Game of Thrones: The High Sparrow

It was Renoir who said, "the pain passes, but the beauty remains." Renoir obviously had never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. And though I believe George R.R. Martin had released at least the first book during Renoir's life time, sadly, we have no proof that he read that either. If the last season of Thrones was largely about villains starting to get their comeuappance whether it be by wine or crossbow bolt on the privy then you might hope as a viewer that this season would start to be about redemption for the Stark clan. However, this episode through some shade on the idea that Arya and Sansa 2.0 were going to have an easy road to redemption. (This is only partially true of Jon Snow, who has such beautiful hair from the first episode that we knew things were going to turn out okay).

Though the first two episodes were good this was the first episode where I started to feel at home again, and I realized it was because this was an episode about the Starks. It's a testament to Eddard Stark that his ghost and legacy still haunt the show. Whether it's one of his former banner men being flayed by good old Ramsey Bolton, or his daughter coming home to roost in Winterfell, the episode felt full of the legacy of Eddard Stark, and I haven't even gotten to Jon Snow, who's beautiful hair is the real hero of this show.

The episode begins with the trials and tribulations of Cersei. Though she's been promised that she'll be replaced by a younger and more beautiful woman the replacement happens quickly as Tommen and Margery are wed within the first five minutes. From there Margery begins to work her uh, magic on Tommen, subtly pushing Cersei out the door. Despite knowing that she'll be replaced, Cersei, ever the grasper, isn't going without a fight. She aligns herself with religious fanatics known as the sparrows. A wise move reminiscent of the classical power moves that played throughout Europe for hundreds of years. Guess who found religion? The woman who was about to lose all her power. (A special thanks to the GOT staff for inserting a random scene of many naked bodies. Why else would people tune in week to week? For character development and plot?)

The power struggle between Margery and Cersei is more complicated than first blush would have us believe. It is GOT after all. Cersei sends a raven to Littlefinger, who is busy marrying Sansa off to the Bolton's, and Littlefinger says that the new queen loves Sansa. Littlefinger knows that his switching of allegiances is a risk, (a risk that seems even more steep when Stannis Baratheon is about to descend on the North) but it also seems like a risk to assume that Margery's love of anyone will stop her from consolidating power. She's no Olenna for witticisms, but she's certainly as power hungry as Cersei, but she uses honey where Cersei uses wine.

People who have both read the books and watched the show have cataloged the ways in which Brienne's story in the books has been like watching grass grow only slightly less interesting. This episode gives us a glimpse into her past and her allegiance to Renly Baratheon. It was kind of like the ball in Cinderella if the prince had wound up fancying men and the girl had been the least pretty girl in the room, so pretty much like Cinderella. Podrick gets a brief back story, yet another reminder of Tywin's kindness.

Here's where things get knotty. Or rather, they are always knotty on GOT. Brienne wants to kill Stannis, who wants to kill Roose Bolton, who has now married his son to Sansa, who Brienne wants to protect, Cersei thinks she is in league with Littlefinger and theoretically with the Bolton's, and Littlefinger is now in league with the Bolton's instead. It appears that everyone is headed for disappointment.

But not quite the disappointment of Sansa Stark, who is being wed to Ramsey Bolton. Ramsey, who yes spent a season torturing poor Theon, but who also, let's be honest, looks almost exactly like a hobbit. I keep waiting for him to ask about Levensees or to complain about his big feet on the long walk. Someone needs to give that actor a haircut or a part in the 85 part Simillarion that Peter Jackson is directing. This particular choice doesn't exactly have the ring of truth. It seems unlikely that Sansa would be willing to commit herself to marriage, even with vague promises of revenge from Littlefinger. I'm not entirely sure what she's going to do in the home of a bunch of sado-masochists. Even Sansa 2.0 feels a bit overmatched. Though we did have that lovely moment of the servant saying, "Welcome home. The North remembers." And Sansa gazing around her childhood home now turned into something else. It's heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, Arya is sweeping floors and exchanging slaps in the House of Black and White. It turns out that a man is interesting when he's silently assassinating everyone with his roguish good looks, but less charming when he's washing dead bodies to inhabit them like a ghoul. It seems like her training is going to move quickly, which is good because it's not particularly interesting. It turns out that sword fighting and exchanging pithy quotes is more exciting than sweeping floors in silence. Who knew? Of course, Arya also had her come to Stark moment, shedding herself of her sword and her belongings. If Sansa if finally coming home to exact revenge, Arya is leaving hers behind in an effort to accomplish the same. It was moving to watch her drop needle into the River Styxx and reenter the death house.

