The End of the Road

February 9, 2009

I bought a new car today. I’ve wanted a Prius for years. After saving up for London last year, I figured I could do the same towards a new car and put into action all my ramblings about the vile dependency on oil. It is a nice car, I’m not going to lie. But I did this primarily because I wanted to contribute towards the message that we aren’t gonna take it any more. Alternative energy has to become a reality.

I’m picking up Kermit on Monday. Kermit because he’s green… and I think the Prius kind of has a muppet personality. But that’s just me and my odd way of seeing the universe.

That leaves me with the Corolla for two more days. I never named the Corolla. Someone else tried to name her… but it didn’t really stick. She has given me a good seven years… and a lot of memories that I find myself pondering before I hand over the keys.

I bought her in May 2002, four months after returning from London. When I decided that I was going to make a go of it this side of the Atlantic. The car has moved me four times, to Worcester, to Barre, back to Newton… then two miles down the road. I’ve driven it to four jobs, one that I hated with my entire soul, one I didn’t care all too much for, and two that I love very much. I drove to a class reunion, countless weddings, and to say goodbye in several cemeteries. It has carted costumes and set pieces and posters for numerous plays.

I’ve had all sorts of passengers in that car. My Little Sister sat many hours in the backseat divulging all the important details of her week, asking me unexpected questions about the grownup world, or begging me to turn on Radio Disney. I picked up George Herman from school when he filled me in on the week’s next great adventure. The front seat had many a guest star on trips to Trader Joe’s or Christmas tree shopping or road trips to no where in particular. A lot of laughs.

I spent many more hours in that car on my own. Numerous hours to and from Gloucester or Worcester. I would listen to my tapes (I have no place to play a cassette any longer), my CDs, and now my iPod to inspire my brain to try to sort things out or create something original for writing or the stage.

Obviously, it’s just a car. I don’t place a lot of stock in holding too much affection for an OBJECT that has no feelings. And yet… there are memories of places that the car has been to which I no longer go. Or the echoes of laughter from people who are no longer in my life. It is good to move away… and yet… worth it to pause and recollect before it goes to the scrap heap.

veritas et rumusculus

November 19, 2008

I remember studying Henry V my sophomore year of college. It was part of a class using literature to examine war in history. We talked quite a bit about the Battle of Agincourt and the downfall of the mighty French, in spite of their heroic shining armor. Armor that could not move… that was so heavy they needed to be hoisted onto horses with a crane. Or so the professor told us (influenced no doubt by Larry Olivier's cinematic interpretation of that history play). A little less than a year later I found myself working at Higgins Armory, where I learned almost immediately that there were no such things as cranes to hoist knights up on horses while wearing armor. Armor had to allow for agility – especially on the battlefield, especially atop a horse. The problem the French had in 1415 was really… just… mud.

This clarification of history came to mind the other day while reading an article sent to me by a museum colleague. It was an amusing collection of vignettes about the misinformation distributed by guides on historic house tours. Some of the stories had an element of truth from which their yarns stemmed, but most were just the polar opposite of truth. I was amused – not just because I've encountered and no doubt told some of my own hyperbolic tales of the past – but because it goes along with my theory that history is just a bunch of antiquated gossip.

When I traveled around New England with Lady Erica and Lady Catherine, we used gossip as exposition to our armor demonstration. We filled the gaps between mail and combat armor with jabs at the greasy, non-toothed graybeard, the six fingered Anne Boleyn, or the audacious young women who dared to expose their legs. It certainly wasn't the most reverent dispensation of historic facts… but I'm sure the idea of Sir Monkeyface made the concept of ceremonial armor stick a lot better than an explanation of metallurgy.

But none of those two shows were ever the same – whether altered by a cast change or an audience change. The nuance of the history certainly varied each time… especially when there was a determination to suppress giggles from unintentional innuendo or there was a question from a spunky eleven year old determined to prove we were in fact not from the 16th century. So while I like to think I know a thing or two about the era of knights and feasts that served up a cockatrice, I'm not going to deny I would play the story to the audience to make it a little more interesting.

I was – and am on Eastern Point every summer – a history gossip.

The ends to justify the means, I tell myself. Because on the page history can be so dusty and moldy and dull. A little embellishment makes it more appealing and intriguing. Because… isn't it better to walk away intrigued enough to learn more than to walk away bored out of one's mind and never wanting to revisit that corner of the past? Besides, those people are dead and can't be hurt by the distortions of conjecture. I imagine the servants would probably hear one of my tours and laugh with a disapproving shake of their heads. What the hell do I know about Beauport? Really, what do I know? I just imagine myself there… and try to take the tangible objects and put myself in the shoes of the people who were actually able to touch them.

But I can't touch the objects, or the people. I can only imagine. So I fill in the gaps with a clever description or romantic guess about what happened between the walls. I make a disclaimer that some of what I say is a guess… but I know that the disclaimer won't linger so well as the good story. And the good story makes me the center of attention and earns the praise of a satisfied audience. No matter the omission of truth.

