Heaven . . . I'm in heaven . . .

Just saw a Time magazine cover about a theological debate about the nature of heaven.  For heaven's sake, can't we wait until we see for ourselves, and just stick to trying to do G-d's will?  This reminds me of poor Harold Camping's prognostications about exactly when the end of the world will occur.  Again, can't we spend our time more productively doing our best, studying the Bible, you know, that kind of thing?  True, it takes more effort, and impinges on our actual lives more than diddling around with conjectures while sitting on our duffs, but perhaps, just perhaps, it is actually more rewarding in the long run.   Bought the issue, though; it had a couple of other articles that intrigued me.

That being said, there is an argument to be made that, however temporarily, my backyard garden is heaven.

The lingering lonicera fragrantissima blossoms still emit their honeyed scent, and pots of lilies, blooming lilacs, and drifts of dangling wisteria are all contributing their heady fragrance to the mix.  I could almost become drunk wandering from flower to flower.  The lilacs and especially the wisteria racemes, which grow longer and longer every year, and are of two types: one a bluer lavender, the other a rosier lavender, are so beautiful I can hardly believe they exist in this world - they are like a portal to the next.  

The importance of signage, and badinage, and triage . . . .

"The Bearded Heart," a bizzaro journal edited by Tristan Tzara.

Well, went to a play tonight.  Travesties, by Tom Stoppard.  It's one of his earlier plays, and I believe I don't care for his earlier plays,. whereas I love, and I mean LOVE his play Arcadia and truly truly deeply appreciated his play The Real Thing, both later and less surreal, over-the-top, "can you believe how verbally witty I am?" than the earlier ones.


Lydia and I had agreed that if we wanted to, we would leave during the intermission.  At the very last moment of the first half, I almost relented in my almost desperate desire to go home, NOW please, because an actor quite literally pulled a rabbit out of a hat.  Well, he was actually way gentler than that.  He actually uncovered the little white bunny, which had been somehow abstracted into a straw boater.  He then stroked it and gave it a little kiss, which I found unutterably sweet of the actor, who it seemed to me was comforting the little rabbit, aware of its potential stage fright or just plain abject terror.


When the lights went up, I turned to Lydia, and the moment our eyes met she said "We're going home," and I collapsed with relief and said over and over again - "thank you, thank you, thank you!"  After swearing the couple next to us (coincidentally, acquaintances of Lydia's) to a solemn oath of secrecy about our leaving before the end, we headed out to the lobby with them to say a brief hello to two close friends of Lydia's before turning tail and running.


The first half of what we saw was almost completely incomprehensible. We couldn't make out the words, nor could the "intellectual" couple to our right or their friends (remember Marsha?).   I even believe the first eighth might have been written as gibberish.  The second half was somewhat comprehensible, but tiresome, and not witty enough to sustain its own weight.    If only the play had been pruned by say, a third (hence the triage in my title for this post), it would have been so much lighter and fleeter, but the early, overly prolix Tom Stoppard evidently couldn't bear to give up even one mediocre jest.There were some amusing moments, but a lot of the humor, even if clever, wasn't funnier than what I have encountered in real life with real people - a bit about "enigmatic, magnetic, but not I think astigmatic;dynamic, gnomic, but not I think anemic," for example, a play on repeating phonemes or whatever.  


However, I did appreciate:
"Ah, the yes-no's of yesterday," a play on "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?"*
and "Never trusted the Hun," I remarked; "Boche," he replied.
(Boche is pronounced like bosh, but was a pejorative nickname for Germans during WWII.)


Ah, well, my attempts to pursue self-improvement through culture have bitten me in the whoziwhatsisses yet again, but though I am bloody, I am unbowed.  The final curtain has not yet fallen on my intellectual endeavors.


Driving home, Lydia remarked that Naked Pizza was full.  I was glad, although surprised, as I told her, because their sign, logo, and general design looked so bleak and super modernistic that I quite lost my appetite just looking at the store front.  And then I ill-advisedly said to her, "Perhaps not everyone reacts to signage as I do," and I suddenly felt as though I had stepped into a Stoppard play.  What would the average person make of that remark?  I believe Lydia's good-natured response is a hint:  "Perhaps no-one reacts the way you do, period," which may be true but which makes me feel just a tiny bit lonely.  I choose to think that somewhere out there, male, female, or undecided, there is someone else who will buy a book for its exceptionally well-designed cover, who is unable to buy certain foods because of the irredeemable ugliness of their packaging, and who feels a shock of pleasure straight through to the solar plexus upon seeing certain colors.  And this person, too, will be unable to completely enjoy Bryan Watson's toes-of-steel, ecstatic jive because his nose is too short for his face.

Oh, another good thing is that I got to wear a fancy pink dress I have been wanting to wear.  The bad news is I couldn't wear the bat-winged black dress I have been wanting to wear.  Well, I could have, but the pink dress would have looked very strange with the black sleeves hanging out from under the candy-colored pink chiffon.  Next time.  And there will be a next time, because every so often, that bizarre-sounding play/poetry-reading/musical improv/art event turns out to be really, really cool and I feel so good and energized by the creativity and originality of it all.  It's happened before, and it can and will happen again.


In the meantime, in a pathetic imitation of the style of some parts of the play, I am so, sew, sow glad to be home.  And remember, as you rip, so shall you sew.  How was the play?  Only so-sew, although some in the audience were in stitches.  Only so-sow; the production was rather seedy.  And last, and yes, probably least, though the other's aren't much either:  Only s'eau s'eau; the evening was a wash-out.


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*Which is itself of the mournful "ubi sunt?" genre, so called after the plaintive Latin phrase "Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?" - "Where are those who were before us?"  Hint: the answer isn't Syracuse or Lake Woebegon.  It's dead.  A similarly melancholy query is "Ubi nunc?" - "Where now?"