It is Sunday afternoon, sunny and rather warm. I am in my office, trying to catch up on work. My law firm, like so many others, underwent a recent “restructuring” and our new motto has become, “We all have to do more with less.” Since the days of the past week have been filled with confusion and lamentation (i.e., people interrupting me a dozen times a day to ask who does what now), I need Sundays to organize myself.

As I look at the calendar, I realize that it is two weeks until the Academy Awards. I have not seen any of the nominated movies. I think this is the first time this has happened since I was a child and my moviegoing was restricted. I was invited to screenings of these films; I could have seen them for free, but I couldn’t get away. And I’m not going to get away before then – I have rehearsals for a reading of my most recent script, Wildflowers of the West, and then on the day of the Awards ceremony I’ll be at BAM seeing The Winter’s Tale.

It’s not that this matters so much as that I feel so out of it. This week I have found myself chatting about the Trojan War and Othello; also Plessy v. Ferguson, Siegfried Sassoon, why that thing that Dr. Who flies in is called a Tardis, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Well, the Survey and Othello come from the fact that I started reading Martha Sandweiss’s wonderful book Passing Strange. I knew the title came from Othello and then I had to look it up:

She swore, in fact, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.

And then I had to read Othello again. Because I remembered my high school English teacher, who was a bit of a cold fish, reading this passage with such passion that her eyes glistened. So I read Othello again and then the evening was over. And I still haven't gotten to the movies.

Labels: Passing Strange, Shakespeare, Wildflowers of the West

posted by Elizabeth at 4:41 PM