Mercury Retrograde: Communicative Swan-Dive Off The High Board

You're not getting Theatre Thursday today. Instead, you're getting Siamese Thursday. You'll probably like this better, anyway, because you're a lazy a-hole and can't be bothered to learn new things.

The Siamese Prince is looking to the Heavens to find out why the hell I've been so crazy lately.



I mean, I tried to tell him that I'm always crazy. Look at the clusterf#ck I've got going in the air signs there. One pitiful water sign is touched on in my chart, and one lonely earth sign. And I have Leo rising, and then, practically everything else (including my moon) is in Sagittarius. I'm not going to be the most even keel on the lake.

But the prince is specifically wondering about my behavior lately. He's not buying that it's all because Mercury has been in retrograde since January 5th, although he has to admit that that's when the funky behavior started.

I pointed out to him that "funky behavior" in his eyes may be something as simple as getting really, really irritated when he won't. stop. meowing. while I'm trying to do work.

I offered to do his chart and see how this Mercury retrograde thing will affect him. He's a Leo (natch). I mean, Jupiter is in Aquarius all year, so I should be golden, but that doesn't really help him any, as a Leo (unless his rising sign in Aquarius, I guess, but we have no way to determine that, so I'm just gonna guess that his rising sign is some fire or other). Technically, this Mercury retrograde thing should be hitting all y'all harder than it's hitting me, anyway.

For some reason he doesn't believe me. See him there, looking askance at my theory that maybe he's the one who's been so annoying and weird lately? The prince's dad is a Gemini, so he's always a little schitzo, but the Siamese Prince here has really been just batsh!t since earlier this week. Very vocal. Since Mercury is the communication planet, I think that might have something to do with it.

Kitten hates being wrong. He knows I'm right (he's the one being annoying and frenetic and needy, not me). He just now decided he's more interested in Vedic astrology than Western. Thinks maybe my signs are off, or something.

He really could have found a more respectful way to disagree, though.

Appreciate The Little Things (Not So Littul, Akshully)

Concerning the recently mentioned boobs:

My five-foot-three self and I are gathering about three days' worth of mail this morning. (What? We don't leave the apartment here; it's not in vogue.) We have a UPS slip to get a package from the package room (if you can imagine such a thing). The slip corresponds with a truly sizable box sent from Atlanta after Thanksgiving with, like, every single play I've ever owned, ever. (YOU: Oh. Good. More Theatre Thursdays. I'm sooo pumped *eyeroll* ME: SHUT IT.)

So, me and my physics degree over here, we decide to put the slippery mail on top of the heavy, heavy box, and balance/carry it over to the elevator. Then, with the slippery mail on top of the heavy, heavy box, my physics degree and I decide to push the elevator button with one of the outer corners of the box. Of course the slippery mail starts to slip, and the heavy, heavy box starts to tip, and, worst of all, my keys - which are on top of the slippery mail which is on top of the heavy, heavy box - start to slip toward the edge of the box, threatening to plummet into the terrifying abyss that is the 3-inch gap between the elevator and the actual floor. I mean, who knows where that goes? Probably to Hell, or to some mole people's lair under New York City. And I don't want mole people having a key to my apartment. I'm sure they're perfectly nice, but they probably don't smell so good.

So my physics degree informs me that I should prevent imminent disaster and stinky mole visitors by correcting the angle of the box and tilting back away from the elevator, which I do, just in the nick o' time to keep my keys *and* mail from slippery sliding off the box into the aforementioned abyss. The mail stops on a piece of packing tape that's popped up, but the keys on their heavy little purple belay (Do you know what a belay is? If you don't, that means you never did a ropes course at camp, and I feel sad for you.) are threatening to slide toward me, off the inner side of the box, and clatter to the floor causing not only embarrassment in the packed lobby (where no one is offering help, by the way), but also the necessity to put down the box, and the mail, and rearrange, and then try to pick that shit up again, which... no. The keys plummet off the inner side of the box, and I'm waiting for them to hit the floor and signal to me that I need to go back to MIT for some refresher courses, and also that I'm going to have a pulled lower back after trying to get the box back up off the floor once I pick up the keys...

And the keys never hit the floor.

I look down, and there they are: sweetly cradled in the valley of my mammary glands. My boobs: the ultimate shelf. At that moment, I (and my lower back) really appreciated them.

*Fin*

Theatre Thursdays - The NOT New Year's Edition!

