31 May 2024

In his essay collection Languages of Truth, Salman Rushdie proposed that there are “hinge moments” in history when “everything is in flux . . . [and] the future is up for grabs.”  Rushdie wrote:  “When one lives at a hinge moment in history, as we do, as Shakespeare did when he wrote his protean plays . . . then it becomes essential to admit that the old forms will not do, the old ideas will not do, because all must be remade, all, with our best efforts, must be rethought, reimagined, and rewritten.”

Here on 31 May 2024, the morning after the first felony conviction of a former U.S. president and the fifth anniversary of my husband David’s death, I am thinking not only of the hinge moment that will fill the 24/7 news cycle for days to come, but of what feels like a hinge moment in my own life, even leaving aside the tsunami of political and historical implications for the world’s leading democracy in peril.

Parsing that I leave to the pros, including Rushdie in his prescient collection of essays first published between 2003 and 2020, incidentally all the more personally relevant to me as I struggle to bring my own take on Shakespeare to light.  Will to Live:  Learning from Shakespeare How to Be—and NOT to Be may yet appear before 2024 is out (inshallah).  But it’s the unpacking—literally and metaphorically—of my recent road trip encompassing Three Graduations and a Funeral (henceforth 3G+F) that preoccupies me now, perhaps a necessary and salutary distraction from the news.  That justice prevailed in New York yesterday was good news; that the convicted felon is celebrated with campaign donations and obsequious support from so many in what was once the party of Lincoln is very bad news.  It’s the best of times.  It’s the worst of times.

But what of my time, my hinge moment?  The short version:  my 3440-mile odyssey brought me back in touch with family, friends, and places from very different periods of my life in a totally absorbing and elevating round of reunions.  The five days following my return were similarly filled with pleasant diversions:  a return to my yoga class, the satisfying launch of Madbury Library’s new book club, and back-to-back first-rate performances of two plays:  the excellent revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part 1 at the Portland Stage and the equally stunning final performance of David Greig’s adaptation of Joe Simpson’s mountaineering memoir, Touching the Void at the Apollinaire Theatre Company’s Chelsea Theatre.  Co-directors Beyland and Brown and their first-rate ensemble of actors fully realized the distressing relevance of Kushner’s difficult, epic play written in 1991 and set in the mid-80’s.  Compellingly realized characters wrestled with plague, societal division, and climate change (as well as an angel) all under the influence of the charismatic, corrupt, and completely amoral and self-serving Rob Cohn.  Sound familiar?

As for Touching the Void, direction, acting, design, and choreography working so superbly in concert produced an absolutely enthralling experience of theatre, conjuring the riveting experience of a terrifying adventure in the Peruvian Andes with an essentially bare stage and a large tarp in a small theatre located pretty much under the Route 1 overpass.  For much of the play, my mouth was agape with wonder, and on the late Sunday night drive back from Chelsea, listening to jazz on GBH, I felt completely happy.

However, finally left to my own devices and quotidian housekeeping tasks on Monday’s grey, raining Memorial Day, that mood tipped in the opposite direction.  The aches of an aging body, including the advent of yet another sign of decrepitude, a temporomandibular joint suddenly making the simple act of chewing a challenge, did nothing to elevate my spirit.  Absent the all-absorbing distractions of the previous four weeks, grief for all the missing loved ones and a nascent but debilitating depression derailed addressing all that needed doing, exaggerating the growing anxieties of a “solo ager,” the label for those of us who face our latter days without any immediate family.  The TMJ problem remains a problematic hinge of a different sort, and it hasn’t helped that I’ve caught myself in a couple of verifiable senior moments:  apparently the last time I “replaced” the house water filter, I disposed of the old one without putting a new cartridge in the system, which in turn compromised the washing machine’s cold water filter, necessitating two bowel loosening exercises as I addressed both problems all by myself, hoping I could still perform the necessary contortions required.

I did.  But then I found myself looking for a pair of scissors that were already in my hand, only to discover that I’d left the outside spigot in the on position overnight, distressing the washer into leaking.  I’ve got mice to evict, hydrangea bushes to trim, and all this rain means the grass I only just finished mowing (having had to recall how to deploy the electric mower after a season’s storage) will soon need mowing again. 

But.  Spying the handsome young buck with his wee antlers sprouting made it hard to be mad at him for munching my daylilies.  Yesterday’s weekly talk with my friend Cameron also helped re-establish my equilibrium, as did seeing my first ever Scarlet Tanager at the feeder.  And my young friend Leo visited from next door sporting a new jester’s cap made by his clever mom.  So, life is good.

I want to tell more about my travels, not just that I think my distance vision and patience with traffic have both diminished since I last undertook so long a road trip.  Lots of good things happened, too.  Dear Reader, do check back in for details of Three Graduations and a Funeral.