Thoughts from In Between/Pensées d'entre ici et là

I don't know what Justice is . . . or Mercy

2012-01-22T14:56:00.001-08:00

This morning, I was part of a presentation at the Baltimore Ethical Society in connection with Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's production of The Merchant of Venice, along with Jill Giles and Michael Boynton. Jill summarized the plot with finger puppets in a way that made it accessible to children, and Michael talked about justice and mercy from a post-modernist perspective, with emphasis on gender and religion. Mine was more of an impressionistic riff on the notions of justice and mercy, as I find them in my reading of the play.

Michael lives and breathes this stuff, so he spoke from the slides he had prepared. I was more comfortable writing mine out, partly so I could see whether or not it made sense, and partly so I wouldn't lose my way.

Here was my offering:

I start with a bare statement: “I don’t know what justice is.”

I soften that with some explanation or elaboration. I don’t know what you mean by justice. Or others. Some people talk about justice as though they’re looking for balance; others, for base, visceral revenge.

In the end, I don’t know what the term “justice” means to me. To my memory, I do not recall ever having demanded justice for myself. Or anybody else.

So I turn to a text – The Merchant of Venice – for enlightenment, at the risk, of course, of further confusion.

What I find after reading and pondering this text is that The Merchant of Venice portrays a world very aware and suspicious of the Other, the Outsider.

As early as the second scene, Nerissa, maid to Portia, lists each of the suitors waiting to take the challenge of the urns, by which they can win Portia’s hand. Each suitor comes from somewhere else: Naples, the County Palatine, France, England, Scotland, Germany. Portia dismisses each with scorn and wit. As soon as she has finished going through the list, Nerissa tells Portia that the suitors are just leaving, having decided against the challenge. We never see them. It’s as though their only purpose in the play was to give Portia a chance to make fun of people different from herself.

When the first suitor, the Prince of Morocco, does appear later to take the challenge, he immediately identifies himself by his difference:

Mislike me not for my complexion
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.

Essentially saying, “I’m not like you, but don’t hold that against me.”

Into this world of heightened awareness comes the ultimate outsider, the Jew, identified as a member of his tribe, and conscious himself of the contempt in which he is held.

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,

The gabardine was a long, loose gown or cloak of coarse material, the prescribed garment of Jews in the middle ages, identifying them as clearly as the required Star of David in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Shylock reinforces his separateness by his behavior – “I will not eat with you, drink with you, or pray with you” – and by his desire to keep the dominant Christian influence out of his house. When he leaves for the evening, he tells his daughter,

Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces,
But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements:
Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter
My sober house.

Within this context of otherness, Shylock sets up his absurd transaction, to lend three thousand ducats with the bond of a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the money is not repaid within three months. His purpose is clearly a search for revenge:

If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

“If I can catch him at a disadvantage, I will feed until it is fat the ancient grudge I bear him.” The arrogant Antonio, the merchant of the title, accepts the contract, because he is fully confident that his ships will arrive well before the due date.

Of course, they don’t, so we wind up in the courtroom, where Shylock is seeking the satisfaction of the bond, as provided by the law, even despite the offer of three times the amount he is owed.

The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought; 'tis mine and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?

Later, he says, “I stand here for law” in response to Gratiano’s “And for thy life let justice be accused.” In fact, Shylock never uses the word “justice” in the courtroom scene. His requests are for the law and judgment. It is Portia who accuses him of seeking justice and who uses the word “justice” against him. In the “quality of mercy” speech, she says, “Therefore, Jew,/ Though justice be thy plea.” No, his plea was for judgment and the execution of the law. “I crave the law,/ The penalty and forfeit of my bond.”

There are some suggestive connections in the history of these words, justice, judgment, law, and mercy.

The noun Justice and the adjective just derive from the Latin Justus, which has roots in jus, with meanings of law and right. Judgment has links to Latin judex, “he who points to or shows the law.” And law derives from many sources, with the meanings of something laid down, established, fixed. Justice, judgment, and law are all connected. Justice can refer to the proper execution of the laws, but it also carries a more abstract meaning, reaching outside the fixed boundaries of the law to something more personal and individually defined.

Separately, mercy derives from the Late Latin merces for pity or mercy and from the Latin merces for hire or reward. It shares roots with words relating to trading, merchandise, business. It is “closely akin to L merces, the price paid for goods, hire, wages and perhaps akin to mercere, to earn, hence to deserve.” Deep in the word, there are notions of exchange, of something earned.

Our most common use and understanding of the word “mercy” lies in the Christian meaning of the reward in heaven, which is “earned by [one’s] kindness to those who have no claim and from whom no requital can be expected.” It is forbearance and compassion by one person to another who is in his power. In other words, mercy is an exchange between people of unequal power.

Now let’s return to the courtroom, where Shylock has come to redeem his bond. Portia, who in a neighboring town had earlier wed Bassanio, the man who borrowed the 3,000 ducats for which Antonio had offered his bond, has come in disguise as a man and a doctor of laws to defend Antonio.

After some preliminaries, she asks if Antonio confesses the bond, acknowledges the contract. There is this shared line:

Antonio: I do.
Portia: Then must the Jew be merciful.

