Through a Glass, Darkly

I happened to read the other day that the public schools here were starting fall classes this week, and in fact, they began on Wednesday. It seems to me that the date of school opening has inched much closer to the beginning of August than it was when I was a student. It's not that I have any stake in it, but it goes against my grain to think of going back to school while summer is still in full flower. It seems a little cruel and unusual, but don't tell any school administrators I said so. It's just my personal opinion, which means little.

I tend to think that school should start, at the earliest, at the very end of August, or better yet, right after Labor Day. The Christmas holiday should be two weeks long, and there should be a full week of spring break or Easter recess, whichever you prefer to call it. Summer vacation should be three months long, and it should begin either right before Memorial Day or immediately after. Of course, my first elementary school experience was in Florida, where snow days never wreaked havoc with the school calendar, and a schedule like this was actually possible.

As much as I liked summer vacations as a child, I was usually a bit excited about going back to school in those early years. There would be new clothes, a new lunch box, and that wonderful smell of new composition books, pencils, and ink cartridges. When I was in school, I didn't mind it most of the time and sometimes quite enjoyed being there. It's just that vacations and the freedom that came with them were so much more fun, and sitting in a classroom all day is difficult even for a good student. In many ways, it was a more innocent time, though I know it's a truism to say so.

I reminded myself when out and about this week to be on the lookout for school buses and have, indeed, seen several. Yes, everything seems a bit muddled when school buses appear only a week and a half into August, but as muddled as the state of the world is generally, an anomaly like this is only a drop in the bucket. I pulled into the parking lot of a local Catholic Church the other day, purely on impulse, because I wondered if it might be open (it has wonderful light, which is great for meditation). In the parking lot was an expensive-looking SUV with dark tinted windows and the engine running, a slightly ominous sight that I'm pretty sure would have given me pause even as a child.

I went to Catholic schools where the church was next door to the school building and seemed a fairly benign place, even if you didn't exactly believe everything they told you. Church was a place where they had bingo and spaghetti dinners, not weird-looking SUVs that kept their windows rolled up and engines running for fifteen minutes at a time. I considered whether this was any of my business or not, as all kinds of strange things seem to happen these days without anyone taking notice, but in the end I decided to report it to the church. The woman I talked to seemed to take it in stride, though she did say they had noticed an uptick in the number of people pulling into their lot to check their cell phones.

OK, well, I'm old-fashioned, I believe in no school till Labor Day, watching out for school buses, and reporting suspicious activity--so I did my part. I hope someone would think it a little stranger if this happened in a school parking lot with kids around, but it does seem to take a lot to get people's attention these days, so I don't really know. I guess the truth is that I just don't like tinted windows.

Chasing Kings at Tintagel

There was a news item last night about excavations now taking place at Tintagel, the legendary birthplace of King Arthur on the Cornish coast. The ruins of a castle belonging to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, that still stand on the site are from the 13th century, too late for Arthur, who is usually placed in the sixth century or so. Archaeologists are now hard at work uncovering the walls of a palatial Dark Age structure, part of a larger complex of buildings yet to be excavated. The evidence of glass, pottery shards, and other artifacts at the site tells the story of wealthy inhabitants who must have had extensive commerce with the Mediterranean world and possibly with the Roman empire itself, which still existed in diminished form after the Romans withdrew from Britain.

The articles were fascinating and the videos and pictures equally captivating. The Cornish coast is very beautiful, and a more dramatic spot for a palace could hardly be imagined. I've always wanted to visit the West Country, and this news certainly does nothing to diminish that feeling. Although the presence of a Dark Age palace doesn't prove that Arthur lived there, the findings are provocative; no doubt many additional details will emerge as the work continues over the next five years. What an opportunity for an archaeologist--Indiana Jones has nothing on the Cornwall Archaeological Unit. It goes without saying that interest in this project, in which history intersects with British legend and myth, must be very keen.

As I looked at the photos, I naturally thought about my Grail story, which I published on this site last summer after being inspired by some readings in Arthurian children's fiction and Grail literature. Arthur's birthplace has never been synonymous with the Grail castle, but the Tintagel site, from my viewing of the photographs, is similar to what I imagined for Corbenic, even down to the detail of existing on an island. Although it is not as far out at sea as I placed my castle (my Grail knight had to ride over a causeway in a storm to reach it), the Tintagel headland, currently reached by a land bridge, will one day be connected to the mainland by a daring new structure soaring high above the old one, which should offer stunning views as well as an unforgettable approach to the site.

All of this is very exciting and has the potential to add much to the current understanding of the history and culture of the period, even if King Arthur himself remains elusive, as mythic figures often do. I was struck by the presence of a recently installed sculpture of a royal figure on the site, an eight-foot bronze by artist Rubin Eynon called Gallos (Cornish for "power"). Although it is up to the viewer to decide whether this kingly figure is Arthur or not, the sculpture itself is very commanding, though somewhat wraithlike in spite of the bronze. The face is partly hooded, and the kingly robe flows into panels that expose a somewhat slenderer figure than one would expect. The effect is startling; I don't know what the artist intended, but the figure speaks to me of the fragility of power, of the gap that lies between the role of ruler and the human dimensions of the individual who steps into the role.

I understand that many people are concerned that Cornish history be portrayed accurately at Tintagel, and I think it's good that this figure makes no claim to be Arthur but rather remains undefined and open to interpretation. That not only avoids historical inaccuracies but also provides, by virtue of anonymity, a more powerful meditation on leadership and power than it would be if tied to a particular personality. An official at the site remarked on what the experience of coming upon this figure in the mist would be like, and I agree: I'm guessing it's a bit of an unnerving experience, like coming across an archetype striding out there on the cliffs instead of a human being. It's not often that legends come to life like that, even if the name isn't Arthur.

When Light Summer Reading Gets Away From You

We've definitely had dog days of summer here this week. The heat index was 114 on Sunday, and I had to change my clothes immediately on coming in from an evening walk. Thunderstorms today eased things off a bit, but it's late July, so the air is still heavy even though it's a lot cooler now.

My reading habits have been as unsettled as the weather. I revisited my shelves the other day to find something I was in the mood for and picked up Jack Finney's Time and Again. I read this rather unusual time travel story some years ago and thought it might serve for some light summer reading this week. If you haven't read it, it's the story of a young ad agency artist who gets recruited for a secret government project that involves going back in time.

Yikes! The first time I read it, I enjoyed the suspense and build-up at the beginning of the story as the main character gradually learns what the project entails and what's being asked of him. This time, I confess that it struck me in a completely different way, namely, that I was horrorstruck at the deal that's offered to Si, who's only told that he's being given a rare opportunity to participate in the adventure of a lifetime. The catch is that he has to agree to participate and be sworn to secrecy before he learns what he's agreeing to. Sounds like something you'd just jump at, right? Drop everything, tell your family and friends you're going away for an undetermined period of time, and place yourself in the hands of government agents you'd never met the day before yesterday--yes? In the story, Si's handlers lament how few candidates actually make the grade and pass all the screening. To me, it's a wonder they find any, given the conditions.

Nonetheless, I kept reading, and found that I really enjoyed the passage in which Si and his friend Kate manage to go back together for a couple of hours to 1880s New York. Kate is not actually part of the project and has no business being there, so I liked the way she and Si decided to subvert the rules and jump in together. Their goal was just to observe and not do anything to bring attention to their presence, so this passage is basically a description of what it's like to stroll through Central Park and take a trolley ride late in the afternoon of a winter day in 1882. It's a charming sequence.

I've certainly wondered what it would be like to be able to go back in time just for a few minutes to see what my street looked like 200 years ago, say, or what the Great Plains looked like when buffalo still roamed there. Si and Kate get a chance to see what New York was like before the advent of skyscrapers, and to observe the dress and appearance of its inhabitants in the age of top hats and bustles. I was fascinated by Kate's observation that the people's faces were somehow different from those of modern New Yorkers in some indefinable way. Personally, a quick there and back like this ride down Fifth Avenue would probably have been enough for me, but for Si, the first subject to actually succeed in time travel, it's only the beginning.