Welcome back to Theatre Thursdays! This post has nothing whatsoever to do with the New Year! (You have been warned.)

In what may have been the laziest essay of my college career, I compared the attitudes toward women in Euripides' Hippolytus and Racine's Phèdre, which tell the same story from slightly different points of view. Phaedra/Phèdre brings about family tragedy when she falls in love with Hippolytus/Hippolyte, her step-son by Theseus/Thésée, king of Athens. I don't remember much of the essay, but I do remember that my conclusion was that Racine didn't seem to like women as much as Euripides. (I do remember that I got an A, which says nothing about whether my argument was "correct," but may say something about my suspicions that the professor was a huge pothead.)

That being said, I adore - nay, worship - Jean Racine's Phèdre. It is just. so. beautiful. I've seen two productions in Paris, one modeled on Kabuki and one traditionally performed and starring the French equivalent of Phylicia Rashad. The former was positively transcendental. The latter was just horrendous, but boy, did the text still shine through the ham-handed mess that was the staging and "acting." Sadly, I know you may not speak French, so I have to give you a translation. Translations make me a sad panda. "Poetry is what gets lost in translation," said Robert Frost, and he was spot-on.

Oh well. We'll have at it anyway, with the monologue in which Phèdre confesses her illicit love to Hippolyte while the palace erroneously believes Thésée to have drowned on his way home. This is Margaret Rawlings' translation, which I don't love, but it's what I have on hand. Racine's original follows, in case you speak French and want to wallow in beauty with me. Really, when I read the French original out loud, I feel like a pig in shit. (Isn't that sentence fabulous in its relevance?)

PHEDRE
Ah, cruel one! Too well, too well
You understand me. I have said enough
To save you from mistake. Well, look at me!
Know me, then - Phaedra - in my madness, know
I am in love. But do not dare to think
That I - in love with you - believe that I
Am innocent, or of myself approve.
Nor that the mad love now deranging me
Like poison in the blood, is fed at all
By cowardly connivance of my will.
Unlucky object of the spite of Gods,
I am not so detestable to you
As to myself. The Gods will bear me witness,
The same Gods who in my veins have poured
This burning fire, a doom to all my race;
The Gods who take a barbarous delight
In leading a poor mortal's heart astray!
Do you, yourself, recall to mind the past!
I did not only fly, I hounded you;
I wanted you to think me odious,
I sought to appear inhuman in your eyes.
The better to resist your charm I sought
To make you hate me. Oh, what useless care!
You hated more. I loved you none the less.
Misfortunes only lent you added charm.
I have been drowned in tears, and scorched with fire.
Your own eyes might convince you of the truth,
If for one moment you could look at me.
What have I said? Can you believe that this
Confesion I have just made to you - this
So shameful declaration I have made
Is voluntary? Can you think so? Ah!
Trembling in fear for safety of a son
Whom I dare not betray, I came to beg
You not to hate him. What a feeble plan
For any heart so full of what it loves.
I could speak to you only of yourself!
Oh take your vengeance, do, and punish me
For such a hideous and illicit love!
Your father was a hero, be like him,
And rid the world of one more monster now.
Does Theseus' widow dare to love his son?
Believe me you should not let her escape.
Here is my heart. Here, where your hand should strike,
It waits impatient to expiate
Its guilt. It leaps to meet your arm. oh strike!
Or if your hatred envy me a blow
Of such sweet torture, or if blood too vile
You think would therefore drench your hand, then give,
Give me, if not your arm, at least your sword!
Give!

And here's the original. Even if you don't speak French, I swear to Blog, you can probably pick out the difference in cadence and poetry.

