August 15
Happy Independence Day, India!
1966 (en route from Mexico to Connecticut)
First day on the road. It was miserable! Hot and sticky and downright UGH.
Fifteen minutes from Laredo, Mr. D had to stop the car because the warning light was on. It turned out something was disconnected, and a guy from Alabama stopped by and fixed it.
We got as far as Palestine, TX - the Sands Motel. The pool is warm, like a bath. I met a young Texan there at first I thought he was Mr. D or I wouldn’t have talked to him. From the side he looked like Robert Conrad, but he acted none too bright.
We ate next door - the food was pretty bad. The filet was chewy and had several toothpicks hidden in it.
Comment 2023
As I recall, we had to drive back with the top down because Mrs. D bought so many boxes of glassware. So hot and miserable. And yes, I was that near-sighted.
1976 (Maryland)
Two days before I go back to work. (Or TO work, really, not back to it.) We are in Maryland, though it feels more like generic Suburbia. I feel homesick for Peace Dale, the beaches, the shady back roads. But I am not there, I’m HERE, so I have to deal with that. It is convenient here; everything is close and handy. The weather has been awful, but promises to improve.
I’ve been scared lately. I just don’t feel ready to walk into that classroom! It seems I should have done more preparation, more reading, more work, when I had the chance! Too late. At least I should have the time to spend on my work. Tuesday and Thursday I teach 9:30-10:45 and 12:30-1:45. Monday and Wednesday I’ll have class in the afternoon, 2-3:15. Nothing on Friday. So I can be on campus 9-4 everyday, maybe 10-4 on Friday. That gives me 2 hours TTh and 5 hours MW to do lectures and stuff, as well as 6 hours on Friday. 20 hours a week. Prep (slides, pulling examples from the collection) should take 1 1/2 hours per course per week, leaving 17 hours. Out of that comes library time, office hours, and collection work. I could start spending Fridays in the collection, and try to expand that time as I get more into the semester.
See! I’m getting organized already.
Comment 2023
Forty-eight Augusts later, I can confirm: summer in Washington DC is always miserable. Great month to go elsewhere.
1984
Let me comment on 2 1/4 year olds. Contrary. Contradictory. Terrible? Not usually. Only now and then. Inconsistent. Lovable, and open. The curiosity of a baby, stealthily being replaced by a primitive calculating spirit. Pure needs making way for manipulation. Just to test me, just to see what works.
If I want to be with her, she wants to be independent. If I give in and go about my own business, she begs for attention. Last year I learned that I was a more nurturing person than I thought. This year comes the revelation that I am nowhere near as patient as I thought I was. What will next year have in store?
1985
Today I have my surgery. It’s odd, but I have really been magnifying it in my mind. It is major surgery, done under general anesthesia, etc., but if it were really more serious, it wouldn’t be out-patient. The worst thing is that the weather is so very awfully hot and I just know I am going to feel like hell when I get home.
Looking forward to feeling better and to cooler weather.
1997
Something from Gift from the Sea rings a bell: that we, as humans, are constructed from infancy to see the One and Only, based on our childhood relationships with the nurturing mother. How much more must earlier humans have idolized their parents, when they often lost them so young? It must have seemed impossible to match one’s parents’ love, tenderness, power, and wisdom, and easy to transform them into superhuman gods and goddesses. God “died”, not only as scientific thought advanced, but as humans lived long enough to see our own parents as older adults, through adult eyes. (But how does that explain today’s fundamentalist and conservative believers?)
How do I make sense of intelligent , educated people like my mother, who believed in a personal God and a god-in-human-form savior and worshipped him in a manner very akin to idolatry?
Comment 2023
I was wondering where this was going, and there it is, at the end: Mom. Two months after her death, I was still trying to understand her.
2022 (New York City)
Dunkin’ coffee and a toasted sesame bagel with avocado.
I walked to Grand Central Station, bought some nice stationery, then people watched for a while. Tourists. Tourists with kids taking pictures of the hippo ballerinas. Beautiful morning. Now ensconced at the (gorgeous) local branch of the NYPL. I got to use the reading/quiet room because I am writing. (!!!!)
Oh, and the Empire State Building wishes India a happy Independence Day!
Comment 2023
I celebrated this year by watching TWO Indian versions of “A Comedy of Errors”: Angoor (1983) and Cirkus (2022) for possible inclusion in a series on “Shakespeare in Translation”. Both relocated the story in India and introduce ideas of caste; both have music (of course). Cirkus is a Rohit Shetty product. He’s sort of India’s Wes Anderson: lots of color, some magical realism plus his own brand of rather low-brow humor and always lots of vintage cars. Shetty is not great art, but he’s always great fun. It’s on Netflix, if you want to take a look.
2024
Just finished watching “Maqbool”, the Hindi adaptation of Macbeth. My recollection of the Shakespeare play is rather fuzzy, so at first I just confused myself by trying to see parallels. But after awhile I was just swept up with the acting and cinematography. Really excellent. But will it work with the audience here at Riderwood?