But … really… will we ever KNOW the truth of the past? It's hard enough to get it straight with what happened yesterday… never mind nearly six hundred years ago on a rainy battlefield in Northern France. For all I know students in a few decades may be learning that the French were just actually really hungover… and that's the reason they lost England that day.

Who knows? Not even Shakespeare was true to the truth... not even about himself.

viva la vida

November 14, 2008

Two weeks ago I went to my second Coldplay concert this year. I'm not usually one for following the masses – but the energy of Chris Martin is awesome to see live. It's enough to make this old stick in the mud smile without thinking and sing at the top of her lungs along with other tens of thousands of fans. What lingers most about that night – even more than him collapsing on the stage extension in some yoga pose without losing a beat of song, or rolling over backwards to reconnect his body mike, or the streams of butterfly confetti to Lovers in Japan – was the contagion of his good energy. I left the Garden that night in a sardine procession to the Green Line. And… instead of the regular Boston crankiness, people were… happy. That happiness continued into the bowels of the train station, even as the tired masses had to wait for multiple trains to pass to get on. Because in the delirious afterglow of those happy two hours, those tired masses started singing the oh oh oh's from Viva la Vida to pass the time.

Then exactly a week later, I woke up to a second burst of good spirit in the city of Boston. The aftermath of Obama's success put spontaneous smiles on so many faces I encountered on the street, witnessed giving reports on the local news, and spoke with in my immediate circle. Strangers on the telephone had a perkiness in their voice I found startling and refreshing. It was a happy day for so many.

When something like that happens once, I try to mark it and register it for memory's sake. So that when life gets me down and the petty BS of day to day is depressing, I can remember that there are sparks of brilliance in human nature. But twice – two Wednesdays in a row, no less – I have to take a little more notice. There is a lesson to be gained in it.

Recently, I have let the other side of humanity get me down quite a bit. There has been so much pettiness and deliberate cruelty and absent-minded disregard directed at me that I've absorbed that negativity and started to let it leak out in my day to day interactions with people. It's a vicious circle because my hurt ends up irritating the people who hurt me so that they feel no obligation for sympathy or making amends… and thus it continues without improvement.

But now, I'm thinking the oh, oh, oh's in North Station are a better option.

I don't know that I'll ever perform in front of tens of thousands of people. And I definitely have no plan to run for president. But there are Wednesdays when that sense of contagious optimism comes on a smaller scale. I work for two women who host a motley crew to dinner on so many Wednesdays. They don't have big confetti guns that shoot out mulit-colored butterflies. They do give us a yummy meal, laughs, and the freedom to pursue subjects that polite conversation pooh poohs. Most importantly in that conversation, they really listen and really care. And there is always a hug goodbye before the evening ends. In that simple yet meaningful way, they give a smaller group of people a reason to hum on the way home.

But you know, the echoes of all those Wednesdays are smiles.

No Pain No Gain

October 7, 2008

I used to dance a lot in high school. Nearly every Saturday I would find myself stretching muscles and acquiring black and blues with such regularity it didn't phase me at all. In fact, if there wasn't some sort of minor pain, I figured I wasn't working hard enough. Some pains were, in truth, a little more to take than others. But at the end of the day, it was just something I learned to work through as I practiced for the next Saturday.

At the end of last week, I visited a trainer. In the attempt to evaluate my current physicality, I was tested on a number of routines to the point of exhaustion. I woke up sore on Saturday and in agony on Sunday. I moved as though five decades had been added to my years and lost sleep as I felt the muscles repairing themselves after a night of 'rest.' I dreaded the return to work on Monday and the stairs that take me to my office.

The soreness woke me too early today as well. But as I left my car a block or two from our building, I realized that while the walking still hurts, it helps at the same time. I was reminded of those dancing days and my determination to not let the little hurts be an excuse to stop trying, but the motivation to make myself stronger.

It isn't rocket science… and the science is simply that my muscles are repairing themselves after ripping from more exercise than they have been used to the past year and a half. The lesson is pretty obvious in terms of exercise… but I think there is a lesson to borrow a little attitude from my seventeen year old self. To just not let it cripple me and move on.

the quechee gorge

July 31, 2008

Ten or eleven years ago I discovered the Quechee Gorge with Lady Erica. We were on our first outreach to Lebanon, NH. We might have had a rental car and a check from the IHOT that allowed us to set up camp at the lodging of our choice. We found the Quechee Inn at the bottom of the gorge and undoubtedly coupled the northern excursion with a cheap bottle of wine from some local NH grocery store and a long evening of gossip and my recounting novel outlines.

I remember the school was really appreciative of our presentation and offered us lunch between our shows. We also had enough time to kill between presentations to go back to the gorge and take a walk along the lightly snow covered path in our costumes.

