in the hall of mirrors

Fin

End of a year. Another year, I suppose I should say – but the phrase "end of another year" has a tired, endless quality to it that I don't like.

Given as I am to worrying over the past and over what I haven't done, or have lost, this of course would typically bring up fairly irrational worries – but I'm older and calmer, and can merely observe such ideas and not get overwhelmed by them. So, without any particularly Protestant guilt or progress-oriented foolishness, I think I can come up with some resolutions:

(a) to continue finishing all those old projects that people have wanted from me, so that my writing/research can be less attached to other people, to the guilt of not keeping up, and to have almost nothing that is 'for' someone else on my list of projects by the end of the year. I believe I can keep the South African project in line with this, by just making sure that anything I agree to do is about my own work, not contributing to someone else's.

(b) to stay calm and not let work, of any kind, get the better of me.

(c) to move again towards habitual behavior of the kind that I need: some regular exercise, even trivial exercise like walking; some regular writing; perhaps, even, meditation (something I have been running around but avoiding for more than twenty years now).

(d) to, as frequently as possible, gently and casually move my attention away from the garbage floating around – bad television, exasperating or foolish people, impossible situations – back to what seems worthwhile: books that go somewhere, battles I can win. To, in fact, choose my battles.

That all makes sense, I think. It's a strange night, dark, stormy, windy, rainy – I have made a possibly foolish plan to walk over to V. & D.'s with A. in all this weather; hopefully it won't be too much of a mess. Or if it is, perhaps we can easily and mutually cancel. But then I wouldn't get to have a piece of that outrageous Xmas cake, the one that apparently has 52% icing, by weight.

Happy New Year....

***

Later, after coming home.

A. and I did indeed brave the elements (okay, one element really, since it wasn't raining by the time I left – and there was no falling fire or dirt blowing around, so merely a lot of cold air is the truth of it) to go eat and drink some of the vast amounts of holiday food left at V. & D.'s (never got to the Christmas cake though, ate too much to form that kind of commitment to a cake knife).

On the way home we were discussing – why are New Year's entertainments, live or on television, so – desperate, so fake? Among the cheesy shows D. kept flipping past we caught some really talented and funny bits from the 2006 version of Secret Policeman's Ball; but then we'd flip back to some dreadful live show where celebrities of various talents would be engaged in cheapening their skills, performing a variety of songs and acts that were aimed at anyone who would watch or listen, and yet somehow not entertaining at all, but only embarrassing. An awful mystery, an unattractive curse – A. thought it might be because these performances were masquerading as parties, which seems plausible. If I were still a performer, perhaps I would avoid appearing on New Year's Eve – like the plague!...

Absent / present

Sleeping incredible hours: a week lost to dreams – maybe not lost, the dreams aren't unpleasant, there is plenty of food, and the house is kept clean, as am I. But a week where my life is passing in a dream world... a week where I am basically absent....

There have been times when I was guilty, confused, over this kind of situation – it is perhaps an unfortunate aspect of my life that much of it has been slept away. I'm not so guilty about it any more, but it remains true; and it's not just a matter of ill health, it is very much a deep pattern of my mind and body – which is why I have imagination, but don't get much done.

And today I received an e-mail from someone about a book I was supposed to write a decade ago, which may change shape or be taken out of my hands – I had a flash of guilt/worry (as I had months of, over the anthology that didn't happen five years ago), but mostly just relief that it might no longer be my problem. But it is all merely a matter for rational decision, not guilt/panic... at least I'm finally clear that, as I sometimes tell a student in trouble, I am more important than the project, rather than the reverse.

But mostly: sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Easy when you live alone, and the sun's on winter holiday.

There are, however, unusual presences just as there are unusual absences: 'tis the time of year for people on the other side of the world to think of their memories, relationships, old friends – and since most of my life is still elsewhere (hmm – San Francisco and Los Angeles and Washington of course, but also Phoenix, Berlin, New York – I think that's probably all of it now), those same people call me or send me cards and e-mails.

In most cases my reaction is happy and wistful; I'd love to see so-and-so again, I'd love to have dinner with, talk to, hang out with. In some cases, I deeply wish I were spending my life around that person again. There are also a couple of uncomfortable bits – an old friend I simply cannot relate to any more (some people do outgrow each other, and become impossible strangers), and another whom I care about a lot but who is now in a peculiar relationship (and I want to be there and watch, and listen, and talk, and see if it all works out).

