Commitment Makes the Difference

Staggering out of the Brooklyn Academy of Music after seeing the Donmar Warehouse production of Creditors on Tuesday night, I was reminded what a difference committed, fearless artists can make. I dislike August Strindberg’s work, though I reluctantly acknowledge its seminal impact on the formation of modern theater. (I vastly prefer Chekhov and Ibsen, his fellow pioneers.) It’s hard to warm up to a playwright who hates women as much as Strindberg does, especially since that’s usually what he’s writing about. I am unpersuaded by the critics who argue that he’s not a misogynist because the men in his plays behave just as badly as women; in my view, Strindberg’s vicious men always turn out to be responding–perhaps just a bit excessively–to the egregiously unfeminine and destructive behavior of a woman.  Creditors, like The Dance of Death, is a power struggle among three people in which one of the men is a pathetic victim, and the other one of those nasty but ultimately justified types I mentioned above. When I last saw Dance of Death, Helen Mirren did her damnedest to make Alice more than a man-eating monster, but she couldn’t really hide the fact that she knew Ian McKellen had a much better part,  with the Captain getting moving soliloquies about aging and dying while Alice screeched and flirted with the hapless pawn in their battle. Walking out at the end, Joe and I shook our heads, saying, “Creepy, but not much of a play.”

Well, Creditors forced me to acknowledge Strindberg’s genius, if not his wholesomeness, as three remarkable actors stormed through this vile,  riveting drama in 90 scarifying minutes. Probingly directed by Alan Rickman, Tom Burke (the pathetic victim), Owen Teale (the not-really-so-sinister older man) and Anna Chancellor (the monster-woman) made each repugnant generalization about human nature the product of their wonderfully specific personal neuroses. Burke’s character was so vulnerable and confiding that you winced as you watched Teale’s character breaking him down into a quivering lump of insecurity about the older, more intelligent and perhaps more talented woman he married. (He doesn’t yet know that his manipulator is her former husband.) Chancellor entered, after Teale had hidden, to find her husband refusing to play the games that had previously made them both happy, and if her persistence in calling Adolph by the infantilizing nickname “Little Brother” was distasteful, her matter-of-fact reply to his furious reproaches went a long way to neutralizing Strindberg’s (yes) misogyny. Maybe I’m wrong that the playwright intended us to sneer at Tekla’s assertions that she leads her own life and does as she pleases, she’s a writer first and foremost; certainly Chancellor made them persuasive. Once Burke tottered offstage and Teale re-entered for the final conflict, however, I felt again that Strindberg’s sympathies were always (and only) for the rejected first husband. Tekla seems quite glad to see Gustav, though nothing we’ve heard about her leaving him suggests that she would be, and almost flirtatious as she hopes they can be friends. When she realizes what’s going on and the real action begins, he has the upper hand throughout. Teale’s electrifying monologue (“Forgive me, for saving you from your mother. Forgive me for making a woman of you.” etc. etc.) makes him the most fully rounded, if not exactly sympathetic character in the play. When he opens the door to reveal that Adolph has been listening the whole time, it’s a horrifying moment, but I wasn’t overcome with grief for anyone–it seemed clear from the outset that this ghastly day could only end one way for these fucked-up people. Ben Brantley’s intelligent review in the NY Times claimed Creditors as “a template for a kind of take-no-prisoners drama that would flourish in the 20th century, practiced by writers as different as Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter”–true enough, though O’Neill at least seems to have some compassion for his subjects. David Mamet seems to me a more obvious heir to Strindberg, with his jaundiced view of the human race in general and women in particular, and I stopped going to Mamet’s plays years ago. With Strindberg, however, I can still be exhilarated by watching gifted artists throw themselves heart and soul into a play whose power I can’t deny, even if its underlying message repels me.

Spring Glorious Spring

April 19: It’s chilly today, but spring was at its most seductive last week, when Joe and I headed down to the Chelsea Garden Center in Red Hook to get some flowers for our newly sunny garden. (The only positive result of taking down a venerable but ailing red maple in our backyard last fall.) We took advantage of the car he had to rent for a business trip, since it wouldn’t have been easy to carry all those pots on the 61 bus. Though goodness knows, now that its final stop is Ikea, you see plenty of people lugging enormous amounts of merchandise aboard! Having recently seen A View from the Bridge, which takes place in Red Hook in the 1950s, when it was a blue-collar neighborhood inhabited by the families of longshoremen who worked on the Brooklyn waterfront, I was struck by the relentless way New York City sweeps aside its history. The old warehouses are now filled with trendy shops and restaurants serving the area’s new residents–artists and bohemian young families–as well as the hordes of shoppers drawn to Ikea and the equally humongous Fairway. Lots of people head to Fairway for the piles of gleaming produce and food products, but lots of others come just to buy take-out meals and sit at tables in the spectacular area outside the store, with views over the East River and the Statue of Liberty seeming so close you might reach out and grab her torch. We settled for loading up the car with azaleas, rhododendrons, dahlias, begonias and lots of ground cover (in an attempt to get something to grow in the back plot still laden with huge maple tree roots) and heading back to Boerum Hill.

Planting our new acquisitions on Thursday morning was sweaty but satisfying, with our dog and cats circling around to curiously investigate our labors. Our neighbor’s cherry tree was in full bloom, with its gorgeous pink blossoms hanging down over our garden and brushing our heads as we dug holes and inserted plants–reminding us why we were doing all this work: to add some more color and flowers to our already blooming backyard landscape. Whenever my son, a budding urban chauvinist, proclaims that he can’t imagine why anyone would want to live anywhere except in New York, I remind him that we are very lucky to live in a house with a garden in a great neighborhood. Still, when I walk down our block, greeting by name neighbors who range from the movie actor who owns a lovingly restored brownstone at the corner to the guys who live in the rather rundown boarding house mid-block, I can be romantic about the diversity and democratic friendliness of urban life at its best.

An Action-Packed Weekend

But not the kind of action of interest to the young and single…I was up to my butt in culture, and spent all Saturday reconnecting with some friends from sleepaway camp I hadn’t seen since we were 13 years old!

It’s strange how you look at people you knew when they (and you) were very young: even though we’re all in our 50s now, and I could see one friend’s gray hair, another’s extra 20 pounds (hey, I’ve got those too), in my mind’s eye I still saw the girls I had played tetherball and gone canoeing with. I remember attending a 25th reunion at my high school where we all embraced and uttered variants of, “You haven’t changed a bit!” Until one friend’s husband smiled indulgently and said, “Of course you have! Michelle doesn’t look at all like the photos in your high school yearbook anymore.” He was right, of course, though I don’t think anyone (including his wife) thanked him for pointing it out.

To begin at the beginning: On Friday night, Joe, Luca and I saw Love Is My Sin, Peter Brook’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s sonnets into a 50-minute play sketching the course of a relationship, with Natasha Parry and Michael Pennington. Of course, this dramatic compression left out a lot–I particularly missed “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”–and it was understandable given the age of the director and cast (85, 80, and 66) that the chosen sonnets focused on the passage of time, the pain of knowing you can’t be everything to a beloved; even the ones in the final section, “Time Defied,” were about love as a constant in a world of change, decay and death. An autumnal evening, in other words, but so satisfying as theater reduced to its bare essence: two people on a stage with some chairs and benches to shape the space for the different moments. I found Parry initially less engaging–though I hope I look that elegant at 80!–but I warmed up to her as the sonnets she spoke grew more emotional and often angry. Pennington was engaging from the start; he spoke Shakespeare’s verse conversationally, emphasizing the content: loss, longing, guilt, transcendence. By the time they closed with “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” I was swept up in the journey they had taken, through the ups and downs of any relationship, the bitterness and joy, so that the final assertion–”Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds….Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come”–hits home as a convincing triumph of love over death. Or at least a formidable adversary!