I started to lose interest in the story when Si went back again, this time without Kate, and took up residence in a boarding house, where he started involving himself in the lives of the other residents and beginning a flirtation with the landlady's niece. I'm not actually that fond of time travel stories, and I kept thinking of what a mess things would likely end up being if such a scenario were actually played out. Far from the "We only want to try this to see if it can be done" attitude of Si's government employers, I can only imagine chaos ensuing if, for example, our government (or anyone else's) somehow managed to send an agent back in time. Undoubtedly, the real purpose would end up being to manipulate events to come out in somebody's favor, which would of course unleash a whole host of other consequences, with everything spiraling out of control before you could say "jackrabbit."

Mr. Finney's story was published in 1970, which may, perhaps, have been a more receptive time for this kind of thing. I'm thinking of the state of the world today and how much less faith many people have in the good intentions of government and in the ability of humans to bend nature to their will without making a mess of it. Also, I suppose I have a greater appreciation now for the law of unintended consequences. I know, I know . . . you're supposed to suspend disbelief to get into the spirit of an adventure like this, but somehow or another, the book kept seeming to mutate from an adventure into a horror story, so I put it back on the shelf and found something else. So much for a little light summer reading.

Whatever time we find ourselves in is going to have advantages and disadvantages. I might be more amenable to the idea of time travel if we seemed to be making more of a success of our own era, but I'm afraid the jury's still out on that one. It's a little bit like the way I feel about traveling to other planets: not a bad idea, but could we please do a better job of managing life on our own turf before packing our bags and hurtling out into the galaxy? Sounds like a plan.

The Drawing Room Marlowe

The other day I started reading Raymond Chandler when I couldn't find the book I had been looking for (an adventure-romance, and not at all noirish). Here's the thing about Chandler's Marlowe stories: when you read one, you enter a universe that seems not only amoral but also tawdry and cheap, albeit in a glamorous, Old Hollywood sort of way. Gangsters, thugs, cops on the make, spoiled rich kids, ruthless millionaires, shysters, confidence men--the first time I read Mr. Chandler, I was simultaneously impressed by his witty style and appalled at his characters.

That was more than 10 years ago. Today, I'm still rather horrified by the meanness and lack of honor one encounters in his pages, but I'm no longer able to view his world as a fiction I can leave behind simply by closing the book, because . . . well, don't some of these people seem oddly familiar? One of the many things growing up does for you is to remove some of the misapprehensions you may have entertained in your youth. While this is not altogether a cause for despair, it's certainly an eye-opener. Your first realization that you might have more in common with some of Shakespeare's characters than you ever dreamed of as a high school freshman is one thing; to realize that the world you know is not so very different from the gritty, hard-bitten L.A. underworld as seen by Philip Marlowe is quite another.

I remember being fooled by the first Chandler story I read into thinking initially that the Marlowe universe had no moral center. This is wrong, of course: Marlowe is the moral center. Because he himself has no illusions and blends so successfully into the jungle with his tough talk and willingness to play hard and fast, I mistook his coloration for something else. A similar thing happened the first time I saw Fargo; I thought the film was ridiculing not only the villains but also the police officer played by Frances McDormand. It was only on a second viewing that I realized how heroic, if unglamorous, McDormand's Marge Gunderson actually is. Likewise, in Marlowe's case, I had to learn to distinguish the manner from the man. Once I did that, it became easier to find my way through the story, as if I had suddenly found the thread in the maze.

If I asked you to stop right now and think of what legendary or mythological character Philip Marlowe reminds you of, what would you say? My breakthrough moment 10 years ago came when I realized that he is really the noir equivalent of a knight in armor, a Galahad, or, more likely, a Lancelot, operating under his own moral code rather than a knightly one. His chivalry might take very unusual forms, and his failings are much more apparent than those of a saint like Perceval, but like a knight errant wandering in the forest he is motivated, underneath it all, by ideals. If he loses his way, he always finds it again, though he may get little thanks for it.

The dispiriting thing about Chandler's world at first glance is that Marlowe's character appears to be operating in a vacuum. There is no Grail, no apparent center to the maze, and no apparent meaning to the struggle other than the will to survive. If you scratch a little deeper, though, it becomes apparent that there is something more, a determination Marlowe has made to live life on his own terms. If there's no justification for the brutal world he finds himself in, fine, he'll be his own justification. Like Childe Roland in Robert Browning's poem, he goes off to meet his adversaries in a bleak and somewhat joyless landscape with an attitude of defiance and a touch of style that really makes all the difference.

It's certainly possible to rail against one's fate and to feel that one would rather be living in a different book. I might picture myself more easily in, say, Jane Austen's world, where people are polite, conversation sparkles, there are plenty of picnics and dances, and behavior is constrained by certain expectations and mores. That's the upside. The downside, of course, is that after a while, all of that dancing and drawing room conversation is bound to get a little old and some of those societal expectations a little confining. Don't you imagine that, if you had been sitting around the fire with your needlework for years and spent one too many evenings making polite conversation with the vicar that you might welcome the sudden appearance of a Philip Marlowe, cynical, unapologetic, and unreconstituted, in your social circle? Certainly, I would.

The main difference between a Marlowe and a Galahad is that, as a postmodern hero, Marlowe navigates without a map. Galahad and Perceval operate under a Christian worldview that gives their universe meaning and supplies the moral compass that guides their actions, even when they are far from Arthur's court. The spirituality underpinning their quests lends a certain ethereal beauty to their landscape that is lacking in Marlowe's, but perhaps that makes his heroism all the more striking.

The difference between a Mr. Darcy and a Philip Marlowe? Well, obviously Mr. Darcy has more polish, and Mr. Marlowe has more swagger, but who knows? In an Austen universe, without all those layabouts to keep in line, maybe Marlowe would relax his cynicism and Darcy would learn to make coffee and scrambled eggs. One thing's for sure: those evenings in the drawing room would never be the same. Maybe the vicar wouldn't welcome the change, but I suspect everyone else would.

City Pastoral

There was a popular book in the 70s called The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which I still have on my bookshelf. It consisted of nature notes taken from the journal of Edith Holden, an Englishwoman in Warwickshire who incorporated her observations of weather, seasonal changes, and plant and animal life into her writing. It was nothing earth-shattering, just closely observed details of such occurrences as the finding of a bird's nest, the first wildflowers of spring, or a walk on a blustery day. I sometimes feel I might be turning into Miss Holden, though I don't have her talent as an illustrator (she included paintings with her notes).

She would likely have found a walk in our local arboretum a little tame, given as she was to striking off on foot across the countryside in defiance (or actual absence) of roads, but for us city dwellers it's nice to have a park to roam in with plenty of divergent paths if the main track gets too crowded. There are certain things you're unlikely to see, such as bears or wolves, but there are plenty of birds and small mammals. Unlike Miss Holden, I don't know the names of all the birds, trees, and flowers I see, but I sometimes look them up. Once in the spring, I was so amazed at the beauty of a flowering tree in the garden that I asked one of the horticulturists what it was (it's a Japanese Kwanzan, and it looks like a tree you'd see in paradise).

With the recent re-landscaping of the field next to the arboretum and the introduction of a widened and re-contoured watercourse, I've noticed some new wildlife. If we were on the edge of town instead of in the center, there would probably be deer, but as it is there are some new species of birds. The smallish, quick birds with the piping calls might be terns; I've also noticed a pair of hawks or falcons that seem to have a nest in the vicinity. They land on the tops of light posts, looking magisterial, and call to one another; the other day I saw a smaller bird darting out of the way, as swiftly as I've ever see a bird move, as one of these larger creatures flew over its path to a lamp post. The smaller bird moved as if it had the fear of God in it, which it probably did.