The hard part is the wish to be somewhere else. That's the problem, the mistake, of moving too much: it is possible to move away from your life....

Midwinter

The tree is a haze of small lights; I'll keep it up until Epiphany, as usual. A cluster of candles, cinnamon and clove, melting to a puddle on a plate. The chicken casserole in the oven for such a long time – I added some chili peppers to the recipe, just enough to heat it up, along with lots of dried green herbs. Bath running, orange oils and salts; reading Dinesen, Jansson. Slept all day, but that's all right – tomorrow I'll use green tea to wake myself up and get some work done; but tonight is just the warm cave, full of rich smells and dim colored lights, against the chilly dark.

Red Shoes

The Red Shoes is on television – a good way of recovering from an excellent but overwhelming long Christmas lunch. I know that there are many things in the film to focus on, but I'm always especially struck by the opening, where a bunch of frantically energetic, highly educated arts students (musicians and dancers) push their way up to the balcony seats and bicker over the impending performance. Then the early scenes, a chaotic, lively landscape of dancers, singers, composers, producers – and of course egos – scattered around Covent Garden....

I always want to be there, among the busy, smart people who work away on what they care about – I know: in 1948, when the film was made, a clever Oxbridge or Ivy League education was embedded in an elitist, aristocratic structure of rich people's sons and daughters that I never would have gotten into anyway; and, of course, all that was processed through structures of conformity and hierarchy that I would have rebelled against (and if I hadn't, that would have been a mistake).

But it would have been great to be involved with young people who were excited about their work and studies, passionate about them. My undergraduate studies were at the 'wrong' school, as far as I was concerned – I blasted through the whole in foreshortened span of time with poor grades, not caring because I thought it had all already gone hopelessly wrong (and thinking so was my first big mistake, the one that set up all the rest).

Then, after years singing in bars and preening my way through ensemble rehearsals, I went to UCLA, although I wanted to go to Berkeley. Their differences ran deep – many UCLA students were pragmatists, aimed at money and jobs, while Berkeley students seemed considerably nerdier and more introverted – but also considerably more dedicated to their chosen subjects. I was always probably too flaky and undependable to be a successful part of their more elevated world, but it would have been so much more satisfying....

•••

and later in the film: all those Stravinskian passages (I know: Milhaud, Tippett, etc. – but, from a certain distance, anything worthwhile in early modernism that wasn't dodecaphonic sounds Stravinskian) – I used to be a perfect Stravinskyite, ever since I first heard the Rite of Spring when I was 13 (I still have a score in my office covered with pencil markings, where I was trying to figure out how it worked – a vain endeavor, as the score is almost impossible to reduce to any theoretical basis that makes any sense).

It's exciting to hear it as a style again, rather than as particular canonic works; it makes you want to compose, sort of... though not quite like that of course.

Christmas Stories

There are some wonderful Christmas stories – they start with Dickens' Christmas Carol, of course. It's a shame that it seems so hard to make a successful film out of it, because it's so overwhelmingly dramatic – but all the many, many versions and adaptations always seem stiff and clumsy when compared with reading the original, which has such conviction and power even in its most sentimental passages. I've always struggled with the other Dickens Christmas books – The Chimes seems so unhappy and grimy, The Cricket on the Hearth so long-winded. Perhaps it's just because I got used to Scrooge at such a young age – I'm certainly not a Dickens fan.

Connie Willis, the wonderful science fiction writer who published a marvelous and eerie collection of contemporary Christmas stories (The Miracle and Other Christmas Stories), lists her favorite Christmas books and movies in an appendix. I'm with her on some of them; there are others I've never read – plus a few surprises by Damon Runyon, Wodehouse, and Auden (I particularly want to read the Morley's 'Tree that Didn't Get Trimmed' and Disch's 'Santa Claus Compromise', but haven't ever found them).

I'm with her on Barbara Robinson's Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which is pretty powerful despite being a sentimental tale for teenagers; and O. Henry's 'Gift of the Magi', which is of course exasperatingly familiar but as strong and expressive as the Dickens. (No, I didn't mean 'as the dickens', thank you so much.) She misses out on some other ones – Saki's 'Down Pens' and Capote's 'A Christmas Memory' should be on that list.

