I'm back to my usual self, feeling that I am pretty lucky. Nothing has changed, really, except my mood. Luckily, my low tolerance level for boredom does not let me stay depressed/sad/melancholy for too long.
It has been a busy week. Friend Leslie has a great crush on Bob Frazer, one of our local theater luminaries (okay, okay, I confess, so do I!) In addition to his great acting (he was Shakespeare in Equivocation at Bard on the Beach this summer, as well as a number of roles in Cymbaline), he also runs a theater company called Osimous Theater. On Tuesday night, we went to see their production of, of all things, Thornton Wilder's Our Town. I haven't seen it for a million years, and was really not sure that it would hold up in this more sophisticated day and age. But, it was Bob Frazer, so off we trundled, to a small church on Commercial Drive.
Dinner first, at a funky joint nearby (there is no such thing as a joint on Commerccial Drive that is not funky....
Then, off to "church". It was, as you can imagine, a small venue, and this was a preview, so we actually got a chance to talk to the great man himself (talk about working a room, Hank, you and I don't hold a candle to this guy!) before the play. Much to my delight, the play was charming, in large part, I think, because Frazer played the part of Stage Manager, holding it all together. (don't bother trying to re-read it, as I did after I got home. It plays much better than it reads.) God, I love the theater!
Wednesday, a different sort of drama. Heather, a former colleague, has more or less made herself scarce since she left work - was it a year ago or so? Anyway, I ran into her on one of my walks, and she asked that I try to arrange a lunch with some of her old colleagues/friends. And I made it so....
(that's Heather, third from the left, not to mention a better picture of Leslie).
She's had lots of changes in her life, and even an hour and a half wasn't enough time to process it all...
Thursday was the usual bridge at Duplicate Lite (god, I hate that name!) in White Rock (Robin and I came in 4th overall out of 25 pairs, not too terribly bad....), and then off to lunch at Crescent Beach, to celebrate our good playing, as well as Robin's birthday (yes, I know, we just celebrated a birthday, but that was Debbie's!)
Robin and friend Diana (above)
If you ever get out that way, the place is Thestis, and they make the best sandwiches on the planet, and as some of you know, I am definitely not a sandwich fan!
And lo and behold, we are at the weekend again, and the usual gang is at the usual place (Fisherman's Terrace in Richmond) for dim sum, the last before I go away.
And now, something a little different. Those who know me, know I read a lot. (I like to think of myself as an intellectual; in point of fact, I am better called a dilettante - I now a little about everything and not enough about anything.) In any event, after reading Lovett's The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession, I moved on to The Impossible Exile, a biography of Stephan Zweig by George Prochnik. Now, I know that is not a name that most of you are familiar with - it is definitely an Eastern European/Jewish thing. He was my father's favourite author (more melancholy!), and, obviously, had to leave Europe in order to survive World War II.
Here's the "different" part. I need to quote you from this book.
Talking about another Jewish emigre writer, Zweig says: '[his] ceaseless activity was nothing but an opiate to cover up an inner nervousness and deaden the loneliness that surrounded his inner life..." If that doesn't sound like a description of me and my frenetic life, I don't know what does.... I know, it sounds dark. It doesn't feel dark, though, just explanatory.
Okay, here's more. When asked why nothing was done about Hitler, he said that "....reverence for Bildung, that magically potent idea of holistic, rigorously intellectual character development, predicated on fluency in the canon of Western knowledge, had made it impossible for educated Germans to take Hitler seriously....it was simply inconceivable that this beer-hall agitator who had not even finished high school, let alone college, should even make a pass toward a position once held by a Bismark, a Baron von Stein, a Prince Bulow. In consequence...even after 1933 the vast majority still believed that Hitler was only a kind of stopgap, and that the Nazis would prove a transient phenomenon..."
Okay, I guess non-Jews don't think about these things.... Just a few more. Even though he studied with Herzel, the great Zionist, Zweig did not believe in a Jewish nation. He hated nationalism of any stripe, and "....never wanted the Jews to become a nation again and thus to lower itself to taking part with the others in the rivalry of reality. I love the Diaspora and affirm it as the meaning of Jewish idealism, as Jewry's cosmopolitan mission..." Well, he certainly was right about that one....
When talking about the Jews as outcast from Europe, he noted that the Jews were no longer a community in the 20th century, and had not been for a long time. "...They had no law. They did not want to speak Hebrew together. Only exile swept them all together, like dirt in the street: bankers from their grand homes in Berlin, synagogue servers from the Orthodox communities, Parisian professors of philosophy, Romanian cabbies, layers-out of the dead and Nobel prize winners, operatic divas, women hired as mourners at funerals, writers and distillers, men of property and men of none, the great and small, observant Jews and followers of the Enlightenment....Why I? Why you? How do you and I who do not know each other, who speak different languages, whose thinking takes different forms and who have nothing in common happen to be here together..." The injustice of anti-Semitism illustrated by revealing the total absence of common ground between the Jews themselves...
Okay, that's enough, you get the idea. A very different biography indeed, told in terms of the times, not of the man. Needless to say, it resonated. Next, I guess I will read some of his books (they have been widely translated). Meanwhile, though, I am stuck with what I have on the night table: The Madwoman in the Attic; The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, and an old one (I first read it maybe 25 years ago) by John Simon called Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline (I love the title, and it called me back to read it again).
