Longing for Shakespeare's Spring.

It's snowing, and the tulips on Pearl street haven't any wool coats to keep them warm.

Being absolutely opposed to venturing outside, I have curled up beneath some down, and will instead take comfort in the dream

of true Spring.

"O, how this spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day;

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away."

-The Bard, Two Gentlemen of Verona

I found these images over at Dustjacket Attic. This one puts me in the mind of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and all that wandering about in the gardens, overhearing things.

"If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stelaing and giving odour!

-Twelfth Night

The Reclamation of Valentine's Day: Part 4

The world's poetic hearts are bracing to quote Shakespeare.

And my heart resounds with the same bard, but with a different angle altogether.

From the angle of the witty woman, the one who disdains the man who cannot outwit her, and the man who can. The one who leaves Aphrodite well enough alone, and has made her peace with Cupid and his pesky arrows. She subscribes to the creed of, "know thyself," as best she can, and "love thyself," with great fervor. And until and unless she finds a man with as much wit as wisdom, she finds great joy in the love of others, and in the sanctity of her own ideals. Be it God's will, she'll die single and happy, and the devil will shun her for her purity, and St. Peter will recognize her joy in banter, and her eternity will be just as happy and clever as her earthly life. For she sees herself as man's equal, and will not compromise.

This is the same Beatrice who's duel of wit and words with Benedick comes to a brilliant climax, for she would be happy with no mean boy, nor any illustrious man, but seeks a balance of both. And it all ends with a Hey Nonny Nonny.

excerpt from Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2, Scene 1:

BEATRICE: He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore, I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-herd and lead his apes into hell.

LEONATO: Well then, go you into hell?

BEATRICE: No, but to the gate, and there will the devil make me and like an old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, "Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven. Here's no place for you maids." So deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter. For the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

ANTONIO [to Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.

BEATRICE: Yes, faith. It is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say, "Father, as it pleases you." But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please me."

LEONATO: Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.

BEATRICE: Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none. Adam's sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

photos: www.stumbleupon.com, girl from weheartit.com, Much Ado About Nothing still

The Reclamation of Valentine's Day: Part 2

Consider the Source.

Saint Valentine's Day. That's right, the day for lovin' your honey takes it's name from a Christian martyr (actually, several of them).

And just like other internationally celebrated over-commercialized holidays (see Halloween, Christmas), it represents a strange cross-cultivation of Catholic beliefs with indigenous (read: pagan, often Roman) celebration.

Here's a synopsis.

The Catholic church loves its martyrs. And why wouldn't they? They represent a level of faith, belief, determination, and courage that is enviable in today's fickle world. They also have cool names (Valentine. Felicity. Perpetua. Sebastian. I mean, really. With names like these, they were destined to do something that landed them in the history books.)

There were several St. Valentines, most of them martyrs. But for the sake of brevity, I'll just recount some major events in a Valentinian life (according to the ancient church tradition of the Saints, which, major points notwithstanding, is sometimes a tiny bit fabricated...but makes for awesome morals). So here we have Valentine, a Catholic priest during the reign of Emperor Claudius (about the time Catholics and criminals ended up as lion-bait in the bowels of the Colosseum).

Despite the edict against practicing, St. Valentine continued to preside at marriage ceremonies for young lovers.

And was imprisoned for his crimes.

While in the clink, however, he healed the jailer's child of blindness, and, legend has it, continued to preach the Christian Gospel by way of tiny letters sent out the window of his cell via the birds that perched there.

And thus began the correlation between Valentine, lovers, and tiny little notes of love... though St. Valentine's notes would have been concerned with a more divine Love....

Meanwhile, the Romans were celebrating Lupercalia, an Ides of February celebration that incorporated the Romulus and Remus mythology (La Cita Eterna's founders, suckled by a mother wolf in infancy),

and some good old-fashioned "let's run through the streets wearing nothing but a wolf hide and carrying thongs of animal skin." The women of Rome would line the streets with hands outstretched, hoping to have their palms whipped by the thongs of the Lupercalians; it meant a healthy birth if you were pregnant, or fertility if you weren't.

Hundreds of years later, along about 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Parliament of Fowles, which included a rhyme from which sprang a tradition:

For this was on Seynt Valentynes day,

When every foul cometh theere to chese his make [mate]...".

It wasn't a long stretch to move from each bird finding its mate in the ruddy rush of pending springtime to, well, this:

which, quite frankly, makes me want to find a white toga and a woodland swing and someone to frolic with during the rites of Spring.