There's a brief visit to see what Tyrion and Varus are up to. And wouldn't you know it, the two of them wind up in the same whore house as our old friend Ser Jorah. I'm  happy to see him back on the show after he was pushed out of the scene by younger women on Downton Abbey and GOT. Now he does the only thing you can do to get yourself back into the good graces of a woman: by kidnapping someone and binding them with rope.

Of the Starks in this episode only one seemed to follow the hero's journey.((Props again to Kit Harrington for turning in his best acting performance as the role has grown) This usually ends in death in GOT, but at least he's had five good seasons! Jon Snow turns down the offer to be made into a Stark and then sets about ruling his men after a charming chat with one of my favorites, the Onion Knight. The Onion Knight tells Jon that Stannis sees something in Jon and warns him that leaving the Bolton's as commanders of the north is also not protecting the people. How is Jon supposed to keep the wall safe from ice zombies and march south on the Bolton's? I'm not sure. But I am sure that we are to feel the echoes of the very first episode when Jon lops Lord Janus's head off in a cloak that mirrors Ned's in the first season. As the first real moment on the show, it's easy to see and feel the resonances as Jon pronounces his sentence and then carries it out with aplomb. There is no time for mercy to the weak. Perhaps he will succeed where Lord Stark failed? We can only hope...and then watch him get roasted by dragons or something. 

In Santa Barbara

In Rome, we read from two different guide books. The blue guide book said we should go to the Spanish Steps after the Pantheon. The Pantheon it said was not built by Agrippa. The other guide book, with a lion's brass knocker pictured squarely in front, didn't tell us to go anywhere. It was merely a laundry list of things in Rome: here lie monk's bones, here lies an old church, this is where you'll find the Forum.

We found the Forum on a day that was blisteringly hot. The best spot was above the forum, where the silver hued leaves of an olive tree offered an umbrella of shade. We ate a loaf of French Bread and goat cheese while consulting the blue guide book. You can't write about a city like Rome without thinking of the past. The landscape is suffused with it, like the scent of honeysuckle come summer.

There was a time, years earlier, when I'd have not cared to travel to Rome. I was living out West then in a city by the water. Back then I lived in a house with strangers. A couple of us were involved, but the women were a thousand or so miles away. Most nights we'd come home from work and watch television. It was a reality dating show, the intricacies of which stretch far beyond the scope of this essay. The general gist of it was, four women competing for the attention of one man over the course of one evening. Or as I would call an evening like that: a short trip into hell. And what a more learned person might call--remaining narrative hegemony of the patriarchy.

I remember a particular episode of this show as my favorite. I don't remember if I watched it with my room mates or not. Two of them were physics students, one of whom worked at Lockheed Martin in a job where he was hated, and a few months back they'd scrawled equations all over the glass on the back door. The equations had remained there ever since, a testament to their intelligence and reluctance to clean up a damn mess. Anyhow, the contestant was a fire man, solidly built with close cropped blond hair. He was also, as I recall, deeply, almost incoherently stupid. Now, the particular joy of this date is that the traditional narrative is upended. By the end of the show, after repeatedly being asked to show him why they wanted to stay, the remaining two girls eliminate themselves from the date, and the firemen stands in a club with bubbles on the floor wondering where it had all gone wrong.

The wild nights we had back then mostly revolved around Charles Shaw. The famous two dollar wine that Trader Joe's stocked by the case. On the particularly lonely nights, I'd buy a bottle of Shaw, a Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon and get driven around the city by one of my less inebriated room mates. The harbor is dark at night, but for the white sail boats being rocked by the ocean as children in the arms of their mothers. In the far distance were the bright lights of oil tankers, grinding away at the ocean floor and looking like nothing so much as carnival ships. In college, a particularly built guy had tried to swim out to them on a whim. He wound up with a collapsed lung.

Why didn't we go out to bars where at least we could have pretended we weren't alone? Those drives along the back streets of Santa Barbara had the affect of making me briefly feel as though I wasn't alone, the ocean wavering, the whole world wavering under the influence of cheap wine. Those drives didn't really work. I went home and swam into my bed, a thin mattress on a hard floor. I remember a green carpet but memory is faulty. And once I'd entered my dreams I kept swimming towards a light that was far, far above me. I took stroke after stroke after stroke as I'd been taught since I was very young. Just keep moving toward the light. And then like that I'd wake up, sleeping the fitful sleep of the drunk, lying in a dark room, wondering where the light had gone.

