Despite the cold this evening, I went in search of Puppet Bike — and the owl and tiger were performing, with disco ball, hanging light, and everything. I gave the little guys most of my lunch money. I shouldn’t be eating anyway. My fingers froze painfully, but it was worth it.
When I walked in tonight, the living room was bright with full moonlight. I love that. It’s been a while.
Tonight, I downloaded and installed phpBB3 and converted the phpBB2 database. This doesn’t sound like much, but databases and MySQL are not my strength. (What is remains debatable.)
I’ve loaded more than 200 photos onto the electronic photo frame that was my Christmas gift from J. I’m really coming to appreciate it more, even though many of the photos carry unhappy and painful memories and associations.
My second Steiff tiger puppet arrived today If I’m not careful, I may end up talking to them . . .
So far, January does not bode well for the rest of year.
– I, along with millions, have lost a large proportion of money through the vagaries of the markets. Think long term . . . although I wonder if it gets any better long term, considering all the long-term trouble looming out there. I’ve got to stop being such an optimist.
– While looking up Web sites talking about seasonal affective disorder (SAD) for a little project, I felt more and more depressed. I am tired of being empathic.
– Due to a fluke incident, the anti-reflective coating on my backup pair of glasses started to break down, which makes everything seen through them have a halo (except most politicians). They are not much use any more.
– I bought a defective coffee pot that I can’t seem to get returned.
– My two-month-old shoes that, strangely for me, both look okay and are comfortable, are falling apart.
– I accidentally gave myself a nice gash along the side of my left foot. It smarted a bit, but I didn’t realize it meant business until I noticed the blood on the floor and my hands a few minutes later.
– I vacuumed up a lanyard, which caused an interesting burning odor. Fortunately, it stopped when I retrieved the lanyard’s remnants from the vacuum, which seems to have survived.
– I woke up one morning chewing plastic, which turned out to be the corner of the night guard I’d bitten off. Better than tooth enamel (the reason I got the night guard).
– I floss every day, yet the dental hygienist seemed skeptical and still spent more than 45 minutes digging around and causing bursts of exquisite agony. “Oh, that was a bit of tartar near the root. It came right off, though.”
– I’ve been sick. It’s better now, but it’s turned into something lingering and depressing.
– Sometimes I think that if I fell asleep and didn’t wake up, I could live with that.
For someone who jokingly calls herself a pretentious dilettante, I’m not very good at being one. Despite my appreciation of music, I have never liked ballet or opera. If pressed to articulate why not, I might say that both seem to me to be very artificial forms of expression. I like music, I like dance, and I like song, but when music is combined with song or dance and a story, it loses its connection to life as I know it and becomes a pretense, like much of the modern art that holds no appeal for me, either.
That can’t be the full explanation, however, as I do love a good stage or movie musical, and seven mountain men dancing at a barn raising or a silent film star singing and dancing with his umbrella partner aren’t realism, either. I’m also fond of symbolism, allegory, myth, and things that go bump in the night, that is, I’m not limited to the realism category.
There’s also the troublesome fact that I’ve seen one ballet (The Nutcracker, many years ago, when my employer provided us with free tickets) and no opera except for brief bits on TV, so my dislike has been based more on theory than on experience.
A friend who is an opera fan and Lyric season ticket holder had bought these tickets in addition to her subscription series. She thought that her husband might like a break from the opera, especially since Doctor Atomic is a modern opera, which generally is not to his taste.
Who am I to turn down a $176 ticket that I couldn’t afford to see something I’ve never seen?
I liked it. I would have liked an hour or so less of it better, I admit. Nearly three and one-half hours of sitting, with one break, tests my powers of physical endurance. Still, I liked it.
Doctor Atomic is the story of the race to build and test the “Gadget,” a discordantly innocuous name for the A-bomb. With a few exceptions, Peter Sellars adapted his libretto from the quotations and writings of the participants, as well as excerpts from poetry.
The scientists are headed by Renaissance man J. Robert Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley, baritone), who loves and quotes the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, while General Leslie Groves (Eric Owens, bass-baritone) leads the military. They were an odd pair in more than the obvious ways; during the project Oppenheimer’s weight dropped to less than 100 pounds, while General Groves’ photos reveal a distinct portliness that stretches his uniform to its limits. In Doctor Atomic, the testy general, concerned that Oppenheimer is going to have a breakdown, sings ruefully about his lifelong weight issues and his diet journal, in which he records transgressions such as two brownies and three pieces of chocolate cake.