Well, we went back there a couple times… and the details of each visit blend together. One trip had us driving through the White Mountains during a blizzard. And there were margaritas at some TexMex place in Lebanon, as well as the Dr. Suess Hamlet t-shirt I did not buy and have not been able to find since…

But the Quechee Gorge has always stayed with me. It probably has been nine years since I've made the trip there, as awe-inspiring as that short trip to the Grand Canyon of New England can be. Nonetheless, it stayed with me after leaving Higgins and outreaches in my past.

It truly is awesome, as that word is meant to describe. The Connecticut River carving itself through rock and forest. Not quite so grand as Arizona… but still breathtaking in its beauty and frightening in its plunge from top to bottom.

For much of my early twenties, I saw myself standing at the edge of that gorge, trying to determine whether to take a step towards crossing it or staying safely on the side without daring to leap to the other side. I imagined the way across like that invisible bridge in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – impossible to detect, but requiring faith to cross. That invisible bridge was London in my life's allegory … and then I fell off of it.

But the thing about the Quechee Gorge is that it is just as lovely when you walk down into it. There is the water and even the shores of the river are a magnificent piece of nature. The Inn that was subsidized by Higgins was in the gorge… so it isn't a bad place to be… for a while.

Ultimately one does look up and want to return to the top. I think I've had a nice visit below, a chance to mend the wounds of my fall and get my bearings… and lose them again. It is time to start climbing back… but the question is… to go back to the side where I started or the side I had hoped to reach by the invisible bridge.

A Glimpse

July 20, 2008

Read into this what you will.

The storm broke up the party last night. The rain came crashing down and cut short the post tour cocktails. We huddled in the gatehouse or a room of the house to shield ourselves from the heavens. When the air 'dried' out, we made a hasty assembly of things to be put away in cars, the fridge, or remain in the gatehouse til Tuesday.

I went back to the terrace for one last look and found the door into the house still open, so brought in a few things to protect from the sun and the rain of the coming days.

Nan had closed the doors to the butler's pantry and the kitchen was vacant, leaving me with a temporary panic that she had left, as had Pilar… with no keys and my security code at home and no use to me to lock up for the evening. Nan hollered eventually hearing my movements disturb the evening's stillness.

She came down from the servants' quarters and stopped in the doorway to the kitchen to ask if I had those non-existent keys. As she stopped to plot her determination to go back to the gatehouse to get hers, the doors to the mudroom moved. They opened. Draft? Maybe… but in the kitchen??? Then, as we looked at the doors, they closed themselves with a movement not like the wind – but like someone pulling them. The room chilled. Not icy like the movies… but noticeably cooler in that sultry air.

There was still lightening in the sky and the lights in the house flickered as century old wiring is wont to do. An added element to the moment… that was more curious than creepy.

Nan resolved it was Mary. And I like to think so… checking in on her kitchen after a party in that house.

Or maybe it was the wind that somehow rattled down the mouse hole or through the walls from the Golden Step room. In perfect momentum.

The House that Jack is Building

July 9, 2008

I've carved a nice 3 mile circle for myself to run/walk through West Newton. There is a nice mix of hills and seeming flatter stretches that inspire me to lengthen my intervals with each attempt – even when I'm jogging through a steam bath. There are lots of big leafy trees to shield the sun and even the random sprinkler to offer a slight reprieve. Not to mention, it is pretty to look at – if I can be bothered to look as I aim for that next emergency call box or street sign.

Right before I crest the hill that starts my run, there is a new house nearing completion. I used to run passed a large green fence that encompassed this property when I went in a different circle back to Newtonville. I couldn't ever see what was behind the fence, except that I knew it marked the end of my third interval.

Now, no matter what side of the fence I were to run along, there is no escaping the HUGE mansion that has been erected over the past year. It stands atop that hill looking over the intersection below it like a castle on a cliff.

I don't know why I try to come up with a poetic simile here. I actually find the thing horrific. Not for any snobbery of historic preservation or theme. Because the thing is so obscenely large and unnecessary.

On the second mile of my loop I pass three more monstrous constructions and one more that is already completed. All of these houses are built on lots once occupied by ranches. Not the kind with bulls and horses – the kind from the 1950's with swanky bars built in the basement.

I don't get it. Well, I do. It is Newton. The rich are still rich, recession or not. But it is Newton, where almost every other car is a Prius. What genius of conservation determines these houses to be a good thing for the environment? Again, they are huge, requiring more electricity, more heat, more water, and more square footage. Square footage that uses more lumber and takes down a few trees in the process. Then again, SUVs populate the roads in Newton as much as the Prius. For all those off road conditions along Com. Ave.

I can't deny the fact these new houses are providing jobs for skilled workers who have fewer opportunities today. But… it still seems such a waste.

I, for one, would much rather have a 1950's ranch with a swanky bar in the basement. And trees.