I wanted to write today. I've no earthly clue what you wanted to do today, but I'm guessing that it wasn't write. What was it? Write it in the comments section? What was it that you wanted to do today? This evening, in the glaring light of our basement my mom said that she'd always wanted to be a writer. Naturally the question came to me. I'd spent the evening drinking Prosecco, sampling whiskey, and passing on beer. I was giving most questions either the answer of: spend time with my mother, life is ephemeral and meaningless, or I want to be on a space shuttle to Mars. This one I chose to answer truthfully after some argument about the semantics of be. What did you want to be? I think I talked about the proto-capitalist model of being identified with career as though the two were synonymous. Eventually, I came around though, mostly to spite people by actually answering a question honestly, "What did you want to be at 20?" my brother asked. I took a sip of beer, Purple Haze, not as an affectation in a story but as an affectation of life, "I don't know what I wanted to be at twenty," I answered truthfully, "Just like now."

There are uncomfortable kinds of truths and uncomfortable kinds of wisdom. It'd be convenient if we all saw the world through the same lens. We don't though, and so playing a game can sometimes become yet another way of seeing the world from a different perspective. I don't want to be anything other than me, which is both the song lyric of  Gavin DeGraw song, who is not a noted song writer, and a bit of ugly truth. I've no desire to be or to become. Forget becoming.  I am who I am.

Game of Thrones: The House of Black and White

Game of Thrones: The House of Black and White

At its best, GOT seasons begin like a pile of Legos. The first few episodes are spent putting small pieces together in a way that can occasionally be frustrating, but, in general, Theon torture porn aside, the final product tends to feel as if it has been constructed with a user’s manual that you just didn’t have access to. Of course, readers of the books will point out that that’s exactly the way the show has been constructed because it had such strong source material. And now that we’re starting to venture North of the Wall, contracting or getting rid of whole bits of Martin’s narrative, I wonder what the final structure of Season 5 will look like.

One of the chief elements that’s missing from this season of GOT is villainy. We’re down Joffrey, one of the all-time greats, and Tywin, the master of all, and the Bolton’s are presumably on a family vacation on the Iron Islands posting Instagrams of one another, so it’s hard to find someone to really hate. Cersei seems to be a lynch pin for this season, but she’s so careless and rude that she’s already lost her chief ally in the new head of the Lannister household, Kevan. Really, Kevin? After all the names of Tyrion and Tywin etc. someone is named Kevan? Anyhow, I’m wondering when we’ll get another scene of the White Walkers, who are the ur villain hanging like the Sword of Damocles over the petty fights of the people in King’s Landing.

Or maybe this season will be about the continuing evolution of characters like Arya and Sansa, or Jaime. Perhaps the season will be a bit more about the thin line that lies between an evil and a good character. It’s worth taking an  aside here to honor the show for having no nudity for one whole episode, thank goodness an ample number of nights had their heads split open or I don’t know how I’d be feeling. This show might as well be on CBS.

The episode begins in a natural place, with the other Stark sister gone bad, Arya, sailing across the sea on her way to find Jaqan H’gar. When last we left Arya she was sitting in the dark reciting the names of people she’d like to kill and sneaking away from the kind Hound and extremely tall Brienne in search of assassins. I think we all wish she’d spent most of her life fighting with the dancing master from Braavos reciting lines like, what do we say to death? Not today. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. The ship’s captain tells the story of how a Titan, the giant statue guarding the city, roars to life when the city is threatened. And, after dragons and children throwing fire and men who are seated in trees. In short, is this going to end with dragons fighting titans fighting ice zombies? If so, can we get Peter Jackson vs. Guillermo Del Toro vs. Quentin Tarantino to direct it and dispense with all those crummy characters and just get to giant swordsman swatting at dragons while ice zombies swarm around? No. Okay. Fine.

Arya sails through Braavos only to discover that she’s accidentally in Venice. Awkwardly, the captain takes her to Saint Mark’s Cathedral. At the house of Black and White a strange man opens the door and shoos Arya away. Except, hey Arya, we all remember that Jaquan can change faces. Well, maybe not all. She spends the night outside chanting the names of people she’d like to kill. At some point this habit is going to cost her some invites to birthdays, before making her way through the city to kill pigeons. Only now she’s great at it. See. Things are looking up! Eventually Jaquan arrives to protect her from a gang of thugs who looked like they might break into song, and she ends up back at the house of Black and White, preparing to become nothing. Forgive me if I’m not excited about the prospects of that sweet child turning into a nameless and faceless assassin. I think I might be the only one.