This is not a request or suggestion. This is a demand. The meter of the line places the stress on the word “must.” She is demanding that Shylock show mercy, to which he responds, “On what compulsion must I?”

In her response, she says, “The quality of mercy is not strained,” meaning not forced. Yet, Portia wants to force him to show mercy. She delivers her description of mercy while in her disguise. They are in a court of law, an institution of the dominant power of a state, and the imagery of the speech matches that power: the throned monarch, the dread and fear of kings, an attribute to God himself. In other words, mercy is something that may be granted by the powerful, whether the absolute deity or the court of law. And the terms of that mercy will be dictated by the powers of authority, sometimes, as we shall see, in terms that distort the meaning and heart of the word.

After acknowledging the validity of the contract, Portia boxes Shylock into a quandary by saying he may obtain his pound of flesh, but only without leaking a “jot of blood.” Then she says,

For as thou urgest justice, be assured
Thou shall have justice, more than thou desirest.

Here is the twist of the knife of justice, seen in the contrast between the two uses of the word. In the first use, she falsifies Shylock’s request for judgment and the execution of the law, shifting from his concrete requests to a more abstract concept. In the second use, she foreshadows the judgment that shall fall on Shylock at the end, the loss of his wherewithal, his faith, and essentially his birthright.

After she finagles him out of obtaining his pound of flesh, she charges him with a law that provides for penalties against an alien who seeks the life of any citizen: the loss of his goods to the citizen and the state, and the forfeiture of his life to the power of the duke. To save his life, he must become a Christian. Antonio, Portia, and their friends may feel that their justice has been served, but at the cost of Shylock’s. And mercy, in my view, is hardly to be seen.

I started with a proposition: "I don’t know what justice is." I’m not sure that my reading and consideration of this text has clarified my understanding; if anything, it may have darkened my outlook.

I have no answers, but I will end with three questions.

The first comes from the opening of a twentieth-century novel, A Frolic of His Own, by William Gaddis: “Justice? – You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.” To which I ask, Where does that leave you if you don’t believe in a next world?

Second, depending on how you define them, can mercy and justice co-exist? Does one person’s mercy undermine the other’s justice? Are they mutually exclusive?

Finally, despite my dark view of the notions of mercy and justice expounded in this play, I do find a corner of hope in the closing words of Portia’s speech.

We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

To put that in a more secular frame, if we keep the positive, personal notions of mercy and justice ever present in our consciousness, will we learn to bring those notions to life in our daily actions? The answer, I believe, lies not in institutions or definitions, but in our individual choices.

At the diner

2011-01-29T06:30:00.000-08:00

Last night, I ate at a diner near me, largely because the other possibilities I had sought out for a Friday night dinner had overstuffed parking lots. I would much rather drive in search of options than sit with a crowd waiting to be called.

I had a cheeseburger with soup to start, no doubt full of ingredients considered unhealthy. I ate and read, undisturbed except for the occasional "Everything all right, hon?" Even that didn't come as often as my previous visit, where the waitress seemed to be ready to set a record for number of times checking on customer, until I wanted coffee, at which point she was concentrated on wrapping silverware in napkins with her back to me.

I get a kic out of reading Montaigne and, in this case, Gaston Leroux on my iPod Touch in a diner. I was glad nobody asked, "Whatcha reading, hon?" Of course, nobody has ever followed up with questions when I say, "a 16th century French philosopher," but I know I feel odder than usual.

When I stood in line to pay my bill, I had a flashback to the two years in Mount Kisco, when I lived in the furnished room and ate most of my meals at the Mount Kisco Diner. Although the Double T in Glen Burnie is much larger than the Mount Kisco Diner of the 1970s, the atmosphere -- the diner culture, I guess I could call it -- has not changed, at least not much, so far as I can tell. The waiters and waitresses have the own culture and community, the customers range in age. There are a lot more old people, it seemed to me, but then I'm a lot older too, though I'm not using crutches or a walker. There are definitely families and recognizable customers, people who've been there a lot. There is somewhat of a family feeling about the place, even though I also feel comfortable in my anonymity. Even at Mount Kisco, when I was definitely recognizable, I don't think anybody every asked me where I worked, what I did, etc. A diner is a comfortable place, unpretentious, despite their efforts to keep up with some trends in food, and welcoming of anonymity. I like that.

Paths of thought

2011-01-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

In the second chapter of his second volume of Essais, entitled "De l'Ivrognerie" (On Drunkenness), Montaigne talks about how much he dislikes drunkenness, how ugly it is. Then he talks about the value of wine and drinking, listing examples of people and peoples who do or do not drink before engaging in combat and other dangerous activities. One question he touches on is who better to assassinate Caesar: Cassius who drinks only water or Cimber who drinks wine?Contrary to what you would expect from an Alcoholics Anonymous tract, which, of course, is not what Montaigne would write, he does not come down in favor of one side or another. In fact, he ultimately moves to a discussion of the relation between acts of extreme heroism or courage and the presence of an altered state of consciousness. He essentially asks, or rather insinuates the question into the mind of the reader, whether or not such an altered state is necessary for such actions. Again, no answer, or at least not a direct one. He does not say, yes, you must get drunk before you perform an extreme action, nor does he say don't ever drink. He looks at the question from multiple angles, raising possibilities and questions in illustration of his own thinking and state of mind, probably not really caring whether or not the reader will come to a desired conclusion. I think his mindset may be more profitably summarized as, "Here's what I think. If you like it, fine. I'm not here to tell you what to think; I'm going to assume that you're intelligent enough to make up your own mind." Now, is this different from John Boehner, who agrees in an interview that Barack Obama is a US citizen, but says he's not going to tell anybody, i.e., birthers who think Obama was born outside the US, what to think? Montaigne, I believe, is encouraging people to think; Boehner is just trying not to alienate people from voting for him, to some extent discouraging people from thinking too deeply about anything and thus leaving themselves more easily to the sway of emotion and political passion.