That might have been the same day I came across a rabbit sitting bolt upright near the woods. I often see rabbits nosing around in the grass, but I've never seen one in such a watchful pose; he didn't even seem to mind me very much, and I was curious as to what had made him so alert. I felt for a moment that I was living in Watership Down and the rabbit was about to turn around and announce some momentous change affecting the neighborhood. That same day, or maybe a different day, there was a cat on the other side of the arboretum, intent on something I couldn't see in the bushes. I would have liked to know what it was, though I'm sure it was only a drama involving field mice or chipmunks, or perhaps groundhogs, which I have also seen.

One sees butterflies of course, and bees, and fireflies at twilight. Last year, there were large numbers of June bugs in the park, scattered throughout the grass and covering the walkways, though I have yet to see one this season. There are always robins and cardinals, and I sometimes see bluejays flashing showily through the trees. I had always assumed that the cooing sound I commonly hear is pigeons, but when I started hearing it in the evening, I wondered if it might be an owl instead. When it starts getting dark, I sometimes see a bat or two flitting overhead. Most magical of all, a bird landed on a fence near me the other evening, of a type I don't think I've ever encountered before, with an unusually melodious and liquid song. I thought of a nightingale, though I don't know if we even have them here. If it hadn't been dusk, I would have gotten a better look at it.

Two nights ago, I was sitting on a bench under a tree in a quiet spot, watching the fireflies as they rose twinkling out of the grass. It's a quintessential Kentucky activity to watch fireflies on summer evenings, and I was making the most of it when I realized I could hear the piping of some of those shore birds coming from a little distance. It was a bit incongruous but not unpleasantly so, a noticeably new voice in a land-locked pastoral of woods and fields.

Tonight's highlight: I came across a beetle of some sort that had gotten turned over at the edge of the sidewalk, unable to right itself. I know it's better not to intervene in nature, but I couldn't help but feel sorry for this little insect, which was waving its legs in the air for all it was worth. I put my shoe next to it, and it instantly seized the opportunity to grab hold and turn itself over. I hope I'm not in too much trouble with naturalists for doing that, but I really feel that I was just helping him to help himself. I watched him for a while as he made his way through the grass, apparently well on his way to wherever he had been trying to go, though he looked a little stunned.

If I were Miss Holden, I would have pulled out my drawing materials and made a sketch, so you could have seen the beetle as I saw it--ungainly, but determined--but I only have words, so that will have to do. The park was crowded tonight, and I went off the path a few times myself for a little extra room, but the evening was pleasant, and there was a pretty pink sunset. I saw one of the hawks floating over the parking lot as I was on my way home, and he peeled off to the right as I watched, followed half a minute later by the second one. I wouldn't mind knowing what they're saying to one another (they're very vocal), but there's no reason I can think of why they should tell me.

Persephone in Philadelphia

So, how was your Fourth of July? Mine was quiet, the highlight (or lowlight, depending on which term you prefer) being an evening walk interrupted by a police officer, who informed me that the Arboretum was closed for city-sponsored fireworks. I love fireworks but had no interest in either crowds or city-sponsored anything, so I walked away from the gathering people to a path through the woods that I'd been meaning to explore anyway. When I came out the other end (on a quiet residential street), a police car was parked at the exit. Back on my own street, the first thing I saw was a drone flying overhead. I've never seen one before, and though it's not surprising that there was security in the area, the overall effect was the opposite of reassuring. It was a bit Big Brotherish, to tell you the truth. This is our brave new world, I guess.

Speaking of that, just this week we've had controversy over the Benghazi Committee's report, terrorist attacks overseas, and now, finally, the news that the Justice Department is closing the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email arrangement. While there seems to be a movement afoot to "move everyone along," away from both Benghazi and the email investigation, I don't mind telling you that I doubt justice has been done in either case. In fact, both the Benghazi report and FBI Director James Comey's remarks in the last couple of days have, if anything, only left me with more questions. I gather that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Accusations of partisan politics will not unnaturally arise in a situation like this one. However, I am not a Republican, but a Democrat, and I believe the current administration is both corrupt and highly skilled at concealing its own deceptions. It gives me no pleasure at all to say this, let me tell you. I wish it were otherwise. I voted for President Obama twice and for Hillary Clinton once in the 2008 Kentucky primary--and these seemed like reasonable decisions at the time. If I have lost all respect for these people, it's entirely their own fault. Far from leading us into what I thought would be a time of healing and greater maturity as a country (sorely needed after the Bush administration), our current leaders have only let us in for more of the same. If they had any integrity, the headlines you'd be reading would be far different than the ones you're seeing.

Mr. Comey of the FBI has always struck me as the no-nonsense type; that he bristled today when someone questioned his integrity doesn't surprise me. So what do we make of the fact that, despite being highly critical of Mrs. Clinton's actions, he didn't feel they met the bar for indictment? He mentioned the lack of evidence of her intention to do wrong and the lack of precedent. I'm a non-lawyer, of course, but I did look up the section of the U.S. Code (18, sec. 1924) that governs handling of classified information, and this is what it says:

Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

It doesn't say anything about the need to establish intent, and Mr. Comey characterizes Mrs. Clinton's handling of the classified materials as "careless"--so I understand why so many people are puzzled over the lack of an indictment. I'm puzzled as well. Many Clinton supporters point to such factors as the email practices of former Secretaries of State, Mrs. Clinton's admission that she made a mistake and wouldn't do it again, and the lack of evidence of any harm being done as proof that the entire affair has been overblown. I can't see what bearing any of that has on whether or not the law was broken. Hasn't security been breached, by definition, just by the way the material was handled?

I have no wish to add to the pain of the friends and family of the Americans killed in Benghazi, but my view of that situation hasn't changed either. In what universe are people living that they deem it forgivable to fail to provide security in such a hotspot as Libya? Mrs. Clinton's assertions that she herself never received any security requests carry no weight with me. How could anyone, least of all the Secretary of State, have failed to know what was happening there, when there had already been one attack on the facility? It's not as if the post in Switzerland had reported a loose shutter and been told to find a couple of nails and a hammer until some hinges could be shipped. The failure to protect as any prudent person should have done is so egregious that it seems to me to rise to the level of active culpability.

Now that Mrs. Clinton has seemingly wrapped up the votes of African Americans and Bernie Sanders is a jerk for having marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I suppose we can look forward to a new era of compassion and enlightened policy if she is elected (much like the "kinder, gentler nation" former president George H.W. Bush spoke of once upon a time. Perhaps the Bushes and the Clintons have been trading ideas on how to bring this about, since they all seem to get along so wonderfully now).

I don't doubt that Mrs. Clinton could find it in her to throw a few bones to the working class and people in need if it didn't cost her anything politically, but I doubt she would even dream of touching the underlying issues of economic and social justice, of peace and stability, both here and abroad, that would truly make for a prosperous America. There's money to be made in war and nation building, but I doubt if much of it would make its way to you and me. Even if it did, it would be blood money.

On this blog, I sometimes discuss myths that seem to shed light on current events, but I don't know that I've ever mentioned the Abduction of Persephone. That one, I think, captures the spirit of the times as I see them more closely than any other, if you think of Persephone as standing in for the bright promise (a promise only--not a guarantee) of the Constitution and a free and open society. America has already lost its innocence, though I'm not sure how many people are aware of it. We're in the underworld now, and you see the evidence all around you. Only think: as a leader, you can dedicate yourself to doing what's best for your people, to acting selflessly, or you can use your powerful position for selfish and immoral ends. If I, as a Democrat, am critical of the current leadership, it's because I see too little evidence of the former and much proof of the latter.

I was thinking the other night about the upcoming Democratic Convention in Philadelphia when I started to hear Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" playing in my head. I'm including a link to the video here, though I really should ask you to look it up for yourself. I know you're not going to disappoint me by asking what a story about AIDS has to do with either Persephone and Hades or 2016 America, but if you're in doubt, check out the video, which itself makes skillful use of one man's illness as a metaphor for the condition of society. It's very affecting, I promise.