So when I met my camp friends at the Museum of Natural History, I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been at how easily I fell into a rapport with three grown women, two of whom  I last knew as teenagers. (The fourth, who’s kept in touch with all of us and went to college with me, was the force behind our reunion.) Two of us are married, two divorced; three have kids, one does not–we talked about our work, our spouses (or exes), our kids (or dogs!) as we walked through The Silk Road exhibit. Back at the hotel room the two out-of-towners were sharing, we pored over faded photos of ourselves at ages 11, 12, 13 in the woods of Vermont. It all comes back in a flash: the counselors whose names you realize you still remember, the lake where we skinny-dipped, the tags you had to turn when you swam–and you got called out at meals if you forgot to turn them back when you got out of the water–the crafts building where I sunk a linoleum cutter into my hand, the tetherball court, the barn where we square-danced with the boys from our brother camp. That was fun, but the best part for me was discovering what interesting women these girls had grown up to be: a newspaper photographer, a dentist in a poor rural community, a lawyer negotiating contracts for a music system with lots of digital apps.

After a leisurely dinner, we went off to see In the Heights, which had not been my first choice, but since I go to the theater all the time I figured  visitors should get their preference. And I liked it more than I expected: a young, energetic cast sang the OK score with feeling and danced the hell out of the lively choreography. The story was predictable but sweet: residents of Washington Heights, once the heart of the Hispanic barrio but now being gentrified, try to stay true to their roots as they look for love and broader horizons. The main protagonist, played by Corbin Bleu (“If you were a teenage girl you’d know who he was,” said my friend with a teenage daughter when I asked), runs a bodega and is all set to sell out and head back to the Dominican Republic, but inspired by the death of his beloved Abuela Claudia decides to stay and fix up the place, reaffirming his commitment to the neighborhood. The girl who’s dropped out of Stanford and taken up with a guy who works at her family’s car service, to the distress of her parents on both counts, decides to go back to California and “finish what I started.” Being a New Yorker, I loved the show’s loving portrait of urban community–and I had to laugh when my out-of-town friend said she loved the backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge. “George Washington Bridge!” I corrected.

We all embraced after the show as we headed our separate ways–two to the hotel, one to her brother’s apartment downtown and me to Brooklyn–vowing, “Same time next year!” We’ll see: good intentions sometimes gets swamped by the busy lives of middle-aged people with careers and kids. But it was a wonderful day, bridging my childhood and my adult life.

Back to being a mom on Sunday, when Luca joined me for the Maly Theater production of Uncle Vanya. Joe opted out: we’d seen it in English last season, and he’d seen a Russian film version years ago and though maybe one Russian-language version was enough! But when I saw the Maly last year performing Life and Fate (a great Soviet novel), I was struck by how beautiful and eloquent Russian is, how much savor it gave to the story to hear it in the language it was written in. Joe had told me several times how intriguing he’d found it as a teenager to see Vanya in Russian–much funnier and less melancholic than it’s usually played in English–and I wanted to experience it. I was a bit surprised when Luca said he wanted to come too, but he’s hooked on classics (as the old disco title had it), and I was glad to have company.

I’m so glad we went! Several members of the cast had also been in Life and Fate, most notably Sergey Kuryshev, who was a memorable Vanya, rolling around the dialogue in his mouth with the same explosive, exuberant relish he brought to the lead in L&F. His Vanya was no whining, pathetic figure, but a loud, difficult, highly dramatic man infuriated by the way he’s wasted his life. Ksenya Rappaport was especially good too in the difficult role of Elena, whose fatal appeal to all the play’s men is often a mystery to the audience, as bored as Elena claims to be by a woman who seems to have no purpose in life. Ignoring most of the text’s insistence on her laziness, Rappaport played a vital, energetic woman who really loves her impossible, elderly husband, even though he drives her crazy. In fact, what everyone in the excellent cast (with the possible exception of the slightly pallid Igor Chernevich as Astrov) did was to highlight the conflict between the characters’ frustrations and their equally strong love for life: the smell of the rain, the beauty of the landscape, the sheer pleasure of drinking a glass of tea or having a snack at midnight. Because you weren’t invited to feel sorry for them all the time, their disappointments and embarrassments were frequently funny. When Vanya discovers Astrov and Elena in a clinch, he freezes with a bouquet of flowers held absurdly in front of his face, while she wrenches herself from Astrov and clutches to her breast the plans he’s been showing her (and boring her to death with), as if somehow covering herself with paper will make her invisible. It’s hilarious; you don’t think about how horrible it is for Vanya to see the woman he’s fruitlessly pined after in the arms of his friend until he erupts in rage at the professor’s suggestion that the estate be sold and goes for his gun. And here too, the Russian word for “missed!” (whatever it is; I don’t speak a word) sounds way funnier than the English! I am a ferocious partisan of supertitles, which have replaced the horrid simultaneous translation headsets theaters used to use for foreign-language productions; now you can glance up to get the sense of what they’re saying, but you can hear the actors’ intonations (muffled or muted altogether by headsets). It makes all the difference. The closing monologue by Sonya is dark and sad, as it should be, but her final words, the repeated mantra “we shall rest,” have a somber majesty in Russian that gives the ending a different tone. The director, Lev Dodin, wrote a brief note for the program about Chekhov’s “amazing tenderness and desperate ruthlessness”; this production captured both.

Luca proclaimed that he liked it much better than last year’s Classic Stage Company production (which at the time he liked a lot). I was especially fascinated by his comment that the long Act II scene between Elena and Sonya was “less boring,” by which I think he meant that you were focused on what the characters were doing rather than what they were saying–which is often irrelevant in Chekhov, or at least a screen for what they’re really feeling. That to me is the essential difference between Shakespeare and many modern playwrights, beginning with Chekhov (well, with Ibsen, really). Shakespeare’s characters say what they mean; if they’re lying or prevaricating to another character, the audience always knows it. Modern drama’s characters frequently don’t say what they mean and often don’t know what they mean. Good productions–and actors–know the difference and perform them accordingly.

More Snow, a New Kitten

February 18: We got 18 inches of snow in less than 24 hours, and before it all melted away, Joe and I took our snowshoes and trekked through Prospect Park. We hardly needed the snowshoes in most areas, as it was packed down by hordes of sledders and snowman-builders. But there were some deep patches, and it was lovely to tramp the length of the meadow, from 9th Street down to Grand Army PLaza, just enjoying the various activities around us. Tons of families with their young kids shooting down the Picnic House hill and also a lower but wider slope over by Eastern Parkway; we had to stay near the fence surrounding the semi-frozen pond to be sure of not being bowled over. We also saw many happy dogs frolicking–one particularly cute little guy was fetching a toy his mistress kept throwing on top of a tall mound of snow; he would scamper up, then teeter on the summit with it clenched in his teeth, tail wagging furiously. There were all kinds of snow structures, none as handsome as the huge frilled reptile crouching on the sidewalk on our block in Boerum Hill (with a stegosaurus in the front yard as a companion), but some handsome snowmen, a few forts and towers. We also saw some indefatigable sports teams playing in the packed-down fields, cross-country skiers, bicycles on the (plowed) roadway–a cheering urban mix of weekend activities. But I most enjoyed just looking at the trees, their architecture so apparent when they’re bare of leaves, the branches black against the cloudy white sky. The dark shapes of humans cavorting in the snowy landscape made me think of Bruegel’s “Hunters in the Snow” and all those other fabulous, event-crammed paintings of his displayed over several rooms at the art museum in Vienna. My mother and sister are still laughing about the amount of time I spent looking at pictures of peasant weddings and children’s games, but I love Bruegel’s deeply narrative canvases.