The world’s most meh journey continued with Brienne self-loathing and Podrick romancing his way through the forest. Of course, this time Brienne, (Yay, take that book readers. She actually sees the girls in the show….even if it doesn’t amount to anything) finds Sansa and is able to convince her of…well, nothing. She does cleave some heads from bodies first though, which is always a relief.

From there we go to King’s Landing where Cersei is out and about charming every one in sight. And by charming everyone I mean ordering everyone around. Jaime heads off to retrieve their daughter, and I can only hope that he grows out his hair. However, most importantly, he snags Bronn, who we all miss like our first loves, to accompany him along the way. This duo could rival The Hound and Arya for sheer fun.

We drop off in Dorne to briefly remind everyone that Dorne is a place where sunshine and happiness reign supreme. Well, except that one lady who wants to bring rack and ruin on everyone in the 7 kingdoms. She seems less peacable. In general though, things seem fine. Although the king is staring off into the distance thinking of peace, which in the GOT verse tends to mean that he’s about to be killed, probably by braining with a stone by his nephew or something.

In Mereen, things are kind of happening? Okay. I get that nothing is happening, and I kind of wish Dany could have had a more gradual path to this standstill. However, Martin has done a rather nice job of reimagining the American standstill in Iraq. How do you govern a people in a new way when they are used to something entirely different? Things don’t change overnight now do they? It doesn’t help when you lop off people’s heads, but I guess you have to try something. On the bright side her episode ends as it must, with dragons. Speaking of names, the dragon who came back is actually named Dragon. Maybe there is an extra o. Point is, she could have tried harder, I guess she was naked and not on fire, so she wasn’t thinking. Anyhow, these dragons aren’t quite Sleeth, but they are more than we could expect from a cable drama. Now how long until they set fire to everything?

Cersei continues to set up her small council. Bringing on the rain doctor who is planning to put a dwarf’s head on Gregor Klegane? Am I the only one who’s excited for Gregor 2.0? I bet he turns out to be really sweet. I’d say this is a joke…except we’re actually trying a head transplant in the real world.

Up North Jon Snow is busy getting elected Lord Commander. Wait, what? How is he going to get to Dany and marry her to unite the two hero’s journeys? Sigh. I guess he’ll fly Dragon the dragon. Honestly, I didn’t expect this move, and though it sets him up as the lead defender against the inevitable ice zombie attack. It also potentially waylays him with politics and machinations at the wall. I don’t want to watch two seasons of Sir Allisair trying to undermine him while shoveling pig dung. We’ll see.

All in all, Black and White house was a solid hour of television. The scene in King’s Landing and on the road with Sir Jaime are coming into view and Jon Snow’s legend continues to grow at the wall. What it’s all leading to this season is unclear to me. But I have faith. The show hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

Game of Thrones: The Wars To Come

 

The most exciting show on television is back, and it's just as, well, confusing as ever. I don't mean that as a slight. Rather, I'd forgotten before last night's episode just how big the world of GOT is. Most shows can only drum up two to three main leads, and then put a bunch of ancillary characters around them. GOT is operating at a different level of time and space. This show is big.

Of course, one of the things that also happens on this show is that as the universe expands, it contracts. For instance, by Bran, we'll see you next season. Remember Rikkon and Osha and Shaggy Dog? That actor probably has a beard by now. Remember when the small council in King's landing was Littlefinger, Tyrion, Varus, Tywin and Maester Pycell with Joffrey prancing round the room? Anyhow, goodbye to all that.

The first episodes of the prior seasons have generally served as an after dinner palate cleanser before the dessert of the new season. The show hasn't really advanced plots beyond the speed of that tortoise racing Achilles. Rather, they've often spent time saying, "Hey, remember this show you were watching ten months ago, intently? Neither do we. Here's what was happening." Well, that idea has mostly gone out the window in the new season of thrones. Rather, they gave us a two minute intro that reminded us of what I'll charitably say are the key points of the show. This made for a pleasing hour of television. Although, as someone who didn't binge watch the prior season in preparation, I did have to use my brain a bit to reconstruct puzzle pieces, "oh yeah, Littlefinger has Sansa, or, what happened to Sandor Klegane?" Etc. Etc. Enough throat clearing.