Mrs. Clinton has criticized Donald Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again." Whatever else Mr. Trump may say, I do agree with him on that--there has been some serious slippage of late. Whether or not we, like Persephone, are fated to eventually find our way back to the upper world is more than I can say, but what I do say is that we have to try. In order to do that, though, we have to grow up and stop believing in fairy tales. If we don't, and soon, I don't think you have to worry about looking up the video. The streets of Philadelphia will find their way to you.

Sauron in the Suburbs

There's often a lull in the air the week before the Fourth of July, with people appending their vacations to the holiday and leaving town early. This year's no exception, and coupled with some cooler weather, it's been a fairly pleasant few days--oh, except for Monday, the day I went to the grocery store and came back home to see one of my problem neighbors in the side yard of the building. I decided to cope with this by giving her a wide berth, so I drove around the block. Avoidance is sometimes the best strategy.

When I came back, lo and behold, she was still in the side yard, sitting on the step with her cell phone. Now, I could have gone in through the other door, but I didn't like the idea of doing so while she was hanging around. You never know, she might decide to walk into the building at the same time I was walking in with groceries, and I just didn't cotton to that idea.

So I decided to take a longer drive, really with no set purpose other than to give her time to clear out--yes, even with perishables in the back seat, a 30-minute drive out of my way seemed preferable to the chance of an encounter. So I drove out Tates Creek Road and into a subdivision I had noticed recently but hadn't visited. Years ago, I had done some copywriting for its sister development, but I had never actually visited this section of it--so call it a semi-professional interest combined with mild curiosity. I used to enjoy going on home tours and was frankly interested in seeing how the neighborhood compared with its sibling across the road.

Nothing, it seems, is without adventure these days, even a leisurely, spur-of-the-moment tour of south Lexington. I pulled into the neighborhood and noted the same large, elegant brick houses and meandering streets I was familiar with in the original development (and used to describe glowingly in advertising copy). It's a neighborhood of cul-de-sacs without any through traffic, a smaller version of its twin on the opposite side of the road. I drove slowly along the main avenue, turned off into one side street, then pulled back on and continued to the place where the street dead-ends next to a field. I was afraid I might have to turn around in someone's driveway until I noticed a final cul-de-sac on the right, just before the dead end.

I pulled in and swung the car around the circle, pausing at the end before pulling onto the main avenue. I was thinking how nice it must be for the people at the end of the street to be living next to undeveloped land. As I pulled out, I saw that a gray pickup truck was coming down the street toward me, going fairly fast.

You know what I was saying recently about things somehow seeming a little out of whack though you're not sure why? That truck coming toward me had that look about it. Partly, I think it was the type of vehicle it was, not something you'd typically see in the driveway of one of these manses, unless it belongs to a contractor or someone who comes to do yard work. Then there was the speed, as if the driver were in a hurry. Perhaps an early evening appointment to cut the grass? Could be, but what's the rush? I somehow thought the driver might be unfamiliar with the neighborhood, as I was, but for some reason was in a hurry. I pulled out of the way, and although there was no turn signal, the vehicle pulled into the cul-de-sac without giving me much room to spare.

Normally, I would have waited to make sure the truck was actually turning before I pulled out, even though there didn't seem to be many other places he could be going, but there was just something a little out of place about that truck rushing down the street, so I decided to get out of the way. I drove back out to the entrance road, where I encountered a jogger in yellow approaching the intersection at the same time I was. I stopped to let him cross, and I may have imagined it, of course, but I thought he looked a little startled. Perhaps my car doesn't look like the typical vehicle one sees in that neighborhood either, but it resembles a Prius to a casual eye, so I don't think it looked that unusual. Thus, though I had been in the neighborhood for only five minutes, that was long enough to have two slightly off-kilter experiences.

Turning left, I noted that I was on Saron Drive and said to myself, "Just add a 'u' and it makes "Sauron" (these myth people and their eternal Lord of the Rings references, you're probably thinking). I would have thought it anyway, but I was unsettled enough by what had just happened to say it aloud. It really does seem to me that I spend my days going from one odd occurrence to another. My neighbor had disappeared by the time I got home, but there was a young man I had never seen standing outside the building next door affecting what I would call a "studiedly casual" manner, so I spent a few minutes parked on the street thinking about everything that had happened before pulling in and starting to unload my groceries. It's a good thing I didn't really have many perishables (except for eggs, and I had nearly lost those when a car suddenly changed lanes in front of me on Tates Creek Road). Nevertheless, my eggs and my paper towels and my produce and I somehow arrived home intact (and not for the first time).

The episode reminded me of one of those Stephen King stories set in a suburb or a small town in which it's the strangeness of events playing out in a very ordinary setting that contributes to the feeling of suspense. Everything looks OK on the surface, but weird little things keep happening to turn normalcy on its head. It's also very much like a dream I had five and a half years ago about horse statues that turned into living horses in front of my eyes. It was the moment when what had seemed inanimate suddenly proved not to be that was so alarming: a sudden spark in the eyes, a slight movement of the head. Once they came fully to life, the bad part was over.

Galleons of Night

The best word for the weather we've been having is probably "unsettled." There's nothing strange about summer thunderstorms in Kentucky, but it has been unusually scorching for June. Over the last few days, huge clouds have blown in that looked like they might have sailed all the way up from the Gulf, and there have been rumbles of thunder and showers off and on. The brief afternoon storm we had on Tuesday didn't do much to break the heat; when I walked that evening, it was like pushing through gauze just to stroll down the sidewalk.

I heard yesterday that some of the storms in the Midwest were turning out to be severe, but it looked like most of that weather was passing to our north. Nevertheless, the sky grew very dark late this afternoon, and I unplugged several appliances while waiting to see if things would blow over. The heat index was supposed to be near 110 today, and I was hoping a good storm would push some of the hot air out. That did in fact happen, though the extreme change in temperature was rather jarring. When I went outside a while ago, the wind was very cool, though the hallway of this building was still humid. We had not one but two tornado watches, issued by two different bureaus, including one in Oklahoma (and they should know).

A few weeks ago, I was nearly caught in a storm when some black clouds that I thought were moving in a different direction turned out to be heading the same way I was. How nice! I hadn't gone very far when a decisive lightning flash put an end to my walk, and I had to scramble up a bank and onto the porch of a nearby office building to avoid a drenching. The worst part was brief, but I ended up having to head home anyway because the light but steady rain that followed showed no signs of letting up, and there were a few dark clouds still on the horizon.

Even though things looked clear when I went out earlier tonight, the wind was gusting, and I decided against the risk of getting caught out in another storm. It seemed more like the interlude between two tempestuous scenes of an opera involving Valkyrie and various agitated gods than a true clearing. Also, I had seen the word "derecho" in yesterday's forecast, a term that apparently denotes very strong winds. While I'm not sure I've ever been in one, it's one of those terms like "wind shear" or "scirocco" that doesn't bode well for a calm walk in nature. It seems a good idea to avoid going out in conditions with exotic-sounding names the mechanics of which you're unsure of.

I'm still hearing rumbles of thunder, though our tornado watches have expired. Although I like summer thunderstorms, the restless conditions over the last couple of days have seemed--except for the heat--more like autumn than June. I saw some high-flying clouds streaming over the moon the other night that were straight out of some adventure story involving Gothic suspense and derring-do, something by Daphne du Maurier, perhaps. Instead of the usual suburban scene, you half-expected to see a cloaked rider heading down the street at a gallop, with a ship moored at a dock at the end of the road and mysterious cargo being boarded. However, it was merely the same old street on a cloudy summer night.

Kafka? We've Got It!

Today, I read a Reuters news article in which several experts, including officials from the FBI, weighed in on the current discussion about domestic terrorism and the reporting of suspicious behavior. An officer from the LA Police Department suggested that people think along the lines of profiling "behavior" instead of people, which seems to me to be good advice. Any self-defense suggestion I've ever received has always emphasized paying attention to feelings that something isn't right and trusting those instincts.

