Four minutes ago i had written the entire 1st paragraph of this essay in my head - and now ______ · Something must be working, and i have no idea exactly what that might be. From the thunder i hear, i know the rain is coming and so closed the cover to the laundry room; i have been able to return to my normal bicycle circuit and found in my short absence the same hills were no longer insurmountable and my vanity nap was no longer a vanity. The large city just to my North is now testing every foreigner for the virus, and to believe my small hamlet is not next would be too ignorant for even my feeble intellect. Just yesterday, my temperature spiked to 37.3 and dropped to 37.1 within minutes - all i can do is observe the protocols, wash my hands better than i have and continue to “shelter in place” which seems to suit my ways far better than butting up against the fence like some rutting ram i never was, nor hoped to become. Where exactly does that leave me in the the cultural crossroads of miasma, biology and fear¿ any ideas?
Yeah, me neither, but i did manage to recall the thread i was aiming at with what had once been described in my collegiate days as a “scattershot” approach to literature - it was a party · an epochal party in the early 1980s in a 1940s dance studio at the corner of 4th & Main in Santa Ana. I like to party and began practicing that peculiar alchemy seriously on the 1st “Earth Day” 22 April 1970; it may have even been the 2nd or 3rd "Earthday" - things get hazy when looking into hazy days. Unfortunately for my single mother, i was more of a budding druid than ecologist and the revelry she returned to after teaching art to spoiled Newport Beach middle school brats, scarred our relationship to this day - but they say radical accountability · and i nothing if not radical; i am sorry ma, please forgive me. The party in Santa Ana nearly a decade later was simply the apex of those early experiments in merriment. The party in Santa Ana was a Masquerade with a remarkable mix of characters, from college professors, doctors, engineers to tradespeople from all walks of life that might have been found anywhere in the roaring 80s of Orange County.
I had just commenced an engineering career as a “C” draughtsman in the same factory i had worked swing shift fabricating aircraft antennae when i graduated high school nearly a decade earlier. At this party, enter one too old to know better, and too vain to understand fellow, but genial enough Senior Engineer replete with comb-over a la early _rump. One of the elder “solder ladies” most certainly an emigre without documentation, and conservative to her core dressed in costume of her native country - wearing an elegant mask making her identity apparently unrecognizable to to said engineer; she also intrinsically understood the spirit of the Masquerade and chose to speak not a word throughout the entire evening. Our poor swain was enamored from the tip of his balding pate to the toes of his, if i remember correctly white patent leather shoes. Chapters would be inadequate to describe the lengths this poor smitten fellow went to that night to charm our mystery lady, a mystery i fear only to he who could not gain traction with her whose heart he coveted, maybe to save his soul.
You need to understand that in her normal workaday world this man’s contempt for anyone who could not benefit his professional standing or resonate with his grandiose self-image simply didn’t exist; yet here on her Cinderella Night she held his heart in the palm of her hand the entire evening. He could not see sideways, up or down - though the dance studio was full to the gills with young nubile and sensuous dancers from the local college, for one of the guests was in fact a modern dance professor who appreciated a good party. To our mystery lady’s credit, when Monday came and work resumed there was never a hint of humiliation for the engineer, though there was a sizable contingent from the proletariate who witnessed her quiet dignity to he who in any other circumstance would have barely acknowledged her existence, much less _______ fill in the blank. To this day, it remains an object lesson for me about the relationship between fact and fiction, the heart and reality, and courage and dignity.
Years later, or maybe even closer i was gifted “Man and His Symbols” by C.G. Jung. Within this concise compendium of human psychology/anthropology/mythology was a passage on the 30s movie “The Blue Angel” (German: Der blaue Engel) a 1930 German tragicomedic film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, and Kurt Gerron. The gist of this poignant story was the blindness of an aged professor when faced with the self-aware beauty of a vibrant young woman simply being all that she could be - however the dice may fall · I cannot say for certain that the “Mystery” woman at my party did not eventually exact her pound of flesh, i was too young and arrogant to understand what i had witnessed much less know that i too would be faced with similar circumstances even to this day; i know young women who have witnessed my aged “game” with a patience i have misunderstood as affection. Was the professor in "The Blue Angel" a fool, or was Marlene Dietrich a predator - it is an ancient game; i remember from my art school training a Renaissance painting of a young swain offering in his open hand his bag of riches to the young love of his life, while in the same frame an ancient hag was reaching around his blinded waist lifting the purse from his belt; as the French proverb goes, so goes the world: “Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes” - A. Nonyme ·
jts 22/08/2020he http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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