The sprawling nature of the show can still leave your head spinning at the variety of locales and characters we have to check in with in a scant hour. The show opens with a young, and petulant, surprise, Cersei Lannister going to visit a witch as a pre-teen. After threatening the poor woman with death, surprise, Cersei has her fortune read and doesn't get all good news. Other than the first few moments when I was wondering if they'd changed Osha's character into someone else, I thought it was an odd choice. Until, you think about the events of the final episode, which culminated in the death of Tywin Lannister, masterfully played by Charles Dance, the driving force from the moment he appeared on the scene skinning a deer and lecturing his son. Where do the Lannister's turn now?

If last season made you feel bad for Jaime, then this season's opening on Cersei can almost make you feel bad for her. She's lost her prize son, seen her daughter sent away, her brother lover lose his hand, and her father's been killed by the brother she hated. That's a tough year. She's now in charge of the kingdom, worried about her second son losing his virginity and mind to the scheming vixen Margery Tyrell. If this season is about Cersei trying to consolidate power, it seems unlikely that she'll be successful, but you know she'll cling to it like an animal in heat.

The other minor flashback, to Lancel Lannister, cousin lover and poisoner of the king, comes home to roost as he shows up wearing old robes and a new haircut. His prior do made him look like a troubador from a Monty Python movie. He alone seems to carry the information of Robert's real reason for dying, and it seems to me that he is not long for this world.

From there the show takes us to the small box where Tyrion has been shipped across the narrow sea, where we learn that Varus has been backing Daenyrs for longer than most have suspected. Though if you were paying attention in season one Arya hears this piece of information when she's scampering around in the dungeon. And then he tries to talk Tyrion out of drinking himself to death and into helping Daenyrs into taking the Seven Kingdoms. Presumably, what Varus means for the imp is for him to gift some of his considerable acting talents to the rather limited Daenyrs since it's clear she's our current co-hero arc. I cant' wait to watch future episodes of the two of them staring into a mirror and practicing line work.

We finally get the chance to see what Daenyrs has been up to. Unfortunately, it turns out that she's up to the same thing she's been up to for 1.5 seasons, which is trying to conform an entire society to her understanding of justice while sitting with amazing posture. For those who were wondering it did take 12 minutes of actual showtime before we had a woman casually showing her breasts to a member of the unsullied as he traipsed down the street. I wonder what the over under was on that. From there he goes to a whore to get a cuddle and naturally has his throat slit by her while a man in a gold mask stands over him. As if being turned into a eunuch wasn't enough, he goes to a whorehouse for a cuddle and gets his throat slit and then dies with the image of a man in a sun God mask over him.

Update list of ways I wouldn't like to die

1) Eaten alive by a bear

2) Eaten alive by a shark

3) Having my throat cut while I'm going in for a cuddle while a man in a sun God mask stands over me.

North to the wall from there where Stannis is trying to amass a larger army by bringing on the wildlings and where the Red Woman is trying to see if Jon Snow is a virgin. Unfortunately, Stannis decides that he needs Mance Rader to swear fealty to him or burn. I think I know what I'd do. I've always said I make a better conversationalist than a torch.

The show then does, believe it or not, a couple of brief check ins. Yes, Littlefinger is still a cunning individual who knows he has the keys to the North in the form of Sansa. And here we are yet again with a war brewing. Littlefinger and Stannis both trying to uproot the ever charming Roose Bolton.

Meanwhile, the squire and knight are still on the road and still the most boring pairing we've seen. Can we bring back Sandor and Arya already? Sigh.

We sneak one last peek, though not at Emilia Clarke's demurely covered chest, at the events in Mereen, where a non-skeezy Dario parades around the room naked drinking wine, which is all we ask of all our leading men, before trying to persuade her to open the fighting pits and release her dragons. Presumably this is Daenyrs learning her lesson about ruling, but it's safe to say that it can only go on for five more seasons before we'll need something else to happen.

She sneaks away for a quick peak at her dragons only to realize that they've grown as unwieldly as the budget for this show, and she shuts the door faster than HBO on a scene that lasts more than a few moments with big dragons. Phew.

The episode ends, like all good episodes of television shows, with an ancillary character being burned at the stake. I think it's fair to say we all miss the Inquisition. In the scene, Mance, rather masterfully played, shows signs of pride and of fear as he's burned alive by crazy old Stannis. Jon Snow, co-hero number two, fires an arrow into his heart, (Just like Kit Cartride fired into all of ours with that shock of long black hair, amirite?) signalling an end to that war.

