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finally ….. i saw him do it

Yep. After all these eons of spying and waiting and frustrating my inner Gladys Kravitz.

I finally saw our neighbor, Australian Episcopalian priest Father Tony or “Tawny” or Jibbly, dump his trash in someone else’s trash can.

He didn’t see me sitting in my car, but I saw him.

Oh, yes, I did, Father.

I saw you …. yes, I did …. I saw it with my own two eyes …. So you can wipe off the grin …. I know where you’ve been ….. It’s all been a pack of lies

(All together now ….)

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
And I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord

Oh Lord, indeed.

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hamlet-ophelia-mucha

Sheila has a post up with a vast gorgeous array of images of Ophelia through the ages. Etchings, drawings, paintings, photographs of actresses who’ve played Ophelia. It’s a smorgasbord of beauty.

Her post made me remember a piece from one of my all-time favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha, so I thought I’d make my minor contribution to the idea here. It’s one of his Sarah Bernhardt paintings/posters for which he become famous: Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, actually, and even though Hamlet dominates the frame here, if you look closely, underneath Hamlet, you’ll see Mucha included an image of Ophelia, in the chill of death, clutching her flowers.

mucha33.jpg

I love contemplating what Mucha intended with the composition — Ophelia boxed in a kind of pretty casket at the bottom, Hamlet’s dark foot breaking the frame — doing what? acknowledging her? reaching to her? oppressing her? what? To me, it’s not accidental that the foot is outside the frame. She is literally under his foot here. It’s not like I picture Mucha having composition issues and being forced to paint the foot out of frame or not giving his subject’s legs and whatnot, like some people I know. Maybe it’s only interesting to me. A roomful of people could go round and round discussing the relationship between these two and, at the end of it, come to a roomful of different conclusions about it. And the views on their relationship shift with the times and the culture. This is a lithograph from 1899, late Victorian era, to give it a context, and based on the feel of the piece, I thought it would be interesting to include a couple of contradictory quotes on the Hamlet/Ophelia relationship from two prominent Victorian women.

The first, from writer Anna Brownell Jameson fromShakespeare’s Heroines: Characteristics of Women:

I have even heard it denied that Hamlet did love Ophelia. The author of the finest remarks I have yet seen on the play and the character of Hamlet, leans to this opinion… I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia.

~ Anna Brownell Murphy Jameson, Shakespeare’s Heroines:Characteristics of Women.

The second, from a well-known Victorian actress who played Ophelia, Helena Faucit:

I cannot, therefore, think that Hamlet comes out well in his relations with Ophelia. I do not forget what he says at her grave: But I weigh his actions against his words, and find them here of little worth. The very language of his letter to Ophelia, which Polonius reads to the king and queen, has not the true ring in it. It comes from the head, and not from the heart – it is a string of euphemisms, which almost justifies Laertes’ warning to his sister, that the “trifling of Hamlet’s favour” is but “the perfume and suppliance of a minute.” Hamlet loves, I have always felt, only in a dreamy, imaginative way, with a love as deep, perhaps, as can be known by a nature fuller of thought and contemplation than of sympathy and passion.

~ Helena Faucit, Lady Martin, On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters (1888).

I, for one, although I like how Brownell states her point, tend a bit towards Faucit’s interpretation. The composition and the general feel of Mucha’s piece makes me wonder if he did, too. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but, let’s face it, my entire life is based on reading too much into everything.

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question

Why is the nightly news revealing the code names of the new first family?

Why??

No, I really want to know. I thought their code names were supposed to be secret.

But again, I cannot remember where my shoes are on a regular basis.

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yum

Trader Joe’s Multigrain Crackers

topped with

Trader Joe’s Goat Cheese

topped with …. my latest TJ’s discovery ….

Trader Joe’s Cranberry Apple Butter

Ohhhhhh mmmmmy …….

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this is fabulous news

7-Eleven makes sugar-free Slurpees now. They’re a Crystal Light product. And I gotta tell you, when it’s 137 degrees and -43% humidity outside in freeekin’ November already, the only way to cool down your internal organs and revive your shriveled dermis is to get yourself one of them-there cherry limeade sugar-free Slurpees.

Yes. That is the ONLY way.

There is NO OTHER WAY.

You may think well, that’s silly; that can’t be the only way, but, nope, you’d be wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong.

Cherry Limeade Sugar-Free Slurpee is THE ONLY WAY.

ONNNLLY WAAAAAY.

So yes.

I think I’ve made my point.

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halloween hoodlums

Okay. So, apparently, some drunken hoodlums jumped out of their car on Halloween and chased after my Younger Nephew and his friends with a knife.

Yeah.

My sister told me this yesterday on the phone while I screamed. Literally. She had to time her words in between my outbursts and screams. It’s hard to be the older sister, I imagine.

