1389 Dear Diary - Wednesday

Friday, July 20, 2007

I haven't been keeping up the diary function the past few days. I've been filling the ether with trivia, the "I'm alive and relatively rational" function. Usually when I do that it's because I am avoiding addressing some issue, but that isn't the case here. I just haven't taken the time.

I have to go all the way back to Wednesday, and I'm already forgetting what may have happened Wednesday morning and afternoon. Nothing noteworthy, apparently....

Wednesday evening was Shakespeare, "As You Like It", at Boscobel. Boscobel is a 200-year-old mansion on the Hudson River, across from West Point. Every summer the grounds host the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. The performances are held in a huge turreted tent (here - scroll down a bit, photo on the left, also do click to see the video). The dirt-floored stage is in the center of the tent with tiered seating around three sides, and the cast also makes excellent use of the lawn outside the tent. The view of the lawns and the river is framed perfectly by the arch of the tent opening.

FW had set it all up as a Mensa outing back in May, but the only people to respond immediately (and separately) were Roman and me. I think because on the weekends the tickets are very expensive (Mensans are not generally noted for financial success, or if they do have it, they certainly don't like to spend it), and during the week everybody else works. Anyway, FW bought the tickets very early, which distressed me a bit because I had planned to invite a friend from NJ, it would be only an hour's drive for him and entirely possible (though not probable) and worth at least a try, but FW said that seats were assigned, and a later ticket purchase would probably not be near us.

Which would make things extremely awkward if I wanted to sit with my NJ friend.

FW doesn't especially like Roman, which complicates matters, I couldn't abandon them to each other (although on his side there is no animosity, and they are always civil to each other). So I didn't invite my friend. Then, a few days ago, there had been an FW-Roman explosion, soothed over but still remembered, and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to sit between them for the entire evening, being unsure how things would go.

As it turned out, there were several seats open on either side of us, so I could have issued my invitation after all. Me Sad. And the two of them were quite pleasant to each other. Me Happy.

The original plan had been a picnic on the grounds 2 hours before "curtain" (there being no actual curtain), but it had rained earlier in the day and looked like it might rain more, so the picnic was cancelled. So Roman and I met for dinner in Poughkeepsie, and then headed to Cold Spring. We got there early, so we were able to visit the gardens and marvel at the river view before FW joined us and we went to the tent.

Roman had warned me that although the actors adhere strictly to the bard's words, stage directions, props, and costumes might be from an entirely different era.

Yup.

They did "As You Like It" as a western.

Imagine Shakespearean English in a Western drawl.

Archery and sword fights were accomplished using rifles, knives, and pistols. People thundered up riding Monty Python horses. The shepherdess's sheep were actors on hands and knees with mops on their heads.

It was fun. I enjoyed it.

It didn't rain, but it was so damp that when I took my jacket off the back of the seat, it felt like it needed wringing out. By the end of the play, fog had moved in, so that as the actors went out onto the lawn to exit, they disappeared. My hair, pulled into a pony tail, was a mass of fuzz, standing out three inches from my scalp even where it was pulled back.

As I drove home up the river, the fog got thicker, and just about when I was starting to worry, six miles from home, the fog suddenly stopped, like a line had been drawn across the road. At my driveway, it was perfectly clear.

Dark. The trees around the house were full of fireflies, more than I usually see. They looked like tiny Christmas lights. When I looked up higher, the sky was full of stars, the Milky Way was broad and dense. As I was looking up, a meteorite crossed the sky below the Milky Way. I waited, and there was another.

I have to say it was a good evening. I just wish there hadn't been those empty seats to remind me of what I missed.
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