This morning Kim is in Washington, and I am home, listening to Godspell while I wash the dishes. Outside a strawberry snow fell during the night, and proper February chill descended. The water in the copper birdbath has become kinetic again, and every hour I go out to break the forming ice and add warm water. Birds of every description are here to drink and visit the feeders that are freshly filled with black sunflower seed. It is almost as though all were right with the world. But the words of the musical remind me that all is not well. Turn back, oh man, the singers warn as I lift the plates and glasses from the soapy water. Forswear thy foolish ways. Old now is earth, and none may count her days. Da da da da da.
Last evening as the dark fell I sat at the back window and watched the birds having their final moments on the feeders, and the late appearing mourning doves standing on the edge of the water. If the bowl freezes, the doves stand on the ice as if they were on a tiny lake. The doves are mysterious. Symbol of world peace, they are actually violent avians, and willing to shred one another for any sort of gain. This does not make them less wonderful to me, but it does heighten their strangeness. On the radio, Ravel’s “Mother Goose” is being conducted by Andre Previn. The music is searing and almost crushingly beautiful, exactly like much of the natural world. The chords of the music mingle easily with the rise and fall of the last waves of birds, and I sit a long time watching them. I wish to believe again in God, when I see such grace. Abdoul told me once that he thought perhaps birds would lead me back to God. I loved him a great deal in that moment. But it was not a persuasive idea.
You make them twice as fit for hell, as you are yourself. In a quick entry of my day journal, this item on December 8th, nestled among the many Christmas shopping lists: “The evil of denying clarity to others=Trump.” It is true that this year I did not listen to Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors” for the first time in more than thirty years. I listen when I decorate the Christmas tree, and I realized the music would move me beyond the place of soft, quiet tears my family may or may not notice as they sit on the couch for their viewing pleasure. I knew it would put me on the floor when King Melchior forgives the mother for trying to steal their gold for her son. Eventually, everyone in the play comes to understand that there are some things beyond material survival. I doubt that we will ever reach this place as a country, in time.
In the final act of “Romeo and Juliet” as the warring families sleep unaware that their children are dead and about to die, Friar Lawrence tries to rush Juliet from the tomb where she sleeps on, drugged and dreaming of her love breathing beside her. Come, he urges her, on the edge of panic. Come from that nest of death, contagion and unnatural sleep. A greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away. Juliet rebukes the monk, and he flees alone. Later, the families don’t blame him and they reconcile. Romeo’s father will build a statue of gold to keep Juliet eternally lovely in the town square. They embrace and exit. From death, the ascension of peace. Earth shall be fair, and all her people one. Not till that hour shall God’s full will be done. Somewhere under an African moon Abdoul sits with his father, praying for the world. And I wait here, continuing to hope he manages to return safely to this cursed nation, almost loving him enough to hope not.
Remedy 