Tag Archives: little bits and pieces

April 30, 2014 · 8:08 pm

“Flatliners” and Larry Dossey’s “Healing Words”–My occasional confrontations with the hinterlands of science and belief

Have you ever been in need of a sort of “spring tonic” for what we call, for lack of a better word, the soul (but I’m almost sure you have, who hasn’t?)?  Of course, we don’t all call it “the soul,” some of us call it “being in need of a personality overhaul,” others of us call it “a desire to take up a new hobby of some kind,” “being depressed for no particular reason,” “feeling under a curse,” “wanting psychotherapy,” “feeling lost,” etc.  This state I’m speaking of can take place in the comparative absence of anything objectively wrong in one’s life, so that it may happen in a condition of extremity in general or just when suddenly for no particular reason one feels deeply out of sorts.  It may also happen for specific reasons of an emotional or spiritual nature that we have long ago despaired of having any control over.  And when it happens, it happens just as often unpredictably as it does when we expect it to happen, and for differing spans of time, both long and short.  My own condition of “soul-lethargy” goes back in time for several years, but it hasn’t been uninterrupted by better times.  In fact, during the last few years of finishing up my thesis and getting my doctoral degree (in 2012), it was noticeably absent, but returned intermittently when I no longer had that particular kind of energy occupying my time.  Every time I work well on my novel(s), it goes away for a little while, until I once again hit a snag.  It’s easy to get dragged under by a sense of sterility sometimes, especially when work isn’t going well, someone is sick (either I or someone close to me), when I am too busy with work-a-day affairs and don’t have the time to assess things properly–in short, this condition is a sort of lack of attention to my inner being which may come about for a variety of reasons.  If left alone long enough, it can cause a sort of “soul sickness,” not the same as something mental or emotional, I don’t think, but feeling just as debilitating if not more.  And it’s sometimes accompanied by very unpleasant side effects.

For example, one of the most frequently occurring negative evidences these days is a hypnagogic nightmare of a sort of black tangle of bad energy hovering on or in or near me as I struggle back into wakefulness to fight it, an angry, evil non-auditory snarl of sorts, which must be blocked out and done away with by a sort of internal prayer which I have learned to make rise from my consciousness (I know, it sounds loopy), the struggle going on sometimes for several moments, the bad energy making as many as two or three passes in a row.  This is not a mental or a physical event, is not accompanied by a speeded heart rate, or clammy palms, or waking hallucinations of any sort.  In fact, a hypnagogic nightmare occurs when one is in the earliest stages of falling asleep, and can simply wake one back up to deal with some startling effect of consciousness.  The awareness of the “ball of negative energy” as a non-pictorial, non-dramatized (by human dream actors) reality of a stage of sleep is a relatively new thing:  it’s not that I never before in my life had hypnagogic nightmares, but when I was younger, the occasional negative energy most of us at one time or another experience “blamed” itself on someone in particular, had an actual theme and plot and human or other living actors, people I knew, things, events, or animals I was afraid of, etc.  This, I understand, is the more usual pattern.  In a way, though it’s still bad news, it’s better to deal with a disembodied energy than to have to try and figure out later why such and such a person or such and such an event, possibly someone I like or something I enjoy doing, is the confusing source of negativity.  From this you may guess that though I’m an inverterate navel-gazer, I’m trying to break the habit of so much non-productive interiority and go instead for the more productive kind, whatever it may prove to be.

As well, there are times (rarer and rarer lately, but still happening sometimes) when I wake in the middle of the night (not in hypnagogic sleep, but after dreaming REM sleep); just after dreaming that someone is standing by my bed looking down at me, I’m terrified until I turn on the light and sit for about five minutes.  Though I’ve heard it said by others who have this sort of dream that this is in fact a normal and reassuring dream to have, and even that it indicates that someone at a distance may be concerned about you, I’ve so far never gotten over my fear of this kind of dream.  Where is she going with this disquisition on odd and unsettling states of mind, you ask?  I’m not sure that I can make my point well, but I figure it’s better to make the attempt than not to speak of something which I’ve found illuminating and perhaps allow you to share it, so here goes:

By and large, for the preponderance of my life, I have been a sceptic about spiritual beliefs.  I say “spiritual beliefs” rather than “religious beliefs” because I’ve always had a tendency to prefer things messy rather than cut-and-dried and rigid and in a prescribed shape.  People annoy me who believe things easily, or who seem to me too gullible; it’s as my brother often says, I feel no innate sympathy with “Gullible’s Travels.”  Still, there have been times of extremity in my life when I feel, upon looking back on them, that some creative urge has come without warning into my life just when I needed to be shaken up or in some way made to observe something other than whatever I happened to be fixating on at the time, particularly if it was something unhealthy or bad for me.  I wanted today to write about just two of these incidents, a time back in the 1990’s and a time just about a week ago (in both of which cases, however, the malaise preceding the incident of creative activity had gone on for some time).

During the first instance, I was deeply depressed by the bad fortune I’d had in my personal life, and was in an extremely strong funk and was disinclined to be forthcoming to even the most sympathetic friend or relative, most of whom had in any case already heard what I’d had to say and had been encouraging but not effective.  This was fairly usual, because I’ve often found my own personality to be generally intractable to influence once I really decide that I think or feel something strongly.  By chance, I happened to be in a group of strangers one night, and someone suggested watching the latest thriller out, the movie “Flatliners.”  For those who didn’t see this basically negligible thriller, it was about a group of medical students who were curious about the afterlife or the lack thereof, and even more curious about the near-death experiences of some case studies they’d read, in which people basically experienced a moment of death or near-death and then “came back” to life.  All the concerned case studies had apparently reported sightings or experiences of paranormal events or encounters with already deceased friends or relatives, and etc.  The medical students one after the other caused themselves to “flatline” (“die”) while the others stood ready to revive him or her after a given number of seconds.  The movie portrayed the startling experiences of what each encountered, but I believe the climax of the movie occurred when the young experimenters had difficulty reviving one of themselves.  I can’t really recall what happened after that, whether the subject in question lived or died, which may seem odd.  All that stuck in my mind was a strong impression of the basic story line:  even doctors had to admit that there was something beyond their materialistic universe, though no one, least of all I, could say exactly what or draw any solid conclusions from the fictional experiments.  Truth to tell, I’ve always been more impressed with stories and tales than with so-called “facts,” so perhaps it wasn’t a fair test of materialism.

There have been other times when I have needed something from what one could refer to as “the infinite” if one has that inclination (and I can at least tolerate the expression now without a total sneer), and it has stepped up to bat for me, though it’s not a regular occurrence by any means, nor one that I can just hope for and have it happen.  I can’t “deserve” it and make it occur, either.  I am probably the most surprised of all when it does happen, though whom I’m comparing myself to in that assessment, I don’t know.  This is the first time I’ve ever written anything about it, for example.

