July 7, 2014

Curiously unsatisfying sleep.

This is the day I count as my third birthday.

Planted yesterday a yellow rose and a deep red hibiscus.

Read of the Istadevata, deities selected by a neophyte as his guardians. I wonder how many do you get? Do they have to agree? Ignorant of the details, I nevertheless chose Aengus the Young, Isis, Athena, Thor, Ptah. Rather, they chose me long ago, by bestowing on me the fragments of my nature.

Rose from my various stupors and went to the Montford Park amphitheater to see Tartuffe. I grumbled at the disturbance of my routine (about which I also grumble) but when I arrived the half moon was rising and Lully played from the loudspeakers, and I thought “this cannot be better.” Many people greeted me and relayed greetings from those who wished to be remembered to me. Through the night the moon wandered from stage right to stage left, and the Montford bat came out to flutter under brightening stars. The production was excellent, witty, elegant, stopping at the sunny edge of farce, without the dips in the quality of casting that nearly always bedevils a Montford production. I lost not one word, saw not one false gesture, was allowed the luxury of thinking about the meaning of the play rather than the production of it. What I wondered about as I sat there was why–or whether– a true message loses its trueness for being conveyed by a scoundrel. Many would say truth becomes falsehood on a false tongue. Do I say that? I’m not sure that I do. Does what I say in class become false if I have done evil that day, or even the whole of the rest of my life?  I guess the difference would be that I wasn’t after anybody’s money, wasn’t machinating behind the scenes against my own precepts. Perhaps a bad man’s good words become bad only when he’s preaching morality. One doesn’t imagine a scoundrel physicist being called a hypocrite. Tartuffe is damaged a little by over-obvious finger pointing. One doesn’t know exactly the butt of this or that witticism, but one realizes someone was, and that everyone in the first audience would have known. Bravo Montford! It will be a while before I need to see that play again.

Even the birds sound dissatisfied. The sky is an odd pewter, heavy and petulant.