Retreat

2010-04-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

I am in the second day of a retreat of my own devising. I make it up as I go along. I am staying in a friend's beach house, which he offered to me free of charge when I told him about my divorce, or my separation, I guess I should say. I got down here early yesterday afternoon and have done a variety of things, from riding a bike to getting some preparatory work done on my summer project. Mostly, though, I have been writing in my journal. I have written more in the last 24 hours than in any previous week or month or maybe even several months. None of the writing has unearthed deep truths; some of it has merely recorded what I've done during the days I've been here. There have been some pensive passages, of course, and one or two items of understanding. None has been life-altering, and I don't expect that from this time away. This weekend or retreat, since it involves more than the two days of the weekend, seems to be an assessment of solitude. I rambled on in the journal for a while about loneliness and solitude and even using the term "aloneness," to distinguish a feeling of drabness from the more philosophical stance of solitude. I think this attitude is something I will explore more within myself and learn more what it means for me. I'm not a misanthrope, but I do want my solitude at times, and I'm not sure I know how to signal that to the right person at the right time.

I certainly distinguish solitude from that crushing sense of aloneness I felt in my conjugal home, when I would hide out downstairs, occupying myself with wasteful pursuits -- wastes of time and energy -- in order to avoid being in the presence of my wife. She would not come downstairs, or would do so only reluctantly, partly because she didn't like it and partly, I think, because she was afraid of what she might find me doing. More often than not, I would not come upstairs till I knew she was in bed and most likely asleep. That sense of aloneness would be even more pronounced as I was lying in the bed next to her, feeling more distant from her even in what would be our closest physical proximity.

I want a healthy solitude, from which I can draw strength and build ideas and exercise my abilities and from which I will emerge to be even closer to others. A healthy solitude is where I recharge my batteries; an unhealthy solitude is where I slowly drain myself of my vitality. I never want to find myself in a pattern of unhealthy solitude again. Doesn't mean I won't be tired or bored from time to time, or that I will forever give up pursuits wasteful of my time and energy. I just don't want those to become a hiding place from my own sense of possibility.

Moving out, moving in, moving on

2010-03-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, Saturday February 27, I moved into my own apartment after 22 years of living in the same conjugal house, after 29 years of marriage. As I woke up Sunday morning, getting ready to unload what I thought would be the last load from my sister's van, I thought, "This is my home." It struck me that, for at least the past 5-10 years, I had not thought of that conjugal house as home, at least not with the same delight that I felt yesterday. I don't have anybody else's belongings closing in around me. All the clutter will be my own. It was about 12 years ago that I first said I feel like I'm living in a warehouse. No matter how often I said it, maybe 3-5 times over the next decade, the tides of things kept closing in on me, at the foot of the bed, in the downstairs room where I hoped to claim my own space, or the piles around the living room. There were always reasons for them and always reasons why it was slow to trim them down, and I was complicitous in allowing the continued accretion of things. Ultimately, though, I had to persuade myself that nothing was ever going to change and that I would not find the level of happiness that I wanted in that house. She had admitted that she had been emotionally unavailable to me a couple years ago, and I finally had to tell myself that I was living in an emotional vacuum and that I wanted more than that. I want an emotional life, and I wasn't going to get it there. So now I'm on my own. It feels great.

Big change in progress

2010-02-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of leaving my wife. I told her on January 22 that I want a divorce, and I am now close to making a decision about an apartment for myself. These steps were nerve-wracking enough in themselves - and I haven't even taken the second one -- yet I suspect they are only prelude to many ups and downs. There will be our negotiations, whether through mediation or lawyers. There will be our children's adjustments. The relationships will shift, and I think to the good. I expect to have a more direct relationship with them, one less filtered by my fear or awareness or second-guessing of what my wife might think. I hope it will also benefit their relationship with her and with each other, but more than anything else I want something better with them. Our relationship now is pretty good; I just want it to be in a more open environment.

Over time, I hope I will be able to express myself better about what I want, about what I feel, and to be more open here and elsewhere about my thoughts and feelings. Even though I know Carol is highly unlikely to find these pages, I have always distanced myself from letting out too much of what I really was thinking and feeling for fear it might get back to her in some way. There are some parts of my life I might not discuss so openly as others, because there are parts that I'm not ready to be completely open about, but I do hope the general tone of my writing -- and of my whole being -- will be more open and relaxed, less worried about what somebody else may think. Not a bad start for somebody the verge of 61.