Here are a few that aren't famous, but are wonderful, and should be more widely known: John Arden's strangely blunt play The Business of Good Government, which does a brilliant job of positioning Herod as an intelligent politician trying to keep a status quo. The play gets a bit unfocused towards the end, but has great stuff in it; the finest moments are amazing monologues by the innkeeper's wife, and by the farm girl who sows the field that grows magically to cover the escape to Egypt.

Shirley Jackson's Raising Demons, one of her two books of family life, has a brilliant scene about opening boxes of decorations. Here's an excerpt I cut down to be read at a Gay Men's Chorus of LA concert, by a woman narrator of course:

"I opened the last carton, labeled DECORATIONS.  There on top was the cardboard tree Jannie had made in kindergarten.  That always went on the dining room buffet, and then there was the big Santa Claus face Sally had done in first grade, and that went on the back door, and the red and green paper chains Larry had made when he was a Cub Scout went over the doorway.  Not two weeks ago Barry had come home from nursery school with a greenish kind of a picture of a snowman, and that somehow got established on the refrigerator next to the big chart Larry always made early in December, so we could all fill out our Christmas lists and keep them in plain sight.  Here were the popcorn strings my mother strung when I was the youngest child, and the paper bells Larry and I made when he was so small it seems unbelievable now, and the jigsaw Santa my husband cut out the same year, and the painted candy canes, and the red ribbons, and the green paper wreaths.  "Oh, my," I said, looking at all of it.  "Oh, Mom, just sit down," Jannie said.  "You just don't remember, that's all.  You sit down and I'll do it." "

Then there's Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland, a set of bizarre parodies; they aren't great Christmas texts and many have dated too much (nobody even remembers most of the novelists they parodied), but a few are hilarious, especially the Henry James parody. Neil Gaiman published the brilliant miniature 'Nicholas Was...', just 100 words long, in his collection Smoke and Mirrors. He wrote it as his Christmas card one year; it's certainly among the creepiest and most exquisite retellings of Santa's hideous destiny.

One of my very favorites is the last story in Tove Jansson's Tales from Moominvalley, 'The Fir Tree'. It helps if you already know the Moomin books, and are unfazed at seeing the reactions by hemulens and fillyjonks to the stresses of producing a family Christmas; but the sensible, incredibly Scandinavian simplicity of the ending is a wonderful response to the confused feelings of the holidays.

***

Here is a rather strange script I made out of a combination of the story as told by Luke, and Unplug the Christmas Tree, a cheesy self-help book I found on an obscure shelf in the UCLA library, for the finale of a Gay Men's Chorus of LA concert in 1987. It was read by Ted and Brita, a married couple who were professional actors; the music was an atmospheric arrangement of Stille Nacht by Mannheim Steamroller, which was timed to end about a minute after the last line. I remember Brita's voice reading her part, which was particularly funny – she had perfectly captured the slightly addled, well-meaning but absurd, tone of that self-help book:

F – One letter says, "I live alone and I'm worried about this Christmas. I won't be with my family and I haven't made any other plans." More and more people in this country are living alone. Many of them go home to extended families for Christmas, but an increasing number have no close family or, for a variety of reasons, decide not to rejoin their relatives during the holidays.

M – And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And Joseph went up from Galilee, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.

[MUSIC CUE : STILLE NACHT]

F [no break] – There are a number of things you can do alone that you cannot do as part of a family gathering. You can play your favorite music for hours on end. You can eat when and what you want, and generally set your own schedule...

M – And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

F [brief pause] – One man, a hairdresser, told us that his job required so much day-to-day contact and conversation that he relished the idea of Christmas Day alone. He said he saved up special reading material, prepared his favorite meal of fried shrimp for Christmas dinner, and put his favorite madrigal music on the stereo.

M [brief pause] – And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

F [brief pause] – One man with no family got the idea of making some banana bread and taking it around to his new neighbors, whom he had not yet had a chance to meet. He told us that their reception of a strange man bearing slightly soggy, warm banana bread on Christmas Day was heartwarming.

M [brief pause] – And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them: Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

F [brief pause] – If, on the other hand, you want your celebration to be social, you will probably find that you have more options than you may have realized at first. Whether you perceive your lack of family as an irretrievable loss or as a chance to explore new options depends entirely on your attitude. First, redefine your idea of "family"...

M [brief pause] – And this shall be a sign unto you: ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

F [longer pause] – You may know several unattached, compatible people who would welcome an opportunity to gather at your house and spend Christmas with you...

M [longer pause] – But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

***

In any case, merry Christmas. And yes, that's my tree....

