30 August 2023

The last humanities course I taught at UNH in the spring of 2020—which with the arrival of COVID at mid-semester unexpectedly became the last semester in my 43 years of teaching—was HUMA 513, an interdisciplinary introduction to the modern world.  As the HUMA team prof covering the literary beat, I referred repeatedly to the Roman deity Janus, the god with two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward, my attempt at a mnemonic device to help students both think back to historical precursors shaping the arrival of modern drama, poetry, and the novel, and also think ahead to what these (to the students, “ancient”) texts would lead.  We went from Wycherley’s 1675 The Country Wife to Sheridan’s 1777 School for Scandal, from Wordsworth and Coleridge’s 1798 Lyrical Ballads to Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein, finally arriving at Ibsen’s 1879 A Doll’s House.  Saying when, exactly, the modern world materialized is, of course, an academic debate shifting over time.  When I was in graduate school in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, the historical period in which I specialized was mostly known as the Renaissance, a label looking backward to the “rebirth” and influence of the re-discovered classical world.  The Renaissance was, however, soon re-branded as “early modern,” looking forward from those early texts toward what was to come.

Having slipped the surly bonds of academia, I’ve been feeling pretty Janus-faced myself of late.  Partly I’ve been looking forward, among other things, to the new cultural season approaching; I’ve gotten my 2024 calendars and filled in dates to avoid double-booking upcoming performances in Boston and environs.  I‘ve counted down the payments left before our home’s mortgage is paid off, and renewed my driver’s license for another five years.  But looking forward also means thinking about the “mort” in mortgage, lists of things to do, and some things one must do, while there is still time.  My new driver’s license will expire in 2028, though because I renewed online, the photo on it remains, Dorian Gray-like, the same.  What’s my expiry date, I wonder?  Tonight is the first super blue moon since 2009, and the next won’t occur until 2037.  Actuarial tables suggest I’ll still be around in 14 more years, but in what condition?  I’ve come a long way from What Color is Your Parachute; now the parachute I most often contemplate has a lot more to do with being mortal, and bailing out when the time is right.

Still, this day has given me reason to be less morbid.  My house cleaner Sarah called this morning to say that her truly malevolent landlord has been bested by the redoubtable former NH district court judge Atty. Bill Shaheen, who took her case and stood up for Sarah pro bono.  Bobbie at Regan Electric called to let me know I could pick up the ginger jar lamp I’d had since 1974, now endowed with a new switch; I wouldn’t have to discard it for lack of anyone still willing to make that simple repair (thank you, Charlie, who rescued me from the much less accommodating Rockingham Electric).  My ailing sister and her family in Safety Harbor suffered no harm from Hurricane Idalia, which last night seemed so threatening.  And my former International Research Opportunities Program student, Procheta, responded to my happy birthday wishes from the beaches at Harihareshwar and Aravi in Maharashtra, India with both photos of him and his wife Sugandha on holiday at the shore and a shot of the birthday cake with which Sugandha surprised the birthday boy sitting improbably on the dunes.  Procheta’s delight, shared simultaneously with me via WhatsApp (which Procheta taught me to use back when I attended their Bengaluru wedding in 2019), brought back the enormous joy I felt then, a gift of his family’s extraordinary hospitality as I visited beautiful Karnataka on my solo passage to and from India.

Still weirdly attached to Tom Hanks thanks to my recent absurdly blissful dream about him, I’ve been working my way through his extensive filmography these past few nights:  Philadelphia, Captain Phillips, and, last night, Cast Away.  I’d forgotten that the film is NOT titled Castaway, and so missed the enormous importance of that caesura.  The Hanks character was indeed cast away, but finally did NOT despair, but rather made the best use of what WAS cast away (ice skates, the memorable Wilson, and the love of his life), including the angel-winged package that “saved his life” and led him to the hopeful crossroad in the last frame of the film.  See this film, Dear Reader.  Well worth re-visiting.

In my darker mood earlier in the week, I’d been thinking of another script, Tennessee Williams’s 1961 play Night of the Iguana and the 1964 film John Huston made of it, most specifically the poem it contains that I was surprised to discover I had mostly memorized:

How calmly does the olive branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair

Some time while light obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever
And from thence
A second history will commence

A chronicle no longer gold
A bargaining with mist and mold
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth, and then

An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth’s obscene corrupting love

And still the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair

Oh courage! Could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?

Yes, the darkness falls earlier now as we reach September, and what’s to come is still unsure.  But there’s great pleasure both in looking back and looking forward—to the ties that bind over time and distance, and to the coming beauty of another New England autumn.

The other day I discovered that my Silver Brocade bromeliad, which last bloomed at David’s memorial in October 2019, had found a reason to bloom again.  No betrayal of despair there.  Carpe diem.