PHEDRE
Ah ! cruel, tu m'as trop entendue.
Je t'en ai dit assez pour te tirer d'erreur.
Hé bien ! connais donc Phèdre et toute sa fureur.
J'aime. Ne pense pas qu'au moment que je t'aime,
Innocente à mes yeux je m'approuve moi-même,
Ni que du fol amour qui trouble ma raison
Ma lâche complaisance ait nourri le poison.
Objet infortuné des vengeances célestes,
Je m'abhorre encor plus que tu ne me détestes.
Les Dieux m'en sont témoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon flanc
Ont allumé le feu fatal à tout mon sang,
Ces Dieux qui se sont fait une gloire; cruelle
De séduire le coeur d'une faible mortelle.
Toi-même en ton esprit rappelle le passé.
C'est peu de t'avoir fui, cruel, je t'ai chassé.
J'ai voulu te paraître odieuse, inhumaine.
Pour mieux te résister, j'ai recherché ta haine.
De quoi m'ont profité mes inutiles soins ?
Tu me haïssais plus, je ne t'aimais pas moins.
Tes malheurs te prêtaient encor de nouveaux charmes.
J'ai langui, j'ai séché, dans les feux, dans les larmes.
Il suffit de tes yeux pour t'en persuader,
Si tes yeux un moment pouvaient me regarder.
Que dis-je ? Cet aveu que je viens de te faire,
Cet aveu si honteux, le crois-tu volontaire ?
Tremblante pour un fils que je n'osais trahir,
Je te venais prier de ne le point haïr.
Faibles projets d'un coeur trop plein de ce qu'il aime !
Hélas ! je ne t'ai pu parler que de toi-même.
Venge-toi, punis-moi d'un odieux amour.
Digne fils du héros qui t'a donné le jour,
Délivre l'univers d'un monstre qui t'irrite.
La veuve de Thésée ose aimer Hippolyte !
Crois-moi, ce monstre affreux ne doit point t'échapper.
Voilà mon coeur. C'est là que ta main doit frapper.
Impatient déjà d'expier son offense,
Au-devant de ton bras je le sens qui s'avance.
Frappe. Ou si tu le crois indigne de tes coups,
Si ta haine m'envie un supplice si doux,
Ou si d'un sang trop vil ta main serait trempée,
Au défaut de ton bras prête-moi ton épée.
Donne.

Theatre Thursdays - The NOT Christmas Edition!

Welcome back to Theatre Thursdays! This post has NOTHING to do with Christmas! And it's a long one (warning you now). We're on to Shakespeare once again. We're also on to more than just a monologue again. We have one monologue, one snippet of dialogue, and some spot-on contextual commentary. I just couldn't help myself.

Today's play is Measure for Measure, which belongs to the group of comedies sometimes called "the problem plays." Exactly which plays constitute the "problem" group and precisely what time frame that period encompasses are two things very much up for debate, but Measure for Measure seems to be a point of agreement for all sides of this academic tug-of-war. It is NOTHING if not problematic for nearly every main character.

Poor, poor Isabella. Gal just wants to become a nun and have done with the secular world. Not only is Isabella saddled with a horndog older brother who's landed himself a death sentence for knocking up his fiancee (because that is the law in Vienna, where we are), but she's also prettier than a daisy. That's what Angelo thinks, at least. Angelo is standing in for the Duke of Vienna while the Duke is away. Angelo, being an upstanding citizen, offers to pardon Isabella's brother... if she'll give him her virginity. She protests and declines and says "no," but he just gets nastier and more threatening, because he is a politician and a perv. Not only is Angelo sleazy enough to propose essentially raping her, he points out that, should she try to tell on him, no one would take her word over his. Here, she weighs her options in a wrenching soliloquy coming heavy on the heels of a ruthless scene:

ISABELLA
To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof;
Bidding the law make court'sy to their will:
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother:
Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour.
That, had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorr'd pollution.
Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.

So that's Isabella's train of thought: very... utilitarian. ("More than our brother is our chastity?" Really? Wow, that's some commitment to virtue.) Claudio's not so keen on this strategy, surprisingly...

While Isabella and Claudio whine at each other ("Why won't you just sleep with him?" "You're so mean!" "No, YOU'RE mean!"), the Duke of Vienna (who actually didn't go out of town at all, but decided to skulk around dressed up as a friar, for some reason) enters and hears all about the perfidy of Angelo. Having known Angelo for years, the Duke knows that Angelo jilted a woman named Mariana once upon a time. The Duke-in-cognito arranges for Isabella to pull a Helena*: Tell Angelo to expect her in bed, then smuggle in Mariana wearing a veil, of course, because no one would find it weird if you showed up in bed with a full veil. Of course not. I guess some people are just kinky like that.

What with one thing and another, Angelo falls for it and sleeps with Mariana. The Duke "returns from out of town" sans religious costume. Isabella, believing her brother's execution has gone forward despite the agreement with Angelo, pleads with the Duke to listen to what a rat-bastard Angelo really is. He tells her to tell it to Angelo, because he appears to enjoy really effed up mind games:

ISABELLA
O worthy duke,
You bid me seek redemption of the devil:
Hear me yourself; for that which I must speak
Must either punish me, not being believed,
Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O hear me, here!

ANGELO
My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm:
She hath been a suitor to me for her brother
Cut off by course of justice,--

ISABELLA
By course of justice!