The other occasion that I found a book (in this case) to be of use (even inchoate, undirected, imprecise use) was a couple of nights ago, when I was in the process of reading Larry Dossey’s book Healing Words.  I can honestly say that I have never before read a book about prayer, have never willingly or deliberately allowed myself to be prayed for, though like everyone else, I’ve had transient moments in the midst of some turmoil or other when I appeal to a force I often profess not to believe very much in with a “Oh, god, let this turn out right!”  The most interesting thing about Dossey’s book to me wasn’t in fact any encouragement to pray or be prayed for, but was his open-mindedness to other states of being than the verifiable, materialistic world of science and medicine which rules so much of the world today.  He has apparently written other books, of which I had never heard, having only happened across this book on a library online website and picked it up sheerly out of a kind of curiosity, sure that I would be annoyed enough to drop it before long (you may recall in this connection that Ralph Waldo Emerson said “The power men have to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity”).  Instead, I finished the whole book.

Dossey did not become an advocate for any one religious system or belief, and in fact seemed to consider many alternative forms of healing under an umbrella of spiritual endeavor, whether they employed a sense of the named Divine or not.  That was what was so liberating about his book, the mere possibility that there are ways of doing things other than the dose, cut, and sew of conventional medicine, or at least that there exists a serious and valid accompaniment to the usual medical tools at most doctors’ disposal.  The book came in handy for me a night or so ago not in relation to any specific malady I had, but in one of my occasional nightly fights with the hypnagogic nightmare, familiar by now but never gladly tolerated:  I was able to reduce the size of the dark ball of gunk and rid myself of it in fairly quick order, and not because of any proclaimed “power of positive thinking” which had been “proven” to work–Dossey says such beliefs often lead to guilt when employed in this way because people are blamed for not believing enough or being “positive” enough to shake their malaise, whatever it is–but because I had allowed for the possibility in myself that whatever causes the negative energy is within my power to affect to some degree, sometimes.  And more than that, more than just ridding me of an inconvenient nightmare, the openness and simultaneous strenuous examining of the book helped me fight through some waking situations which I’m still engaged with, but which I feel a better hope of affecting positively now.

I’m not saying that I’ll automatically become rich and famous for my fiction, or find a lot of new friends and acquaintances in my daily life who are muy simpatico, or do something, anything, else which causes my life to be distinguished much from other people’s.  But now I feel, due to Dossey’s book in part, that people and their “souls” or “intelligences” or “personalities,” whatever one wants to call them, are what he indicates they are, continuous and not isolated, whole and not separate, and that is a very comforting feeling (or belief, or conviction) to be going on with, for now.

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March 11, 2014 · 8:54 pm

“Why can’t I do anything right today?”–The curse of spring fever

This morning at 7 I thought I would have an early breakfast and then do something smart, beautiful, or fun.  At first, I had the idea to work on my newest novel, which until about the end of January had been stalled for almost a year.  I suddenly started working on it again then, and have worked on it every day or so ever since.  So, what’s wrong with today?  How is today different?  Dunno.  But I didn’t work on the novel.

Then, I thought that I would watch an opera on Met Opera on Demand on my computer.  But I left it too long to start, and when I calculated how long I had to listen and watch before an important call comes in early tonight, I knew I would get interrupted if I started it, and so bailed on that opportunity as well.

Oh, well, there’s always that computer game I like to play, I thought.  Maybe I should go through the dungeon and defeat a few more monsters and villains.  But frankly, enthusiasm was lacking.  I was bored with the easy battles and didn’t have the interest or energy for the hard ones.  Besides, my characters needed to buy more equipment and change some things, and I was bored with them too.

That eliminated smart, beautiful, and fun.  What was left?  By the time I’d finished lunch, that left doing something by rote just to pass the time.  So, I went for a walk.  And suddenly, I knew what was wrong.  It’s 56 F today, gorgeous sunny weather, and yet another big storm is expected to hit tomorrow (one hopes the last of the season, but then who can tell?).  I had spring fever, as plain as the nose on anybody’s face.  And I still have it.

So, I thought, what can I do until dinner time?  Write a post.  But I just started another book and haven’t had a chance to prepare anything literary yet, so what am I supposed to post about?  What are other people doing?  Are they enjoying the same break from the winter blahs while realizing that it’s short-lived and that snow or at least rain in buckets is back with us tomorrow and Thursday?  And then, I just decided to write about that.  Nothing, really.  Just a post to say “hello readers, I hope you’re reading my site, and won’t mind too much if I cause you to waste a little time today on ‘nothing, really.'”

Or, you can talk to me.  If you’re in a different part of the world, your weather may be different, and instead of trying to last out the tail-end of a miserable winter, you may be whinging and complaining about the last of a hot, arid summer.  Or maybe you’ve already had the rain and snow that was predicted, and are just stepping back in from shovelling out or are wringing out your clothes and taking off soaked galoshes.  Whatever your situation, feel free to drop a line if you want, just to communicate with the great outside world.  That’s all I’m doing today, after all.  And now it’s time for iced coffee, one of the first of the season (we live in hope); ta for now!

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January 31, 2014 · 4:14 pm

A brief and partial survey of the “bon mot” and a nod to the latest contender….

Hi, folks!  I’ve finally returned to blogging, back from my winter hiatus of the turn-of-the year holidays, my own illness (a nuisancy cold), and the illness of a couple of friends (now on the mend) whom I took time out to make something for to lift their spirits.  And my topic?  A brief (all too sketchy) and partial (showing favoritism to the French and the U.S. citizenry) survey of the bon mot (the “witty remark”).  Naturally, I wanted to include one of the latest examples of the form, so let me embark upon my survey without further ado, and I will bring this fraction of the world’s wit and bonhomie up-to-date with a nod to Justin Halpern’s short text Sh*t My Dad Says, which actually you probably heard of long before I did.  It can’t do any harm, however, to situate it within a line of historical descent with its forebears.  So here goes:

First, there’s the comparatively gentle and whimsical Montaigne, who included his cabbages and his cat in some of his musings.  The remarks he has to offer are thoughtful, perceptive little contributions to the world’s store of witticisms and go something like this:

  • “The thing I fear most is fear.”
  • “I want death to find me planting my cabbages.”
  • “He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”
  • “I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my mind better.”
  • “Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.”
  • “When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?”
  • “Man is certainly crazy.  He could not make a mite, yet he makes gods by the dozen.”

Then, there is the more pointed and far more cynical La Rochefoucauld, whose Maximes are famous for their cutting edge and bite:

  • “That we can overcome our passions signifies their weakness rather than our strength.”
  • “There is always something in the misfortune of our best of friends which does not entirely displease us.”
  • “We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.”
  • “There is no disguise which can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.”
  • “True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.”
  • “Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgement.”
  • “Old people like to give good advice, as solace for no longer being able to give bad examples.”

Finally as a requisite for situating Halpern’s book in a slapdash historical context, there are a few from Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.), and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table:

  • “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.”
  • “Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.”
  • “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.”