Oppenheimer’s foil is Hungarian scientist Edward Teller (Richard Paul Fink, baritone), a cynic whose humor is black (before the test, he offers the team suntan lotion) and whose position is ambivalent. Pacifist Robert Wilson (Thomas Glenn, tenor) anticipates the 1960s activist, with his petition demanding that at the least Japan be warned of what is being planned.
On the principle that behind every good man is a woman, and behind every good opera is a soprano, Kitty Oppenheimer (Jessica Rivera) brings a human counterpoint to her husband’s outwardly stoic determination to complete the Gadget and the test. Meredith Arwady (contralto) plays Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer’s Indian nurse whose deepest tones seem wrenched from the heart of the earth mother herself. Military meteorologist Jack Hubbard (James Maddalena, baritone) offers most of the little comic relief as General Groves demands better weather conditions and threatens the junior officer with insubordination for refusing to promise to provide it.
Absurd as the general’s orders are, they are no more so than the very concept of an opera based on the development of the A-bomb seems to be. On the other hand, what better or bigger subject for an American opera? Like Frankenstein and other stories of man’s exploration of god-like powers, Doctor Atomic hovers between the genius of creation and the ethics of destruction. Oppenheimer understands the awesome power of the idea that he must make concrete, but disingenuously leaves it to the “men in Washington” and their wisdom to decide whether to unleash the bomb’s powers. These are enormous themes, carried over from the nineteenth century’s fascination with science; defining much of twentieth century life with its Cold War fears and anxieties; and seeping into the twenty-first century, when it is no longer just “men in Washington” and their communist counterparts but mad tyrants and terrorists whose fingers may hover over the nuclear button.
Oppenheimer, who dubs the test “Trinity,” calls upon the three-personed God of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:
BATTER my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. ***** Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
It takes poetry from throughout the ages, from the Bhagavad Gita to John Donne to Muriel Rukeyser, to address the timelessness and power of creation and destruction and man’s responsibility for both. Even as Oppenheimer, Teller, and Wilson grapple with ethics and expediency, targets are being identified for the “psychological impact” their destruction will have on the Japanese people — and on the watching world. Even as the team waits for the weather to clear, they cannot be certain that Trinity won’t burn off the Earth’s entire atmosphere. Somehow it is a risk that must be taken.
In the opera’s only romantic scene, Kitty Oppenheimer seems to represent the creative (and neglected) power of sex, while in Act II she seems driven to near-madness by visions of destruction (Rukeyser: “In the flame-brilliant midnight, promises arrive, singing to each of use with tongues of flame . . .”), even as Pasqualita, an Indian Gaia, nurtures her and her children — the future. Kitty quotes Rukeyser:
Those who most long for peace now pour their lives on war Our conflics carry creation and its guilt . . .
Pasqualita, quoting Rukeyser, is prophetic:
The winter dawned, but the dead did not come back. News came on the frost, “The dead are on the march!”
Doctor Atomic ends on what appears to be an anticlimax. The ensemble stretches out in self-defensive positions, much as children of the 1960s were taught do during air raid drills, save for two technicians who monitor the instruments. The test goes off quietly, leaving in its wake an intact atmosphere and a woman’s voice speaking in Japanese. We know what happened. Or do we? The history of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy is not yet over, and their legacy is not yet known.
As might be expected, the staging is stark, and so is the music. There are no lush orchestral moments, and little soprano and tenor brightness. The music is arrhythmic, somewhat discordant in places, and thoroughly modern. Various instruments are used as voices, and the singers are used as instruments, occasionally struggling a bit with what John Adams’ composition calls upon their voices to do. Conductor Robert Spano, whose intense face I could see clearly from my fourth-row seat, holds the orchestra together nicely throughout the nearly three and one-half hours.
I am not sure that Doctor Atomic has made me love opera, especially as it suffers from two faults that I associate with the art form — it is overly long and it is overwrought. I liked it, however, and to be fair in my judgment I will need to experience a more traditional production — one whose music and arias may stir my emotions as Doctor Atomic stimulated my intellect and interest in the fate of humanity.
Doctor Atomic Music: John Adams Libretto and direction: Peter Sellars
Site A, where the world’s first nuclear reactor is buried August 23, 2020
I feel like I have lived in three or four climates in the past few days.
On Sunday, I left Regenstein Library at about 4:30 p.m. It was warm enough to walk the 1.3 mile comfortably, which would give me an opportunity to stop at Parker’s Pets. Hodge needs more toys like I need more cat bite scars, but I wanted to see the store, and every moment he spends biting toys is a moment not spent biting me.