There isn't a day that goes by when I don't see something that looks odd in my neighborhood, and if I reported all of it, I'd never do anything else. When you've lived in a neighborhood as long as I have, you've got a good baseline for what's ordinary and what isn't, and it's just a fact that this place is not the same as it used to be. When I'm out walking, I often see people who look like they don't belong here, but it's also true that I've seen lots of ordinary-looking people, some of whom do live here, do strange things. It surprises me that people don't react more to some of the wild things that go on around here, though when I tell an outsider, I sometimes get a reaction like, "I'd report that if I were you."

I joked a few years ago about a WiFi handle someone in my building had called "FBI Van." I was speculating on whether someone actually with the FBI would have such an identifier or if it was some kind of a joke. Assuming it was a joke, I found it sort of humorous, though I'm not sure I would if I were the FBI director. Evidently, the owner of that one has moved on, and we no longer have an "FBI Van," though we do have "Limemoose," "Winterfell," "Zeldalink," and suchlike. My neighbors around here are very creative.

But to give you an example of what I mean by something strange that I wouldn't necessarily call the police on but that I would wonder about, here's what happened last night. I went out to walk under an overcast sky that had turned very threatening by the time I got close to home. It was one of those "Wrath of God" storm systems, and the wind was kicking up to boot, so I ran part of the way. When I entered the side door of my building, I saw someone else coming in through the front lobby, and although I can't say exactly why, I didn't like the look of her (besides the fact that someone suddenly appearing just as I'm entering is usually enough to get my attention anyway).

I decided to go back out and take another look around, letting this person go on her way. I should note that before I had gotten close to my street, there was hardly anybody out, as you would expect with such a storm impending. As I ran up to the building, though, I noticed not only someone on a bicycle but also a pedestrian on the main road that runs in front of my building. Nothing wrong with that, but it did catch my eye. When I walked back outside, I saw several people walking down my side of the street, as well as a man on the opposite side. They weren't close to me, but they were walking in my direction. I stood and watched for a minute, and the man, who was closer, kept coming until he suddenly turned around and went back the way he came. I kept watching to see where he was going, and he turned into a driveway farther up the street; the people who were coming down my side turned in at almost the same time to the driveway across from his.

Well, obviously, no one broke any laws there, but I've got to say it looked strange to see so many people in the vicinity of my building all at the same time, especially with a storm on top of us. It may not sound strange in the telling, but it looked strange, and I've lived here long enough to have a sense of that. It's not the first time, either, that I've noticed someone switch directions suddenly for no apparent reason (unless it was the fact that they saw I was watching). No safety expert would ever advise you to discount your instincts, even if you can't always explain why something bothers you--and I don't discount mine. It doesn't matter how many other people seem to take no notice.

I've often come across strange debris around the building that makes me wonder how it could possibly have gotten there--a branch and a plastic bag in the hallway, for instance, left there as if by chance; dog droppings that someone had concealed with a rock; bottles and cans in the hall; rubber bands in the driveway. Some of that would not be out of the ordinary as plain carelessness, but some of it seems more than just accidental, as if someone were trying to recreate some bizarre Blair Witch Project hijinks. I also noticed a number of people, not only here but also across the street, who seem to leave their lights on at all hours. I used to leave a window lamp on in my living room but stopped doing it when I noticed how many other people suddenly seemed to be into window lamps. I can't say why it bothered me, but it did. And what's with all the extreme door slamming?

I have never had a security briefing or been interviewed by the FBI, but I could certainly tell them a lot about this place. Perhaps the things I'm talking about would mean more to them than they do to me. I suspect a thorough investigation of not only this neighborhood but this town would uncover a lot of things. I do know that, while outwardly looking the same, Lexington doesn't seem at all like the place it used to be. It's a little bit like being in a Coen Brothers movie that never seems to end. It's also more than a little Kafka-esque. And as for the upstairs neighbors, the weird laughter and other noise that floats down sometimes make me feel I'm Jane Eyre, living downstairs from Mr. Rochester's crazy wife. Yeah, it's just about as much fun as it sounds.

Manhattanhenge

I read an article just before Memorial Day weekend about Manhattanhenge, the twice-yearly phenomenon in which the setting sun lines up with the east-west streets of the city and turns the thoroughfares into canyons of light. It's a charming notion, to me at least, to think of those busy New Yorkers stopping in the streets to turn their faces west, transformed for a minute or two into quasi-sun worshippers amid traffic, skyscrapers, and all the trappings of urban life. This year, the spring event coincided with Memorial Day, lending real star power to the day most Americans consider to be the true start of summer.

It's kind of a slow week here, but I've had the image of Manhattanhenge in mind ever since I read the article and saw the very striking photo accompanying it. You may be thinking, jeez, what is it with you, Wordplay, if you're not talking about the moon, you're talking about the sun. Are you some kind of astronomer or something? The answer is no, I'm not, but at least the sky is still one place you can look that's free of advertising and marketing efforts, except for an occasional Goodyear blimp or low-flying plane--and you've got to expect a few things like that.

At any rate, I was taking a walk a few evenings ago that was blessed by a relative absence of people on the streets, as pleasant a June evening (weatherwise) as you could wish. I had made my way through the neighborhood and turned toward home on an east-west street when I noticed how gorgeous the sun looked going down, fiery round and orange-red over some trees and the edge of a building. It had set a bank of clouds glowing in shades of lavender and seemed to me almost as good as Manhattanhenge. I glanced at a leafy lane to my left on which an early streetlight was burning, its glow muted by the daylight that still hung in the air. It looked homely and inviting, even though I'm not particularly fond of that street.

A few steps more, and a slight breeze caught the corner of my camp shirt. I looked at the almost tropical-seeming sunset and felt, for a few seconds, a rush of summertime ease. With a little imagination, I could almost believe that the street I had just passed was the last row of houses before the dunes and that I was now walking on the beach, a sea breeze in my hair and a relaxation in my step that wasn't there before. Even my clothes felt looser. The illusion was probably helped by the fact that I'd been seeing some unfamiliar birds--attracted, no doubt, by the newly engineered watercourse in the neighborhood--that resemble sandpipers in both their movements and their calls. Seeing them run across the pavement with their quick steps, calling to one another with shrill cries, has the capacity to turn even a land-locked parking lot into a shining expanse of sand.

I breathed in and enjoyed my mini-vacation, which was over with very quickly. As I turned away from the sun and passed the stadium, some loud popping noises that started up out of nowhere resolved into fireworks being set off at the back of the lot, attracting a bit of a crowd in the process. There was nothing else going on that I could see, so perhaps someone from the city was practicing for the Fourth of July. The display was modestly impressive, but the noise broke up the last of my beach reverie, and I was unmistakably back in the neighborhood with a number of people milling around.

That little dab of beachiness will no doubt last me for quite some time. I've tried, on my last couple of walks, to recreate the experience, but due to the timing being off and one thing or another, it hasn't happened again, and I doubt if it can be repeated in the same way. However, the night it happened was also the night I saw the first fireflies of the season twinkling above the grass on my street, a sign in Kentucky that summer has unquestionably arrived, no matter how far away the beach may be. Greetings, Manhattanhenge. Greetings, fireflies. Finally, we have summer.

School for Fascists

Well, speaking of cosmic events happening on your own street . . .

I told someone recently that I never thought I'd look back and think of the last apartment I lived in as "The Golden Age," but compared with where I am now, it's starting to look like that. When I moved here, I was ready for a change, and I've mostly been happy with the apartment itself. It has amenities that the other place lacked, and until a few years ago, I would have said that the move coincided with a new and more satisfying phase of life. The process of having my HVAC unit replaced the other day underscored some of the reasons why this is no longer true.