Between those and trying to keep up with The Economist every week, well, I should keep out of mischief! (And you guys wonder why I don't read on line.....)
It has been a busy week. Friend Leslie has a great crush on Bob Frazer, one of our local theater luminaries (okay, okay, I confess, so do I!) In addition to his great acting (he was Shakespeare in Equivocation at Bard on the Beach this summer, as well as a number of roles in Cymbaline), he also runs a theater company called Osimous Theater. On Tuesday night, we went to see their production of, of all things, Thornton Wilder's Our Town. I haven't seen it for a million years, and was really not sure that it would hold up in this more sophisticated day and age. But, it was Bob Frazer, so off we trundled, to a small church on Commercial Drive.
Dinner first, at a funky joint nearby (there is no such thing as a joint on Commerccial Drive that is not funky....
Then, off to "church". It was, as you can imagine, a small venue, and this was a preview, so we actually got a chance to talk to the great man himself (talk about working a room, Hank, you and I don't hold a candle to this guy!) before the play. Much to my delight, the play was charming, in large part, I think, because Frazer played the part of Stage Manager, holding it all together. (don't bother trying to re-read it, as I did after I got home. It plays much better than it reads.) God, I love the theater!
Wednesday, a different sort of drama. Heather, a former colleague, has more or less made herself scarce since she left work - was it a year ago or so? Anyway, I ran into her on one of my walks, and she asked that I try to arrange a lunch with some of her old colleagues/friends. And I made it so....
(that's Heather, third from the left, not to mention a better picture of Leslie).
She's had lots of changes in her life, and even an hour and a half wasn't enough time to process it all...
Thursday was the usual bridge at Duplicate Lite (god, I hate that name!) in White Rock (Robin and I came in 4th overall out of 25 pairs, not too terribly bad....), and then off to lunch at Crescent Beach, to celebrate our good playing, as well as Robin's birthday (yes, I know, we just celebrated a birthday, but that was Debbie's!)
Robin and friend Diana (above)
If you ever get out that way, the place is Thestis, and they make the best sandwiches on the planet, and as some of you know, I am definitely not a sandwich fan!
And lo and behold, we are at the weekend again, and the usual gang is at the usual place (Fisherman's Terrace in Richmond) for dim sum, the last before I go away.
And now, something a little different. Those who know me, know I read a lot. (I like to think of myself as an intellectual; in point of fact, I am better called a dilettante - I now a little about everything and not enough about anything.) In any event, after reading Lovett's The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession, I moved on to The Impossible Exile, a biography of Stephan Zweig by George Prochnik. Now, I know that is not a name that most of you are familiar with - it is definitely an Eastern European/Jewish thing. He was my father's favourite author (more melancholy!), and, obviously, had to leave Europe in order to survive World War II.
Here's the "different" part. I need to quote you from this book.
Talking about another Jewish emigre writer, Zweig says: '[his] ceaseless activity was nothing but an opiate to cover up an inner nervousness and deaden the loneliness that surrounded his inner life..." If that doesn't sound like a description of me and my frenetic life, I don't know what does.... I know, it sounds dark. It doesn't feel dark, though, just explanatory.
Okay, here's more. When asked why nothing was done about Hitler, he said that "....reverence for Bildung, that magically potent idea of holistic, rigorously intellectual character development, predicated on fluency in the canon of Western knowledge, had made it impossible for educated Germans to take Hitler seriously....it was simply inconceivable that this beer-hall agitator who had not even finished high school, let alone college, should even make a pass toward a position once held by a Bismark, a Baron von Stein, a Prince Bulow. In consequence...even after 1933 the vast majority still believed that Hitler was only a kind of stopgap, and that the Nazis would prove a transient phenomenon..."
Okay, I guess non-Jews don't think about these things.... Just a few more. Even though he studied with Herzel, the great Zionist, Zweig did not believe in a Jewish nation. He hated nationalism of any stripe, and "....never wanted the Jews to become a nation again and thus to lower itself to taking part with the others in the rivalry of reality. I love the Diaspora and affirm it as the meaning of Jewish idealism, as Jewry's cosmopolitan mission..." Well, he certainly was right about that one....
When talking about the Jews as outcast from Europe, he noted that the Jews were no longer a community in the 20th century, and had not been for a long time. "...They had no law. They did not want to speak Hebrew together. Only exile swept them all together, like dirt in the street: bankers from their grand homes in Berlin, synagogue servers from the Orthodox communities, Parisian professors of philosophy, Romanian cabbies, layers-out of the dead and Nobel prize winners, operatic divas, women hired as mourners at funerals, writers and distillers, men of property and men of none, the great and small, observant Jews and followers of the Enlightenment....Why I? Why you? How do you and I who do not know each other, who speak different languages, whose thinking takes different forms and who have nothing in common happen to be here together..." The injustice of anti-Semitism illustrated by revealing the total absence of common ground between the Jews themselves...
Okay, that's enough, you get the idea. A very different biography indeed, told in terms of the times, not of the man. Needless to say, it resonated. Next, I guess I will read some of his books (they have been widely translated). Meanwhile, though, I am stuck with what I have on the night table: The Madwoman in the Attic; The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, and an old one (I first read it maybe 25 years ago) by John Simon called Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline (I love the title, and it called me back to read it again).
Between those and trying to keep up with The Economist every week, well, I should keep out of mischief! (And you guys wonder why I don't read on line.....)
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