The first patently obvious difference which stands out in Justin Halpern’s book and which sets it apart from the more conventional book of bon mots is that in this case part of the humor is in fact derived from a disrespect for the polite conventions of conversation, signified here by the repetitive and constant use of vulgar and quasi-abusive language (by the “Dad” in question, who is copiously quoted).  Though Halpern makes it clear that there is much affection amongst the family members he writes about in the showcase for his father’s wit and wisdom, he never hesitates to quote his father’s disparaging remarks to him and other family members, and even started a Twitter feed for the work, at www.Twitter.com/ShitMyDadSays.  Here are some of the choicer remarks, not for the shy or faint-hearted, and definitely not for the social worker type who eschews frank language in family situations:

  • “Do people your age know how to comb their hair?  It looks like two squirrels crawled on their heads and started fucking.”
  • “That woman was sexy….Out of your league?  Son, let women figure out why they won’t screw you.  Don’t do it for them.”
  • “Jesus Christ, one fucking Snickers bar, and you’re running around like your asshole is on fire.  Okay, outside you go.  Don’t come back in until you’re ready to sleep or shit.”
  • (On off-limits zones in hide-and-go-seek) “What the fuck are you doing in my closet?  Don’t shush me, it’s my fucking closet.”
  • (On getting in trouble at school) “Why would you throw a ball in someone’s face?…Huh.  That’s a pretty good reason.  Well, I can’t do much about your teacher being pissed, but me and you are good.”
  • (On my first school dance) “Are you wearing perfume?….Son, there ain’t any cologne in this house, only your mother’s perfume.  I know that scent, and let me tell you, it’s disturbing to smell your wife on your thirteen-year-old son.”
  • (On fair play) “Cheating’s not easy.  You probably think it is, but it ain’t.  I bet you’d suck more at cheating than whatever it was you were trying to do legitimately.”
  • (On slumber parties) “There’s chips in the cabinet and ice cream in the freezer.  Stay away from knives and fire.  Okay, I’ve done my part, I’m going to bed.”
  • (On understanding one’s place in the food chain) “Your mother made a batch of meatballs last night.  Some are for you, some are for me, but more are for me.  Remember that.  More.  Me.”
  • “The dog is not bored.  It’s not like he’s waiting for me to give him a fucking Rubik’s Cube.  He’s a goddamned dog.”
  • “You sure do like to tailgate people….Right, because it’s real important you show up to the nothing you have to do on time.”
  • (On the right time to have children) “It’s never the right time to have kids, but it’s always the right time for screwing.  God’s not a dumb shit.  He knows how it works.”
  • “The baby will talk when he talks, relax.  It ain’t like he knows the cure for cancer and just ain’t spitting it out.”
  • “Sometimes life leaves a hundred-dollar bill on your dresser, and you don’t realize until later it’s because it fucked you.”

Though longshoremen are often credited with having vulgar language and using vile expressions that bring out the timidity in the rest of us, it’s vital and useful, I think, to report that this opinion is a result of class prejudice and that the language usage above comes from an educated member of the community, in fact a doctor, who uses his panoply of casually dismissive and discrediting language to call members of his family to attention and to let them know that he is making a serious point about something that involves them.  His point, clearly, is that they should listen carefully, and there’s apparently nothing like a good round expletive or frank evaluation to call people to attention quickly.  What comes out as well in Halpern’s book, after one has had a good laugh at all the many things that one wishes one could have said in similar situations, but which one didn’t have the chutzpah to enunciate in quite those terms, is that there is genuine affection and caring, not only of Justin Halpern for his family, but of the family itself as well by the frank and vocal father.  Not bothering with the excuse a lot of people offer before becoming either snide or frank, “I’m saying this because I love you,” Sam Halpern (the lauded dad) simply cuts to the chase and verbalizes what we all wish we could say sometimes, but with the whole emotional resonance of the remark intact.  The result is a hilarious collection of sayings and some other story-like passages of text which continue and update the traditions of the bon mot, making one wonder what indeed could possibly come next.  Truly, if one puts one’s linguistic prejudices regarding formal and stately language aside, assuming that one has them in the first place, there’s a world of wit and laughter in the picture Justin Halpern creates just by exhibiting his father’s contributions to one of the oldest traditions in the world.  Kudos to him and his father both, the older for being who he is first and foremost and not hiding himself from the world behind a screen of propriety, and the younger for knowing how to appreciate a true contributor to our literature without being blinded by false modesty because the speaker is a member of his own family.  May we all learn a little more of frankness as well as adroitness from their example, in whatever vernacular we choose to express them.

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December 18, 2013 · 8:08 pm

Dylan Thomas and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”–The perpetual present tense

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

With this magical beginning, the spirit of the Christmases of one particular childhood is brought alive into the special awareness we all share, by reference to the moment of brightness just before sleep, and Dylan Thomas begins his tale of all the events of many Christmases, as if they were all rolled into one, all astounding and equally miraculous.

His second paragraph goes thus:  “All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like and cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street, and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.  In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.”

This second paragraph not only strengthens the half-hallucinatory quality of memory, but also strengthens the poetic qualities and aspects of the narration, all while centering on one particular Christmas at the beginning as a way of leading into the wider, more general story of how all the Christmases were alike when Dylan Thomas was young, focusing thus also on the aspect of repetition as a characteristic of tradition.  The odd previously unexplained reference to “Mrs. Prothero and the firemen” draw out one’s curiosity as well, and provoke further attention.

To participate in this poetic piece of prose most fully, it is necesssary to read it aloud, and it comes as no surprise that the work was intended for the radio, full of many “tongued” voices as it is through the narrator’s memory.  There is a vague quality to many of the very items that strike us as most picturesque:  for example, the acts of the aunts and uncles in the story are both traditional and highly characteristic of celebrating adults, yet the identities of some of the uncles are unclear, and one aunt is remembered mainly for getting tipsy whenever possible, without really being an alcoholic, “because it was only once a year.”

The short work is almost like a work of music, starting with a brief flourish, alternating details and word pictures as a piece of music would vary themes, building to several minor crescendos and then featuring moments of what one feels must be a modern Christmas, when a voice or two undefined urges the speaker on to tell of specific details already known to the listeners.  As the time of day changes, so does the elegiac tone increase, until finally night comes.  The last sentence reads, “I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

I don’t know what your Christmas traditions are if you have them, but in our family we always read something together on Christmas Eve.  Usually it has been the whole of “A Christmas Carol” (which is long) or for a less attentive audience and a younger one “The Night Before Christmas.”  But if you are looking for something to read together this Christmas Eve, you could do much worse than to be Welsh for a season and to read together “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas.  There are no difficult dialectal words to master or explain, and the whole piece is immensely accessible for young and old alike, regardless of nationality or political affections.  To find this piece on the internet, simply go to Google.com and get on the link www.bfs.media.com/MAS/Dylan/Christmas.html .  And have a happy and blessed holiday in bringing to mind a perpetual present-day vision of your own Christmases past, this season!

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November 10, 2013 · 7:33 pm

“The greatest pleasure is relief from pain.”–Anonymous

Recently, I’ve had an opportunity to devote some intense thought to the saying in the title of my post, i.e., “The greatest pleasure is relief from pain.”  And while I know that there are many great pleasures in life, some so fine and worth pursuing and enjoying that it’s hard to imagine what could be greater, yet when one is in deep pain from emotional causes or from physical injury, the devout prayers one sends up to whatever being or force one happens to believe in, or the simple secular longing for equilibrium and away from the extremes of pain are so strong that I begin to agree with the anonymous author of my quote.

