Kill Claudio

I must have been around 17 years old and was in the audience on a school trip when Maggie Smith's Beatrice spoke these words to Robert Stephens' Benedict.

A pause and a silence that you could have cut with a knife.

As a comedy, Much Ado about Nothing has a dark side. The male rage and vitriol (including that of her much-loved father) heaped upon Hero after her faithfulness is questioned, for one thing. It reminded me of present day newspaper stories about honour killings. Shakespeare did seem to have a fixation on cuckoldry and you wonder (well I do) whether he subscribed to the attitudes he bestows on some of his male characters.

Then I think that he has to have the benefit of the doubt. Any man who can create a such a human, stroppy Beatrice must be all right. She and Benedict are equals, each gradually dismantling their own defences against the possibility of love (with a little help from their friends of course).

Much Ado came to an open air performance in our town last week courtesy of a touring theatre company. Four men and two women, covering several roles each (Beatrice was also Dogberry!). It was played for laughs and the goal was entertainment, text interspersed with asides and banter with the audience. We were eating out of the actors' hands after the first two minutes for they were genuinely funny. A relaxed, enjoyable evening but somehow the light/dark qualities of the play stood out all the more because of it.

Beatrice and Benedict will be OK. Claudio and Hero are heading for the divorce courts.

....

The night was dark and close and warm. I was the only one walking home, but this isn't a problem here. Houses and gardens. Trees. High hedges. A stream. A pub with drinkers sitting in the gardens, talking and laughing. Several cars went by, then for the last ten minutes, silence. Just the sound of my own steps. Friends were unavailable or away and I was glad I had pushed through reserve and inertia to go to the play on my own - not something that comes easily however often I do it.

I opened the front door and went indoors, locking up behind me.

Family

The weather is overcast and humid, with spells of sunshine. It has, thank the Lord, stopped raining. A powerful, steady wind rushes up from the south, tugging at the hair and separating the first dry leaves from their branches. I woke at 6 this morning and the sky was barely light. Autumn isn't far away.

***

My cousin, J, drove over yesterday. That's inaccurate, her father and my mother were cousins, so the link is more biologically tenuous. Now that I'm closer geographically - she lives about sixty miles away - we're seeing more of each other. Aside from my sister she is now my only relative.

When she walked up the path I did my usual inward half-gasp. Family genes are strange. J is eleven years older than me and she looks so like my mother in her later years that the effect is downright spooky. The resemblance was nowhere near as marked between me and my mother.

The face, the stance, the grey wavy hair. So similar.

I'm fond of her. For all our differences we share pieces of the past: she is the only one alive now who knew my grandfather and it means something that we can talk about him. And I'm one of the few who remember her father. Custodians of each other's memories, you could say.

After lunch we sit on the patio. She smokes her second and third cigarettes and tells me about her children, her husband. I unload my current employment woes. She gives me hints about cutting back the fuchsia and spreading the compost. We discuss water meters - apparently it will save money if I get one (she used to be a maths teacher and has done the sums).

The realisation dawns that I am being taken in hand, gently but with great competence, and there is an unexpected rush of gratitude. She issues a standing invitation to spend Christmas with them.

"No need to decide now. Just let me know in early December."

I will.

Connecting

Well now. I'm gratified. This blog has received an award from Kate at Dating God, who was one of the instigators of my life in cyberspace. I found her blog way before I started mine and remember spending several rainy afternoons reading through the archives, hooked. She writes with courage and honesty about beginings and endings, about waking up and trying to live out her purpose, telling it like it is through the highs and lows. I've followed her progress from New York to North Carolina. I can't imagine not keeping up with her - and the cats of course.

The idea is that recipients in turn nominate seven blogs. Rules are made to be broken, I know, but I haven't linked much recently and it seems a good thing to do at this point, for all sorts of reasons.

I'm not going for any of the blogs on my blogroll. It would be impossible to choose some and leave out others. So here are seven excellent sites that I visit regularly mainly, but not exclusively, as a lurker rather than a commenter:

Life on Earth and other Accidents: LJ used to blog regularly but then life happened in a big, painful, way and she stopped. Happily, she's started again. She has a big heart, a keen eye and a nice line in irony. She lives in Nova Scotia. And, heaven knows, she writes so well.