There have been large gaps in any entries I have made here, as well as in my personal journal. That journal is currently devoted to notes about apartments and some of the specifics of my change, and I do want to get back to some more specific and daily commentary about what I'm doing and what I'm thinking. Less quarrel with myself and less hiding. That would be a wonderful gift to myself.

At last, a sign

2009-07-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Atheists receive a sign from a watermelon. Courtesy of Deep Thoughts, from The Atheist Experience. (Linking, oh no, signs of a vast atheist conspiracy!!)

Religion: For hatred, against reason

2009-07-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

Two brief passages from Theological-Political Treatise by Benedict de Spinoza, from Christopher Hitchen's The Portable Atheist

"I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith."

"... faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices -- aye, prejudices too, which degrade men from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason!"

Remember the veterans -- all of them

2009-05-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

This is a letter that I had sent to the Annapolis Capital a week or so ago and that they just published today. I was pleasantly surprised, since I hadn't heard from them and the issue is a bit old.

They don't post the letters that they print in the paper, so this is my way to make it available on line.

---------------

With all the huffing and puffing about the recent Homeland Security reports suggesting that right-wing extremist groups might try to recruit disgruntled veterans, it will be helpful to remember that the most extreme act of domestic terrorism in the US, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, was perpetrated by a veteran. I say this as the son, grandson, and great-grandson of career Army officers (USMA classes of 1877, 1904, and 1934, if you need specifics). To say that some veterans may be susceptible to the inducements of right-wing militias does not mean that all veterans are likely candidates for such extremist groups. It is an acknowledgment, however, that veterans have a range of skills and aptitudes that these groups might want to add to their repertoire and that unhappy veterans, of whom there are undoubtedly a few, may be persuaded to turn these skills toward hateful ends.

Veterans are just as subject to success and failure, to peaceful and hateful behavior, as the rest of the population. I remember being glad in 1995 that my father had died a month or two before there were reports of a neo-Nazi skinhead gang within the 82d Airborne Division, with which he had served during the Second World War. Members saluted a Nazi flag in their barracks, distributed white supremacist literature on base, and held barracks parties where they played music with lyrics about killing blacks and Jews. Two members gunned down a black couple in a random, racially motivated double murder. Do these facts invalidate the service of my father and all other veterans of the 82d, from the 1940s to now? Of course not. To turn a blind eye to the possibility, however, puts us at a risk from which Homeland Security is supposed to protect us.

Cyrano on noses

2009-03-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Dans son roman Voyage dans la lune de Cyrano de Bergerac, un des habitants de la lune parle de la vertu des grands nez dans un langage que Edmond Rostand reprend avec beaucoup de fidélité dans sa pièce, Cyrano de Bergerac.

L'originel, de Cyrano:

"...un grand nez est le signe d'un homme spirituel, courtois, affable, généreux, libéral, et que le petit est un signe du contraire."

Et puis Rostand:

"Attendu qu'un grand nez est proprement l'indice
D'un homme affable, bon, courtois, spirituel,
Libéral, courageux, tel que je suis, ..."

Or in English, in his play Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand used virtually the same language to promote the virtues of a big nose that the actual Cyrano used in his novel, Voyage dans la lune. Anthony Burgess, in his translation of the play, follows right along:

"... provided that a great nose may be an index
Of a great soul -- affable, kind, endowed
With wit and liberality and courage
And courtesy -- like mine... "

On finding bits of family history

2008-12-23T19:06:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, maybe as many as five, I heard somebody talk about "ego surfing," now more commonly referred to as Googling your name. I gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised to see my name in theatre listings and reviews. I saw a couple references to my father in historic listings of the staff of the 82d Airborne Division. I saw another Frank Moorman in North Carolina, associated with theatre; a captain Frank Moorman associated with the Royal Netherlands Air Force; and some information about the Frank Moorman on the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

I also saw this reference: "Colonel Parker Hitt describes Lieutenant Frank Moorman's approach to solving the Playfair which addresses the keyword recovery logically."

When I checked out the site, I figured out that it was a lecture about cryptogaphy and decoding, and I knew this was about my grandfather, but that was about all I knew. I copied the reference and sent it to my brother Jere, who is the only surviving member of the family who knew my Moorman grandfather, who died before I was three. I asked him if he had ever heard about this; he wrote back to say no, but he did know that grandfather worked on a calculus problem every day of his life to keep his mind sharp.

I became intrigued and, over time, poked around some more here and there. I'll write more about this in later posts. I was very glad to make these discoveries, because my father's side of the family has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. My mother talked a lot about her father and grandfather, both of whom were West Point graduates, as was my father. The Moorman side of the story was not quite so illustrious, and my father was not much interested in talking about it. There were a few tidbits here and there, but they never achieved the breadth of narratives that my mother's stories seemed to build.

Over time, I've become intrigued with the name commonality I have with my father and his father, and I've been occasionally curious about what else I might be able to learn. Oddly enough, the internet and some other sources have given some insights into this man who's always been more a shadow than anything else.

Perspective on a naval career and the presidency

2008-09-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Since I never served in the military, I suppose some people would say I have no grounds for commenting on the value of John McCain's military service in his campaign for the presidency. Since I also have no intention of voting for the man, I suppose some would say my perspective is inherently corrupt. Too bad. I'll discuss it anyway.