Because of some unsettling incidents in and around the building in recent years, I wasn't happy about having strangers in my apartment, but since I wanted air conditioning, I responded to necessity by resorting to, of all things: research! I decided the least I could do was to check out the contractor's credentials, and one thing led to another, and I was soon looking at information about the actual owners of this building. Business filings with the Secretary of State are standard forms and not terribly exciting, but as I learned as a law librarian, they can reveal interesting facts. In this case, I learned that that there is a second owner I hadn't heard about who actually has a couple of points of intersection with me. One is that his business address is the same suite that used to be the main office of the law firm I worked for. The other is that he is on the board of a local Christian college attended by a couple of people I know, including the son of my former supervisor.

It certainly is a small world, as every day proves anew, and these types of coincidences happen, but the information also fits in with some recent experiences I've had. I recalled someone mentioning that some of the part-time staff employed here for odd jobs belong to a Christian youth group. That probably doesn't sound like particularly bad news, but I can tell you that the atmosphere here has changed in recent years from what you might expect of a place with some students in residence (i.e., occasional rowdiness) to something akin to, oh, I don't know, let's say The Stepford Wives. It's as if everyone has drunk some strange Kool-Aid.

I often encounter people who seem to arrive as if by magic at the same time I do while entering or exiting the building, or who arrive in the parking lot just as I drive in. I am frequently regaled by loud conversations that seem, by some invisible edict, to be required to take place right below my window. Of course, there's going to be chatter, but does it have to be so loud and so close? In the old days, there was an instance when residents gathered on the other side of the parking lot were having a 2 a.m. conversation that was keeping me awake. I got up and closed the window, and not long after that, they dispersed, seeming to take the hint (these days, I wouldn't even think of leaving my window open at night). If not for my sound spa, which provides just enough white noise to drown out words if not voices, I would never be free of intrusive conversations. If you try to ignore these people, they seem to get louder.

I was speaking last week about light pollution in the neighborhood, but this sound pollution is an even worse problem. I now have a word to describe what it reminds me of: proselytizing. It's as if people are somehow so convinced of the importance of being heard that they've lost all sense of proportion and common courtesy. I'm not saying that everyone here is a tele-evangelist, but most of them seem to have been influenced by that communication style. It's as if they've all been coached on how to pitch their voices so that you can't help hearing them. They also tend to use a highly theatrical delivery, as if they're all on stage. And you can't get away from them, because they're your neighbors.

From what I've been able to find out, there's controversy about the methods of the youth group that seems to be influencing some of these kids. I can see why. Some people think it's actually a cult, as its methods reportedly run to manipulation and outright deception. This includes such practices as using college students who appear to be the same age as younger kids as contacts to form relationships with them; attempting to circumvent or replace parental authority; and bullying or ostracism once emotional control has been established. It sounds like mind control to me (though many people who've been involved in the group say they haven't experienced this, others strongly disagree).

Evidently, group meetings are big on skits and theatricals. I have to say that living here in some way resembles living in a compound, and I feel I'm constantly witnessing one drama after another. I remember noticing one night that there were five white cars in a row lined up on one side of the parking lot, and while I've got to say that there's nothing really wrong with that, it looked a little peculiar. I didn't know that many people here even had white cars. Some kind of code for "Bible Study tonight in apartment 5?" (I'm being facetious, but only a little.) It's also true that making it clear you don't want to mix with these people does nothing to put a damper on the antics.

In between all the amateur theatricals, on one hand, and all the vehicles with skulls or skull insignia parked on the local streets (including one right outside my door), it's a rather odd mix of neighbors. It's like being the only hippie at a convention of charismatics mixed in with Nazis. I'm not actually sure there's much of a difference between them. That occasion not long ago when I heard some extremely loud bass music in the middle of the night? My impression was that it came from the direction of the building that some of these young guys live in. What happened to all the normal people? Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

To get back to the HVAC that precipitated this essay, it turned out that once it was installed, I noticed a flickering in my lights. Concerned that it might be a sign of an overloaded circuit (and having lived through one serious fire in the building already), I sent an email to the property manager. I didn't get a response, and since I've had a few instances of people telling me they didn't receive my emails, I also left a voice mail. I still didn't get a response. I'm not unduly concerned when I don't get an immediate reply to a service request about a slow drain, but in the matter of something that could be dangerous, I think it's reasonable to expect a confirmation that someone's looking into it (though, I have to say that when I reported a recent car break-in, I never even got so much as an acknowledgment).

There being a lot of activity in the basement beneath me that day (where the circuit box is), I looked out to see who was there and saw a neighbor who is also a part-time odd jobs person. I wanted not only to find out what was going on in regard to my service request but also to meet the person who is so frequently in and out of the basement underneath my apartment. I had to flag the two young men down, since they were already leaving by the time I got outside. When I did, I encountered not one, but two smirking faces.

I would have been willing to suffer through yet another polite but unsatisfying encounter with a management surrogate, but being a bit too self-respecting so take arrogance from a youngster, I told the young man that I had never seen a bigger smirk. I'm peaceable by nature, but I don't mind calling things as I see them. What followed on his part was a denial that he uses an excessively loud voice in the basement, an attempt to place the blame for it on someone else, and even more smirking. I told him I didn't mind waiting if he wanted to look up some of the words I was using. It was sarcastic, I admit, but what are you going to do when someone's main conversational gambit seems to involve repeating everything you say?

When I mentioned that the point of the conversation was to let them know that I needed to reach someone about a possible overloaded circuit, they said they wouldn't do it because they didn't like my attitude. When I pointed out that it was their job whether they liked someone's attitude or not, they still demurred. I confirmed later that one of these guys does in fact belong to the Christian group in question. I wouldn't have said that cockiness, denial, blaming someone else, and shirking responsibility are particularly traits of people who claim to be "Christian," but they are consistent with other behavior I've seen around here.

The kicker was that when I finally did reach the property manager, his idea of a solution was that I ought to know someone better before making a judgment on him. (No, thank you.) He also didn't seem to blame the young man for not wanting to carry a message but instead blamed me for not giving him a chance to respond. I gather that I'm supposed to be living in the best of all possible worlds here and that while arrogance and dishonesty are acceptable, telling the truth to the best of your ability is not.

There is, in my mind, a larger significance to this story. If you read this blog regularly, you probably know that I've talked before about instances of pushy and intrusive public behavior that I encounter regularly in the park, the coffeehouse, and other places in and around the neighborhood (even the grocery store and the bank). As a matter of fact, I've recently overheard several intense and loudly pitched conversations about Christianity in the coffeehouse that were notable for being louder than anything else in the room. It is not a condemnation of religion to say that being sure of your beliefs is no license to intrude on the rights of others, nor is it a sign that you are better in any way.

My personal feeling is that it's wise to question your own beliefs and assumptions (I question mine all the time). Questions are healthy. Being too sure of yourself, not a lack of zealousness, is the real sin. There are many, many, many Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, followers of Native American traditions, and others, including many who profess no faith at all, who are much kinder, more considerate, thoughtful, and aware than many of these so-called Christians I keep encountering. I also know many Christians who are fine people, and you can generally spot them by their live-and-let-live attitude.

All of this is important because we're living in a democracy, which requires thoughtful, informed people who can form their own opinions. Being a citizen is no Sunday picnic. If my neighbors are anything to judge by, this Christian youth group encourages people to behave in ways they wouldn't think of on their own. They seem to turn into automatons, which is dangerous, not only for democracy but also for them personally. I read a comment from someone online who responded to a parent concerned about the influence of this group on their child by saying, "What, you're worried about your kid spending time with nice people as opposed to some of the other wackos who are out there?" The perceptive reply to that was that "niceness" in itself is OK but can be the tool of people with a hidden agenda. Beware the hidden agenda and the motivation behind the smile. Be sure it's a genuine smile you're seeing and not a mask.

If I had kids, I wouldn't want them within 500 yards of these people. Why? Because you should never, ever, ever, give up your right to think for yourself--to anyone. If there was ever a time and a place to question authority, it's here and now, in 2016 America. And if this youth group is any sample of the direction our nation is heading in, I'm extremely concerned. There's something troubling about their behavior.