We had tickets for a concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, an evening we prefer to spend at home in Brooklyn, but it was actually kind of fun immersing ourselves in the hurly-burly of Manhattan on a weekend night. It being a Saturday, the program was classical music’s greatest hits: Dvorak’s “From the New World,” Beethoven’s Leonore overture and one of Mendelssohn’s best known violin concertos (of course, I don’t remember the number because I am just the kind of not especially knowledgeable concertgoer these weekend concerts are programmed for.) Nikolay Znaider, the soulful Russian soloist on the Mendelssohn, was a virtuoso with the fingering and bowing, of course, but he was also unusually responsive to the orchestra, smiling and nodding to various soloists and at one point mouthing the beats of the drum. (I leaned later, reading the program bios, that he’s also a conductor, though he looks to be about 19.) The Leipzig orchestra also contained a female cellist Joe pointed out to me in the interval between Beethoven and Mendelssohn who had the most marvelously expressive face, her eyes in particular commenting on the music as her head bobbed in time–a cellist trait, of course, since the violinists and violists have their chins tucked into their instruments, and the winds are constrained by needing to blow. We were in the second row, which is less than acoustically perfect (the strings over-dominate), but I love being able to see the musicians’ faces and the way they interact with each other and the conductor (Ricardo Chailly). This was a young orchestra–typical of Europe; American orchestras are grayer and have more women and Asians–but extremely polished. Znaider, responding to sustained applause, referred to “the great European classical music tradition” and Leipzig’s central role in it–a suitable intro for the encore piece by Bach, Leipzig’s most famous kappelmeister.

The Dvorak was what brought us there; Luca plays the theme from the largo on the piano, and it reminded me how much I like the symphony. I didn’t need to read the (excellent) program notes to know that this 1893 work established the “open air” harmonies that resonate through Gershwin and (especially ) Copland and all 20th century American classical music. Dvorak loved America and especially loved African-American music (spirituals in those days), remarking presciently that any distinctively American music would have to take those rhythms into account. The symphony itself is European, like its composer, but very  much a precursor of American music to come.  Really a wonderful evening, and a good introduction for Luca to Carnegie, still the most beautiful concert hall in New York. Too bad it’s so expensive!

March 7:  We trekked to exotic South Ozone Park in Queens today, stumbling across a Hindu parade in celebration of spring–we learned that from the Indian-descended director of For Animals, the rescue organization whose shelter where we were headed to find a new companion for Lou. The “shelter” turned out to be the basement of one of those tiny, semi-detached bungalows with driveways that litter the Queens landscape. We descended the stairs to find some 50 cats hanging around–it didn’t smell too bad, actually, so the volunteers obviously keep it very clean. Some lovely adult cats, who were much more social, but we wanted a young cat to play with Lou–and, as it happened, we made friends with an elegant, nearly all-black female, about six months old. She wasn’t too thrilled about being stuffed into a carrier bag for the subway ride home, but now she’s sitting next to me on the sofa, with our dog Harry quivering with excitement nearby. He’s mostly stopped tha ghastly whimpering he does when he’s thrilled to pieces, thank God, and the kitty seems relatively unperturbed; she’s swatted him once or twice and hissed once, but mostly she stares at him while folding herself into the farthest corner of the sofa. Lou is mostly ignoring her at the moment, I think because Harry is all over her; he appears a bit jealous and batted her with a paw once or twice–but he might have just been getting acquainted.

It might seem heartless to have acquired another kitten so soon after Abbott’s death, but we’ve always had two cats, and as soon as Abbott died and Lou became much more active–his brother’s illness had cast more of a pall over him than we realized–we could see he needed a playmate . I’m kind of glad to have a girl, so the gender imbalance is only 4 to 2–Joe, Luca, Harry and Lou vs. me and Morticia, the brilliant name Joe came up with–instead of 5 to 1 when Abbot was alive. Luca’s snails (a never-ending legacy from a kindergarten project that kept reproducing) are neutral, we always say, by virtue of being hermaphrodites!

Spring is pretending to be here these past few days, with temps in the 40s, sunshine and mild breezes. We celebrated by walking to Fort Greene Park, which I’m ashamed to say we have never visited in the 13 years we’ve lived on Bergen Street. When I was growing up, the park and Fort Greene were considered horribly dangerous, and I guess I never really reconsidered when we moved here–ridiculous, as it’s a ten-minute walk and a spectacular site: a steep climb up to overlook Brooklyn (including a gorgeous stretch of brownstones on Washington Park, the northern boundary street) and to see the Empire State Building in the distance; big sweeps of lawn littered with young families; the recently restored Prison Ship Monument, the usual obelisk with a rather different purpose (tribute to the POWs held in boats on the East River during the Revolution); a majestic staircase, a parade of diverse trees with plaques listing their name and characteristics as part of the “Fort Green Tree Walk.” We enthused to the park rangers at the visitors center, which had historical background about the prison ships, the battle of Brooklyn Heights, the park’s design by Olmstead and Vaux–even the rangers seemed pretty yuppified, as opposed to the blue-collar staff at the Nevins Street Pool or Carroll Park. I can’t believe, obsessed urban strollers that we are, that it took us so long to discover this magnificent space. With that plus the High Line in Chelsea, we have two great new places to walk!

March 9: I had a good laugh from my mother the other day. She had called to say she was going to a movie and wouldn’t be around that evening, when we usually talk on the phone. When I called the next night and asked what she saw and how it was, she replied, “It was a little peculiar; it was a screening at church, and it turned out to be Spiderman 2!” Apparently, someone at church was fooled by the subtitle (Redemption) into thinking it would be just the thing for Lent!

I saw Hard Times at City Center this week, performed by the Pearl Theatre Company, an excellent group dedicated to “classical repertory” (which in their case seems to mean modern classics: Shaw, Synge, etc.). The Pearl has a resident company doing all the shows each season, and many of the actors in Hard Times were longstanding members, so the acting had that unity of style and intent that the Group Theatre thought was so important. In this case, six actors played all the parts, which was great fun to watch, especially Bradford Cover as three odiously diverse villains: blustering, selfish Bounderby; nasty, pinched Bitzer, the product of Gradgrind’s pinched education; and sensual, careless Harthouse–no real costume changes, but his expression and bearing were different for each one. Everyone else equally fine. TJ Edwards as Stephen Blackpool and Rachel Botchan as Louisa, playing the characters burdened by Dickens’ explicit moral message, acted with such conviction that there was nary a nervous giggle from the regrettably sparse audience. Less than 100 people, I’d say, despite glowing reviews, and I think it’s because the company is utterly faithful to Dickens’ vision, which means that the play is melodramatic and unabashedly sentimental. It worked because of the actors’ commitment and a bare bones production that was all about the magic of theater: a few chairs, tales and trunks rearranged for new scenes; a single colorful banner released from a hanging baton when the circus was the venue.

Winter Recreations

I saw Carmen recently–not, alas, with Elena Garanca, the sexy Slav who made a sensation at the premiere of this exceedingly intelligent new production directed by Richard Eyre. But Olga Borodina–the sexy Slav du jour about 15 years ago–remains a fine singer and a decent actress; physically she’s getting a bit matronly for the part, but this is opera, after all. Brandon Jovanovich, making his Met debut as Done Jose, was terrific: sounded great in some of the loveliest tenor arias ever written, and acted even better. I’ve always considered Don Jose a fairly wimpy role, always whining about his mother and his honor, but Jovanovich really mailed it and let you understand his conflict: a perfectly ordinary, conventional guy from the sticks, devoted to Mom, ready to marry the nice girl she chose, just the kind of rule-follower the army wants–until he’s swept away on a tide of sex by this gypsy free spirit he doesn’t understand for one moment (and that sure is mutual; she hasn’t got a clue about him either), so destroyed by the void she leaves him in when she abandons him that death for them both is all that remains. Hot stuff, and Eyre backed it up with every detail, in particular the Spanish Civil War background, used to suggest the perennial conflict between conformity and liberty. I disliked the set, which kept revolving more massive semi-circular scenery onstage, but it worked effectively enough. I’d forgotten, because I don’t listen to opera at home much anymore, just how sublime the music is and how great the libretto: “Libre elle vivait, libre elle mourra”; “nous nous reverrons”–spat out by Jovanovich like a curse, which it is. Carmen was the first opera I really fell in love with (along with Tosca), and it remains a favorite. “It’s really just a musical, isn’t it?” said one of my snootier opera-loving friends once–well, if you mean that it hurtles along with the pace and passion of Gypsy (so to speak) or West Side Story, then I suppose it is. But don’t tell Bizet–or Verdi, for that matter–that opera shouldn’t be popular entertainment!

As part of my reluctant exploration of the 21st century, in February I joined Facebook, Linked In and (God help me) Twitter–the latter the most egregious display of trivial chatter yet to be invented. And I have yet to see that Linked In lives up to its rep as a source of professional contacts. I do see the appeal of Facebook, as virtually everyone I went to high school with seems to belong, and it is fun to see people’s photos, random thoughts, etc.  Soon we won’t even have to meet anyone; we’ll merely check out their Facebook “status” to see how they’re doing.

Saw the Philip Pearlstein/Al Held show at the Betty Cuningham Gallery on West 25th Street. I love gallery shows, because they’re small enough to be fully absorbed in one visit. This one had perhaps 20 paintings, and the affinities it subtly revealed between Pearlstein’s nudes and Held’s abstractions were really interesting. They both like deep space, with layered canvases containing lots of important content in the background as well as the foreground. They both favor bright, harsh light and a sense of air, coupled with strong, occasionally lurid colors (eld especially), coupled in Pearlstein’s case with that livid, mottled flesh (sags, stretch marks a specialty–no airbrushed perfection for him!). I could have gone on to other shows–25th Street is packed with galleries–but instead I walked to the High Line and enjoyed seeing its vistas (and its landscape) buried in snow. What a wonderful addition to urban promenading it is; there were quite a few people there even in the dead of winter.

A hasty wrap-up of recent movie viewing. Cold Souls had an intriguing first half, weirdly compelling as it showed people having their souls extracted, but it became a bit plot-bound with some stuff about Russian traffickers that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Big Fan was a fascinating look at obsession so intense the protagonist can’t even be angry at the football star who beats him up–sharp, morosely funny, oddly compassionate. Shakespeare in Love was even fluffier than I remembered, but so witty and packed with in-jokes (the creepy kid killing rats who turns out to be John Webster, the way Marlowe constantly overshadows the fledgling Shakespeare). Luca enjoyed it, as I thought he would, and it certainly was appropriate to our Bard-heavy theatergoing season.He was less enthralled, though polite, about Waiting for Guffmann, which I think was a little too dry and deadpan for a 14-year-old. Joe and I, however, loved seeing it again; Christopher Guest’s mercilessly accurate yet somehow tender comedies never get old for me.

Movies, More Movies, Vikings and Opera

January 31-February 11, 2010:

When I look back over my diary from the winter, there seems to be little in it besides comments on movies and other performances–plus one nasty family crisis that I have no intention of sharing online! For what it’s worth, what we’ve been watching….

Catch Me If You Can, still among my favorite Leonardo DiCaprio performances, far better than his earnest, often heavy-handed work with Scorsese, and uncharacteristically light touch for Spielberg as well. Joe and I rented it so Luca could see it, and we all enjoyed the surprisingly moving portrait of a con man who’s really just a kid who wants his parents to get back together. Out of Sight, another old-ish film that stands up very nicely–George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez an amazingly sexy couple (I’m sure she wishes she’d chosen her subsequent roles as wisely as he did), a ton of actors just breaking out in 1997 (Ving Rhames, Catherine Keener, et al.): a nimble romp from Soderbergh. Moon was new to all of us, but in many ways a throwback to the more intellectual, challenging SF films launched with 2001–Kevin Spacey’s suavely voiced computer Gerty is a kinder, gentler HAL, and several sequences Sam Rockwell jogging, a dangerous trip outside the base) pay direct tribute to Kubrick’s masterpiece. But Moon has a feel all its own, with some heart-wrenching scenes involving the astronaut who slowly realizes he’s a clone whose cherished memories are all uploaded from the “real” Sam Bell. Does that make his feelings of loss and loneliness less real? Nice philosophical questions, never overplayed–good work from director Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son) and amazing work by Sam Rockwell, who will never be a move star (too plain, too eccentric), but is a phenomenal actor.

One cold afternoon, Joe and I strolled down Court Street into our old neighborhood, Carroll Gardens, checking out new shops (Union Market) and restaurants (Frankie), savoring the stark winter sunlight and crisp air. I love this city more than anything except my husband and son!

We saw Crazy Heart, a wonderful film, but given its subject matter–alcoholic artist finds loving woman, blows it by drinking, gets sober but doesn’t get her back–perhaps not the perfect choice at the end of a miserable week. (The family crisis had a good deal to do with alcohol abuse by relatives.) As Crazy Heart made clear, sometimes you fuck up and you don’t get to fix it. A pleasure to see Jeff Bridges, excellent as always, finally get the acclaim he deserves, but Maggie Gyllenhaal is very bit as good in a much more difficult part, and Colin Farrell does a nice turn as the protegé turned superstar who’s not at all the ungrateful creep or sellout you expect. I loved the film, but it would have been easier to watch if I hadn’t been through the mill this week.

With all the family angst, I haven’t exactly spent  a lot of time looking for work. I did redo my resume in a burst of energy back in January; in fact, I now have two, one for writing and one for editing. But my tentative wanderings in the blogosphere just make me depressed: as far as I can tell, most online sites pay virtually nothing to their writers, and the quality of the blog stuff, though variable, is mostly garbage. Looking through the postings on Galley Cat, a “curated” site–which means they lift reviews from print publications, run a few paid reviews and a lot of freebies–I was partly appalled, partly felt vindicated by the plethora of opinions offered that were misspelled, badly punctuated or just plain stupid. There is a reason why professional criticism exists, though I fear that experience, judgment, and a track record, not to mention ability, may be squeezed out by the sheer volume of free trash. It’s always been true that “everyone’s a critic,” but everyone didn’t use to have access to a public forum the way they do now with the Internet. So I spend a lot of time late at night (which is when I can’t keep my subconscious quiet) wondering if my profession is basically dying and I need to find something else to do. In which case, the question is: what the hell would that be? At the NBCC, everyone I talked to taught somewhere, and I guess nowadays if you’re an intellectual, that’s your sole option. As Joe–always the voice of reason–points out, there’s undoubtedly something out there I haven’t even thought of, and of course, I could always write another book…but who the hell would publish it, and what are the chances of it making a dime? Whoa—that way lies madness, or at least extreme anxiety. I just have to get out there and start looking and see what happens.

Thank goodness for my sanity that I am also swept away at the moment by the Icelander Sagas, which I bought ages ago for Luca (because he loved Beowulf and the Vikings so much, but he never really got interested) and picked up for myself over Christmas. Wild and woolly stuff–”The Iliad with snow” is my standard line–and utterly fascinating: a glimpse into the classic hero mindset (looting and murder bring you “honor”), but with an unusual slant because Iceland was much more of a democracy than Greece was, and certainly far more than Europe was at the time of the sagas (from 800-1000 AD, written down several centuries later), and women play a far more prominent role in them, especially The Saga of the People of Laxardal. Thank you, Jane Smiley, who first directed my attention to them—and no wonder, because she has the same dark world view, albeit slightly more contemporary. I’m guessing that Hilary Mantel would love them too, because this is definitely the “man is wolf to man” school of human relations.It’s why I fell in love with literature in the first place: you see an entirely foreign world through the eyes of the people who live in it, giving you a sense of its texture and mindset that you also get from history (my other great love), but not with quite the same intimacy.

Well, this entry has been pretty gloomy so far, though in fact I’m not (quite) as freaked out as I sound. Thank goodness for my husband and son, who remind me every day how lucky I am, and not so incidentally for Joe’s job, which can sustain us just fine even if I don’t make a dime all year–though of course that would not be a good thing. Even my income, which seems pitiful by the standards of my comfy middle-class peers, is of course a lot of money compared to the real world: imagine that $35,000, which is what I grossed last year, entitles me to the highest level of unemployment benefit! Juts to remind me how privileged I am….

Even my amusements bespeak it: last week I went to a benefit performance of Armide, tickets paid for by my friend Anne because the conductor is Ryan Brown, married to our old classmate Chris Healy. Ryan is the founder and director of the Opera Lafayette, which specializes in 17th and 18th-century opera, especially French; Armide is Gluck and really sensational. I’m also very fond of Handel, but it’s really interesting to hear how much opera changed between his work in the early 1700s and Gluck’s 40 years later: Armide has actual ensembles and harmonies, not just those lovely, keening solo arias that always make Handel feel sort of existential to me. Gluck is also romantic and melodramatic in a way that anticipates Verdi, and Dominique Labelle as Armide and Stephanie Houtzeel as Hate in particular made the most of it. I loved the ballets, which were an integral part of French opera and were treated with the respect they deserved, even though this was a concert performance and the singers were hardly staged at all. (Gorgeous ballgowns for the ladies, though: flame red for Armide, sexy bosom-baring blues for Judith van Wanroij and Nathalie Paulin as her sidekicks; slinky metallic fabric for Hate–it was very incongruous to see them swigging water from plastic bottles while they sat on the sidelines!) Catherine Turocy, a specialist in baroque dance, did beautiful choreography, stately but fluid, helped by masks and elegant costumes that would have fit right in at a Versailles performance. I was struck, listening to the charming odes to pleasure and joy, by the fact that it was written right before the French Revolution (1777), and those pleasures were strictly for the aristocracy, while the masses starved and the middle classes seethed. “Enjoy it while you can!” I thought. Still, the music is so lovely, and it was a wonderful performance.

My cab driver on the way home (yes, the privileged unemployed, that’s me!) was another study in class resentment, as he assured me that “Obama is in the pay of the globalists,” and “they want to register everyone for health care so they have all our names in the system and then they can raise prices.” It made absolutely no sense, and was quite creepy–especially since the guy started out being quite charming as he passed along various tidbits about American history…he was slightly surprised that I knew the answers to most of his trivia questions, and we had fun swapping stories. But I should have known: those experts in the American Revolution often turn out to be far-right nuts, and when I asked him if he was a fellow history buff, he replied, “Well, I’m a patriot.” Later, he pulled out a LaRouche broadside of some sort, so I knew what I was dealing with. “We’re not going to agree,” I said firmly, “but that’s the great thing about a democracy; everyone gets to have their opinion.” Even when their opinion is based on paranoid conspiracy theories….

Just describing this past week makes me tired! I’ll say briefly that The Invention of Lying, funny but also covertly sweet, much like Ricky Gervais’ first film (Ghost Town), was a welcome light relief after Crazy Heart, and In the Loop was grimly funny in a deadpan sort of way as it anatomized the rush to war (clearly Iraq, though the name is never mentioned) as experienced by a gaggle of self-serving political operatives, with even the better-intentioned characters (James Gandolfini’s general and Mimi Kennedy’s State Department official) having their eyes on the main chance and the spin possibilities. Dead-on and very funny, if you didn’t ask yourself, “Why am I laughing over the fucked-up state pf contemporary politics?”

Let’s definitely not go there–that’s all for now.

Winter Changes

On Sunday (1/24), while Luca went to visit friends, Joe and I lunched at Grand Sichuan, our favorite Chinese restaurant– au zhou chicken and those mouth-frying beef filets in chili sauce–then walked over to the High Line to see what it looks like inthe winter. Those masses of wildflowers look quite dramatic as tall, bare stalks, actually, and with the adjacent trees bare we could really appreciate the cityscape to the east–billboards, trendy new buildings, etc.–as well as the silvery Hudson to the west. We got down at 15th Street and roamed through Chelsea Market, the old Naional Biscuit Building rehabbed into lots of trendy food stores, some fo them quite nice (an Italian-style grocery, Bowery Kitchen Supply). Joe and I are seldom happier than when eating a good meal or walking through our beloved city.

Luca was off for most of this week for Regents Week: most high school students have multiple state tests, but ICE (the Institute for Collaborative Education) kids take only the English and math. Luca took the ELA Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons (math in June) while I cam in to sit as a parent volunteer on the math/physics senior panels. They’re new this year, which means that we were absurdly under-scheduled: panels supposed to take an hour started 45 minutes late and lasted two hours! (The teacher in charge said they would fix that next year.) Otherwise they were very interesting, as the kids presented a variety of projects designed to answer various questions stemming from Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.I had a wide swathe of students, the most intriguing being a girl whose lit panel I had sat on in December. She barely passed that one, looking really nervous and unhappy as she dished out material on horror novels that made it clear she’d never be an English teacher. Here, by contrast, she sailed in and started whipping out equations, laid out her problem with aplomb and solved it with panache. I had two kids we couldn’t pass: the (marginally) better one we asked to go away and think about how she could add at least a few equations to an otherwise math-less project; the other one burst into tears when we said we needed to see additional work. I couldn’t stay for either remedial session, but in the case of the second student, I don’t think the poor kid was capable of it. ICE’s star debater gave a slick presentation of a good project with slightly slipshod math, so I saw the gamut of ICE students!

The school has always made a point of not being a gifted program; there is a wide academic range, which is one of the things I like about it. I was struck by that again when an old friend, whose son was in elementary school with Luca and then went on to attend Bard for high school, called to say that he was starting at ICE as the second semester began. Some kids thrive in Bard’s super-competitive atmosphere–it helps to be a driven high-achiever, but this boy, a decent student and avid baseball player, was not one of them. His mother, who was very negative about ICE when we were all looking at middle schools, was shaken by how poorly her son did last year (when he was in ninth grade), but didn’t actually move him until this year, when he got so depressed in the first half of 10th grade that he stopped going to school altogether. Our principal, of course, simply took him in–he can never say no when he thinks a kid needs the school.

I thought about Bard for Luca when he was in eight grade at ICE–some kids do leave and go to different high schools– just because he’s such a good student and I do get antsey sometimes about ICE’s ultra-alternative approach: the critical thinking part is great, but could they learn a few dates and facts? They do, of course, Luca loves it there, and I believe in that kind of education (despite a few residual old-fashioned reflexes). Why would I move him?

On Friday we went to BAm to see As You Like It, somewhat apprehensively, in my case, since I had been the moving force behind the expensive and disappointing visit to Love’s Labours Lost. “Maybe the comedies are just not as good,” I worried, “or at least harder for a modern audience to enjoy.” Well, of course not–this lovely production directed by Sam Mendes with a  stellar cast reminded me that the great comedies have just as much wisdom and gorgeous language as the tragedies or romances. This version happened to stress the darker notes in the play, but it’s not as though they’re not there: the brilliant Stephen Dillane as melancholy Jacques was only the most noticeable depressed character, but everyone is perturbed and disturbed by love. The forbidding set of the opening scenes perfectly matched Act One’s grim events, and the snow on the ground in the forest of Arden is justified by textual references in Act two to winter. (I could have lived without the waterboarding allusion with Orlando’s brother, however.) But then winter turns to spring, grass grows, the characters shed their greatcoats and boots to go barefoot–yet tghe mood is still tentative; Juliet Rylance’s thoughtful Rosalind and Christian Camargo’s battered Orlando are wary of the love they feel, with good reason. Such a pleasure to see Americans like Camargo (a great classical actor) give as good an account of Shakespeare’s verse (and prose) as the Brits: Thomas Sadoski as a very contemporary Touchstone, Ashley Atkinson and Jenni Barber as the down-to-earth country girls were the equals (in their parts) of the magnificent Dillane and Rylance. It may be their language (as Joe said after seeing an RSC Twelfth Night 30 years ago), but we can make it new! The main this is, the whole cast is outstanding–only poor Michelle Beck displayed the stereotypical American inability to deal with either the verse or the ideas–and Mendes, as he did with The Cherry Orchard last year, directs an unobtrusive interpretation that doesn’t offer startling innovations, just a solid, sensitive reading of the text, including some of Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits: Seven Ages of Man, “sweet are the uses of adversity,” “all the world’s a stage,” etc. Can’t wait to see The Tempest, with Dillane as Prospero, Rylance as Miranda, and Camargo as Ariel!

March 6: Oh well. Mendes loaded up his version of The Tempest with flashy special effects: pots of flame; Caliban entering from below stage, crawling out of the sand; Ariel in bizarre costume changes, including an evening dress (Christian Camargo did not make a convincing transvestite, which I assume was the point). They did not conceal a hollowness at the core; I’m not quite sure if Mendes hadn’t decided what the play was about or (more likely) had decided wrongly. I loved the fact that As You Like It‘s darkness, wholly justified by the text in the first half, gradually gave way to spring and hope in the second half, at least in the scenery (not sure all the actors got the “lighten up” memo). Certainly The Tempest should have lots of dark moments, beginning with the shipwreck. But I have never seen such a bummed-out Prospero! Poor Stephen Dillane, an excellent actor mostly at sea here, seemed entirely uncheered by his magical powers–and if he walked in a circle around that damned sand arena one more time, I was going to start screaming! Juliet Rylance and Edward Bennett, both so good in As You Like It he in a small part), seemed too old for Ferdinand and Miranda–dull parts  to begin with, but the CSC production last year stressed their youth and the freshness of first love; this one, as with so many things, seemed unsure. The play’s amazing poetry rarely registered–Dillane practically threw away “our revels now are ended,” and Ron Cephas ones as Caliban (OK, but a black Caliban is getting to be a cliché) didn’t do much better by “be not afeared, the isles is full of noises.” Camargo as Ariel was the one really outstanding performance (despite the silly costumes): he was truly an alien, a spirit creature intrigued but baffled by these peculiar human goings-on. (You could easily imagine him saying Puck’s line,”Lord, what fools these mortals be!”) Eerily detached, with some kind of intense bond with Prospero though he longs angrily and aggressively to be free–brilliant work, as almost always from Camargo. Sorry I missed him in All My Sons,  just to see what he can do onstage with a modern role–he’s good in a supporting part in The Hurt Locker, but film is so different. I’m guiltily grateful that he strikes me as too unusual to be a movie star, or even a big character actor in film–I want him onstage in Shakespeare! Or in the Greeks–he’d be scary as Oedipus or Creon.

Getting back to The Tempest, it was, as Joe said, oddly bloodless, and looking at a program note from Mendes I fear that’s because the living text was subordinated to an idea: As You Like It as “the tragic overture” to The Tempest (say what?), Prospero’s island as “what remained of the forest of Arden after the holocaust of the tragedies” (say what again?!?) Both those comments are quotes from a book by Ted Hughes that I wish Mendes had never read; he took that as his unifying concept, I guess, but it strikes me as just a gimmick,.

What Does It All Mean? Who the Hell Knows!

Tuesday, January 19: I took a long walk with Luca down to the Promenade and back, talking about everything from the Spanish Civil War (his final Cycle 2 project) to the Massachusetts senate election (she lost tonight, God help us–more on that later). A paradox to be talking about brutal wars and depressing politics while reveling in the pale winter sunlight on beautiful old brownstones and on the water in New York’s glorious harbor–but thank goodness! Our peaceful, happy life, so deeply rooted in Brooklyn, enables me to deal with the world’s sorrows a little better. But I never forget they’re there. I’ve been reading a sensitive but sometimes irritating memoir by Dani Shapiro, the third account of someone’s spiritual quest I’ve read in as many months. And I am not generally eager to read this sort of thing; I was asked in all three cases. Shapiro’s Devotion wasn’t as dreadful as Roll Around Heaven, but it wasn’t as tough-minded as Mary Karr’s Lit either. I felt awful for Shapiro when she described her infant son’s struggle with a life-threatening condition (he made it), but when she wrote about how this revealed “the abyss” to her, the horrible randomness of malevolent fate, I felt like saying, “This is news to you? Where have you been?” Although I agree utterly that the most important achievement is simply to be in the moment, to appreciate life’s wonder in full knowledge of its transience and fragility, I’m getting tired of having that announced as a blinding insight. Well, Shapiro’s book has some lovely moments and closes with a moving paean to the human need for connection, so I won’t have to fake enthusiasm when I interview her on Thursday.

It’s symptomatic of how ugly politics in this country has become–and how unqualified the Democrats are to deal with it–that this idiot Republican has won in Massachusetts. Let’s not even start on the fact that he and his party have nothing to say except “no”: no to health care reform, no to dealing with climate change, no immigrants, no to minorities (Haiti had an earthquake because its citizens made a pact with Satan; Obama is sending aid to curry favor with blacks–I kid you not). It’s mean-spirited and frightening, this appeal to people’s fear and ignorance. Talking yesterday to my friend Lelia, who’s just back from an inspiring and heart-breaking trip to Burundi, where civil society is so fragile and the government basically does nothing, I was reminded how dangerous the Republicans are as they incite people to fear and hate our government. That’s fine for their real constituency: rich people don’t need government, because they can pay for everything they need, but the rest of us really do need public schools, police forces, garbage collection, an orderly civil society where you can get a driver’s license without bribing someone or drive down a road without being ambushed and killed–that happened to a car headed to Village Healthworks in Burundi, probably because the local Pentecostal minister hates the clinic, which he fears lessens his power over the community. What saddens all of us on the left–my God, hardly a term for anyone who believes in a functioning government and some level of taxation to pay for it–is that so many people can be persuaded to vote against their economic self-interest by appeals to their prejudices.

Lelia was still pretty tired after a grueling trip–48 hours just to get to Burundi! and a lot of long car rides over bad roads–but she was exhilarated by how much Deo has accomplished in three years: the clinic and community center are open and serve hundreds of people every day; a women’s clinic is under construction; they have a huge garden of edible plants and are trying to teach people to vary their diet. But there’s so much yet to do: women of 25 or 30 have seven or eight children, and when the doctor suggests that they bring their husbands with them to discuss family planning, they say, “You say one thing, the [Catholic] church says another.” So many of the babies dies because they’re malnourished; people die en route to the clinic because the access road is so bad it takes an ambulance an hour to go ten miles. Women who come to the clinic to give birth then take their babies to witch doctors who kill them as often as cure them (and there was a faint suggestion that maybe that was the desired outcome for a sick child who was going to be a burden). “These people have nothing,” Lelia said: no indoor plumbing, no hot water, no electricity; only the clinic has these things. yet everyone was incredibly warm and friendly; they had a huge New Year’s Eve party at the community center, with everyone singing and dancing . Deo gets along all right with the local government, such as it is—it provided soldiers to guard the road after the ambush–but all the money comes from fundraising in America, and the need is so great.

Lelia also went to visit a friend in Uganda whose husband is in charge of higher education; she’s trying to raise money to build libraries in the village while she’s on a six-month sabbatical from Hunter. (These are the people who make you feel you’ve done nothing with your life!) Uganda is a more affluent society than Burundi, but it’s in total political chaos–interestingly, when Lelia asked the husband (a native Ugandan) whether he thought they needed a leader like Kagame in Rwanda, he said no, because there could be suppression of the press and civil liberties. “He may be a good dictator, but I don’t want a dictator,” he said. Lelia, whose favorite phrase is,”it’s complicated,” feels overwhelmed by the complexities of Africa, where the alternative to a dictator may be a genocidal civil war (Kagame has strongarmed a tentative peace in Rwanda), or he may be fomenting a genocidal civil war (Kagame is also messing around in Congo). You pays your money and you takes your choice–but of course, the villagers Lelia met in Burundi don’t have a lot of choices, though Deo is trying to give them some by soliciting their help and advice at the clinic. It was wonderful to see Lelia and fascinating to hear about her trip–funny, she went to a wildlife park in Uganda and barely mentioned it. Human life was so much the focus of this journey–now she wants to get that road to the clinic paved!

I should briefly mention, on a considerably less exalted note, that we went to an enjoyably eclectic and amateurish “Coney Island, Then and Now” program  in the chapel at Green-Wood. (A little odd to see the beaming figure of Christ illuminated above a parade of puppeteers and carnies.) It was a wildly mixed bag: introduction and a quick history of Coney’s early days by a knowledgeable guy whose spring trolley tour we signed up for; then a troupe of “mermaids” in green spangles and fishnets who did some innocuous bumps and grinds and returned at various intervals to ask questions. (“What did the sign George Tillyou posted after the fire at Steeplechase Park say?”); a commercial diver–in his wet suit!–described his discovery of a bell that had been submerged in the ocean since the Dreamland Pier burned down in 1911; a 65-year-old guy in a lifeguard suit (he worked the beach in the ’60s) sang a song about Coney; the Czech-American marionettes were quite good; the Puppeteers Collaborative, not so much. Quite enjoyable, if your expectations weren’t unduly high. Hey, we were warm and indoors–it was pouring outside! I was surprised to see so many young kids, from babes in arms through toddlers to grade-schoolers; Luca was definitely the only teen. It wasn’t publicized as a children’s show, nor was it especially aimed at kids. But of course parents are always looking for family activities, epecially in bad weather; the chapel was quite full.

A Sad Story

One of the reasons I wanted to go back over my diary entries from earlier this year and post them on my blog is that we had a traumatic experience that made me think about a lot of things that belong in the blog. But I have to go back a bit to have it make sense.

February 8, 2010: I finally took Abbott to the vet on Tuesday, after Joe and I acknowledged that there was something wrong.  He’s been a quiet little guy since we got him, but we slowly realized that he was much too listless and passive for a kitten; we finally talked about it when he was lying by the basement door, Harry was pushing him around with his nose, and Abbott didn’t even get up to flee downstairs. So I took him off to Hope Veterinary Clinic, and the very nice vet, Dr. Faigle, was clearly concerned by his unkempt coat and limp demeanor. What she’s worried about is something called Feline Infectious Peritonitis (though it’s not in fact contagious), which is a rare mutation of a common virus that stray cats often have, and which is ultimately fatal. It’s also hard to diagnose, and the blood tests so far ar inconclusive; we’ll get another one today, and if the readings are high, it won’t look good. So we may not have Abbott for very long, and the thought of dealing with a mortally ill cat so soon after Bessie is grim indeed. At the moment he’s feeling better–we’re giving him a ton of meds–and is slightly more active than before; actually comes downstairs to get his food instead of my having to carry him over to it. But he’s not a normal kitten like Lou, who eats hot dogs off the counter and bounds over all four floors. I’ve taken to calling Abbott “our little invalid,” and I’m trying simply to think of him like that in case the worst happens. It’s still possible that he merely has a very stubborn upper respiratory infection, in which case he’ll get better eventually, and I think he’ll always be a quiet guy. But I don’t want to have to think about losing him!

February 11: Abbott is not doing so well. The corona virus test that came back Tuesday pretty much confirms that he has FIP, and I was shocked to learn from Dr. Faigle that once they start showing symptoms, “It’s usually a matter of weeks or days.” The poor little guy remains lethargic, though he seems to feel more at home and knows the routine; he’s waiting at the top of the basement stairs for his food in the morning, and he’s eating a fair amount. But he’s horribly weak; if I don’t carry him down the stairs, he lurches down, obviously having no muscle control. He’s happy to sit in your lap (if you pick him up and put him there), he sometimes purrs and he doesn’t seem unhappy. As Joe said, it’s like having an old cat, all energy gone and waiting for then end–but he’s six months old! It’s terribly sad, but because he’s been sick basically from the moment we got him–he seemed fine, obviously, but within a couple of days we realized something was wrong–we never really knew him except as a dying cat. We feel sad, but not devastated. In fact, because he looks so much like Bessie and we lost her so recently, it’s weirdly like she never died and we’re still nursing her.

Lou has taken to jumping on top of Abbott and treading on him, or standing next to the couch where he lies and swatting him–either as a way of asserting dominance or trying to get him to play, I don’t know which. But both Lou and Harry both obviously know something’s up with Abbott: Harry comes over whenever I’m holding him and butts him with his nose. We’re going to take him to Vermont (a planned trip to visit my mother): how can I ask our teenage neighbor who cat sits to look after a dying animal, or leave him at the kennel saying, “He might die while we’re away–should I sign a release?” Better to keep him with us–it’s not like we need to worry about him getting lost, since he hardly moves. Well, Joe and IO agreed last night that we’re giving him a very comfortable end of life, however long that will be, and we’re allowed to feel a little sorry for ourselves so long as we don’t wallow in it.

That’s how we’ve been playing it with Luca, whose instinctive response is to say, “I don’t to talk about it.” We respect that, but we push him to ask questions and acknowledge what’s going on. He’s got the Mobilia tendency to push things under a rug–Joe’s at least as eager to discourage that as I am, so we try to balance between denial and wallowing in angst (the Smith strategy). [In case anyone missed it, Joe's last name is Mobilia, and mine is Smith.] Luca responds well–he’s a great kid!

