Trying hard

Trying too hard. 

I have a long and radical history of trying too hard. Especially when it comes to doing too much too soon. Why, on the other hand, wait around? How boring is that?

So I stumped into Harvard for my two classes, feeling a modest similarity with Cleopatra — minus the barge and the beauty and the history of sleeping with Caesars. She and I, indeed, only have one thing in common — impatience. Why wait around? For a battle to be lost? A lover to cast one aside? Life to pass one by?

Did you know Cleo was a linguist? So says Plutarch. Did you know Plutarch was a Greek? Did you know Antony, from the moment of falling in lust, could not do anything right? Including killing himself? Maybe he didn't really want to. Maybe it was only a 'gesture' — one that had the distinct disadvantage of internal bleeding.

It is impossible not to love Shakespeare. Even when he's being obtuse. Though is it possible to try too hard in undertaking to 'know' him? How is it that this country boy from Stratford, on the simple stream called Avon, knew about Mediterranean sea battles? The royal Egyptian court? OK, he cribbed from Plutarch for the story line but that still does not explain the detail he achieves in painting the picture of Ceasar's Rome. Or Pompey's Sicily. Or Cleo's Nile. Are answers necessary? Or immaterial? 

So, if I were Cleopatra, minus the purple sails that so perfumed the winds they were lovesick (it doesn't work from my pen but it most surely does from Will's), I would not be waiting around for man nor beast nor dark of night. I'd lasso them all, and reel them in under my own personal spell. Like the fish Cleo has her people affix to Antony's hook.

Oh well. It's a worthy fantasy. But then I am stuck on being stuck. The more I twirl my metaphorical wheels the more I dig myself in. Oh, but it is lovely to be cast back to ancient Rome and Alexandria for  a couple of hours! Of course I try too hard to immerse myself, when immersion comes so readily if only one would let go.

Truffle: Beverly. An unexpected S.O.S., thanks to inclement weather, asking if she could stay with us rather than hole up at an airport hotel to wait out the weather for the trip back to ACK. As I got home, there she was, being delivered on our doorstep by her step-daughter.

Quote of the day: "She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind." (Toni Morrison)

 

Comments

[Nancy]

Friend I have known almost since birth (his mother was nanny to my two oldest sisters) and his wife bringing lunch. Every year they come in November for her vacation. He has retired. Sister #3 gives them her house here every year and every year we share a meal and lots of nostalgia for the old days in New Haven. My mother used to "give" nannyandbill (run together forever in our minds) what used to be her "guest house" every year and they kept coming after her death. Bill was a passionate golfer who hooked up with three octogenarian friends and played happily as long as he could. Traditions, traditions. Son Bill does not golf but loves every single thing about Nantucket, weather or not! So that's my friendship story of the day.

[Nancy]

Forgot to say, my son is preaching for the Sunday evening service at OXFORD!

[Kate Stout]

Very nice.  :-) Thanks (again) for sharing!

[Nike Shox Clearance]

Business underlies almost everything within our nationwide life, together the lines of our spiritual life, Witness the reality that from the Lord's prayer the first petition is for daily bread, No men or women can worship God or enjoy his neighbor on an useless stomach. (Woodrow Wilson. us President)