Far

I will admit: I'm not completely happy with the Christmas Alone thing.

It's not bad; I'm not depressed. And I will have a leisurely lunch-and-afternoon with V. and her family; and if only I'd gotten organized I could have gone to see my family this week (they're all gathering in Washington this year – actually more of them together than most years) – so it's really all my fault.

But this isn't really the ideal way to get through the holidays: someone should be around to share it – it's a shame that my dear friend Paddy went home to his family, or I'd make him stay here over Xmas Eve. Ultimately, I don't like that everyone is so far away – in space, or of course in time.

It reminds me of my cousin P., who shared my name, and was the 'gay uncle' in my mother's side of the family. He was funny and talkative, if a bit overwhelming – in fact, he projected a slight sense of social desperation, of loneliness; perhaps part of it was the fact that he lived with his mother until she died, of course. He had friends, with whom he shared his love of Greek music and food, and I don't know anything about his relationships with them; perhaps he just wanted more of a connection with us, his younger relatives – but it felt a bit like a bid for inclusion, a reconnection with family.

He died of heart failure in February of this year; I remember my mother commenting on his smoking and heavily salted foods a number of times. I guess I just want to know that there's still a chance that, when I'm older, I'll be sharing holidays, and in fact every day, with someone, with some people even....

Holiday

Holiday stuff....

Pandoro from an Italian student, M. (although I can't imagine why he shipped it all the way from Austin, Texas, where he's on a year abroad – after all they sell them around here). Already put the powdered sugar on it, going to have a couple of slices as a snack.

A very British fog outside – the kind that suggests stories by Dickens and Dunsany.

Some excellent books and DVDs sent via Amazon from my younger sister.

Some Like It Hot on television.

And a somewhat more unusual gift – a very soft, small, multi-colored scarf, with the following letter enclosed with it; I hope the writer won't mind me quoting it:

"This scarf is your 'hug'... from me. The yarn reminded me of you – multi-cultured (multi-colored), strong, warm. With every push, pull, and twist of the needle (crochet) I thought about your life's journey. I even wondered how many times you might have been afraid, as I 'frayed' the ends. I am no poet, but I do try to look deeply into the heart of those I love. And when I do, I realize that we are not as different as we appear to be. In fact, you and I are very much the same! (I am reading your blog – and seeing myself!). We live with the scars from the 'push, pull and twists' inflicted by those who loved? us! And to my horror I have inflicted a few damaging blows – like spontaneous combustion! The pain ripples through generations. Until.... So, wrap this around your neck as many times as needed – and remember – I love you!"

Upanishad

Reading a passing reference to the Upanishads, by the shimmering lights of my small, comfortable, living Xmas tree (I'll post a picture on Xmas Eve), I think: I would like to spend time studying them, reading them... of course they're coming up obliquely, at a sort of angle, in the paper I'm writing; but I'm not allowed to say too much about them, as they aren't my specialty of course.

I remember my friend Frits Staal, who taught Sanskrit at Berkeley (an eminence I would be overjoyed to have a chance at someday). He had retired the last time I'd seen him; I'm sure he's still around, though, as he was almost obnoxiously healthy. A charming, intelligent man; his apartment was fill of enormous tomes (there is no other word for them) in various Eastern languages, and serious European books trying to interpret them – the kinds of books that make you really take books seriously, the kind that make all my paperbacks, and my poststructuralism and current philosophies of current art forms, look like a few bits of paper trash floating on the ocean of the infinite.

He actually quoted me in what was probably my first academic reference, before I ever went back to graduate school – his research in his last few years was on Vedic hymns and how they structured number and time, and I set him straight about Schoenberg and dodecaphony for one of his books. As it happens, Frits was also the kind of Dutch man who had black rubber sheets. So confusing to pigeonhole people: they always have so many aspects that are hard to fit into any coherent whole – no wonder I have such a tangled and undependable memory.

I wish the structure of our universities didn't militate against large changes in one's reading, in the direction of one's thought. I'm frankly not terribly interested in musicology these days, of any kind, or in music at all, really – I'd rather talk about Rilke or Woolf, philosophy or Buddhism, or the Upanishads of course. If I could figure out some course that had music in it, I could teach that of course in our department (which is unavoidably a Music Department), but it's very hard to imagine one. And, on that exasperating merry-go-round where academics are forced to start over with new students every year, I would have to teach Required Courses anyway, so I'd be stuck with the same old stuff – I will be stuck with the same old stuff, again, in just about six weeks or so. Rite of Spring all over again, here we go.