Now, first of all I must say that no one else is responsible for my quandary vis-à-vis pain.  About a month ago, I over-stretched a muscle or tendon in my left hip, and instead of putting ice and then heat on it in the recommended fashion, decided (or rather simply neglected decision-making altogether) in favor of waiting it out.  It was only a minor mishap, and it would heal, as all my previous mishaps had before.  Only then one night in an equally stupid fit of hubris, I leaned out sideways and down from my new high bed to pick up something I had dropped, and raised myself back up by the inflamed muscle without other support.  My hip had never given me any trouble much before, or when it had–and I had to admit to myself that occasionally I’d felt a twinge when sitting too long in my easy chair–the twinge had always disappeared again.

Loyal to me and my purposes, the hip only fussed a little at me in the next two weeks, but I just ignored it and assumed that it would stop after a while, if only I stayed active.  But then came the real test:  I went on vacation and exerted myself and slept with a heating pad on my back in intervals all night long–and contrary to what I had supposed, and what seemed at first to be working, I should’ve been using ice–until one fine night, after gradually getting worse and worse, the hip and my lower back and waist all combined to overthrow my dominion over pain:  I was actually crying aloud with pain from every movement, however gentle, and could not get up out of bed without it taking me at least ten minutes to do so.  I kid you not.  I sat up for hours at night on the most comfortable couch it’s been my good fortune to meet, with the heating pad still on my back, and yet I had aggravated my anatomy to such an extent that every movement still brought pain.  When my host (my brother) arose the next morning, he asked me “Are you ready for those pain-killers yet?”  He had offered me a strong dose of over-the-counter meds the night before, but I had been too afraid of taking so many pills:  but by the next morning, my whole body was crying out, “F— that, I want those pills!”

It was time to come back home anyway, so I dosed myself up with as much pain medication as was available and I was able to travel for the requisite 3 hours in the car to get to an emergency room near home.  Not that it was pain free:  every jolt and bump and sudden stop on the road was another agony, but luckily I was doped up enough with the pain meds that I didn’t scream out with pain and distract the driver or cause an accident.  Then came the next part of the ordeal:  the examination to make sure that it wasn’t actually my liver or my spleen or my kidneys or my gall bladder or etc.–I knew what it was, but doctors like to hedge their bets (and mine), so I put up with it.  They ended by giving me some stronger prescription muscle relaxant and pain meds, and discharged me.

This story has several morals, the most significant one of which is that as we get older we can no longer assume that our anatomies are going to keep tolerating various abuses as they did when we were younger.  Another is that when you’re in pain, ignore the “stiff upper lip” routine and admit you’re not a superheroine and do something about it.  Finally, when someone offers you relief from pain, unless they are a known felon and pusher (which my brother with his pain pills was not), seriously consider taking the pills the first time they’re offered.  And remember:  every time your vacation to Jamaica is cancelled, or you have to pass up the champagne with dinner because you have a headache, or you don’t get to go to the amusement park as you’d planned, there’s always one pleasure greater than all those things rolled into one that you may someday experience, though at some cost–“The greatest pleasure is relief from pain.”  You can quote me on that!

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October 29, 2013 · 5:31 pm

When an Agent of Fate Takes a Hand in Human Decisions–The Third and Last Halloween Post of 2013

For my third Halloween post this year, I decided to eschew the werewolf-vampire-zombie-Frankenstein’s monster tack, and take up the merely eerie things that sometimes happen just when human beings think they have everything under control.  My choice of story topic is Jack Lindsay’s “Judgement in the Underworld,” which takes place in the Valley of the Tombs in Thebes.

In the middle of a hot day in the East, two erstwhile friends, Iseri and Paibes, hunters in other times, are making their way steathily towards the Tombs, with something other than wildlife and bows and arrows on their minds.  These two hunters are instead planning to plunder Sety’s tomb of its gold, and make themselves wealthy and powerful with the proceeds.  Iseri has a secret, however.  “He loathed Paibes more than anyone else in the world.  Always he had been overtopped by him, beaten as a hunter, a runner, an archer, a drinker, and now, last and worst, as a lover.”  It’s easy to see why Iseri at least resents Paibes, reading the dialogue between the two; Paibes is always putting Iseri down and gibing at him, making fun of him for his mistakes, and mocking his faults and hesitations.  He’s a bit of a psychological bully, and very prideful about his own superior traits.  “They had been good friends once, till Paibes had shown the full of his overbearing temper, taking arrogant possession of the younger man who admired him so frankly.”  Lately, Paibes has even been courting Iseri’s understood betrothed, Zenra, and Iseri realizes that if Paibes proposes, Zenra’s father will accept on her behalf, regardless of the fact that Iseri and Zenra have a firm arrangement between the two of them.  Little does Paibes realize what awaits him in the tomb, however:  Iseri plans to kill him once the gold is found, and thus he himself can make his way back out both rich and favored by Zenra’s father as a suitor, while Paibes rots in the bowels of the earth, forgotten.

Because they have been making their way through the heat of the day to the tomb, the sun is slowly lowering toward the hills as they reach their destination, and they exchange the extreme heat of the valley for the breathless air of the interior of the tomb, Iseri with murder and the right moment for it on his mind.  All the way through, as Iseri experiences first a chill in the heat and then shudders, knowing what he himself is thinking, Paibes mocks at him, thinking that he is afraid.  The air grows heavier and staler as they descend into the earth.  “Iseri clenched his hand to stop it from creeping to his dagger….Inside the tomb things would feel differently.  Along in the sweaty darkness he, Iseri, would feel power nerving his arm; he would strike.  Therefore he could bear with Paibes’s sneers for the moment.”

Just as the sun sets, the two hunters find the tomb entrance.  They clear away a boulder and some rubble, and enter the tomb, Paibes leading the way impatiently, Iseri behind him, waiting for his moment.  He wants the gold for the dowry for his marriage to Zenra, and so wants to find the inner chamber before striking Paibes down.  He sees himself as an “instrument of judgment,” and is no longer bothered by the paintings in the tomb, as he has been in other tombs in the past.  Once they find the stairway down to the inner chamber, Paibes turns and looks at Iseri, only to jibingly tell him that he would never have been able to find it by himself.  “On again, and more steps to descend, and at last the burial chamber was reached.  The great sarcophagus of alabaster gleamed nobly before the tired, stinging eyes–and things of gold, furniture and cups, all that a man might need, left here in the deep, buried silence like reflections in the mirror of death, to enable living men to view their life undistorted, to value it all at long last, if they had the courage to look; but into the terrible mirror of death none dared to look.  There, encased in alabaster, lay the mummied king awaiting his releast and justification, his resurrection, living his life in the mirror, dead.”

