Please note that the the title of this entry is preceded by an *. From now on I am going to give fair warning by using an asterisk prior to the title when the posts consist of personal musings which may not be of interest to many, if not most, of my readers. Proceed with caution. Why am I getting up close and personal? No really good reason except that I feel a need to do so, and, well ...what the hell, it's my blog... I can do what I want.
One of the aspects of my the long car trips that I have taken in recent years that have been a major plus is the ample opportunity to do lots of thinking. Parenthetically, this raises the question of why it seems that I don't have time to do serious pondering during my day to day life at home; to which there is no answer.Some of the things I thought about were important to me, weighty, and pertinent to this blog; some are vexing and often understandable, at least for me; some are trivial and really beneath serious contemplation; and some, particularly those topics related to politics and social issues, are, as in the well-known quote from Macbeth "...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
My ambivalent feelings about thinking, perhaps the more appropriate word is rumination, came to mind today because of the difficulty I am having blogging about some of the complex topics I wrestled with during my trip and am still having difficulty giving form and substance to, especially in writing in a public space. All of this came to the fore this morning when I read a review of a recent Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, by Terry Teachout and encountered this: "it is an entrancingly clever whodunit for eggheads whose underlying purpose is to dramatize the central problem of modernity: How are we to live our lives if it turns out that they have no ultimate meaning?" Indeed!
If you, dear Reader, are at this moment scratching your head and uttering something like "what the hell is he going on about, it's just an insignificant travel blog" or words to that effect, I want you to know that I am not in the midst of some existential crisis. This is, I think, mostly an old man's pastime. At a certain age, many of us really begin to understand something we have always known about not really experienced: the realization that time is truly running out and that there is unfinished business to be contemplated and dealt with.
Probably few of you are old enough to remember the days when PBS was actually filled with good content, before the Yanni Concerts, or the dusting off yet another tired musical act from the '60s (don't you just get a tingly feeling when you watch video of some post middle aged dweebs at a Peter, Paul, and Mary Reunion Concert waving Bic lighters- cells phones these days, of course) or yet another documentary retelling of some aspect of America's horrible sordid past. Anyhow, back in those early days of public television, I chanced to see a performance of a Medieval Morality Play. The details elude me, but, if memory serves,
the main character was Everyman, the theme was redemption from sin and the elements, or was it the characters, were I believe Confession, Absolution, Penance, and Grace (Susann says that grace would not have been included because it's a Protestant thing). During my trip I attempted to remember the details of the play and, more important, the essence while contemplating my wish to make some amends. Frankly, revisiting the past, much less remaking it, is not easy. Whether or not doing so is rewarding remains to determined.
No comments:
Post a Comment