July 1, 2012

Took Marco to Brief Encounters at MF last night. He’s good company, in a way unlike most of the rest of my friends, innocent and tough, like a soldier in a movie.  Mesha’s play originated in my class, written to a prompt I invented, which is to say its origins were arbitrary and artificial. Yet it was good-- as far as gravity and radiance are concerned, the best thing in the show. I repeat to my classes, “never fear the arbitrary,” and Mesha’s play could be an exhibit of proof. Some other pieces I have seen are clearly arbitrary also– what if person X were in situation Y– but the difference between Mesha’s work and the others is that she explored, while they controlled the vision to make the first manifestation of it work. Since it had not arisen in the heart, the minor writer allows the artificial inspiration to remain distant from it, an intellectual exercise or an occasion for wit. The major writer finds a way to tie the artificial to the heart, to bring it home. There is always a path between any incident and any human heart; the task is to find it. A sweet and happy evening, ending with champagne and a lopsided moon.

A little gardening today in defiance of the heat. Wild clematis had grown a tangle of tendrils behind a plank of siding-- amazing, and a little sickening, like a cancer or an orgy of pale green squid.

An impression from the Iliad is how devastating those bronze weapons were. Limbs are sheared off, bones penetrated, guts spilled  by the strength of mere human arms. Modern weapons are not more devastating, merely more wholesale. Great King Idomeneus takes out one guy with a spear, face to face; some idiot can take out twenty with artillery, and never lay eyes on them.

Ache in my shoulder became unbearable, so I went to the gym and did a pretty hefty weight set. The ache was then bearable.

Rabbit. Rabbit.