After Paibes puts the lamp down and starts to sort through the precious objects in the tomb, Iseri thinks to himself that he must wait for an omen, that he will know when his time has come to kill Paibes.  “His hate was so final that the gods must be on his side, as they were on the side of all things final and fated.”  Suddenly, the omen comes.  Out from behind an alabaster jar, a huge cobra, often seen as an Agent of Fate and a Messenger of the Gods, comes.  Just behind Paibes it rears its head, ready to strike.  But Iseri is ready to strike, too:  to his own surprise, he kills the cobra just as it rears to strike Paibes!  Paibes whirls back in his astonishment, looking first at the cobra, then at the man with him, who has acted the part of a friend.  “[Iseri] did not know why he had done it.  When one had hunted for years with a man, it was not easy to stand by and watch a cobra strike him.  What had happened, Osiris?  Was it the judgment?”

Paibes takes Iseri by both hands and thanks him, confessing, astonishingly enough, that he is sorry that he has tried to take Zenra away, and says that she has already rejected him.  He also confesses that he himself has been hating Iseri too, and might have killed him in the night himself.  He says that Iseri can have Zenra, which causes Iseri to feel, on the sudden, that he himself doesn’t want Zenra either, but wants his old friendship with Paibes back!  But then, he admits that he wants Zenra, also.  He cannot admit to Paibes, however, that he himself was planning to kill too, and it makes it hard for him to get back on their old terms without a clean confession.  He finally admits weakly that he “would rather” be friends.  Paibes says they will, and that he only meant that he was angry, and says he is no longer enraged.  He again reiterates that Iseri can have Zenra.

“The two men stood indecisive, afraid.  Suddenly the whole weight of the hills seemed to be pressing down on them, tons and tons of stone; and there was all the long passageway, sculptured with the indecipherable meaning of things, through which they must run the gauntlet of the multitudinous abiding eyes.  Gold, why did they want gold?”  As they collect bits and pieces to take with them, they watch each other “suspiciously,” neither wanting to be the one to go first on the way back out.  Yet, they each know that they will not be able to strike the other:  “They were both too frightened and weary, heavy-lidded with the heat, and wanted nothing but the night air of the open.  In the open, perhaps, they would be able to draw close together again.  After all; perhaps they would hate one another worse than ever.  It didn’t matter as long as they got out.”  Thus, two friends learn the price of meddling with Fate and the Underworld, and find themselves praying silently for the merely human terms by which they normally live.

For those of us reading their story, Halloween is an excellent time to reflect on life-and-death (and breath-beyond-the-grave) decisions:  if it’s bad to kill people at any time, we should all try to be especially careful of how we treat them around All Soul’s Eve, when the dead are said to walk.  And any other bad decisions we may have made in the past (even just making fun of old Aunt Ernestine, who’s now one of the dear departed) should be carefully pondered.  Enjoy your Halloween fun, but be sure it’s really good clean fun, and not malice, or you may find yourself being tracked by a ghost or goblin (or trapped by a cobra, ready to spring!).

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October 21, 2013 · 4:50 pm

“A [Halloween] Ghost Story of Long Ago–The Sutor of Selkirk”

“Once upon a time there lived in Selkirk a shoemaker, by name Rabbie Heckspeckle, who was celebrated both for dexterity in his trade and for some other qualifications of a less profitable nature….In short, he was the Paul Pry of the town.  Not an old wife in the parish could buy a new scarlet rokelay without Rabbie knowing within a groat of the cost; the doctor could not dine with the minister but Rabbie could tell whether sheep’s-head or haggis formed the staple commodity of the repast; and it was even said that he was acquainted with the grunt of every sow, and the cackle of every individual hen in his neighborhood; but this wants confirmation.”

From this curious beginning continues an “old wives’ tale” from Selkirk, which I found published with no other author given in an old book from London called The Evening Standard Second Book of Strange Stories, which also has no copyright date.  It seems that even though Rabbie’s wife Bridget tried her best to restrain Rabbie’s constant curiosity, “her interference met with exactly that degree of attention which husbands usually bestow on the advice tendered by their better halves–that is to say, Rabbie informed her that she knew nothing of the matter, that her understanding required stretching, and finally, that if she presumed to meddle in his affairs, he would be under the disagreeable necessity of giving her a top-dressing.”  (I’m not entirely sure exactly what a “top-dressing” is, but as I suspect that Rabbie was of the sort who made himself “disagreeable” to anyone who interfered with him, I think this was likely to be a wife-beating threat, which in such an old tale was often treated as a matter for raucous comedy rather than as the serious thing we now think it to be.)

Because Rabbie had much work as a shoemaker to do in addition to his not-so-neighborly “researches” into the lives of others, he usually rose early, “long before the dawn,” and was one morning putting the final bits on a pair of shoes for the exciseman (tax collector), when a rather unusual customer came into his shop.  The customer was “a tall figure, enveloped in a large black cloak, and with a broad-rimmed hat drawn over his brows.”  Rabbie was perplexed to have a customer so early, and moreover one who was a stranger in the town, and yet one he’d never had knowledge of.  Rabbie tried his best to make leading conversation, but the figure ignored him, and instead picked up the exciseman’s prospective shoe and tried it on, taking a turn around the room to make sure the shoe fit.

Though Rabbie was caught up in watching the mysterious figure, his other senses were working overtime as well:  “‘He smells awfully,’ muttered Rabbie to himself; ‘ane would be ready to swear he had just cam frae the ploughtail.'”  But Rabbie had no time to think of this, because the stranger motioned for the other shoe, and pulled out a purse to pay for the pair.  Once again, Rabbie noticed something odd:  the purse was “spotted with a kind of earthy mould.”  “‘Gudesake,’ thought Rabbie, ‘this queer man maun hae howkit that purse out o’ the ground.  Some folks say there are bags o’ siller buried near this town.'”

But imagine Rabbie’s surprise when out of the open purse fell a toad, a beetle, and a large worm, which wound itself around the stranger’s finger!  Still, the tall figure in the black clothes held out a gold piece, and indicated in dumb show that he wished to buy the pair of shoes.  But Rabbie, being a hard-minded, some would say eminently practical man, responded that “‘It’s a thing morally impossible,…I hae as good as sworn to the exciseman to hae them ready by daylight,…and better, I tell you, to affront the king himself than the exciseman.'”

The stranger stamped his foot, shod in the new shoe, in anger, but Rabbie stuck to his point, nevertheless being conciliatory in his own terms by offering to make another pair for the strange visitor within a day’s time, which finally the figure had to accept.  So, he sat down on the three-legged measuring stool and held out his foot to the sutor, who measured it, all the while trying to find out something about his mysterious visitor through friendly conversation.  But the figure was largely silent.  When the measuring was done, Rabbie tried to insist on delivering the shoes himself, in order to find out something at least about where his visitor lived to satisfy his own curiosity, but the stranger replied, “‘I will called for them myself before cock-crowing,’…in a very uncommon and indescribable tone of voice.”