But if I could, I would drop it all and learn Sanskrit, read the Upanishads, and argue about some of the oldest theories of awareness and godhead: sitting around among trees, I suppose....

Shortest Day

The winter solstice was 12:22 a.m. GST – this morning.

It didn't feel like the shortest day. I'm sleeping too much the past several weeks, because I've been careless about my thyroid medicine (as well as missing not one but two antiretroviral doses when I went to Liverpool, which, in AIDS medicines is really going over into the 'unacceptable' zone). But I started the day by receiving an e-mail from a colleague in Africa, which could possibly lead to some really interesting work and fast-lane activities; then an early meeting to discuss my possible bid for promotion – I may not be allowed to apply this year, but if I'm not I understand the reasons; a general meeting that was fairly rational and pleasant; and a committee lunch that was, if not exciting, at least quite civilized.

Then the Two Davids came over, we sat around, they cooked dinner, I put up the Xmas tree. Very nice and homey.

So the threat of the shortest day – the dismal dark, the hopelessness, the vain waiting for the return of the sun – wasn't part of that day at all: I'm feeling fairly calm, in charge, lately, able to do what is necessary to get through work, and not too oppressed by the mechanisms and personalities of the university world. Indeed, I've had almost no ideas, no urgent communications to make through this blog: which is slightly embarrassing, as the blog demands a bit of care, of course.

I did want to do what I've done before: pull out old poems or stories and post them – but that raises a specific problem: many of my poems and stories are pretty damned depressing. Since many of them came from particularly dark times, they are themselves pretty grim – they just didn't feel appropriate at the moment.

What's that you say – why don't I write a new poem? Yeah, well, good point. It often feels as though the basic techniques, the balance of abilities, that it took me to generate even a fair poem in the early 1990s simply aren't in my head any more – too long since I thought about it, since I tried it. I think it's a bit like singing: if you spend a period of time (months, or years) pushing your voice into its lower range, or working hard at high notes, other parts of your voice weaken, suffer – if you're doing a lot of serious bass work your baritone high Gs tend to vanish. In the same way, I think, my exclusive focus on academic writing (even the overblown kind that I indulge myself in) has meant that my ability to crank out journalism, or poetry, or tell stories, has suffered....

Maybe I need to practice.

On 'Her Face'

I should explain....

Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati is spiritual leader of Kashi Ashram, in central Florida. She is also an important AIDS activist – which is how I met her in the late 1980s (I think it was 1989). One of her followers in Los Angeles was also my AIDS Project Los Angeles phone buddy – that is, the guy who checked up on me, made sure I went to the doctor, etc.; so when she visited Los Angeles I went to meet her.

It was entirely amazing. I tend to worry a bit about institutionalized spirituality, and to avoid it when I can; but she not only a remarkable woman and teacher, she is also frankly a bit of a rebel – think of some of those 'wild' teachers famous in Zen and Sufism, who don't act restrained and saintly, and clearly don't fit into a well-behaved and socially 'correct' milieu. Ma was, and is, startlingly real, full of strong feelings and powerful intuition; one of the main ways she teaches is by the startling, even shocking, revelation – she will easily and definitely tell people what they need to know, even when it's not a comfortable thing to hear.

She became an important part of my life throughout the 1990s, as she frequently visited Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I visited the ashram several times on my own; I think this poem came from a week-long visit. The ten sections end up being occasional portraits of Ma in several of her aspects, and also of a few of the people around her – Bina, Rudra Das, Shambo – although it's unfortunate that I didn't write about some of my other friends there, especially Omkar Naga. Of course what it's really doing is trying to link up all those portraits into a sense of what Ma is like (from my point of view), and what it's like to stay with the people who live on the ashram.

This came up in the last few days also because D– was recently in India; when he visited yesterday he was showing photographs of his hotel, the school, the people, elephants in the street – all in an effort to convey the visceral, immediate experience of this strongly flavored culture, this place where feeling, music, spirituality, awareness, and philosophies that link up all of those are respected and in fact omnipresent. Different, of course, than visiting an ashram in central Florida; but I sympathized with what he was trying to do, and even with how hard it was to achieve – how can we convey the vivid three-dimensional reality of cultures that seem more honest, more real than our everyday lives?

I suppose that's what the poem is trying to do....