Of course, the episode is called the Wars to Come. And it seems that they will. We didn't check in with ice zombies or fire flinging children of the forest. Even so, you can already see the forces rising. It's just hard to tell which one of them is actually going to turn out to be good. And maybe rooting for good is a bit of a fool's errand on this show, but it's mine. I'm rooting for Maester Pycell, who would usher in a long reign of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Only time will tell if he outlives them all.

The Girl who's hair grew forever

I'm going to relay a curious story to you, told to me on one of those fanciful trips that you book from a magazine--spend eight days walking on the shores of the Greek Isles and piss in the Aegean or whatever, all for the low fare of 2,000 dollars. I was on such a trip, a brief jaunt into Japan, and it was on a very hot day that I drifted away from the group of tourists to get a quick drink.

The place I stepped into was small but intricately designed. The wooden inlays were of fierce dragons laying siege to mountainside villages, with finely carved spears, held aloft as though they could pierce the skin of a god. And beside those, another repeating pattern of a beautiful woman with long hair wrapped around her entire, presumably nude, body. The second picture caught my eye, which the owner must have noticed because he said, "I knew her," with a faint accent, as he turned a glass around in his hands.

I sat down at the bar to hear his story.

She was a strange woman because she came from a small village in the mountains. There were not many villages left at this time, and it was strange that a woman so beautiful should have still been single when Japanese businessmen were passing through nearly every city and gathering up all the blossoms. And yet there she was, my beautiful wife.

Naturally, I spent a few weeks with her in the mountains before we were to be married and nothing seemed amiss. She was quiet, though intelligent. We often sat in a warm bath across from one another and looked out at the mountains and trees in her quiet village, and she'd tell me which birds were calling from the trees or how they'd started irrigating crops from the river a lifetime ago.

I took her home to be my wife. And the strangest thing happened that at first I was certain it could not be true, and I thought that I must have been dreaming, and so I spent part of the morning pinching myself and trying to will myself awake. All of this to no avail.

When she slept, my wife's hair grew longer and longer, uncoiling like a snake, or more like a spool of endless thread. And the hair would spread out around her, enveloping the entire bed in a fine gloss of black. Mind you, though strange, this was the sort of thing that a man can bear for a beautiful and quiet woman. However, the strange part is that her hair took on a life of its own, at first gently brushing along my back, tickling me, a forgivable annoyance. Though, and I noticed this after several nights, as the hair grew more voluminous its intentions grew more clear. It would try and push me out of bed with all of its thin strength, such that the first three nights I wound up on the floor without precisely knowing why. Though each time I was surprised to find my wife surrounded by an endless array of hair.

The fourth night I stayed awake and was thus aware when the hair started trying to push me from bed. I hear you already saying it. Yes, of course we could have started to sleep in separate beds, but my wife was young and beautiful, and we were still in the stage where your bodies are learning one another, and I did not want to spend an evening away from her.

On My Garden

I've been gardening more this year. A haphazard affair like any undertaking in my life. I find that too much order and planning stifles my creativity. And what I mean by stifles my creativity is that it takes time, and I am impatient. I took the advice of a Frost poem long ago, something about apple trees growing from the scattered seed and apply it liberally to my own garden. If the plants are intended to grow, they grow. If not, well they weren't worth the time.

This is, as nearly anyone could tell you, almost profoundly stupid, and yet I see no reason to change my stance. Many of our human tendencies are contingent upon our unfailing belief in certain things, which upon further examination would reveal only our stupidity. And so I plant a blackberry bush in abundant shade, or dig an insufficient hole for a grape that's never going to grow anyway because I'm impatient. I garden like a child. Throw seeds in the ground in the morning, and I expect to be eating Watermelon by afternoon.

One of the strange things about self-knowledge though, is how useless it can be. I realize that I'm a crappy gardener, in large part due to my impatience. However, this knowledge does nothing to curb my impatience or change my habits. I believe this is largely because the impatience is a part of my essential nature, while the self-reflection is merely an idle curiosity. Although, perhaps it's just another failing.

Nero was insane, and he was the emperor of Rome. This fact either cheers or saddens me. On the one hand, at least I'm not an insane person killing large swaths of people for my own pleasure. However, if even an insane person can rise to the highest position of power then what does that say about me?