“‘Hout, sir,’ quoth Rabbie, ‘I canna let you hae the trouble o’ coming for them yoursel’; it will just be a pleasure for me to call with them at your house.’  ‘I have my doubts of that,’ replied the stranger, in the same peculiar manner; ‘and at all events, my house would not hold us both.'”  Rabbie continued to try to insist on dropping in on his visitor at the latter’s home, but the stranger instead gave Rabbie a kick in the seat of the pants that knocked him down, and walked out.  Mystified but determined to be satisfied, Rabbie ran out the door behind the mysterious visitor in his red night-cap as a cock called for dawn, and reached the churchyard at the end of the street before he gave up, not finding his recent customer anywhere.  “‘Weel,’ he muttered, as he retraced his steps homewards, ‘he has warred me this time, but sorrow take me if I’m not up wi’ him in the morn.'”

With diligence which surprised his wife Bridget, Rabbie spent the whole of the day on his three-legged stool working on the pair of new shoes, and astonished all the neighbors by this as well, who all agreed “that it predicted some prodigy:  but whether it was to take the shape of a comet, which would deluge them all with its fiery tail, or whether they were to be swallowed up by an earthquake, could by no means be settled” to their satisfaction.  Moreover, Rabbie resisted every outside attempt to get him interested in local gossip, and instead worked steadily on the pair of new shoes.

Late at night, he had finished the shoes, and placed them beside his bed for the dawn.  Suddenly, startling Rabbie with his presence, the stranger appeared, asking for his shoes.  “‘Here, sir,'” said Rabbie, quite transported with joy; ‘here they are, right and tight, and mickle joy may ye hae in wearing them, for it’s better to wear shoon than sheets, as the auld saying gangs.’  ‘Perhaps I may wear both,’ answered the stranger.  ‘Gude save us,’ quoth Rabbie, ‘do ye sleep in your shoon?'”  Not answering, the stranger put gold on the table and took the shoes and left the house.

Not to be outdone by the visitor’s reticence, Rabbie slipped out the door after him to follow and find where he went.  Imagine his astonishment when the stranger went into the churchyard!  Rabbie said to himself, “”Odsake, where can he be gaun?’…'[H]e’s making to that grave in the corner; now he’s standing still; now he’s sitting down.  Gudesake!  what’s come o’ him?'”  And though Rabbie looked all around him and rubbed his eyes, he couldn’t see the stranger anywhere!  This struck Rabbie as “uncanny,” but his curiosity being still stronger than his fear, he thrust his awl into the grave so he could find the place again, marking it for further investigations.

By the time the sun went down that day, the news was all over town, and it was decided to go and open the grave “which was suspected as being suspicious.”  When the grave was opened and the lid forced from the coffin, a corpse was found, dressed in all its tomb clothing, but with a pair of perfectly new shoes on!  With this, everyone else fled in all directions in horror, but Rabbie and a few braver souls stayed to “arrange” things more to their own satisfaction with the corpse.  They agreed to nail the coffin and place it deeper in the earth, but Rabbie took the shoes back first, saying that the corpse had “no more need for them than a cart had for three wheels.”  After re-burying the corpse as proposed, Rabbie and his friends went home, not at first thinking any more about the matter.

It’s true, Rabbie did have some “qualms of conscience” about keeping the stranger’s money and depriving him of the shoes he’d paid for, corpse or no corpse; but thinking that it would be a black mark against his family name to have made a pair of shoes for a corpse, and knowing that there was no court of appeal for the corpse, Rabbie soon put the matter out of his mind.  “Next morning, according to custom, he rose long before the day, and fell to his work, shouting the old songs of the “Sutors of Selkirk” at the very top of his voice.  A short time, however, before the dawn his wife, who was in bed in the back room, remarked that in the very middle of his favorite verse his voice fell into a quaver, then broke out into a yell of terror; and then she heard a noise, as of persons struggling; and then all was quiet as the grave.”  When she went into the shop, the stool was all broken up, bristles all over the floor, and the door off its hinges.  There was no Rabbie.  There were, however, footprints, which she found to her horror led straight to the churchyard, to the grave of Rabbie’s former customer!  The ground was disturbed, and several locks of Rabbie’s lank black hair were on the surface of the grass, whereupon Bridget ran to acquaint everyone in town with what she guessed.

The grave was re-opened, “the lid of the coffin was once more torn off; and there lay its ghastly tenant, with his shoes replaced on his feet, and Rabbie’s red night-cap clutched in his right hand!  The people, in consternation, fled from the churchyard; and nothing further has ever transpired to throw any additional light upon the melancholy fate of the Sutor of Selkirk.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this second Halloween post, a very old story from the British traditional corpus (or should I make a pun, and say “corpse”?); just remember, if an unearthly figure makes its appearance and requests your services, stick strictly by the letter of the law, and keep your curiosity in check, or you may wind up “Gude” knows where, like the Sutor of Selkirk.

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October 10, 2013 · 9:28 pm

The way a writer “surfaces” into a seduction–a tale of the end of youth by V. S. Pritchett

In my last post, I wrote on a story by Turgenev called “First Love,” in which an adolescent has his heart broken for the first time when he realizes that his own first serious crush is his father’s dalliance, if not his father’s actual “light-o’-love.”  And I commented that this story was one which was being told (read, rather, since its teller insisted on making it a literary artifact for his audience) to an story’s internal audience of men, likely over port and cigars after dinner.

Another popular topic which surfaces now and again is the “first seduction” tale, and though I would like to be able to report that I had read an equal number of wise and worldly women tell such tales along with the number of tales I’ve read over the years in which men tell each other about youth’s first moments of sexual awakening, it just ain’t so.  Maybe women need to start writing them.  In any case, I’ve just found another example of the genre with an interesting twist, written by V. S. Pritchett, and published in his volume Selected Stories.  It’s perhaps a bit dated, but none of Pritchett’s humor is lost as he traces the young man’s initial unknowingness, then clumsiness with his first opportunity, then final triumph over his partner’s assumption of superior knowingness.

The story is called “The Diver,” and I should tell my own audience right now that the term “diver” is used as a double entendre for the young man’s male organ by the experienced woman who takes it upon herself to educate him sexually.  But this does not happen before the whole setting is established by a series of minor incidents and misfortunes which cause her to take pity on him and take him as her lover.  Here’s how it goes:  first of all, the young virgin male is an Englishman in Paris, where his fresh-cheeked English innocence is made fun of by all the other young men he works with, who all have (or say they have) mistresses, while he not only has none, but brags that he has none.  The adult narrator of this story says he was a “fool” to tell the others this, but the youth at the time doesn’t at first realize how much teasing it will lead to.

Even his superior at the leather warehouse where he works, a M. Claudel, has a woman who stops by to see him, a Mme. Chamson, who likes to tell dirty jokes to all the office boys in a group, but who takes exception to the young man at the center of the tale (an aspiring writer) if he tries to laugh along with the rest of the group.  He doesn’t really “fancy” her, and thinks she looks like some “predatory bird,” with her badly dyed hair and extravagantly arched eyebrows, some Parisian harridan of the streets.  Despite the fact that she is married to an attendant at the Louvre, she seems to have some understanding with Claudel.  But the young man’s luck is due to change.  One day, when a barge is unusually sent with the consignment of skins to the leather warehouse, it is accidentally rammed and sunk by a Dutch boat right in the harbor, and the young writer is asked to accompany Claudel to the harbor to watch and see how many of the skins can be salvaged by a diver, who is the hero of the day to the admiring youth.  In a strange accident, the youth gets knocked into the water, and comes up with a chill which even several glasses of rum at the local bar cannot dispel.