Seems Nephew and three friends went up the street to check out the neighbor’s haunted house. This was Halloween night around 9. MB and I had just left to drive back home. This is a suburban area, lots of houses, but one section of the road has no houses for quite a long stretch. That’s where the boys were accosted. A car pulls up, overflowing with rowdy dudes. My nephew thought they were drunk (based on his vast experience with drunkenness.) Whatever. That doesn’t matter. Drunk or not does not matter here. They started taunting Nephew and friends, yelling, “We could kick your asses!” etc. The boys walked faster. These are just junior high school boys. My nephew just turned 14 so he’s a little older and bigger for 8th grade, but the other boys are pretty small. They’re in junior high. And I’ve met them. Good kids. Nice boys. Just wanting to stroll up the street to check out the neighborhood haunted house, for God’s sake.

The boys pick up the pace and the car follows them, then pulls over. The dudes pile out of the car, 4 or 5 of them. One of them pulls a knife. It was NOT part of a costume; they weren’t in costumes. Instantly, one of Nephew’s friends tears off up the street, hides quivering behind a bush, apparently, and calls his mom on his cell phone. God bless him. “Mom, are you coming? Mom, are you here yet?” God bless him. Then another kid runs the other way. Do not ask me why Nephew didn’t run instantly. As Sister was telling me this, I was freaking OUT inside, “Run, Nephew! RUNNNN!!!” My God. I’m having palpitations just writing this story.

Now there are just two boys left. Maybe Nephew underestimated the threat. Maybe he didn’t realize how big they were until they got out of the car. Maybe he doesn’t spook all that easily. Actually, I know that’s true. But in this case, he needed to spook and FAST. As the dudes get closer, Nephew turns to the last friend standing and says, ever the dry dry boy, “Well …. I guess we’re outnumbered,” then FINALLY, “Come on!!”

The two shoot on up the street, running, running past the long empty stretch of road. The hoodlums chase them. My God. They are chasing my nephew and his friend WITH A KNIFE up a long empty stretch of road! Nephew heads straight for the nearest house. He told my sister later, “Mom, I tried to make it look like that’s where we were going all along. Like we knew the people who lived there.” Okay. That’s good. Good strategy. As Nephew and friend ran up the walkway of the house to ring the doorbell, the hoodlums finally began to slink off down the road, back to their car.

It was too dark to identify any of them. Too dark for seeing license plates. Nephew and friend went to find their two other friends who had run off. And in typical Nephew fashion, he didn’t even mention this incident to his parents until a couple of days after the fact when his friend brought it up in carpool. “Hey, did you ever tell your mom what happened on Halloween?”

“Oh, yeaaah ….”

Ever the low-key kid. “Oh, yeah ….. drunken hoodlums chased us with a knife …. maybe they could have killed us …. yeah, no biggie ….”

My God. I want to punch him. I want to hug him.

I think next Halloween will involve helping my sister strap Nephew to a chair for the entire night.

Excuse me. I’ll just be over here, hugging myself, trying to calm my hysterical ass down, okay?

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i must tell you something

I am very interested in this New First Puppy I keep hearing about.

It’s true. I am. Votes schmotes. I need to hear more about the puppy.

Now I suppose you could say, “Oh, Tracey. You’re always ‘very interested’ in every puppy you see. It’s called covetousness.” Okay. Sure. Fine. Say that if you want. But this is different because this time, I am very very interested. See that? That’s two verys, with one italicized. If there’s another level of interested, I honestly do not know what it is. And, truly? That extra level of interest comes from nothing less than my deep-seated desire to help my fellow man.

See, I’ve been thinking certain things for a long time now. Like all day. Things like: You know, Trace. They would probably need a New First Puppy Wrangler in the White House, right? I mean, Obama and Flobama (uhm, I made that up just now — for First Lady Obama — isn’t it clever and such — also who cares) can’t personally wrangle the New First Puppy. Oh, no. They will be busy-busy changing things. And those little girls of theirs are quite cute, yes, but also clearly ignorant on how to wrangle a puppy based on the fact that I’ve never ever seen them with a puppy. Not once. Whereas puppy wrangling is knowledge I clearly possess in spades based on my experience of not having had a puppy in lo! these vast yawning years since I was eight years old.

Also, let’s not forget that I visited the White House, yes, I did, when I was 13 — you know, back in the days when you could tromp all over that place with impunity and peek into the medicine cabinets in the Millard Fillmore Bathroom and find, say, an old jar of Woodrow Wilson’s hemorrhoid cream and whatnot — so I pretty much know the presidential abode like the back of my dainty white hand. Which I imagine would be used for New First Puppy wrangling in less-than-dainty ways I’d rather not dwell on here.

On top of all this, not to get all dreary on you, but neighborhood mongrels murdered my guinea pigs Cinder and Snowball in cold blood when I was 6 and nothing gives a girl a deep abiding sense of the importance of proper puppy wrangling quite like the brutal murder of her pink-eyed rodent balls at the paws of wandering sociopathic mongrels. Plus, in the aftermath of the carnage, when a girl sees her fuming dad literally fling a canine suspect down the backyard stairs with one strong righteous arm, a girl is kind of inspired and thinks, “Perhaps I, too, can fling a HORRIBLE CONSCIENCE-LESS MUTT down the stairs someday, just like daddy.”

Sighhhh ….. maybe someday.

So Obama. I know you’re hiring. Just who do you want for your New First Puppy Wrangler? The choice is obvious. Blaring.

I mean, duh.

You heard me.

Duh.