The upshot of the situation here seems to be: I alerted management to what I thought might be a hazard, feeling that it would be irresponsible not to. That opens me to ridicule. I'm not supposed to make independent judgments, based on my own perceptions, about someone else's character, though that is an essential part of taking care of yourself. (When's the last time an apartment manager said that to you?) I'm a middle-aged adult with a PhD, but I don't know how to use logic. Au contraire! Cogito, ergo sum! (It's unseemly to flaunt credentials, but just this once, I'll make an exception.) And management here has always been responsive to my concerns--I just didn't know it because I don't hear from them.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (I didn't make that up.)

It Only Looks Ordinary

Earlier this week, I was reading about the opposition of Mars and the rising of the blue moon and decided to go out and take a look at it. I think I've mentioned before that stargazing isn't so great around here due to the increase in city lights in recent years. It was never outstanding, but the number of stars you can pick out on a clear night gets smaller all the time, as parking lots and new construction crowd in around us. Still, it's hard under any circumstances barring thick clouds ever to miss the moon, and I'm usually able to find a planet or two, light pollution or no.

Officially, the full moon had occurred the night before, but the opposition of Mars was supposed to be that night, so it seemed a great time to catch both moon and planet. Up the street I went, binoculars in hand. I had no trouble finding Mars, even without the binoculars, due to its brilliance and rusty color. The information I saw online had mentioned looking toward the southeast sky; my view in that direction being blocked by trees, I was wondering just how long it would take before the moon cleared them. I alternated between gazing at Mars and looking expectantly toward the trees, so I was caught off guard when I noticed the leading edge of the moon peeking above the horizon near the stadium, farther north than I was anticipating.

I had to catch my breath. The moon was quite large on the horizon, and the color was distinctively orange, more of a harvest moon in my mind than a spring moon. It was a dramatic rising. I noticed someone in a car parked at the side of the road, presumably as dazzled as I was; someone going by on a bicycle also stopped to look. I started thinking about other memorable full moons I've known, such as the one that rose over the sea outside my hotel in Naples, Florida, many years ago, waking me in the night and causing me to wonder who was out on the beach with a spotlight. There was also the time I was driving to my brother's house from Yellowstone and noticed a glow in the sky behind the hills. I first thought there was a fire, only realizing it was the moon when it finally crested the ridge, appearing almost to sit on the hills. And there was the moon that rose over the Santa Monica Mountains in the bright blue sky of early evening as I drove to the airport at the end of my Pacifica days, seeming to mark the end of something, or maybe the beginning.

All of this went through my head as I watched Sunday's moon climb slowly above the trees and the power lines, clearing some clouds that partially obscured it. Rather than Flower Moon, I would have called it the Gold Moon; there was nothing delicate or ethereal about it. It was Technicolor orange, and all of its features were sharply delineated. After observing for a little while in the same spot, I started walking home, stopping every so often to look behind me. It seemed wrong to turn your back on something like that, even if it was getting late.

On my street, I stopped again for another view. The moon had barely cleared a rather ordinary and nondescript flat-roofed building, which happened to have a window facing me. There was a light on in the room, giving it that slightly hyperreal air that offices and schoolrooms have when you go into them after hours. The empty room had a contemplative look, which became even more striking when I shifted position and noticed the standard-issue office clock on the back wall. The round clock face made a counterpoint to the moon, and the fluorescent light framed in the rectangle of the window seemed to answer in some way to the luminous orb in the sky beyond. It was such a perfect composition that I would have painted it on the spot if I could. The juxtaposition of mundane and magical, of earthly and celestial, was one of the most moving things I've ever seen. The feeling was a bit like that of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, without the people. It seemed to sum up all the loneliness of existence, but it was also quietly exhilarating and obscurely comforting. I would have called it Time and Eternity, but I see that someone's used that for a video game. Maybe Eternity and the Clock instead.

So that's it, that's my full moon story. I was expecting to see a beautiful moon, but the framing that occurred when I changed position caught me by surprise (how true it is that shifting your perspective can yield unexpected vistas). It's remarkable that I had such a cosmic experience on my very own block, just down the street from where I live--but after all, maybe it isn't. Aren't we always in the midst of burning stars, whirling galaxies, wandering planets, and unseen dimensions? It only looks ordinary.

Where Have You Gone, Tom Bombadil?

I started re-reading The Lord of the Rings the other night--I don't know how many times now I've read the trilogy, but my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring is literally falling to pieces. The back cover and last few pages have come apart from the rest, and I trail tiny bits of paper crumbs every time I move the book. At this point, I should probably stop using my own boxed set as a reading copy and check the books out of the library, though it would also seem strange to read the story under a different cover and typeface. My own copies are almost as familiar to me as the back of my hand.

Why am I reading Tolkien? I've checked a few new books out of the library recently, but more often than not, I've been disappointed. I don't know what's gotten into some of our leading authors of late; they seem to be trying to reach for a meaning that escapes me, so I find myself going back to the classics or re-reading books I've already read. This isn't a real hardship, since I have a lot of books, but I'm sorry that some of the recent fiction hasn't seemed more compelling. Ideally, you keep growing with new authors and fresh stories in addition to revisiting old favorites, but some of the new work seems a little stale to me.

The Lord of the Rings is like comfort food. It's like sitting down with a big plate of macaroni and cheese or a bowl of popcorn: once you start, it's hard to stop. I was struck the last time I picked it up by how much happens in the first book that was left out of the Peter Jackson films. I think many fans were disappointed not to find Tom Bombadil and Goldberry in the films, for example, and while I would have liked to see them included, I understand the reason for leaving them out. So much happens in The Fellowship of the Ring that it probably would have taken a couple of extra hours (at least) to cover what takes place in between the hobbits leaving Hobbiton and the events on Weathertop. Mr. Jackson would probably have needed to make four films instead of three.

There's a part of me that would like to see Mr. Jackson go back into this material and do a prequel, even though I'm not quite sure how that would work. When I re-read the books last year, I remembered why the first one used to be my favorite: it's nonstop action, with so many incidents crowded into the story that it's like a thrill ride. There are the elves encountered in the woods of the Shire, Farmer Maggot, the evening at Crickhollow, Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, the Old Downs, and the Barrow Wights--and that's before the hobbits even get to Bree. The escape from the pursuing Black Riders is handled very effectively in the film, but that sequence takes the place of an entire stretch of other characters and incidents that you never get to see. Making a film requires different decisions of timing and sequencing than does writing a book, no doubt about it. Still, it would have been fun to see some of these other incidents come to life on screen.

Tolkien is best encountered, in my opinion, when you're curled up with a blanket and some hot tea. Even though it's May, we've had a cool spell that has actually made for just the right weather for LOTR. A chilly and rainy day outdoors creates prime conditions for letting your imagination roam in Middle Earth. If you're looking for a tea pairing recommendation, I suggest chai--and a little bit of chocolate or a couple of cookies to nibble on never goes amiss either.

The Moonlight Hour

It's not unusual at any time for city streets to be crowded, noisy, and full of people in too much of a hurry for civility, but in the Iron Age this is especially true. A person could resort to such judicious responses as blogging, making rude faces, and other instances of patriotic civil disobedience--but getting away from it all is also, occasionally, the best option. An instance of the latter occurred once upon a late winter day when Emma, the protagonist of this tale, had had enough of being harassed, bumped into, and shouted at for the time being, and ducked in from the sidewalk to the Moon and Stars Cafe just in time to avoid being run over by a mother with a stroller and a cell phone.

Respite, of course, is a relative term, especially when you're talking coffeehouses. You are probably imagining Emma ordering a latte and collapsing into the nearest open chair to catch her breath as an antidote to the zeitgeist, but that won't do. No. In fact, she did walk up to the counter, and she did order a mocha. And given no other choice, she might have taken the nearest seat, which is what she did most of the time, despite the fact that the cafe itself was a breeding ground for wanna-be-world rulers and the poorer class of law students. (In a totalitarian age, the government left nothing to chance, not even espresso.)