At this point, Mme. Chamson comes along and convinces him to come along with her to her shop, where she first coaxes him, then intimidates him out of some of his clothes to get warm and dry, then finally (as he proves resistant to removing his pants) starts to undress him herself.  This often-used device of literary seductions of having someone be too wet to stay in their own clothes and having to change them in the surroundings which include an attractive or at least available member of the opposite sex, however, does not follow its well-worn pattern in Pritchett’s tale, for Pritchett quotes frank chapter and verse for what elsewhere is left undeclared or neglected or unarticulated.  In his tale, the young man becomes inconvenienced in the extreme by his reaction to the woman trying to undress him.  “She stood back, blank-faced and peremptory in her stare.  It was the blankness of her face, her indifference to me, her ordinary womanliness, the touch of her practical fingers that left me without defence.  She was not the ribald, coquettish, dangerous woman who came wagging her hips to our office, not one of my Paris fantasies of sex and danger.  She was simply a woman.  The realization of this was disastrous to me.  An unbelievable change was throbbing in my body.  It was uncontrollable.  My eyes angrily, helplessly, asked her to go away.  She stood there implacably.  I half-turned, bending to conceal my enormity as I lowered my trousers, but as I lowered them inch by inch so the throbbing manifestation increased.  I got my foot out of one leg but my shoe caught in the other.  On one leg I tried to dance my other trouser leg off.  The towel slipped and I glanced at her in red-faced angry appeal.  My trouble was only too clear.  I was stiff with terror.  I was almost in tears.”

Mme. Chamson becomes angry with him at first, and says she is “not one of your tarts,” and asks “What would your parents say?  If my husband were here!”  Then, when he starts to sneeze with the cold he is per her previous supposition catching, she takes a look at his “inconvenience” and is caustic:  “‘In any case…’ as she nodded at my now concealing towel–‘that is nothing to boast about.'”  She finds him partial clothes then leaves the room and doesn’t come back.  After a bit, she calls to him in a harsh tone of voice to come and get his things, and when he goes into the back room, she is lying on a bed without “a stitch of clothing” on!  “The sight of her transfixed me.  It did not stir me.  I simply stood there gaping.  My heart seemed to have stopped.  I wanted to rush from the room, but I could not.  She was so very near.  My horror must have been on my face but she seemed not to notice that, she simply stared at me.  There was a small movement of her lips and I dreaded that she was going to laugh; but she did not; slowly she closed her lips and said at last between her teeth in a voice low and mocking, ‘Is this the first time you have seen a woman?'”  The narrator has already told us in an earlier paragraph that it is the first time he has seen a naked woman, but at this point the young man obviously becomes a bit irritable with the woman having so much control of the scene, and he denies it and lets his writer’s imagination take over:  he thinks idly of the earlier talk of the morgue in the bar and tells her that he previously saw a dead woman in London.

This properly frightens Mme. Chamson, and she pulls the coverlet up across herself and the writer continues to spin out details from his imaginary view of a dead woman in London, whom he says was (like Mme. Chamson herself) a shopkeeper.  He even invents a “laundry man” killer who was “carrying on” with the woman, and when she says, “‘But how did you see her like this?'” he keeps on going and says that his mother had been very insistent about his paying the bill and that he had been up to the woman’s apartment before because they knew her.  She asks him if the tale is true, and how old he was, and we are told “I hadn’t thought of that but I quickly decided.  ‘Twelve,’ I said.”  He continues the tale by explaining that they called the police and so on and so forth, but all this only causes Mme. Chamson to feel sympathy for him, and pulls him to her, and when the obvious happens, she says, “‘The diver’s come up again.  Forget.  Forget.'”  In their passion, she even says “‘Kill me.  Kill me,'” though now of course she’s thinking of “la morte douce” and not actual death.

As he leaves, she advises him about his suits and his job, and by implication approves of his plan to be a writer.  She also introduces him to her husband, who has been fishing after his busy day but has just come home.  And she asks him, finally, to return the suit she has lent him the next day, raising the suspicion in at least this reader’s mind that she means to continue the liaison.  The narrator recounts “Everything was changed for me after this.  At the office I was a hero.”  Ostensibly, this is because Mme. Chamson has told the others that he saw a murder, but the last paragraph shows that at least one of the people he works with may have a clue as to the more complete state of affairs:  “‘You know what she said just now,’ said Claudel to me, looking very shrewd:  She said “I am afraid of that young Englishman.  Have you seen his hands?”‘”

It is of course not the young Englishman’s hands, or even any other bodily manifestation, which is the real “hero” of the story, but his imagination, which in the vibrant air of Paris has had many a tale start to develop only to die out when he tried to write them in English.  Now, it is clear, however, he has rhetorically triumphed over someone more experienced by telling a tale which, whether true or not, was just the kind of thing she was waiting to hear.  This shows that he judged his audience correctly, a main concern for a writer whether of a speech or a tale or a novel.  And if he only sees it, of course, it may equally be partly the imaginations of the other young men which have guided their “tales” of seduction in front of him, so that he is now freed from the barrier of silence which previously held him back.  Not that he would tell them about Mme. Chamson; one feels he will not.  Nevertheless, he is now a person whom people can talk about rather than just a cipher with no particular meaning, and he can embroider all he likes in his stories, which as we have seen by his on the spur of the moment improvisation are at least convincing.

It is likewise V. S. Pritchett’s sure touch with his own story, the humor of the embarrassing moments in the young man’s life which delights and charms us, as he proves without doubt that a writer can portray another writer in contact with what could be a seamier side of life and yet “dive” to “surface” with something well worth preserving, a fine comic masterpiece.

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September 27, 2013 · 4:38 pm

What is it about opera? It’s so over-the-top!

And now comes the time for a full confession.  Recently (my last post, in fact) I wrote a bit about being away from home, travelling, and therefore not doing as much posting as usual.  A few weeks ago, I wrote a little post about Monsters’ Den:  Book of Dread and Monsters’ Den Chronicles, which was yet another of my excuses for not posting on my old regular schedule of once every three to four days.  Now is the time finally to make the third part of my tripartite revelation, and say what else I have been doing (partially on my summer vacation) that has taken me away from the posting screen on my computer at WordPress.com.  And that’s listening to opera (and watching it) on my computer on Met Opera on Demand, which is immensely good and more affordable than full stage or screen opera for someone of my limited income, and which fills my very heart with delight.