My father graduated from the US Military Academy in 1934. In 1942, he was signal officer for the 82d Infantry Division and remained in that position as it became an airborne division. He parachuted into Normandy, was appointed to fill in for a wounded staff officer, and remained with General Ridgway, the division commander, through the rest of the war and for most of the following ten years, even as Ridgway became Chief of Staff of the Army. Following Ridgway's retirement in 1955, Dad served as military attache to the embassy in Paris, chief of communications and electronics for SHAPE, and as commanding general for two different Army posts until his own retirement as a major general in 1965. These positions called for a high degree of diplomatic and executive leadership skills, for which he was frequently recognized and honored. They are the kind of skills that I think a US president should have. Yet Dad would have been the first and loudest to scoff at the notion that he was qualified to be president (not that he wanted the position, of course).

John McCain graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1958 and became a naval aviator. In Vietnam in 1967, he was shot down during a bombing mission, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He was held from 1967 to 1973, experiencing episodes of torture and refusing an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer; his war wounds would leave him with lifelong physical limitations. After rehabilitation for his injuries, by late 1974, McCain had his flight status reinstated and gained command of a training squadron in 1976. He later served as the Navy's liaison to the US Senate, which he identified as his entry into politics. He retired from the Navy in 1981, having already decided to run for congress.

While his liaison duties with the Senate may have provided him some basis for negotiation and working within the halls of the legislature, it is not convincing that his other naval experience necessarily gives him any of the executive or diplomatic skills that would serve him well in a presidency. The horrors of his captivity and torture provided tests of character and endurance such as few others have faced, and the years of his captivity no doubt interfered with his future as a naval leader. That experience, however, to my mind does not necessarily qualify him to be president.

Some thoughts on raising children

2007-12-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

The following is a comment I wrote on Greta Christina's blog, where she raised some questions about raising children with god. I may try to add some thoughts later, but I wanted to make sure to capture this here.

My father had read the bible as a child and could quote passages from the King James version, which he considered as much great literature as a book of religion. He also read and could quote great passages from H.L. Mencken, often to the detriment of religion. He was in the Army, and we would occasionally go to the post chapel for services, but never out of a sense of devotion or need.

His basic attitude toward most things was skepticism and irony. He had a tremendous cutting wit, which he often used to deflate pomposity and ignorance, and he was not afraid of correcting people's misquotations of the bible, Shakespeare, and other poetry that he knew. For a person in an authoritarian position in an authoritarian culture, he was amazingly unswayed by authority and was described by somebody as the only staff officer willing to argue with their commanding officer.

Yet every now and then I would see him kneel in church and rest his head on the pew ahead of him. It surprised me and seemed out of place. My mother said that he was never certain about a belief in god, sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. And I never heard her talk much about god until after Dad, to whom she was truly and beautifully devoted, had died.

One of his most common statements about raising children was that everybody should learn to make his own mistakes, which was a way of saying that we should each find our own path. Neither he nor my mother, both children of Army officers, tried to push any of their children into the Army, as people usually expect. And they did not have any religious expressions in the house or attend church regularly; Christmas and Easter were fun times to be together. We were left to figure things out for ourselves. My younger brother and I tended toward the godless, my sister toward the religious. I've raised my children to make up their own minds, though without telling them why I don't believe. They both tend toward the godless, though one of them did have a difficult time in high school and went to a church for about a month. The older one, in her mid-20s, made some comments about questioning her beliefs a year ago, but I have heard nothing further. They're both well-grounded in their own ways and seem quite capable of managing the vicissitudes that will lie ahead.

So I'm not sure that telling them why I don't believe was necessary to their upbringing. If they had asked, I would have stumbled through something that would have probably raised more questions than it answered, much the same as I would have expected if I had asked that question of my father. He probably would have asked me questions to get me to answer for myself and given me a few nuggets to think about and to laugh over, without actually committing himself either way. His goal was to get me to think for myself, just as I want my daughters to do. And I prefer that approach.

I hope this makes sense.

Twelve years

2007-09-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

I realized with some surprise this morning that today was the 12th anniversary of my father's funeral. He had died September 10, 1995 and was buried September 15. What made this somewhat meaningful is that, twice this week, I had told two people at work the same story about the day of his funeral. It was a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, and we worked with the Army chaplain to have a very basic service. The only special passages we asked for were the 23rd Psalm, "for the children," Mom had said, and the final passage from Tennyson's Ulysses, one of his favorite poems. The passage has a lot of language appropriate to comrades in arms going off together, "to sail beyond the sunset."

The story that I told was that the chaplain, as we were gathering for the funeral, came to the waiting room, signaled to me, pointed to the word "Achilles," and asked, "How do you pronounce that?" I was glad he asked, so that he got it right, though I was a little surprised. When I told Mom, she said, in a characteristic tone that those who knew her could hear, "Oh, he should know that." (I actually am not completely sure she said this. However, it makes for a good story, and I fall back on Dad's axiom, "Why spoil a good story for the sake of a few facts?".)

As I told the story, in both cases, I also talked about a line earlier in the poem, where the narrator, Ulysses, says, "This is my son, mine own Telemachus." I still cannot read that line aloud without choking, and I couldn't even finish it as I told the story. Immediately after these conversations, I wondered why I had talked about that second part, because it wasn't pertinent to the original story that I told. This morning, when I realized what the date was, it became clear.

Echoes happen. Memories, sensations, feelings sneak up on us in ways we can't explain. People who believe in deities and an afterlife may put it down to a direct connection. I don't buy that. Some level of my consciousness makes connections and evokes these mental states in ways that I do not control. There may be some purpose in it, a purpose evoked by that consciousness, not set by some outside cosmic muffin, and there may be some prodding by that consciousness to work something out or just to remember and observe a passage. It's up to me to decide where to go with that prodding, whether to use that moment to work on myself, whether to ignore it, or whether just to enjoy the momentarily intense memory of somebody who was very important to me during his life and whose presence in my life remains very prominent and important.

One more book

2007-09-04T21:50:00.001-07:00

I should add that I'm also reading Jonathan Swift's The Tale of a Tub. I've got this one on my Palm Pilot (Z22, I guess), so I forget sometimes that it's a book. I can't underline passages or write on the pages, so I wonder how much I'm retaining, and quite honestly, it's the sort of book that I'll have to read through a few times to begin to get a clearer picture of what he's doing. I get a chuckle every now and then, and I read some of the notes for some other explanation, but I know I'm missing a lot, in part also because I read it at odd moments at work, so there's not a long flow to things. Still, I'm getting it, and if I live to 140, I may be able to read it again.

When do I decide that I'm reading a book?

2007-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

I just posted "One Hell of a Gamble" and The Canterbury Tales as two books that I'm reading. I've carried Chaucer around since high school, though I actually bought a different copy at a used book sale some time ago. I have often threatened to read him, but never carried it out past a few pages of the prologue. I think I'm further along in the prologue than I have been before, but I'm not totally confident that I'm going to carry through, but there seems to be sort of drive this time than there has been before.

The history of the Cuban missile crisis was one of my daughter's college books, which has been languishing in the garage for a year or so, ready to be given away. I brought it in one night and started to read it, half a page at a time usually in the bathroom. I'm now up to p. 99 and the Bay of Pigs disaster. So I seem to be actually reading it. It's made its way out of the bathroom, to the bedside and sometimes to the dining table. Meanwhile, Doubt is languishing by the bedside, partly because I'm also trying to learn lines for a play. I love it, and I read it in short bursts, though I'm sometimes left with the feeling that I need to read all the works that she refers to. I've got some of them around, and I've started a few pages, but not gone far enough to post it on the list of what I'm reading.

Actor's choices

2007-09-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

I attended a lecture about King Lear and Cordelia at St. John's College last night. During the academic year, they have regular Friday night lectures that are for the students and open to the public. This lecture was a close study of three of the scenes in which Cordelia appears, with very specific attention to the language, choice of words and actions, and an interpretation of Cordelia's meaning to the whole play. The lecture triggered several thoughts about Lear in particular and about actor choices in general.

In Lear's last speech, after the five "Nevers," he says, "Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir." Louis Petrich, the tutor giving the lecture, said that he imagined Lear saying this to the gentleman (perhaps one of the captains listed in the script I have), rather than to anybody more specific, because, he notes, Lear never says "thank you" to Kent or Gloucester.

We took a different tack in our production (Chesapeake Shakespeare, 2006). In the final scene, Kent knelt next to me, so he undid the button and I said "thank you" to him. I also died in his arms, which has always seemed completely logical and appropriate to me, though I heard from somebody else several years ago that nobody had ever thought of that before. I doubt that, but maybe it's not the standard approach.

I also expressed gratitude or affection for the two other characters who care for Lear in the course of the play. In the storm scene, after Kent tells about the hovel, Lear says to the Fool:

Come on, my boy: how dost my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. ....
....
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.

The Fool was sitting on the step in the center of the stage, and I went up to him, wrapped my arms around him, and kissed the top of his head. It was the first sign of affection that Lear had ever displayed in the play and was a moment of clarity in the madness, of understanding that he and the Fool were in the same situation and that he felt for him, loved him.

Later, on the heath, when we come across Gloucester, who has been blinded and tried to commit suicide, Lear says,

I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester.

On that line, I broke down crying, held him in my arms (much to Kristina's dismay, because she wound up making a second tunic and washing that one every night to get the blood out of it), and kissed his forehead. Again, a moment of recognition and love.

While these do not contain the specific words "thank you," for me, they were similar in feeling to the moment with Kent at the end, when Lear recognizes him and says, "You are welcome hither," and I think the "thank you" is appropriately directed to Kent.

Thinking about this led me to think about actor choices. The decisions to embrace and kiss the Fool and Gloucester were pretty much mine as an actor; Ian as director set up the situation and the ambience that allowed these moments, but so far as I remember the specific decisions were mine. Now, obviously, if my decisions fly in the face of what the director's trying to do, he or she will speak up. It's always been my view that part of an actor's work is to try things, to make choices and explore the consequences. Some choices don't work, and I appreciate directors who let me try things a few times and then say, "maybe not." I'm usually about to come to the same decision myself. Without testing the choice, though, neither one of us would have known how well or poorly a particular action might have worked.

Playing Adam in As You Like It this past summer gave me some other opportunities to make choices that I think worked out well. Like Lear, Adam is said to be 80. Based on what I presume were general life expectancies in the Elizabethan period, I see Shakespeare's use of 80 as a kind of mythical or iconic "old guy," so I've played both characters at around my own 57-58. Adam pretty much has two major scenes. In the first, he persuades Orlando to run away from his brother's home, offers him his life savings to accomplish this flight, and begs to go along with Orlando as his servant. In the second, as they arrive in the Forest of Arden, Adam is completely exhausted and crying out that he's going to die from hunger.

If I had played Adam as a feeble old man in the first of these scenes, the second one wouldn't have been very funny. So I played him as he says in his line, "though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty." I suppose there would be an element of pathos and sympathetic humor if a feeble old man were to say that line, but I think that would undermine the following scene, which is much funnier if it overturns Adam's previous appearance.

One of the wonderful aspects of Shakespeare's plays is that they provide so many moments for actors to make choices, so many opportunities to interpret the clues in the script in different ways that can work. Of course, that also means that there is an equal number of opportunities, if not more, to make poor choices and go badly astray, but that's just as much a part of the richness of Shakespeare.

In the dark again

2007-08-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

A violent thunderstorm knocked out our power last night around a quarter to nine. After waiting for an hour or so, I called my sister, who lives on the other side of the main road into our community. She had power, as so often happens, and we were able to spend the night there and get a shower in the morning.

The last time the power went out was this past February in the midst of an ice storm, when the temperature was in the 20s. Sister put us up then, too, though it was for two nights that time, and we really needed it for more reasons than one. That's one of the nice things about having family nearby.

Rev it up

2007-08-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to get the hang of this social networking stint. Maybe some day I'll actually get into a daily habit.

For the past week, I've been rehearsing Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde with Dignity Players in Annapolis. I'm playing Carson, the attorney cross-examining Wilde in the first act. It's a typical courtroom scene, back and forth between the attorney and the witness, though this is based on actual transcripts of the trial. We run for two weekends in October.

Last week, I had three days of filming for a movie, "Crystal Fog," being directed by Steve Yeager, a Baltimore film director and teacher at Towson University. Saturday I spent working on a short film by Keith Jodoin, about a man who discovers that his wife has posted nude pictures of herself on the internet. There are a few more days to work on "Crystal Fog," and I've got another project in the offing with Keith, as well as another film about to get started next month, "Lessons Learned" by Kubla Khan Productions. A lot of film work, which is great. The next step is to get paying work.

Parts I'd like to play

2007-06-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

As indicated in my profile, I'm a part-time actor, currently performing with the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in Ellicott City, Maryland. We're doing Henry V and As You Like It in repertory (same cast in both plays). I'm playing Exeter, the king's uncle, in Henry V and Adam, the old servant, in As You Like It. After a double-header Saturday, a bunch of us went out for a drink and started talking about parts we'd love to play. Here's my list (partial, tentative):

Pozzo in Waiting for Godot
George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Prospero, Caliban, or Gonzalo in The Tempest
Sade in Marat/Sade
Any of Beckett's old men (Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, That Time, Ohio Impromptu)
M. Jourdain in le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (though I don't know if there's a good English translation)
Claudius in Hamlet
Duke in Measure for Measure

The only musical that really interests me is Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

Others may come to mind, but that's it for now.

Limits of persuasiveness

2007-05-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

A recurring theme in some atheist writings is an attempt to prove by logic, rational discussion, or scientific demonstration that gods don't exist. It seems to me that the only people who could be swayed by this kind of argument are those about ready to make their own decision or who are in some state of advanced doubt and are open to accepting a logical, rational, scientific view. Those who are solid in their faith would be impervious to any such efforts, because the mental state and process of faith probably just does not recognize the mental state and process of science, and vice-versa.

A useful area of inquiry, perhaps already pursued in ways I don't know about, would seem to be how we come to the state of mind that orients us in one way or another. My sister and I were raised by the same parents, under the same circumstances, with a six-year age difference between us. My father had read the Bible in his youth, pretty much as everybody else had, and understood it both as dogma or faith, depending on his frame of mind, and as literature. He was also well-read in other areas of Western literature. He had also studied mathematics, engineering, electronics, and other sciences and was well read in those fields as well. For the last 20-25 years of his life, he studied French and Spanish language and literature. He had a wry sense of humor and a wonderful ironic attitude toward most human behavior. He sometimes went to church, mostly the chapels on Army posts, and delivered some intelligent, thoughtful, and sometimes wry chapel services at the boarding school where he taught for eight years after retiring from the Army. Over the course of his life, he probably vacillated among various levels of belief. My mother pretty much followed his lead, though she did tell me once that I should probably read the Bible, because it contains a lot of wisdom. After my father died, I was surprised to hear her make references to god in a way that suggested some level of belief; she never became a church-goer, though.

So from that common background, how do my sister and I head in opposite directions? I have always been inclined toward skepticism and non-belief, and she told me once, when I was surprised to learn that she had become a regular church-goer, that she had always believed there was something out there, though she could not have quoted one dogma over another. I think we were fortunate that our parents let us find our own way and that we were free of pressure from other directions. Or at least I was, and I certainly have never heard my sister say she was pressured one way or another.