Today, however, she glanced at the back corner, in which, always without warning but often enough to make it worthwhile, the outline of a slim doorway, invisible to the casual observer, would on rare occasions appear. Emma was aware that she was in full view of the cafe's patrons as she walked up to the door and said the secret word (it was "chocolate," but she never said this aloud), but she also knew that no one else, for reasons that remained a bit cloudy, ever followed her. As soon as she passed through, the door closed behind her, and the noise of the cafe was instantly shut out. She was now in a dark tower with a faintly luminous staircase that rose before her, first in a smooth spiral, and later in exuberant zig-zags as it neared the top. This she began to climb, with a tight grip on her mocha.

The tower had windows that opened onto a velvety black sky pierced with stars. There was also moonlight, so that finding her feet was not a problem. Despite the steepness of the climb, and the distance, she was never out of breath when she reached the top. At the very end, the stairs broke free of the tower entirely, with a doorway on the left leading to a small platform and another short hop of steps, broad but crystal-clear, so that one saw through them entirely. At the top of these steps, like a cardboard cutout at a fun fair, hung the moon. There was actually a bit of a jump at the end, but one always landed smoothly, gliding onto a window seat perched on the very edge of la luna, behind which was a small room with a table and two chairs (in case of inclement space weather, though it had never yet been necessary to use it).

Michael was already there, as usual. He occasionally brought his own cup of coffee, but more often it was a beer. They had sat that way, feet dangling into space (and an occasional passing cloud) numerous times over the years. There had never been a time when she had arrived and not found him there. They never talked much about their respective ways of getting there or how it was even possible. It very obviously was possible, so that was that. (When she had told him that her access was via a hidden staircase from a coffeehouse, he had grimaced a little and said his route involved "Kind of a wormhole." He hadn't seemed to want to say more.) In fact, their conversation was usually interspersed with large gaps of silence, for who, faced with such a prospect before them, would want to waste time in talk. And what, in fact, was there to say?

Below them is the earth, resplendent in blue and green. It has the appearance of a cartoon earth, or earth as seen in a child's picture book, with landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall, and the Golden Gate Bridge clearly visible, as are the occasional toy airplane or ocean liner passing into view. Despite dominating the foreground, the globe as a whole is somehow comically foreshortened, so that everything appears much closer together than it actually is, entire countries taking up no more room than a large park. Aside from that, stars twinkle all around them, and they are occasionally treated to the sight of a passing comet or a planet hoving into view.

It was not as if a visit to the moon made one forget anything. With the earth so insistently present, it would have been impossible to forget anything no matter how hard one tried. But the distance gave one perspective, the quiet was a relief, and it was a heady experience to find oneself sitting companionably on the edge of the moon with such an entertaining panorama on offer. Even the mocha tasted better there, Emma's opinion being that the altitude cleared her sinuses. And it was not quite true to say that space was completely silent. At times, there was a low-pitched humming and sometimes a faint sound of a high, distant voice, which reminded Emma of Dawn Upshaw singing Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.

Aside from the rareness of the occasion, the brevity of each visit also ensured that every moment counted. Half an hour? Forty-five minutes at most? Each visit was a jewel of such clarity and beauty that its memory was sustaining for months at a time. Breaking free of gravity for short periods was enough to help you get through tax season, the end of Daylight Saving Time, pap smears, and Vitamin D deficiencies in winter. You carried the view from that window seat around with you like a locket with an unfathomable secret folded deep inside.

Tonight, Michael looked at her, and she could tell by his brief but searching glance that he knew she had had a tiring day. But why ruin a nice evening by talking about it? She kicked her legs back and forth and watched a developing supernova overhead; Michael sipped his beer and followed a wandering planet with his eyes. In the background, that angelic voice was singing, "Ah, ah, ah . . ." It was celestial relaxation at its best. It was also over with all too soon.

The upper end of Michael's wormhole suddenly yawned, like a cave opening, to their right. Michael and Emma both got up, standing at ease on a wispy but otherwise quite substantial cloud. "It's been real," Emma said. Michael smiled. "Till next time," he said, with a tip of his hand. And then he was walking away, disappearing into the mouth of his tunnel, which instantly dissolved. And here goes Emma, jumping lightly from the cloud and landing on the crystal stair, descending slowly, and climbing into the tower once again for the long walk down.

It's a thing she has often noticed, the different quality of the return trip. The closer one gets to the bottom the more one notices chips at the edge of the stairs and cracks in the walls of the tower that never seemed to be there on the way up. At the bottom of the tower, the stairs are worn; one notices a coffee stain and a bit of dust on a windowsill. Then the outline of a door appears, and you are somehow through it and back in the noisy environs of a crowded coffeehouse. No time seems to have passed while you were gone. Despite a sense of residual sadness, though, there is something else. The sunlight seems brighter than it was, and the aromas of freshly brewed coffee and baked croissants, which now come through with a sharp intensity since your sinuses are clear, are heavenly.

Emma takes her cup to the counter for a refill, sits down, and finds a newspaper someone has left behind. She unfolds the front page and scans the news of the day. "So the world is still here," she murmurs to herself. "And honestly, how glad I am. Even if it is the Iron Age."

This is the latest version of a story I've been writing for a number of years. Originally, it involved two children; then, a single child. This is the first time the story has featured two adults.

Road to Damascus

What a difference a single detail can make in how you perceive things. The other evening, I was coming into my building when I happened to notice that a house across the street had its porch light on. I don't know whether the owners had changed to a different, brighter bulb or whether they usually have the light turned off at that hour, but the change noticeably altered the appearance of the house. Suddenly, it flashed into my mind that the whole setting--the still bright sky above, the house and trees silhouetted against the light, and the darkening street--looked remarkably like René Magritte's painting, The Dominion of Light, which I have written about before.

In the many years I've lived here, that thought had never occurred to me previously, and I don't know that it would have except for that porch light being left on. The view across the street is a pleasant one, but there is nothing in it that has ever made me think of Magritte. If it's a cosmic joke, it's a good one, because one of the dominant characteristics of Magritte's work is its surrealism, the way it takes the ordinary and gives it a fantastic twist, blurring the boundaries between ordinary consciousness and a dream state. I take Magritte's surrealism as an invitation to look at things more imaginatively, to realize that the seemingly solid appearance of things often masks another reality.

When you have experience in looking at things from the perspective of myth, the idea of seeing beneath the surface becomes second nature, but even I was startled by the sudden change in perspective. I have always found the views of the rooftops and trees in my neighborhood to be charming and reverie-inducing, particularly at sunset, when they show to best advantage against the changing light. There is something pleasing about the solidity of the houses and the varied angles of the roofs set amid so many tall and shapely trees. The scene is comfortable and established but somehow leaves the door open to the imagination, possibly because your eye is drawn up toward the liminal space between earth and sky, away from the traffic and the street so noisily present below. You can imagine Mary Poppins sailing in over those rooftops with her umbrella or perhaps sailing over them yourself one night in a moonlit magic carpet ride.

More than anything else, this episode makes me realize how important the detail of the light is, not only in the scene across the street but also in the painting. It's the central image in the The Dominion of Light, literally and metaphorically, standing in for, as I interpret it, the spark of consciousness that's alive and observing in each of us, the point of connection between spirit and matter, the awareness that's awake even when dreaming and that sheds light in the face of ambiguity. It's not a blinding light that forecloses any possibility of nuance or complexity but rather a soft, steady light that neither overwhelms the dark or retreats from it.

The other thing that impresses me about this incident is how quickly one's view of something can shift with the addition of a single element, like a piece of a puzzle falling into place. That light coming on so suddenly seems to say, be ready, because even something as familiar as the intimate scenes you look on every day holds something in reserve. There's always something unknown even within the known, always more to know than we realize at the present. If you think you know as much as you'll ever want to about a given subject, person, place, or thing, get ready: an increase in consciousness can be life-altering. In the face of uncertainty, plant your feet, turn your light on, and wait.

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.