The Sudanese Thinker: By Drima, an expatriate Sudanese whose blog is a mixture of African and international cultural and political comment, interspersed with videos of his favourite music. He tackles controversial subjects with civility and acceptance, and nearly all the commenters seem to follow his lead, more or less. Besides, any blogger with the phrase "Warning: I'm very sarcastic." in the About section has already won me over.

Patteran Pages: Dick Jones's blog. Dick is a terrific poet, with wide interests that are reflected in his writing, both poetry and prose. I love his work.

The Paris Project: Can't remember how I found Jenell. An American Christian anthropology professor in her thirties with a feminist outlook and three young sons, we seem to have little in common, but she's a fixture on my Bloglines subscription. She questions and celebrates life and her faith with a sharp, open mind and a light touch.

Astrotabletalk: One of the best astrology blogs around, taking the subject far deeper than many. Dharmaruci has strong Buddhist leanings and is an excellent and thoughtful writer.

Nothing Special: Never was a blog so inaccurately named! Janice's beautiful artwork makes this a calm and reflective place to visit. Companion blogs are her Zen Diary and the Reading Diary. She doesn't post often but it's worth the wait when she does.

Tasting Rhubarb: I've read Jean's blog on and off ever since the start of its first incarnation, when we were almost-neighbours in South London. Like Kate, her example was one of the reasons I started this blogging business. She combines words with beautiful, subtle photography to create an art form out of the raw material of her daily life.

No pressure on any of the recipients to take this forward if you're not in the mood or it's just not your thing. But if you are mentioned (or even if you're not) and you feel like doing a spot of awarding, then pick up the badge and go for it.

Once Upon a Time

Rue Mouffetard, Paris
www.terragalleria.com

Steve, the library assistant, said jokingly that he should perhaps date stamp the book for a year rather than the habitual three weeks.

Spells of Enchantment – The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture is a collection of wonder and fairy tales from the 2nd century AD to 1988 by authors ranging from Andersen to Voltaire to W B Yeats. At thirteen hundred pages and sixty plus stories, Steve is right, it isn’t a quick read. A week later and I’m just three tales in.

In the editor’s words:

In the wonder tales those who are naïve and simple are able to succeed because they are untainted and can read the wondrous signs. They have retained their belief in the miraculous condition of nature, revere nature in all its aspects. They have not been spoiled by conventionalism, power or rationalism. In contrast to the humble characters, the villains are those who use words intentionally to exploit, control, transfix, incarcerate, and destroy for their benefit. They have no respect or consideration for nature and other human beings, and they actually seek to abuse magic by preventing change and causing everything to be transfixed according to their interests.

and then this

Enchantment means petrification. Breaking the spell equals emancipation.

If I discover nothing else, I’ve been introduced to the writing of Angela Carter, whose tale, The Tiger’s Bride, a feminist variation on Beauty and the Beast, makes me want to run out and read everything else she has written. Here's a wonderfully gothic description of the scene as the heroine’s father gambles, his daughter as forfeit:

But then the snow comes, you cannot escape it, it followed us from Russia as if it ran behind our carriage, and in this dark, bitter city has caught up with us at last, flocking against the windowpanes to mock my father’s expectations of perpetual pleasure as the veins in his forehead stand out and throb, his hands shake as he deals the Devil’s picture books.

The candles dropped hot, acrid gouts of wax on my bare shoulders. I watched with the furious cynicism peculiar to women whom circumstances force mutely to witness folly, while my father, fired in his desperation by more and yet more drafts of the firewater they call grappa, rid himself of the last scraps of my inheritance.

Fabulous.

****

I’d better come clean. The subject matter was not the only attraction of the book. What made it leap off the shelf into my hand was the name of the editor. I’d never come across any of his books until this.

Thirty years ago this month I owed the first of my three homes in Paris to him. He was American, a visiting professor at Nanterre University who needed to rent out his studio for three semesters to take up a temporary post in East Berlin. I had arrived from England to work a few weeks previously in the wake of the breakup of a long and tortuous love affair. Totally alone, I was staying in a cheap hotel and looking for somewhere to live. I developed a tentative friendship with a Peruvian postgraduate student, a gentle, quiet man who was moonlighting at the hotel as a weekend receptionist and who put us in touch.

A faint memory lingers of my quasi-landlord. Blue eyes, blue jeans, nice smile.

