Like the prodigal son I return to you, the sea. You who scare the idylls off into tame inner fjords, bays and inlets because you are much too majestic for weekend yachtsmen, outboard motors and hobby anglers. Without so much as a blink you swallow the sun like a raw egg-yolk for supper and at daybreak you lift heavy banks of cloud dense with rain and squalls, a wet cloth on sleep-heavy eyes and throbbing temples. With the horizon like a diadem about your brows you write your salt letters to the shore. Land changes, men and beasts come and go. Only you live your solitary life, the world’s blue eyes fixed on the stars and eternity.
The world, we are told, was made especially for humans – a presumption not supported by all the facts… Why should humanity value itself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit – the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without humans; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge. From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo Sapiens. From the same material God has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. ~ John Muir (Meditations of John Muir: Nature’s Temple)
Twenty years ago, in July of 1991, The Colonial Theater of Westerly, Rhode Island, began presenting its annual Shakespeare-in-the-Park with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My mother had died only a few weeks earlier, and after seeing an article in the newspaper about the free performances, Tim & I decided we should go. We loved every minute of it, cuddled under the stars in our beach chairs on the lawn of beautiful Wilcox Park. Seeing these plays became one of the highlights of our year, a dearly loved tradition.
For the 15th season, in 2005, the theater presented A Midsummer Night’s Dream again, much to our delight! And I loved these words found in the program that year:
The mix of illusion and reality that runs through the play is also a particularly relevant theme at this time. For this is at the heart of what we do each year. With your participation, we visit people and worlds where the normal, earthbound laws of physics no longer apply. … Not only is the play filled throughout with the imagery of dreams, but Puck even addresses the audience at the play’s close with the advice that if they’ve not been pleased with what they’ve seen, they should just tell themselves that they’ve been dreaming, and will wake up with nothing lost. And what’s to say that we haven’t been dreaming while this parade of characters has performed across the stretch of our imagination? ~ Harland Meltzer, Producing Artistic Director, Colonial Theater
Over the years we’ve been to almost every play, except for the few times there was no play due to lack of funding. It’s free, but the theater counts on donations to make it each year. Besides making donations ourselves, Tim buys a coffee cup each year and as you imagine, has a large collection now.
“The Tempest” ~ summer 2011 ~ Wilcox Park, Westerly, Rhode Island
This year the play chosen was The Tempest, which was put on for the second time, the first time being in 1992. After watching the weather report we decided that Wednesday was the best night to catch it. We went early in the afternoon to stake out our spot, and then returned in the evening, found a good parking spot, walked to a restaurant for dinner and then walked back to the park for the play. Even though I had my exercise ball to sit on, perhaps all the walking and sitting in the restaurant had taken its toll because I was uncomfortable almost immediately. And Tim was not feeling well due to moving around in the heat and humidity – it’s hard on his heart. Both of us sat there miserably until the intermission, wondering if the other would mind leaving early, something we had never ever done before. When intermission came we took one look at each other and knew with very little verbal communication how things stood. We quietly gathered up our things and left…
Wilcox Park ~ 7.27.11 ~ Westerly, Rhode Island
For future reference I’m listing all of Shakespeare’s plays we’ve seen by this theater group at Wilcox Park:
1991 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1992 – Tempest 1993 – As You Like It 1996 – Romeo & Juliet 1996 – Julius Caesar (performed by the visiting Anglian Open Air Shakespeare Company) 1997 – Twelfth Night 1998 – Othello 1999 – Taming of the Shrew 2000 – Henry IV, Part I 2001 – Hamlet 2003 – Merchant of Venice 2004 – Much Ado About Nothing 2005 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2006 – Romeo & Juliet 2008 – As You Like It 2009 – Two Gentlemen of Verona 2011 – Tempest (until intermission)
“Symphony in White No. 2″ by James McNeill Whistler
People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Clear Vision: Finding Peace in a Troubled World)
I apologize to big questions for small answers. O Truth, do not pay me too much heed. O Solemnity, be magnanimous to me. Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your train. Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom. I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere. I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman. I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me, because I myself am an obstacle to myself. Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light. ~ Wisława Szymborska (Under a Certain Little Star)
Some adopt a rigid system that answers all possible questions and so you don’t have to think beyond its systems. The other response is much more seemingly fragile but much more expansive, because it doesn’t lay down a rigid framework. It allows you to move within the mystery of it. And that seems to be flowering right now. I think people are more and more interested in embracing that because they’ve been through everything else. It is a willingness to embrace mystery, a willingness to embrace not knowing, allowing that intuitive awareness to speak. ~ Paul John Roach (The Translucent Revolution)
There’s more than one answer to these questions Pointing me in a crooked line The less I seek my source for some definitive The closer I am to fine ~ Emily Saliers ♫ (Closer to Fine) ♫
Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life. ~ Wisława Szymborska (Poems New & Collected)
There may be people who like centipedes… ~ William S. Burroughs (The Western Lands)
Bugs!! Shudder!!! Yesterday I was sitting on the couch for a few minutes taking a break when one of these creatures, which I think must be a house centipede, ran across the living room, lickety-split, and disappeared under the couch. Needless to say I have not sat in the living room since! And reading up on them has not made me feel any better. Much as I avoid chemicals, I think I’m in the mood to buy some “bug” spray!
I had never seen one of these things until the 1990s when I was coming out of the laundry room in the basement and one confronted me in the hallway. It was a good two inches long and an inch wide! I grabbed what was handy, a can of hair spray (good a getting ink stains out of clothing), and started doing battle with the alien. It actually charged at me after I zapped it once. It finally died after tons of spray and I left the scene, shaken. When the family came home and I told my tale and went to show them the remains of the bug, it had dried and shriveled up to almost nothing, and they seemed a little skeptical of my accounting of the enemy’s size and speed and aggressiveness.
Am I losing my mind?
Sometime during the 2000s I was walking on the treadmill, also in the basement, when one of these monsters raced out from under the treadmill and made a beeline for a big pile of storage boxes. I tried to pretend I had not seen what I had just seen, and to get on with my life.
And now yesterday, my third sighting. Why me??? Why do they not come out to terrorize the rest of the family? First two times in the basement, then this time of the first floor. I’ll be hysterical if I ever see one up here on the second floor!
I have learned that house centipedes are not native here, but have arrived somehow from the Mediterranean region. That would be why I had never encountered one before. The only positive spin I can put on this situation is that apparently they eat spiders and ants and can eat a few of them at a time. Still I don’t like the idea of something so big and so fast lurking around my home. I startle way too easily… I had a LOT of trouble falling asleep last night.
Has anyone else ever dealt with house centipedes???
Gain knowledge, brothers! Think and read, And to your neighbors’ gifts pay heed, Yet do not thus neglect your own.
Sadly I weep when I recall The unforgotten deeds of all Our ancestors: their toilsome deeds! Could I forget their pangs and needs, I, as my price, would then suppress Half of my own life’s happiness…
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)