As I looked around the sky seemed odd. It wasn’t right. Something about the feeling that it gave me reminded me of my dreams in which I’m at home, in my bedroom, looking out over the sunlit woods and field, and yet I am disturbed to find that this post-dawn light is shining at 10 p.m. A sensation that an apocalypse is night come over me, yet I convince myself that this is normal, that this is the way things are meant to be.
It was about the time of sunset, and the western sky was completely obscured by a very black, low-hanging cloud that seemed disingenuously ominous. To the east, the sky was as weirdly white and bright. At a time when the western sky should be filled with light and the eastern sky should be darkening, the reverse was true, and I felt odd and disoriented in time and space as I walked away from western darkness to eastern brightness, away from the sun and toward the light.
After the 0 degree F temperatures of last week, thermometers here hit 60 degrees F Monday. There was lightning when I left work, which has happened before in January but is disconcerting at this time of year. It seemed to be a distant storm, with very little thunder. For hours, sheets of lightning sporadically lit the sky over Indiana and Lake Michigan. On the bus and later, after midnight, I saw the lightning mainly from the corner of my eye, which sometimes made me wonder if I had seen it at all.
Tuesday morning was cooler, but still warm, with wind and rain. When I first looked out the window, I could see little through the rain and fog. It was clear when I poured coffee. It was foggy when I took the empty cup to the kitchen. It was clear when I got dressed. When I finally stepped outside, it was foggy again despite the wind.
By the time I arrived at Hyatt Center, there was a brief, faint hint of sunlight in the southern sky. After months of unbroken clouds and oppressive skies, even diffuse sunshine seemed as alien to me as the dream of 10 p.m. light. It also reminded me that spring must return someday, with its own varieties of disturbing weather — snow, rain, cold, heat, wind, storms, floods, and the soft sunshine of happiness, the light that puts life into perspective.
I’ll be waiting.
Note added 10 January 2008: The sun was spotted briefly at sunrise today, although the clouds quickly consumed it. It is reassuring to know that it is still there in its many-splendored glory.
(After I wrote this, a friend took the following video on New Year’s Day, showing Hodge with his fleecy green friend.)
Sunday morning I was walking around while brushing my teeth with my 10-year-old Sonicare, which sometimes aggravates Hodge (the sound? the walking around?). I wasn’t thinking about Hodge at all when suddenly his furry body slammed into my legs. All I felt were fur and muscle — not a hint of anything hard or sharp, like teeth. I take this as a sign of the progress we have made since 2002.
In addition to fear aggression, two of Hodge’s behaviors mystify me. One involves standing on a soft object (cat bed, blanket, or pillow, for example) and lifting his right front foot, then his left front foot, then his right front foot, over and over, for as long as 15 minutes. As he does this, the expression on his feline face varies from deep concentration to inner pain. It doesn’t seem to be enjoyable, yet I’m not certain it’s right for me to distract him and get him to stop when he doesn’t seem to want to. Or is he not able to?
I had never witnessed Pudge engaged in this activity, so I mentioned it to K., who has more experience with more cats than I have. She nodded and said that she’d seen Morpheus doing the very thing I had described. One evening during my stay, she directed my attention to the other sofa, where Morpheus was standing on a blanket, lifting one front foot after the other, looking thoughtful and even pained. Unlike Hodge, Morpheus has claws, and it’s hard to guess whether this behavior is related to the feet alone.
In addition, Hodge has a toy to which he is either mother or master — I can’t tell which. It’s a foot-long, faux fleece green caterpillar that he drags around and even brings to my feet repeatedly when the mood strikes him. Sometimes, he grasps one end of it with his mouth and steps on it with his feet deliberately even as he tries to walk off with it. From my perspective, he looks mentally impaired as he tries to drag his fleecy friend along while pinning it down firmly. This, too, can go on for quite a while. It’s funny, yet frustrating, to observe.
When Hodge does manage to walk around with the green guy in his mouth, he sometimes vocalizes in a way that I’ve not heard from him in any other circumstance. It’s a loud cry that sounds more like a mother’s than a predator’s. His facial expression seems to be more of concentration and concern than triumph, although I suppose he could be thinking about where to hide his “victim” from others. I can’t imagine maternal feelings in a neutered dominant male. Given the idea that cats see people inconveniently sized, socially inept cats, I wonder if the caterpillar is prey — and if its arrival at my feet is intended as some kind of love-offering. In that case, I must be a disappointment to Hodge, as I do not accept in graciously in the same spirit in which it is offered.
Perhaps I am the one whose behavior is mysterious and disturbing.