No one can prove that the hanging gardens of Babylon ever existed. We wanted to have hanging plants on our front porch. We have, numerous times been out and about and admired the hanging plants at home depot, the red splash of geraniums or the blue and purple pansies crawling towards the light. And yet, like one of the eight wonders of the world, you cannot prove that we have ever had a hanging plant.

It rained the other day, and the morning sunlight refracted through clouds was covered in dust. Or rather it appeared as though it were dusty. In the yard, the berry bushes that I have just planted are crisscrossed by spider webs, glistening in the morning light, glimmering in the late summer air, bending in the gloaming.

I have a picture in my mind of an old English gardener. He is white, and he has a white mustache and a large hat, which he removes frequently to scratch at his unkempt hair, more as an affectation than anything else. I am not that gardener.

Today is a lovely kind of day, dappled light coming down through the large oak in our yard. I could lie in the grass and sleep for days, for years, for decades, I could wake up with a long white beard and wander about this city looking for the people that I used to know. 

Easter

From E.B. White’s introduction of his late wife’s essays entitled
Onward and Upward in the Garden.

The only moment in the year when she actually got herself up for gardening was on the day in fall that she had selected, in advance, for the laying out of the spring bulb garden. The morning often turned out to be raw and overcast, with a searching wind off the water — an easterly that finds its way quickly to your bones.

Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katharine would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat much too long for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes, and proceed to the director’s chair — a folding canvas thing — that had been placed for her at the edge of the plot. There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while Henry Allen produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate interment. As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion — the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.

Sophocles 

 “There are many strange and wonderful things in this world, but none stranger than man.”

Jesus

And one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting him to the test, asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

Jesus said to him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.'

This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it,

'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40) Let us remember the second great commandment that arises from the first. I do not think it was intended to be taken as lightly as we have taken it. 

Mine

Let's also be reminded that the celebration of the Resurrection is a celebration of the wedding between the divine and the human. That, if the scriptures are to be believed, the Lord saw each and every human being as worth saving, as special, as exceptional, as we'd all like to see ourselves in our heart of hearts. It's a good day for reflecting on the mystery and the wonder of divinity and humanity.

A reflection from an old essay

In Vernazza, the small fishing boats bobbed gently in the bay, and the lights of the city lay across the harbor like a lover’s silky slip, and the combination of dark water, small foreign towns, and being stranded from even language made us feel gloriously alone. When we left, the tracks wandered through hills striped by vineyards and into mountain tunnels that opened to views of the Ligurian Sea, and the whole ride my wife took pictures while I read a book about the founding of Rome, and no one bothered to check our tickets or ask us any questions to make sure we belonged, and we still arrived safely, in the arms of some far away heavenly city. Reader, listen closely to the churning of the wheels, to the train’s thumping engine beneath your feet, watch the waves settle into the shore, they are all one, listen to all these sounds as we travel together to the same city. Reader, You are loved.

Dating

Narrative is an interesting thing. I don't mean the kind of stories we're read as children, rather, I mean the stories we tell ourselves. These stories, lies mostly, are the fabric that hold us together. For instance, I'm about to tell you a story about the woman that I married. She was dating someone else at the time, which means, narratively speaking that he must have been a dud. Which, in all honesty is precisely what I believed at the time. His least likable quality, if I'm being honest now, is that he wasn't me. But at the time I was certain that he wasn't right for Ellen because I was interested in Ellen.

What if I told you that she probably should have stayed with him instead? I'm not dracula, nor do I tie girls up like some fantasy of a bored house wife. I'm just not that good of a person, a common enough affliction, I'll grant you, but one that's hard to see when you're young. When you're young it's easy to let the narrative of your life supersede reality, to assume everyone else is an extra in a play that you're starring in.

I live up north now, working in a small public library, shelving books and helping homeless people check their e-mail. It gives me time to reflect. Time to admire the small buds that appear in April on the limbs of the deciduous trees.

I met her when I was young and here were the first five things I liked about her

1) She was reading a book. Even in the early aughts most people had given up on reading books. And there she was, sitting on a green couch in the lounge at my college reading an actual book.

2) She had green eyes. One of my favorite songs ever is this song by Joe Purdy called, Balcony Green Eyes. I can't remember now if I heard the song before or after I met her, but it was relevant either way.



3)  The way that her brow did this funny thing, a slight wrinkle or something, a depression when she was listening intently. When this appeared it was like you were the only person in the world.