ANGELO
And she will speak most bitterly and strange.

ISABELLA
Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak:
That Angelo's forsworn; is it not strange?
That Angelo's a murderer; is 't not strange?
That Angelo is an adulterous thief,
An hypocrite, a virgin-violator;
Is it not strange and strange?

DUKE VINCENTIO
Nay, it is ten times strange.

ISABELLA
It is not truer he is Angelo
Than this is all as true as it is strange:
Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.

DUKE VINCENTIO
Away with her! Poor soul,
She speaks this in the infirmity of sense.

ISABELLA
O prince, I conjure thee, as thou believest
There is another comfort than this world,
That thou neglect me not, with that opinion
That I am touch'd with madness! Make not impossible
That which but seems unlike: 'tis not impossible
But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,
May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute
As Angelo; even so may Angelo,
In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
Be an arch-villain; believe it, royal prince:
If he be less, he's nothing; but he's more,
Had I more name for badness.

And do you know what the Duke does then? Do you know what he does? He has Isabella taken away under guard because he is not done with his effed up mind game yet! WTF?!

Anyway, in the end, the Duke admits to Isabella that he was the friar who hatched the Mariana plan with her. Dukey also compels Claudio (who is not dead) to marry his knocked up fiancee; forces Angelo to marry Mariana; and confesses to Isabella that he has fallen in love with her, offering her his hand in marriage. Unfortunately for Isabella, this isn't really so much a "suggestion": He's the Duke. He gets what he wants. Think Prince Humperdink. All the... uh... happy couples leave the stage together.

And that, children, is why Measure for Measure ranks as the most undeniably Problem of the "problem plays." In the classical sense, it is a comedy: everyone ends up married and no one - not even the bad guy! - ends up missing a skull. However, at least two of the three marriages (the possible exception is Claudio's) are being forced upon at least half of the new spouses.

I'd definitely call that a "problem" for someone.

*That would be Helena from All's Well That Ends Well, who tricks her husband into sleeping with her instead of a younger woman and is only able to secure her marriage by getting knocked up on that single, miraculous night. Happy ending!!!

A Room Of One's Own

Yup. Virginia Woolf. I went there, baby.


Living in a two-room Manhattan apartment is tough sometimes. Here's a good example.


My husband is buddies with a teenage kid who lives downstairs (yes, really). Sometimes the kid comes up to play video games and whatnot, and occasionally the kid brings friends. The kid's nice and all, but sometimes the kid's visit coincides with dinner time. That happens because my husband, though he has many talents and strengths, cannot think ahead for shit. His sense of cause and effect doesn't always present itself in a fully developed manner. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's infuriating. Mostly it ends up being somewhere in between.


But I hate it when it fucks with my dinner.


That's a somewhat normative reaction. I mean, who really likes to be 10 minutes away from food, really hungry, then, BAM! COMPANY!? "Why didn't you consider our general evening schedule before asking this person over? That's not polite to your spouse/living partner" is a reasonable question to have in that circumstance. It's normal to dislike that kind of situation. But you know who *really* dislikes that? People with eating disorders or related issues. We haaaaaate it. Our food is our ritual is our space is our time is our self is our identity. Fuck with our food and we will fuck. you. up. (Yes, I'm spelling it out today, as you may have noticed.)


You know the most really, truly horrible freakout I remember having? It was over some braised lamb. My dad made it in the summer of my first major recovery from anorexia and it freaked. me. out. It was a whole big scene, but suffice to say, it ended with me weeping at the table and choking down most of my meager portion of very healthily braised lamb. The point being, OH MY GOD, I have my FOOD PLAN for the day or minute or meal or week, and do not FUCK with it, because it is what helps me deal with EVERYTHING ELSE.


This still comes up from time to time, only, now it comes up when I'm, you know, annoyed that two teenage boys are at my two-room home and my dinner just got here and, dammit, I don't want to eat in front of them because it may be silly, but I'm self-conscious about eating in from of people to whom I'm not close (I don't know if that will ever go away). Am I explaining this well? I don't think I am. Well, suffice to say, now that I'm a moderate way along Recovery Road, I notice the food OMGWTF stuff pop up when it's really about something other than food. Which I suspect it mostly always was. Or so the psychologists tell me.


But you know what? Now I can realize what it's about; take the laptop into the bedroom; and "verbalize" a little later without having a meltdown over chicken parm and two teenagers.


Progress?