In the August of 1978 he set off for East Germany and I moved into the flat in the Ve arrondissement, the heart of the Left Bank, on the rue Mouffetard, a cobbled street, narrow and picturesque, that snakes downhill from the Place de la Contrescarpe to the rue Censier.

More memories float back into focus. You left the bustle of the daily street market, passed through a dark, narrow passage to a small courtyard. The flat was on the ground floor of the far building. Eerily quiet it was, considering the crush of people on the street.

****

Nine months later. I found an apartment with a new friend and a white cat on the rue Andre del Sarte up against the massive stone bulk of the Butte Montmartre, convenient for the Gare du Nord and the train journey to the job I had been offered in Chantilly.

Invisible links.

Paths that cross.

Lives that intersect

I would stay in Paris for ten years. I don't know how I did it. Looking back I suspect I might indeed have had a fairy godmother. The years were marked as much by searching and hunger and lostness as excitement and adventure. Yet opportunities came when they were needed. Helpers stepped out of the shadows at critical moments.

It would be another fifteen years and I'd be back in England before the happy ending started to manifest. Slowly. It wouldn't be the one that I had envisaged. And the process still continues.

Fuchsia

September 1993: a holiday with a companion in Co. Kerry. A peaceful, serene hiatus, amidst mountains and green fields, in a life that was at that point careering out of control with the speed of a express train. We walked lanes and paths bordered with mile upon mile of fuchsia hedges.

Previously I'd thought of the fuchsia as a well-behaved, cultivated suburban species. Rather boring in fact. I'd never seen anything like this riotous, unlimited abundance of colour and I marvelled.

****

It wasn't in the garden last year and I didn't plant it. Probably a passing bird.

For a start I wouldn't have placed it where it is growing now, right in the middle of a flourishing clump of other assorted blooms. But I can't deny that it lifts the heart to see it. The red and purple flowers glow and quiver like so many miniature, coloured lanterns. In the grey August dampness, uninvited, they shine.

Next Thing

It takes being sick, if only for a few days, to remind me how healthy I generally am, and thus how fortunate. I can't remember the last time I was off work due to illness. It hasn't always been like this.

I've had to leave some time-critical job tasks undone, which I'm fretting over. I'll probably go in tomorrow for a couple of hours, just to clear them. In any event it always comes back to doing the next thing, slowly and gently.

Trying to let go. Being open to - praying for would be more accurate - a change in perception.

Dog Days

The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. They are a phenomenon of the northern hemisphere that usually falls between early July and early September but the actual dates vary greatly from region to region, depending on latitude and climate.

Dog Days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant, or marked by dull lack of progress.

Wikipedia



Hot, yes. Dull lack of progress, yes. Stagnation definitely. I remind myself that the word germination might be more helpful, but the sense of drumming the fingers in frustration, of marking time has felt almost palpable.

Sunday was different.

Twenty or so people. a leisurely lunch followed by a game of rounders on the lawn of an old farmhouse facing south towards the Monmouthshire hills. The weather: warm and overcast, promising both sun and rain at different times but never quite delivering either. Aside from a few partners, children and dogs (including the subject of the photo) everyone knew each other.

We ate hot dogs (oh yes) and salad and cheesecake and strawberries. We drank juice, ginger beer, coffee. We chatted and cheered and ran and hit and missed the rounders ball. I can't remember the last time I felt so at ease in a group this size.

It occured to me during the drive home: Don't put labels or expectations or judgements on a single moment of this fragile, unpredictable life.

Dog Days can be good.




More info on Dog Days and the Dog Star here and here.

And who is old enough to remember Al Pacino's extraordinary, febrile performance in this?

Midnight

The words won't come. Much is happening and very little of it translates to a blog post. Thoughts come and go, drift and evaporate. Looking back I see that August has been the month in each of the past two years that I've taken a blog break. Hmmm.

****

In the middle of the night, last night, I woke up. Power cut. No habitual shadows on the wall from the street light. I reach for the bedside lamp. Click. Nothing. No World Service murmering by my left ear. I shuffle to the window and look out over a sea of total, unaccustomed dark.

****

Leading onto a middle-of-the-night poem by Ted Hughes. Out of season, but who cares. I've only recently discovered this and I absolutely love it, the symbolism, the physicality of the description of a very non-physical event.


The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes