A Theatre Without A Ghost

Prokofiev,"Dance of the Montagues and Capulets"

"This is it," I said, pulling the car to the curb.

"Ok, thanks. I'll be an hour or two. Bye!"

I had no reservations about the theater itself. Some restoration was evident from the street. New paint, aluminum scaffolding up to the eaves, some major work doubtless underway inside. Poppy entered and I drove off on errands.  An hour later, I returned, waited a little while, then locked the car and entered the building. I could hear Poppy's voice and followed it down a darkened lobby, slipped through a door to a back row and sat unnoticed. The script recited was somewhat archaic --period piece, I supposed-- and then silence.

I stood up and walked into the light. Poppy saw me.

"Everybody," she said. "This is my Uncle Geo."

I smiled, a bit nervously, and waved. I asked, "Are we done here?"

She gave an interrogative glance around the stage and said, "Yes."

Back in the car, I said,"Ok, so tell me about it."

"Well", she said. "It was interesting. There were a bunch of people there putting together a hybridization of two plays, Hamlet and Romeo And Juliet. "

"Who came up with that?"

"Two of the guys on that stage, Bill and Fletch.

"Fletch for Fletcher? John Fletcher by any chance?"

"You've heard of him?"

"Not for a while, quite a well-known name at one time, but go on, please."

"They thought it would be a good idea, more modern, to have Hamlet leave Elsinore for Italy instead of England. Then, instead of returning to Denmark and dying, have him fall in love with Juliet in Verona. He would've been clever enough to fool  Capulets into, uh, capitulating --by calling it part of their namesake heritage-- and Montagues into montigulating, which nobody knows what it is. Both families were keen on legacies of all sorts. Besides, he was way sexier than Romeo."

"And what of Romeo?"

"Bill thought Romeo's high school could have a foreign exchange program so Italian kids could learn herring fishing. This would get him to Elsinore to meet Ophelia and they could just hide in corners together and quiver instead of killing themselves and living happily ever after --I mean..."

"No, I get it, an ambitious project! Who else did you meet on that stage?"

"Ummmm. There was an old guy, Paul or 'Polo-oops!' they sometimes called him. Nice lady named Gert. Ty, guy with a temper. 'Nother guy, Merc? Who'd name their kid after an old car? Anyway, 50 people maybe. They decided I was too assertive for Ophelia and too short for Juliet, balconies being lower than they once were. So I asked if I could be the ghost, unless maybe they already had one cast. Every theater is supposed to have a ghost, y'know."

"What did they say to that?"

"Well, Bill says,'My dear, I do fear neither phantom-trod battlements nor pointed merlons of yore are  standing any more, nor would you, young soul, like getting paved in paint for such a role. And A GHOST? None would fear A ghost in this jaded age. Besides, not every  theatre hath but A GHOST!' That's when you came to collect me, Uncle."

We pulled up to Poppy's place and she hopped out. As always, I waited until she was safely through the front door before I drove away. Indeed, back from a theater without a ghost, A ghost --certainly a singular experience. What I refrained from telling her was, while I sat watching the audition and came forward to call her home, Poppy was, on that brightly lit stage, quite alone.

Genetics And Personal Safety

Are you accident-prone?

Try this simple test. Stretch your arms out. Make a fist with each hand and bring them quickly together. If your head got in the way, you are accident-prone. No, don't try it again, stop it. We are going to discuss safety. I said stop it! Look at figure 1.

Figure 1 is a specimen of Modern Man. Norma found it in our yard. She took a picture of it. She made it carry out a little bag of garbage. There is an old banana in there, some bones, paper --organic things-- in a plastic bag. Plastics are organic polymers derived from oil. Oil comes from geologically compressed zooplankton and algae. If anything was to cause something to fall off of (or out of) the bag or out of the Modern Man in figure 1, a close examination would reveal this:

Of course, you'll need a really good microscope with lots of brass knobs like mine:

And what does this tell us? Man shares 40% to 70% of genetic code with the banana --the same old flaccid banana that fell --accidentally?-- young and yellow off a tree and got shipped here to obscurity, forgotten behind Tupperware (with which we share 55% of  DNA). It could not have happened on purpose. Paper? More organic matter, more DNA --born to be scribbled on or pressed into currency of uncertain fungibility. Bones? I won't even get into that. Point is, none of these relatives of Man could have intended to end up the way they did, in the garbage. Nor could primordial plankton and algae calculate their participation in the ubiquity of automobiles.

This brings us to thoroughfares.  Our specimen of Modern Man must cross a lane to throw garbage in a can. This is asking for trouble. Lanes, freeways, doesn't matter --they are all roads. We have seen what happens to skunks when they try to cross roads. Modern Man shares 99% of DNA with Mephitidae and that constitutes certainty in all rational disciplines. If skunks can't reliably cross roads, free from accident, neither can Man. Barring genetic engineering away from accident-proneness, there is only one solution. We must redesign our environment so that everything --workplaces, residences, churches, tallow works, skyscrapers, farms, markets, missile silos and liquor stores-- everything we need in life, is on one side of the road --all roads, all over the world.

I can't imagine what would be on the other side of the road then, can you?

Epidemic Anosognosia. Run!

It's a familiar old story. You go to your familiar old doctor and get told....but I precede myself, we want background here. So I have appended a Normaphoto of the human brain. Its resemblance to a Normaphoto of a hornet's nest in our eaves is purely coincidental. One sees one's doctor and the following exchange ensues:

Doctor: I believe you are suffering from anosognosia.

Patient: Am NOT!

I should mention here, anosognosia is a malady first named by neurologist, Joseph Babinski, in 1914. It is a disability that renders its sufferers unaware of their disability. People with anosognosia do not  know they have it, because they cannot. Therefore, the consultation above is a conclusive test for the problem and the result is always positive.

The condition has little to do with age or collateral caducity. I use myself as example. Although not a young man, I have undertaken the study of a foreign language, Canadian, and am doing well. My mind is facile. Nor do I eschew alternative medicine: I am considering chiropractic to have my eyebrows realigned. Likewise, when troubled by The Jumps, I make an appointment to get that fixed too. But if I should suffer from something that prevents me knowing I suffer it, whom do I turn to?

In the study of human folly, I have witnessed whole populations enthralled by misconception and prejudice, huge factions marginalized, human beings wasted by arbitrary discrimination, useless wars undermining economies, greed devouring government by discussion...suffice it to say, when I reflect upon global and  domestic political psychology and the strange enthusiasms it generates, I wonder if anosognosia is not epidemic. Brain has indeed run through that run-on sentence again and again.

Still, brain buzzes and builds, year after year, up there under the eaves, functional, hopeful --under construction, tattered. But Norma's scan of it has left me somewhat wary of anosognosia. Poor brain, I find little else in my experience to explain the state of its remains.

A Superior Course Of Study

"Is it lined up ok?"

"Parfaitement. The world is cloudy behind you and  Brazil oozes out your ear."

"Then let's find a different background."

"No, I was kidding. I would never take such a silly picture!"
  
***I am learning. In retirement, I am learning.***

"I feel so sleepy this afternoon!"

"You went to bed before I did, but got up before 6 a.m., which is very early."

"Geo., that was yesterday."

"Well, that's even earlier then."

***I am learning. I worked 40 years but I still learn.***

"Darcie just wrote me. She's carrying a shotgun outdoors."

"How unlike her. Why?"

"She has bears. Bears in her yard!"

"Wow, they sure have interesting problems upstate."

"But yes! I told her we have only a crazy bearded drunk neighbor stumbling around in our field."
 
"Ah, give him time, Norma. Give him time."

***Decidedly, I learn anew. Retirement doesn't define who one is, only what one did for a while.*** 

 

'71 VW Tact

Bus:  I feel a presence, Geo., something unfamiliar behind me.

Geo.: You mean back down the lane?

Bus:  Yes, a disturbance in the force.

Geo.: Here, let me adjust your rearview mirror.

Bus: Good heavens! You didn't!

Geo.:  Look, I'm sorry to spring it on you so suddenly but there's no help for it. It had to be done. I needed something with air conditioning.

Bus: Nonsense. Look at it, brand new, frightened and squinting. It looks upset. It looks like it wants to hide in the weeds. Whereas I...

Geo.: I know, you are tall and proud and have served this family over 30 years. You've hauled children safely to and from school and to cities after they grew. You've carried tools, appliances, building materials, landscaping supplies and groceries reliably and without complaint. But your odometer has clocked over a million miles and it's time you joined Norma and me in retirement.

Bus: Soft sawder! I'm just a big ugly box on wheels and you'll probably sell me.

Geo.: You are, always have been and will be an extra room of our home, a magic room with wheels. We would not dream of selling you.

Bus:  I said ugly too.

Geo. :  You'll never be ugly to me, Bus. But now that you mention it, the newcomer is an attractive car.

Bus: I thought as much! Go ahead and say it.

Geo.: What?

Bus: Say it.

Geo.: Ok ok, it's a pretty car and I bought it because... well, even I need to feel pretty sometimes.

Bus: dumme Gans!

Geo. : Ich liebe dich auch.

Brain-Kink Sermon

Sometimes Norma will compose a veggie face from her garden. Here is today's:

It brightens up our sideboard on this disturbingly hot Sunday. My job is to compose the sermon. And I am working on it, though with indifferent success. Nothing I have said to myself today has left any profound feeling behind it. This, and the heat and one thing and another results in brain-kink. I am reminded of gardening.

When I gardened for a living, sometimes my friend Rogelio would drive round and help me with big projects. One day, he was climbing out of the truck and stepped on a flattened aluminum can. Flattened aluminum cans on pavement are different  from littered leaves and paper wrappers. They are deceptive. When stepped on, they will skitter energetically away, bearing any amount of weight --indeed, converting it into horizontal acceleration-- ignoring all protest and this is what happened to Rogelio.

To his credit --or double credit to a man half his age-- he kept upright. One foot remained on the speeding can while all other limbs fought centrifugal, centripetal, gravitational and universal forces, known and unknown, that rule our lives.When he found his way back from whatever unseen distant place he'd slid and managed to dismount at, poor Rogelio was holding his side.

He said,"Iiiieeee! MygoddamnBACK!"

For several weeks I heard this exclamation repeated whenever Rogelio moved wrong. It became a kind of mantra, to which I responded by suggesting we sit down together. He refused to take a break of any sort while I continued working, so I had no other option.

Then I forgot to bring beer. "Are we in trouble?" I asked.

As a gang-mower roared by, I heard,"Es fácil salir...rumble rumble... de algo que...rumble... no está en." I took this to mean one has no difficulty getting out of something one was never in, or something is easy with rumbles, or rumble rumble rumble --which I accepted as a personal axiom that always gives me brain-kink.

Iiiieeee! MygoddamnBRAIN!

Go in peace.

The Jumps

                                            [Norma photo of Geo. graphic]

I worked 40 years (Hah, just see if I go do that again!), and for most of them I had to get up before sunrise and never got used to it. This was because I became a gardener early on --it did not require one to be house-trained.  Then, in 2009, I called in old.

In my working life I did nothing particularly right but there was a general and positive momentum toward settling an income in a humane economy. It allowed leisure enough to pursue my lifelong dream of retiring on the prairie to raise hornets. But this essay is not strictly limited to my successes in vespine husbandry. It is about the jumps.

For the purpose of our inquiry, I have included over this essay an x-ray of my head. You are invited to observe the chief mechanical systems of the brain: psychic constructs called conscious and subconscious minds. They are separated, with rather disappointing efficiency, by the nuchal crest.

The nuchal crest is a posterior bump on some human skulls that serves mainly as a head-hook to catch the edges of swimming pools so one might relax the rest of the body and chat with other nuchal crest possessors. People without nuchal crests --like my wife-- try to emulate and join in the fun but unhappily slide off into the depths. Another advantage of this crest is the extra cranial room it makes. As you can see, the x-ray shows a mainspring that has relaxed in some spots and snapped clean in others. With some stabilizing by means of baling wire, the added space effectively accommodates this neurological distemper.

Point is, although 4 years retired, I woke this morning from a dream that I was late for work. In the dream, each time I looked at a clock I was another hour or two later and quite beyond my repertoire of phone-able excuses. I woke with the jumps, and the impossible question: what does time measured on a dreamed clock measure? That is a question left to the conscious mind. It cares.

Subconscious mind doesn't care. It finds no purchase on the pool edge, slips under and hatches more anxious dreams based upon outdated data. Down there, it eludes reason no matter how tightly our net is drawn around it. This gives one the feeling, not of having slept but having spent the night in a Beckett play, proving even retirees work hard for their money.