Yet I'd be just as happy with this:

which I'll explain later....

photos: St. Valentine Baptizing St. Lucilla by Jacopo Bassano circa 1575, Detail of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's Spring, Illuminated Manuscript of the death of St. Sebastian, The Christian Martyrs Last Prayer by Leon Gerome, Stained-glass window of St. Valentine presiding over the marriage of two lovers, Love Jail by Don Moyer, Bound To You in Vintage Colors by Jessica Rose from flickr, Beccafumi Lupercalia, Fragment Romulus et Remus, The Women of Amphissus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Angel of the Birds... by Tonya Van Gieson, Spring by Pierre Auguste Cot 1873, Emma Thompson as Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing.

Snow and Sunlight.

Honestly. Despite craving a mad, torrential downpour of epic spring-thunderstorm proportions, I cannot deny the loveliness that's lurking in the Rockies. After all those years living in Philly, this sunshine is simply...well...glorious.

And so is the Night.

Night

Stars over snow,

And in the west a planet

Swinging below a star---

Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,

It is not far---

It never will be far.

--Sara Teasdale

Rain.

and the rain, 

and the rain, it will wash away the pain,

wash away uncertainty

and make me clean again.

There are few things I love more than rain; summer rain, in particular.  When the torrent starts and the world grows suddenly dark, it's like my consciousness brings my soul into focus: every edge and shadow and highlight and line of what lies somewhere between head and heart sharpens with a snap.  Sssshwap....  Good mood, bad mood, feeling ecstatic, feeling blue, whatever the overall color and cadence of life, the rain pulls out the deeper wherefores.  It triggers a rapid recognition of the connection between self and humanity at large, between self and world, between self and destiny.

Okay, that sounds crazy.

Try this on for size:

Stuck in a car when the rain came down like buckets but the sun was still shining.  Morten Lauridsen's Dirait-on playing loud loud loud.  I didn't know what the French words meant in my head, but my heart got the gist, and the tears started with just as much gusto as the storm. 

Sitting on the screen porch at home in Atlanta under the lazy ceiling fan after a day of working in the yard.  Listening to the water start to drop from the heavens to the scorching summer earth.  And inhaling that warm, unmistakable smell of hot asphalt and hot magnolia blossoms and hot wood on the deck and hot crabgrass when they're suddenly doused with rainwater.  I look across at my father sitting in the old wicker chair bought sometime in the early 90's, and painted light green by mom somewhere in the mid 90's.  And suddenly, I'm full to bursting with Home.

College dorm room, Junior Year.  No roommate tonight, but the rain will keep me company.   Push that window open as far as possible, turn off all the lights, turn on Tim McGraw, and lay on top of the covers thinking about things that might be, and things that might never be, and breathe deep the uncertainty of life.  Learning to revel in uncertainty is a lesson that is hard to navigate, but of unparalleled importance.  Dreams may not always come true, but the real gem of experience is unearthed long before a positive or negative resolution.

Standing under a broken drain pipe in Sienna, willingly, foolishly, being soaked by the runoff of ancient cobblestones, hoping the Italianness will never completely dry out of my skin.

Driving into the middle of the marshes in Madison, CT, screaming and giggling with two good friends who each see a different side of me, but each know me.  Watching the lightning reach down to the sea from the sky and thinking "this isn't safe, this isn't safe, this isn't safe...but this is fantastic..."

Standing beneath the train tracks in Manayunk, seeking refuge from the freak rainstorm, posing for a picture with the kind of friend who doesn't care if you look like a wet rat - she only sees the you that glitters.

Running through the house and slamming shut all the windows, then returning to bed and leaving the window that aligns with the bedside open just a few inches.  Lay a towel on top of the mattress to catch the rain water that manages to squeeze past the screen, and lay an arm along the window, so that the filtered rain makes little splishes on my skin, washing away the uncertainties of yesterday, so that tomorrow my soul, like the sky, will be shining and clear.

photo: found online: Yauheni Attsetski

There Are Also Musicians.

There Are Also Musicians

by Michael Coady

Though there are torturers in the world

There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,

Men are screaming in prisons,

There are jazzmen raising storms

Of sensuous celebration,

And orchestras releasing

Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God 

Is everywhere defiled,

A man in West Clare

Is playing the concertina,

The Sistine Choir is levitating

Under the dome of St. Peter's,

And a drunk man on the road

Is singing, for no reason.

The power of music is an unmitigated one, constantly reinventing itself, molding and folding and empowering - affecting a single soul for a moment, or legions of souls for lifetimes.  When words cannot comfort you and reason can't sustain you, music is an offering to the Divine Conductor, a jaunt through His unwritten orchestrations.  It can give purpose without meaning, or meaning without purpose, as you close your eyes and feel the conduit between heaven and earth, present and past and future.  It's just...glorious.

Images: LCT - Street Musicians in Boulder, CO. 1999; shorpy.com, blind fiddler and musicians from 1935