February 24: Abbott died today, poor little baby. He soiled himself yesterday, and had done it again this morning when I carried him downstairs–he hasn’t really been able to walk in days–he couldn’t even stand up to eat his food. His head was wobbling, and it was clear his time had come–in fact, when I took him to the Hope Veterinary Clinic, the vet said that he’d gone blind. “I hate this disease,” said Dr. Ryan, her eyes damp–she was so empathetic I practically felt I should be comforting her! But Hope’s alternative style really made a difference for the euthanasia: they let me hold Abbott as they inserted the catheter and then gave him the injections. I felt the shudder go through his wasted body as he went. Went where? What exactly went? Dr. Ryan, who seems to be philosophically inclined, said, “I hate it when people say everything happens for a reason.” I surprised myself by saying, with subdued vehemence, “I never look for a reason. Life is what it is.” I said something similar to my friend Gabrielle recently, and she replied, “So, the straight atheist position?”  But I don’t think of myself as an atheist, in the sense of someone militantly sure that there is no God–well, I guess I am pretty sure about that, but I’m no longer the teenage existentialist proclaiming that life has no meaning; I sense an order and perhaps a purpose in the universe, but I think we can’t know them. I don’t think there was  reason Abbott got this horrible disease, and I’m not outraged that there isn’t. The pursuit of human knowledge seems enough to me: understanding more about ourselves, our history, the natural world. As far as meaning, I’m definitely of the “you make your own meaning” school: you try to treat other people well, do the right things (and don’t ask me how you know what’s right–obviously you just decide), savor this beautiful world that can also be so cruel and arbitrary. It seems pretty simple, really–and sorrow and suffering are part of the package, along with joy and pleasure.

We hardly had a chance to know Abbott, who got visibly sick just days after we brought him home, but we loved him as our little invalid and took care of him and tried to keep him comfortable as long as we could. Did I sometimes think, “Jeez, hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a cat that was sick from Day One?” Yes, I did, and I’m not embarrassed by those thoughts. I didn’t act on them, I did everything I could for Abbott, and I loved him. One thing I’ve learned from Helene [a 93-year-old friend]–I think mostly because I was ready to learn it–is that human nature is so mixed, and we’re foolish to try and pretend it’s one thing or another–it’s both/and, not either/or.

Goodbye, Abbott dear, may you rest in peace. The deep meaning of that phrase becomes more real to me every year.

February 28: Sometimes, when something’s on your mind, you find it waylaying you everywhere–and that was true with this week thoughts about death and how you lead your life while you’re waiting for it. Joe got home Friday from a trip to Las Vegas and handed me an Esquire article about Roger Ebert–I had already sen the shocking photograph of him with his ghastly mutilated jaw, the result of multiple operations for cancer. But Joe had found the Esquire profile by Chris Jones in which the photo appeared, an article that told the story of his struggle with cancer, the burst artery that led to him losing his lower jaw and his voice in 2006, and how he lives now: being fed through a tube in his neck, “talking” via a computer program at home and writing on a pad when out. The piece was both horrific and incredibly moving. What Ebert and his wife have been through boggles the mind, yet he’s still writing movie reviews, still taking walks with her through his beloved Chicago, still traveling. He’s refused to have more surgery, and he knows he’s slowly dying: “I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do,” he wrote recently. “What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting.” I had tears in my eye–I hope I can face death with that kind of grace and good sense. What else can you do except try to be a decent person, treat other people well and enjoy every minute of life without asking what it all means?

I thought of all this while I was watching Measure for Measure, one of the “problem plays” that people don’t know quite what to make of. This typically lucid, evenhanded Theatre for a New Audience production highlighted its paradoxes without telling us how to resolve them. What are we to make of the Duke telling Claudio, awaiting execution but hoping or a reprieve, “Be absolute for death; either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter”? Wise stoicism, or callous platitude? Are Lucius the pimp or Pompey the thief any worse than Isabel the sanctimonious prude or Angelo the hypocrite? To me, the play troubles people because it says, “Hey, that’s human nature” and declines to pass judgment. Harold Bloom, whose Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human I dipped into afterward, takes M for M for a nihilistic comedy saying that the world is mad–which seems to me to say more about Bloom’s world view than Shakespeare’s…but then, our responses to Shakespeare generally say a lot about our own philosophies.

I liked this production, especially Rocco Sisto as Angelo; he made this odious character agonizingly human, goaded into evil by his lust for Isabel. Ala\s, Elizabeth Waterston, so charming as Miranda in CSC’s Tempest, was one-note and off-putting as Isabel; she seemed not to have figured out what made the character tick, or at least she wasn’t  conveying it. Jefferson Mays as the Duke was an enigma–but how else do you play that part? He spoke those marvellous speeches beautifully, leaving us to decide whether the guy was an odious moralizer, the voice of reason, or just plain crazy–I’m not sure Shakespeare had decided about that either. Of course, this is part of the genius of Shakespeare; he captures life onstage; he ponders it with amazing acuity, but he’s not in the business of providing answers. He encourages us, I think, “to love life more than the meaning of it,” something Dostoevsky wrote about (that quote’s from The Brothers Karamazov), but I don’t think ever achieved.

It’s the secondary characters–all well acted in this production–who give the play its scope and bite: Lucio saying that the state will end fornication about the same time that people give up eating and drinking; the executioner and Pompey, his new assistant, making a farce of killing people; Barnardine, the death row prisoner so drunk and indifferent to life and death they can’t even execute him. They all remind us that life is rowdy, unpredictable and ungovernable–fine words like the Duke’s ring very hollow in light of their antics. Yet I don’t find M for M a bitter play–merely a ruefully adult one.

The Human Touch, continued

After spending the morning cleaning the kitchen and living room, I treated myself to a visit to the Metropolitan Museum to see the exhibit of Bronzino drawings. One of the most appealing things about drawings is the sense you get of the artist’s hand; you’re much more aware that a human being made these images, because they’re less formal than an oil painting. I remember years ago seeing a Holbein exhibit at the Morgan Library, comprised almost entirely of sketches of people’s heads, and being struck by how familiar the faces were: one guy could have been a punk rocker (like I said, this was a few years ago), another looked like a malevolent corporate executive, despite the 16th-century hairstyles. I could practically feel Holbein sardonically assessing these crazy Brits and catching their every wart with his agile pen, a stranger in a strange land. Bronzino’s drawings are mostly studies for paintings–the Met, pedantically, put photos of the paintings on the accompanying placards–so they’re often full figure, or  a piece of the body he was trying to get right (a knee, a bent back), and they’re usually nudes. So they don’t seem as contemporary as Holbein’s psychologically astute portraits did, but they’re wonderfully intimate, with that warm reddish-brown ink, often highlighted with white gouache that casts a ghostly light. A study of two young men stretched out on the ground and entangled in each other’s arms, allegedly for some religious painting, caused Ginnie and me to glance at each other and guffaw. “Jacob Welcoming the Angel (or some such)–I don’t think so!” I said! The ease and casualness of line makes you respond in easier, more casual ways–and I love painting! But drawings have their own special place.

A marvellous exhibit called “Playing with Pictures,” about Victorian collage, also gave you a close connection to the people (women mostly) who created these unassuming mashups of photographs (usually from cartes de visite), sometimes arranged in patterns, sometimes made part of a painting that placed them in a landscape or a social scene. All those hilarious muttton-chopped men and tight-laced ladies seemed so much more like your neighbors when their stodgy images were plunked down in armchairs in a living room scene or set as jewels in a painted necklace or turned loose in a forest. And you could easily imagine these quiet housewives satisfying their restless creative instincts with these playful pieces–again, casual work that didn’t announce itself as art. The Victorians were pretending just to play, while Bronzino was an artist working at his craft, but in either case, you feel their human presences.