28 October 2024

As my birth month draws to an end, the line that comes to mind is Leonato’s from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.  His daughter Hero’s chastity has just been falsely impugned, which makes her swoon.  The attending Friar suggests Leonato let her accusers believe Hero dead so that they will come to prize her “lacked and lost.”  Leonato replies:  “Being that I flow in grief, / The smallest twine may lead me.”

This close to what all seem to agree is the most significant election of my lifetime, and on the heels of Trump’s fascist rally in Madison Square Garden, my attempts to navigate torrents of anxiety have me grabbing at any hopeful lifeline, however small.  The twine I was reaching for Saturday night in Portsmouth at the Music Hall was Paula Poundstone’s comic relief.

The evening began well enough:  I found ample parking (rare in Portsmouth) at a new, well-lighted and appointed parking garage on Foundry, and arrived at my excellent seat in the orchestra at the same time as a young couple who were, I learned, celebrating their tenth anniversary by returning to the site of their first date.  Charming and romantic, I thought (if a bit poignant, my sitting there solo missing my David).  Poundstone made her unassuming entrance, and pretty quickly her comedy, largely improvised by engaging her audience, turned to her expressing the anxiety I’m certain most of her audience shared:  the proximate threat of a second Trump presidency.  Baffled (like so many of us) by how ANYONE could be at this stage undecided about the election, Poundstone opined (in a rough paraphrase):  He HID important secret documents in his BATHROOM, he tried to OVERTHROW our DEMOCRACY, his every-other sentence is a LIE, and people say “I don’t know enough about HER???!!!

From Poundstone’s entrance, the couple next to me had not laughed.  And about ten minutes in, they started talking to each other so loudly that it obscured Poundstone’s miked routine.  Twice I asked them to please hush, and finally, they simply got up and left.  I can only assume they knew nothing of Poundstone’s NPR persona and were likely Trump supporters.  Poundstone was actually wonderful—such a high-wire act, solo improvising for nearly two hours—but that couple’s response disturbs.

It’s been a lovely month, crowded with happy incidents and birthday remembrances from friends near and far, two very fine play performances, wonderful Manny Ax, several dinner parties attended and one given, some lovely autumn walks, yoga, tai chi, a good book club discussion of Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel, delightful weekly chats with my dear friend Cameron in Greensboro.

I even scored a couple of triumphs over tech adversity:  a challenged charge on my VISA card dropped, an appealed parking ticket forgiven, and successful use of a diabolical app-driven ParkMobile parking meter all sparked joy, however absurd the work-arounds necessary to live in our tech-centric time.  Case in point:  in order for me to open a new savings account, my helpful, newly promoted TD Bank clerk Gabby had to have her supervisor show her how to work around the barriers her not-yet-upgraded-to-reflect-her-new-status computer threw in her path, while I, standing at the counter opposite and less than two feet away from her had to initial a series of agreements and e-sign forms on my tiny cell phone screen.  Even that did not quash my good mood; in fact, I felt triumphant.

Not that all personal annoyances are in abeyance, however.  The struggle to get Amazon KDP to correct their many formatting mistakes has currently resulted in their “unpublishing” my book, calling with still-unfulfilled promises of perfection, and sending me the ugliest demo web site imaginable, featuring my name spelled wrong:  “Georgean Murpy.”  I fear a legal challenge lies ahead.  And after many months of waiting for a quite uncomfortable EMG test to try to determine the source of my left leg’s weakness, the orthopedist who ordered the test only reported to me that he could make no sense of the neurologist’s conclusions, and advised that since the pain I had experienced had lessened, I should just “wait and see” if there would be more improvement.

On the other hand, my silver brocade bromeliad is blooming for the first time in five years, and I’ve managed to accomplish almost all the “winter’s coming” chores:  houseplants safely back inside, hoses drained and stored, outdoor water supply cut off, deck railing freshly painted with penetrating oil.  But I’ve not taken the canoe out since my last birthday, and the Madbury reservoir, for all its gorgeous autumn display, is so low that launching the canoe would mean some perilous wading through boot-sucking muck.  The last time I tried that, I had to be pulled out by my larger, stronger friend Gregg.

And OMG.  The election:  Trick or Treat?  November 5^th will mean voting, helping with the Madbury Library’s book sale, tai chi, and . . . what fresh hell?

I’ll try to take comfort in my resident barred owl’s hoots and occasional visits, the roving flock of wild turkeys, and the juvenile deer caught faux-boxing each other on the west lawn, an encouraging sight first thing in the morning.

Still, another Shakespearean line comes to mind, this time from the Third Citizen in Richard III:  “All may be well; but if God sort it so, / ‘Tis more than we deserve or I expect.”