Cambridge XI

June 29, 2010

Dreadful dreams last night– not that they affected me badly, but that they were brutal and I was rather enjoying them. There was a kind of war in which one combatant on each side faced the other at a time, and devised novel ways of sneaking in and slashing the other to ribbons. As I was waking, my conscious self had a moment to pass judgment on my savage subconscious.

Took ten of the kids to an Indian restaurant last night. One thing I’ve noted is the wide variety of revulsions and abhorrences cultivated by our students. One cannot touch baby powder or anything dry and powdery. Several cannot have their various foods touching in their plate, and if they do they cannot eat it. Sometimes the rules apply to all and any foods; sometimes they are specific. One cannot eat if peas are served– to anyone, anywhere One buys an expensive meal and cannot eat it because it contains cilantro. The next day she is still a little upset from the intrusion of cilantro into her life. One cannot have food touching her lip, so scrapes everything off her fork–audibly–with her teeth. Two hate birds. One hates horses. One cannot sit down at a table or in a classroom unless he is the last to do so. Not a meal passes when someone doesn’t cry out, “Oh, I cannot eat such-and such,” not because they CANNOT, but because it makes them feel funny or it has some tainted association. One keeps silent. Took this motley assemblage to Kettle’s Yard this morning, a unique and wonderful museum no more than five minutes’ walk from our doors. Add it to the long list of places I’d never been in a town I thought I’d covered pretty well. Kettle’s Yard is a series of small houses made into a big house, and that turned into a living space that was more than 2/3 museum. The work is Modern, abounding in excellent sculpture, the paintings second level but tasteful, mostly in, now that I think of it, a calm whitish-to brownish spectrum that must have been easy to live amid. It invites and allows seated contemplation. I did sketches in pencil, of the objects, but also of me living happily and imaginarily in such and environment. Were my house six time its size, no reason why I couldn’t achieve the same thing. Graelin and Matt the Littler seemed particularly taken, and lingered long after they needed to. Jeff gamely leads the way whenever he can, and refuses to let his accident keep him from Evensong.

I believe I hit stride today– which is, my Cambridge life and my Real life harmonized almost upon a moment, and I no longer felt furtive and on-the-wrong-track. Maybe the success of the Byron play helped; maybe it was just endurance.

All the students are dear to me. One does not expect that. There is usually one whose neck needs to be wrung.

Evensong at Kings, XXth century music, rich in contrasting effects, poor in structure or conviction or meaning–as was, I suppose, the century in which it was written. The quality of light made the glass especially buttery and beautiful.

Went finally to the Cambridge Fine Arts Theater to see Quartet by Ronald Harwood, about four aged opera singers in a home. . . apparently for aged opera singers. It was well acted, with a skeletal Susannah York in the cast, and most of the audience old enough to remember when Susannah York was not a skeleton at all. I had great hopes for the script: it was witty, did not insult the intelligence, was well (if a little too well) structured, but it dodged greatness at about the mid point and took a power dive by the end. The death-march to the foreseeable denouement could have been deflected a little if, at the end, the quartet from Rigoletto had been sung by the croaking old relics they knew themselves to be, and if then they had been triumphant, recognizing who they were at the moment, being at peace with themselves and what was passed. That would have been heroic. That would have been real and transcendent at once. Instead, there was a mortifying lip-synch to a recording, and a red projected sunset behind. The wily old coots fool everybody (though it’s hard to imagine that anyone really would have been fooled) by playing a recording of their former selves, so vanity and illusion rule an end that could have been ruled by broken majesty. Maybe the producers insisted. Still, it does dishonor to the playwright’s craft and to the dignity of old age. I did enjoy the evening. That must be said. But outside my little room of enjoyment was a wilderness of outrage.

The Fine Arts lingers in memory because there I heard Michael Macliamoir recite Yeats, the first I had ever heard of that great poet, and the beginning of an enduring love.

Ordered a vodka tonic for the interval, and got a vodka and Coke, Turned out not to be too disgusting.

The red sunset made me think of my father, who painted a red sunset on his garage door to signal the ending of his life. What did he hold as the brilliant, memorable, irreplaceable moment of his life? I burst into tears, because I didn’t know. What must the people on the street have thought?