I will say that, while she has been an active member of her church for the 25 or more years she's been attending, she does have critical judgments about some of their positions on various social issues and about the hypocrisy of other christians. And I am open to what I can only call spiritual understandings and experiences that cannot be explained or captured by the tools and mindset of science. The two of us have had some fascinating conversations, in which we agree on the same topic from different perspectives.

Somewhere in the past, though, we each made a choice at some level of consciousness about our future directions. At some point, we probably said out loud, here is what I believe and the path I will follow. When is that moment? How deeply rooted is the decision? What does it take to shift it? Until we understand those, I don't think we could truly change people on such deeply held beliefs. At the same time, I don't think we should, though I am completely in favor of rationally presenting information for a view alternative to the more pervasive views of religion and faith.

On not taking myself seriously

2007-05-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

One of the great lessons in and examples of not taking oneself seriously is the novel Tristram Shandy, which starts out with the narrator scolding his parents for not paying more attention to what they were doing when they conceived him. He blames at least part of his problems on his mother distracting her husband with a question about the clocks while they were conceiving him, that is, fucking. The novel then goes off on some wild tangents of not taking itself seriously, yet obviously being a very serious work.

So, I wonder, what might my parents have been thinking about when they conceived me? I'm going to assume that they were completely wrapped up in each other, since conception occurred within a couple months of their marriage, and they were of a school to have not fucked prior to marriage, or to have used that particular Anglo-Saxon word of eminent heritage. If my own experience is any guide, it was probably a sweaty operation, since I'm going to assume they were under the blankets. Certainly, internally, it was sweaty, as his stiffness slid into her slickness and emitted the viscous substance that would combine with her substance to create that which is now, nearly 59 years later, is sitting at a keyboard, invading their privacy and modesty.

My mother looked on sex as something beautiful to be reserved for marriage. While she recognized that the world had changed and did not inquire into the behavior of her children, she believed that something was lost by the greater indulgence that seemed more the norm for our generations. My father tended not to talk about bodily functions of any kind except in oblique and usually well phrased witty references that would deflect more than attract attention.

I have no idea what might have been on my mind when I conceived my children. I like to think that I was attentive to their mother, and I do know that I sometimes played mind games with myself in order to delay, probably not terribly successfully, ejaculation. Our mind frame as a couple had certainly changed in the three years between the two children, and it's amusing, though relatively useless, to consider whether the mental framework may have contributed to their personalities, along with all the other factors they were subjected to in and out of utero.

To my children, if you ever find these pages, I'm sorry if my mental state contributed negatively to your personality and the gifts you received at conception. And let me be happy for the positive contributions my mental state may have made. In either case, I wish you strength in overcoming what you need to overcome.

Be serious -- or not

2007-05-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

I really need to get over myself. I take myself way too seriously. I just read this in The Onion, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan:

Let me make one thing clear right off the bat: I started my blog because I needed an outlet for my thoughts and feelings during the 2004 elections, not for the prestige and loyal readership it might bring me. I just needed a personal creative space where I could jot some things down that someone might be able to Google.

(Here's the whole thing, in case you're bored with me: http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/if_someone_wanted_to_publish_my)

Maybe it's my half-French childhood, this notion that everything I say has to be meaningful, a path toward understanding myself or something beyond myself, providing insight for the rest of the world. That can be such a hampering attitude -- and probably belongs in the hamper. I just need to relax and have fun with myself, at least in a form other than what I do while lying alone in the morning before getting up.

I'm not even sure I really care if anybody Googles me or this content. Hard to think why they would. I should just play with words and see what happens. By chance, today, I forgot to bring my journal, which I often carry back and forth from home on the off chance that I might think of something worth writing down. Pages stay blank for a long time, and, truth be known, much of what fills them up these days is repetition of what filled them up weeks, months, and years ago. Just a variation on playing with another part of myself: the same stuff comes out.

That's about as meaningful as I feel right now, so bye.

Andrew Sullivan has some good meaning, some of which I agree with, most of which leads me to think, when I give myself permission. Try him from time to time.

Here I am / Me voici

2006-12-19T14:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure where I'm going to go with this blog, which I suppose is as good a reason as any to create one. It may just be a place to develop thoughts -- or whine -- and see, what if any, reaction these generate. I'm willing to see where it goes and follow it down any paths I don't expect.

The title comes from a way I've often described my state of mind for the past few years, although the pieces that I feel myself to be between change. It's how I described myself for a year or so after my mother died, though I had felt that way before she died and continue to feel that way now, even thought I don't think it honest to relate the continuing feeling to her death. And I put it in two languages, because I spent half my childhood in France and have often felt myself to be between two cultures, US and French. There are some parts I really like about each, and some things about each that amuse me or irritate me. At the moment, France has taken the lead, largely because I'm deeply pissed off about the direction my native country has chosen on so many levels. I'm still here, though, and not likely (or able) to run away quite yet. So I'll puzzle out being in-between.

Sometimes, when I'm in the mood, I'll write some entries in French, and if that leaves you out of the loop, provided anybody shows up in the loop, you'll just have to stay there for a while, because I'm not all that likely to do running translations.

Oh well, more later. This is at least a toe-dip in the pool. Laissons voir ce qui se passera.