That is, sometimes my heart is filled with delight.  At other times, my heart is filled with angst, or with bitter remorse as I recall an old relationship in which I acted much as some opera character acts.  Or perhaps moments of fleeting and evanescent passion or joy take center stage, and I allow myself to be pulled along with them, on wings of song (as the saying goes), loving and hating and sympathizing (or empathizing, if the feeling goes deeper) with the characters I see before me.  Just yesterday, as Magda in La Rondine left her lover, Ruggero, I thrilled with response as the young lover repeated over and over again to her “Love!  Don’t leave me alone!  Don’t leave me alone!”  A couple of weeks ago, the Romany Carmen likewise rejected her lover José (who by chance was the same tenor as Ruggero in that later opera I mentioned a moment ago).  But what a difference in attitude the tenor assumed!  Whereas Ruggero was incapacitated with grief and wept what looked like real tears from a reclining position on the floor, when José was once convinced that Carmen meant it, he leapt to his feet and with a final roar of “Carmen!” stabbed her to the heart outside the bullfight ring in Spain, where Carmen had gone to join her new lover, a toreador.  Do I approve?  Do I acquiesce?  Does it seem like a good idea, to watch people behaving like children and barbarians, weeping at length over what can’t be avoided and killing people who fall out of love with them?  I would just ask, do we ever with any drama apply the same rules we do to life?  And the answer is, “No, we don’t.”  Even with comedy, when the Barber of Seville gets up to his pranks and plots for his favorite customers, do we question their morality, and his?  No, we don’t, because we’re too eager to see him succeed!  We love the characters he’s plotting on behalf of, and hope they get their way free and clear.  By whatever means necessary, as government spies are wont to say.

It’s not, of course, that we don’t apply some of life’s rules to drama:  after all, would there be any way of understanding why Azucena in La Trovatore becomes so overwrought with a desire for vengeance that by accident she throws her own child into the fire, intending this end for an enemy’s child?  Or how understand Rigoletto’s final belief in the curse supposedly hanging over him when he exclaims “the curse!” in the final moments of Rigoletto, unless we saw that, true to life, his own character had caused him, in combination with circumstances inflicted upon him, to fall victim to the curse?  How understand the whole concept of Fate as it rules so many of these strange and outré dramas, and how accept the twists and turns of characters not recognizing someone they know well because the person is wearing a new hat or a cape in the comedies, and the mistakes and hilarious happenings that occur because of these?  We have to see that some of these things have actually happened once upon a time in real life, and upon that tiny hinge of possibility, the much larger door of probability swings open for the composers’ and the librettists’ imaginations.  And of course, we make moral judgements, but these judgements are delayed or attenuated into a last-minute resolution only after we have been treated to a full-scale examination of all the passion and humor and exaggerated emotion which can be extracted.

Because, that’s what opera is about more than any other form of drama–exaggeration, going over-the-top, having the full experience of pain or joy or fun in a concentrated form.  And that’s why music is the central part of opera, why music is at the very heart of drama and why the sets are so lavish or at least emphatic even when minimal, why the costumes, even those of a beggar, are gorgeous and grand and picturesque, because the exaggeration of emotion is central here.  Music of all art forms touches us most intimately, and though we are visual creatures, we hear before we can see, and thus the stunning visual effects here play handmaiden to the ear and its domain.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing, and I intend to keep on doing it.  Obviously, the best place to see opera is the venue where it occurs, but not everyone can get to NYC or other famous opera locales, and not everyone can afford a season ticket.  If you’re interested in a huge inexpensive free catalogue of operas to watch and listen to, you can contact metopera.org and either opt for tickets for seeing some of the shows each season at selected movie theatres, or listening on the radio, or watching them on your computer, where as I can attest even those shows which are not in HD are of high quality.  As a novice at this form, however, having seen the occasional opera since my teens on PBS, but knowing little and only learning more now, I prefer to watch what operas I can in order to familiarize myself with the stories and to be able to visualize them; then, when I know what my favorites are, I can elect to hear certain artists I like especially perform on audio alone.  This season, I was able to obtain a subscribership to Met Opera On Demand (viewing and listening on the computer) for only $14.99 a month, and decided it was definitely worthwhile.  I hope you will be interested in doing the same, as opera is one of the few larger-than-life experiences guaranteed, like any art form, to supply drama and humor without personal pain.  I mean, you could be sniffing glue or blowing up buildings, but one would destroy you and the other would destroy other people and landscape, and who wants that, when they could watch Don Pasquale (in the opera of that name) try to work his way free of the toils his new “wife” is winding round him so that she can instead marry his nephew, and hear the nephew’s beautiful and evocative serenade to her from the garden?  There is a certain mercy obtained by living vicariously, and though opera among dramatic forms may not have a total corner on the market of vicarious blessing, it certainly is up there at the top.  What am I saying, though, it’s over-the-top, dramatic, larger than life, all the qualities I’ve discussed above (and now that like many an opera aria I’m beginning to repeat myself, I will just leave off with the coda and hope you may find your way to such pleasures on your own, leaving my recommendation to speak for me).

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September 21, 2013 · 4:32 pm

Sorry, no literary post this week….celebrating!

Yes, I know, I promised not so long ago to increase the number of my posts so that I was closer to my original blogging schedule of at least 2-3 posts a week.  But life intervenes, in that inimitable way it has, and right now, I am away from home, waiting for my close relatives to come back from family soccer morning, sharing my solitude with 3 cages full of 8 baby bunnies that my brother and his son–the unforgettable Charles, who earlier if you will recall compared me to “Aunt Josephine” from The Wide Window in A Series of Unfortunate Events because I worry about him–have adopted.  Sad to say, the baby bunnies had sores and worms when they were brought home, which is what occasioned their sympathetic adoption in the first place, but my brother and nephew have treated them and brought them nearly to full health, with only a bit more to go before they can be caged outside in a warm hutch for the winter.

When I was young, I also had a rabbit, and my brother had one, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, or else I’ve forgotten some of its habits.  “The habbits of rabbits,” to coin a phrase, are funny.  They clean their paws, ears, and bodies much like cats, but make a great deal of noise licking and biting the water bottles that are attached to their cages.  They also eat a lot, almost constantly, it seems, though whether this is from boredom or necessity I don’t know:  you’d have to ask the rabbits in question.  They have big appealing brown eyes, and mostly pale, orangish-fawn colored bodies with the usual little white tails, except for the mottled and speckled two of the litter, which have the fawn and dark brown-sepia colored markings.  For some reason, evidently companionable concerns (it can’t be for warmth, since they’re inside the house), they can have a whole cage for space and yet prefer to sleep and cozy right on top of each other when they’re not eating or drinking.  They aren’t big on manners, since often when they’re eating, one or more of them will place both paws in the food bowl, effectively blocking the access of others.

Right now, the males and females are in separate cages, but my brother and nephew aren’t ruling out the possibility of increasing the litter for sale later on.  One thing’s for sure:  rabbits don’t smell like cats and dogs in their “toiletry” habits, which is great, because as long as the cage is clean, they are pleasant animals to keep inside (always barring the noise of their water drinking, which if it weren’t water ingestion would make you think you’d taken in a host of dipsomaniacs).  Another certainly (which my nephew and my brother both assure me of) is that I’m going to have to read Watership Down to fully appreciate rabbit culture.  And there, it’s a literary post in its way after all, with a commitment to read and review later on.  For now, I’m going to celebrate the family birthday we’re here for, and wish you the best until such time as I post again.  Hoppy trails!

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