4) She was taken. This one I didn't really realize at the time. But I can see with the benefit of time that I was looking for a challenge, which was batshit crazy, since I'd barely dated anyone back then, but you're crazy when you're young.

5) The way that she'd look at point slightly beyond my right shoulder when she was talking about something abstract. She'd start talking about God, or what it might be like to travel around on a skiff in Greece, and her eyes would sort of gloss over, and she'd gaze just beyond me, like the next world was actually graspable.

6) But this one was kind of a given. She was pretty.

When I was in Paris

I went Paris years ago. We took a long plane flight over The Atlantic and landed in daylight. We were there, like most Americans for duck and a chance to see if Henry Miller was right about anything. Anyhow, we arrived mid-day, though no one had really slept well on the flight, so we were in fact all ugly Americans.

We argued in the train station for a while about which train would take us to our hotel, or maybe we just had trouble finding the ticket counter, or maybe we couldn't find the right denominations to pay at the ticket counter, or maybe everything worked out just fine and we were waiting longer than we'd thought for the train, or maybe the truth is that I don't really remember.

In Rome, the women on the train wore golden hoop earrings, gold shoes, and their hair was exquisitely coiffed. I don't really remember the women in Paris, or the people in Paris. The train ride was a lot like the metro in DC, but all the signs were in French, and the people on the metro were still surly, but they smelled slightly less of urine, and they had a special French kind of surliness, more private than on a DC metro, less insane in some ways, though you knew, deep down that they couldn't wait to talk to  you about Camus.

I think we lugged our stuff to a small hotel near Notre Dame, though it was either hazy outside, or we were so tired that it was hazy, or it was raining because we traveled there in April. After we put our stuff down we wandered down by the Seine where the peddlers sell pictures of Notre Dame to get a good look at Notre Dame, which is impossible if you're as tired as we were. When you're that tired Notre Dame is more an encumbrance to sleep than a marvel of architecture.

We stood outside for a while trying to marvel at the beauty or hold ourselves up on fellow tourists, our arms strung around them as if were drunk. For being tired is akin to being drunk. It was like we were day drinking at Notre Dame.

We wandered back to the hotel so that everyone could sleep and appreciate Paris after a nap. Because Paris through a haze was just as obnoxious as any other city. We all lay down to sleep.

I woke before everyone else. The sky had begun to lose bits of light, a tree outside our window was waving at me with a bag of trash. I crept quietly out the room and slid into the streets of Paris. I took a route that I could never recreate because I didn't know where I was going. I wound up in Saint Germain, ducking in and out of side streets, Old Paris, confusing Paris, dirty Paris, the Paris of dreams.

I turned down a side street and wandered into a small pub where I sat down immediately. Inside the pub was an old Parisian man, hateful as all Parisians, scrubbing the end of the bar and mumbling to himself about the state of the world. The woman who came and asked if I'd like a drink looked like his wife, or maybe his daughter, and I ordered a small glass of red wine. I sat in the pub, watching the old man scrubbing the bar, and the young girl standing at the edge of the bar listening to his rant thinking that I was living an authentic Parisian experience. The sort of thing that you go home and tell people about, or show them pictures of, or maybe just post an album to Facebook with a pithy title. Anyhow, someone would be hearing about this night in Paris.

Of course, all the while I was having a secondary conversation, which was taking place underneath the story I was already telling about the time I wandered away in Paris. This secondary narrative, for aren't we always talking to ourselves in our heads all the time? Well, this secondary narrative was more complicated from the first because after I'd ordered a glass of wine I realized that I'd left my fanny pack money belt back at the hotel, and that I didn't have any money, nor did I speak enough French to explain how I'd be right back. No, what I was doing was calmly drinking a glass of wine and wondering when I'd get the chance to run out.

For a moment, the man stopped grumbling and looked up at his daughter and said something in French, which may have been, did he pay the check, or, give him the check, or, wash these dishes, or how about this weather, or, what a tired and old American. I don't really know. In that moment, when both of their eyes were turned away I sprinted out of the street. I was like Carl Lewis or any sprinter, only much slower. I ran like I was being chased by the fires of hell; I ran like someone was going to kill me if they caught me; I ran like I was playing the world's most intense game of tag.

What's the strangest thing you've ever done in your life? I suppose I've done stranger. I can't really say. But one time when we were all in Paris I ran down the streets of Saint-Germain like I was on fire. The people all around me looked at me like I was strange. One more crazy American running around the streets of Paris. I cannot remember the last time that I felt so alive.