same thought came to mind that had occurred to me the first time I read the card, which was, "Wow, if you really want to know how I'm doing, why didn't you call when you were in town?" The nerve, huh? This time, however, I didn't suppress the thought, and that card went the way of the shredder.

I know there will be more things thrown away by the time I'm done. I've already parted company with videos I have no desire to look at again; I've gone through my books before, but who knows, there may be more that I feel I can part with now. I certainly have plenty of them. Then there are all those "collectibles" sitting around that make dusting such a pain in the neck. Some of them I've had for years, but it may be time now to let them go. It'd be much easier to clean without them.

It isn't that I don't value gifts that people have given me but rather that I want the things I look at every day to speak to me of living affection--in many cases, these objects are like exhibits from a museum of my past, curios collected on an archaeological dig, from people I no longer see. And who wants to live in a museum? It's the relationship with the giver that gives an object meaning--without that, it's just something taking up space. This process will take a little doing, but the beginning of the year seems like a propitious time to start.

On a final note, I've been clearing out old emails and online accounts as well--and while I'm on the topic of electronic communications, this is probably a good time to tell you that Google says people following my blog with a non-Google account will no longer be able to do so in the near future. If you want to follow Wordplay, they advise that you sign up for a Google account and re-follow the blog. I'm not sure how many Openid followers I have, but if you're one of them, this applies to you. I sometimes look at the metrics on my blog and am amazed at the number of readers I have around the world. So many from Russia, for instance--what gives with all those Russian readers, second only to Americans in following my blog? I asked that once before, and someone said that perhaps I have a Russian admirer. I don't think that's it, but it remains one of the curiosities of my blogging life.

You may, like me, be busy clearing out clutter and getting organized for the new year. If so, good luck and smooth sailing. And if you enjoy Wordplay's forays into myth, culture, and everyday life, I'll see you in cyberspace.