Strange experience, not supernatural

I picked up a sheet of paper off the floor. When I stood up I was more than a little light headed. I couldn’t figure out what was printed on the sheet. I looked for a heading and couldn't focus.  I wondered if I might be dreaming, because I can never read very well in dreams.  I forced myself to keep looking at it.  It was some sort of list. I picked up on a couple of names that sounded like they might be archetypes from mythologies I was unfamiliar with. I might have printed this out from something like Propp’s Morphology of Folk Tales….or …..then I realized: IT WAS THE RACING FORM. I just don't see them often. I printed this out the one day we went to Santa Anita, and we didn't even wager. This was a trap I set for myself. Time to start getting up slower.

A thought-and-a-half on knowledge and originality from the Quixote.

"There are some people who wear themselves out learning and discovering things that, once learned and discovered, don't matter one bit for our comprehension and retention."- Don Quixote, Vol 2 Ch. 22

This is an interesting moment in the Quixote. They are talking to a pseudo-scholar who is compiling a book of "who did what first." This college graduate is referred to as the cousin (primo) of a scholar they met earlier. Primo, of course, also means first! Sancho makes fun of the fake humanist and asks him who was the first man to scratch his nose, and tells him, "it must have been out father Adam." Then Sancho stumps the pedant by asking him "Who was the first acrobat?" Why, Lucifer, of course. Most Cervantes scholars think this is a sardonic interpretation of the decadence inherent to the compilation of data for its own sake, an accumulation that is then allowed to pass for erudition. But I think this chapter is really about originality. The scholar's knowledge of firsts is not only useless but mere compilation. Sancho's questions and answers are creative and original compared to those of the scholar, and of course, the squire's examples are closer to the original creation! Cervantes is also critiquing the use of "formulas" for composition, such as those used by his arch-rival Lope de Vega. If nothing else, the Quixote is unpredictably original.

My Barbara Ore Story

     I taught Drama for a decade at Sacramento Country Day School and Barbara was Middle School Principal for all that time. From my first day on, she was helpful and encouraging to me.

     One spring the Middle School Play was “The Madwoman of Chaillot.” It was a comedy/fantasy with political overtones. Basically, the Paris street people spread reports of vast oil deposits under the Madwoman’s house. This rumor lures all the greedy rich people into a sort of hell-mouth in the basement, and they close a giant trap door on them. The sun comes out, the birds sing, and the street people are happy.  A silly fairy tale, but a good show for a big cast and more than the usual good female roles.

    One afternoon we were rehearsing the play and Mrs. Ore walked in calmly and asked to speak to me.

      “I have read the play and I must tell you that I think we may have a problem” she said.  “Doing a play about sending rich people to hell may not go over well with the patrons of the school. I think we’ll get calls from parents once they know what it’s about and we’ll have to cancel. So, we probably should head off a painful last-minute cancellation and just cancel the play now.”

I was completely flabbergasted. I hemmed and hawed, “But, we’ve done things much more political than this and got no complaints…. I can’t believe this. Do you really think we’ll have to cancel?”

Barbara just sighed and said, “I think we should ask the students what they think.”

The kids had been sitting quiet as statues, looking down and feeling, I thought, embarrassed for me and disappointed, since they liked the play. I turned around to the entire class shouting, “April Fool.”

     It was April the 1^st and I was so busy with the play that I forgot. I fell to floor. The cast had asked Mrs. Ore to participate in this scheme, although I think it was mostly Tracy Minicucci. Barbara’s prank on me was the absolute best performance that year, and the best trick anyone ever played on me. I completely fell for it. 

We need a contemporary Cervantes

Like many returning veterans throughout history, Cervantes found his country unable and unwilling to help him return to society. He was a wounded war hero and was held captive for 5 years, during which time Cervantes experienced both the depravity and the humanity of an enemy culture. Ransomed at last, he regained a homeland that seemed to have forgotten his sacrifices and that was intent on covering the patent failures of its domestic and foreign policy with a patchwork of religious fanaticism and ethnic scapegoating. 

In a time and a culture ( early 17^th c Spain) when xenophobia was the national religion, when the poor were assumed to have deserved their lot, and when women were thought to be naturally subservient to men, Cervantes regularly wrote with compassion and humor to explore the feelings and experiences of religious and ethnic minorities, social outcasts, old people and women.

Who will be our Cervantes? We need one.

Conflict isn't Everything

Inspiration looks like madness from the outside and feels like madness from the inside.

When I found him, he was writing an avant-garde novel which I think was about the feeling of insects on your skin as a symbol for death. The feeling or the skin was the main character I think.

      Then he wrote a novel about what he wished the world and life had been like. No one would publish it though because there was no conflict. Everyone was creative and happy. People had empathy and took responsibility for others. Louis Armstrong was on the 4 dollar bill, Sitting Bull on the 20. History was similar to our dimension’s until the 20^th century. Jazz ended institutionalized racism much more quickly, and instead of two world wars, there were two extended world meals, in which every man woman and child on earth was fed. Buckminster Fuller had become the Engineer General and everyone had electric cars by the 1950s.