"The seasons alter," indeed.
If there were fairy courts, if they were having an argument, I wished they'd just kiss and make up. Though not the way they did in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Ahead of me, Sophie and Jilly came to a stop and I walked right into them.
"How's our dreamwalker?" Jilly asked.
She spoke the words lightly, but the streetlights showed the concern in her eyes. Jilly worries about people— seriously, not just for show. It's nice to know that someone cares, but sometimes that kind of concern can be as much of a burden as what you're going through, however well meant it might be.
"I'm fine," I lied. "Honestly."
"So who gets your vote as the author of Shakespeare's works?" Sophie asked.
I thought Francis Bacon looked good for it. After all, he was known as the most erudite man of his time. The author of the plays showed through his writing that he'd had a wide knowledge of medicine and law, botany and mythology, foreign life and court manners. Where would a glove maker's son from Stratford have gotten that kind of experience? But the argument bored me.
"I'd say it was his sister," I said.
"His sister?"
"Did he even have a sister?" Jilly asked.
A black Cadillac pulled up to the curb beside us before I could answer. There were three Hispanic boys in it, and for a moment I thought it was LaDonna's brother Pipo and a couple of his pals. But then the driver leaned out the window to give Jilly a leer and I realized I didn't recognize any of them.
"Hey, puta," he said. "Looking for a little of that kickin' action?"
Homeboys in a hot car, out for a joy ride. The oldest wasn't even fourteen. Jilly didn't hesitate. She cocked back her foot and kicked the Cadillac's door hard enough to make a dent.
"In your dreams," she told him.
If it had been anybody else, those homies would've been out of the car and all over us. We're all small women; Jilly's about my height, and I'm just topping five feet. We don't exactly look formidable. But this was Jilly, and the homie at the wheel saw something in her face that made him put the pedal to the floor and peel off.
The incident depressed all three of us. When we got to my apartment, I asked them in, but they just wanted to go home. I didn't blame them. I watched them go on off down the street, but sat down on the porch instead of going inside.
I knew I wasn't going to sleep because I started thinking about what a raw deal women always seem to get, and that always keeps me up. Even Titania in the play— sure, she and Oberon made up, but it was on his terms. Titania never even realized the crap he had put her through before their "reconciliation."
A Midsummer Night's Dream definitely hadn't been written by a woman.
3
A funny thing happened to me a few years ago. I caught a glimpse of the strange world that lies on the other side of the curtain we've all agreed is reality. Or at least I think I did.
The historical version of what happened is pretty straightforward: I met a street person— the old man on the bicycle that everybody calls the Conjure Man— and he got me to take an acorn from the big old tree that used to grow behind the library at Butler U. He had me nurture it over the winter, then plant it in Fitzhenry Park near the statue of the poet, Joshua Stanhold.
The version he tells is that he's this immortal who diminishes as the years go by, which is why he's only our height now. He was supposed to leave our world when its magic went away, but he got left behind. The tree that came down behind the library was a Tree of Tales, a repository of stories without which wonder is diminished in our world. The one I grew from an acorn and planted in the Silenus Gardens is supposed to be its replacement.
My version... I don't really know what my version is. There was something strange about the whole affair, I'll grant you that. And that little sapling I planted— it's already the size of a ten-year-old oak. Jilly told me she was talking to a botanist who was quite amazed at its appearance there. Seems that kind of oak isn't native to North America, and he was surprised to find it growing in the middle of the park that way.
"The only other one I've ever seen in the city," he told Jilly, "used to grow behind the Smithers Library, but they cut it down."
I haven't seen John— that's the Conjure Man's real name, John Windle. I haven't seen him for a while now. I like to think that he's finally made it home to wherever home is. Behind the curtain, I suppose. But I still go out to the tree and tell it stories— all kinds of stories. Happy ones, sad ones. Gossip. News. Just whatever comes to mind.
I'm not even sure why; I just do.
4
I'm not as brave— or maybe as foolish— as Jilly is. She doesn't seem to know the meaning of fear. She'll go anywhere, at any time of the day or night, and she never seems to get hurt. Like what happened earlier tonight. If I'd been on my own, or just with. Sophie, when that car pulled up, who knows how it would have ended up? Not pleasant, that's for sure.
So I'm not nearly so bold— except when I'm on my bike. It's sort of like a talisman for me. It's nothing special, just an old ten-speed, but it gets me around. Sometimes I think I should become, one of those messengers that wheel through the traffic on their mountain bikes, whistle between their lips, ready to let out a shrill blast if anybody gets in their way.
You think you're immortal, covering ground faster than anyone can walk, you're not all locked up inside some motorized box that's spewing noxious fumes into the air. You feel as natural as a bird, or a deer, racing through your concrete forest. Maybe that's where John got that feeling from; riding through town on his bike, free as the wind, when all the other street people are just sort of shuffling along, gaze to the ground.
I started a poem about it once, but I couldn't get the words to fit the vision. That's been happening to me all too often this summer. Oh, who'm I kidding? Wordless pretty well sums me up these days, I look at the work I've had published, and I can't even imagine what it was like to write those verses, little say believe that it was me who did it.
Feeling sorry for myself is the one thing I have gotten good at lately. It's not a feeling I like. I hate the way it leaves me with this overpowering sense of being ineffectual. Worthless.
When I start getting into that kind of mood, I usually get on my bike and just ride. Which is how I found myself in Fitzhenry Park a few hours after Sophie and Jilly left me at my apartment.
I laid my bike down under the young Tree of Tales and sprawled on the grass beside it. I could see a handful of stars, looking up through the tree's boughs, but my mind was back in the Standish, listening to Puck warn Oberon of the coming dawn I drifted off to the remembered sound of his voice.
5
Puck breaks off and looks at me. The play has faded, the hall is gone. It's just the two of us, alone in some copsy wood, as far from the city as the word orange is from a true rhyme.
"And who are you?" he says.
I make no reply. I'm too fascinated by his transformation. Falling asleep, the voice I heard, the face I imagined, was that of the actor from the Standish whom I'd seen earlier in the night. But he's gone along with the city and everything familiar. This Puck is more compelling still. I can't take my gaze from him. He has a beauty that no actor could replicate, but he's more inhuman, too. It's hard to say where the man ends and the animal begins. I think of Pan; I think of fauns.
"Your hair," he says, "is like moonlight, gracing your fair shoulders."
Maybe I should be thinking of satyrs. Legendary being or not, this is a come-on if ever I heard one.
"It's dyed," I tell him.
"But it looks so full of life."
"I mean, I color it. I'm not a natural blonde."
"And your eyes?" he asks. "Is that tempest of dream-starved color dyed as well?"
I have to admit, he's got a way about him. I don't know if I should assume "dream-starved" to be a compliment exactly, but the sound of his voice makes me wish he'd just take me in his arms. Maybe this is what they mean by f
airy enchantment. I've only known him for the better part of a couple of minutes, and already he's got me feeling all warm and tingly inside. There's a musky odor in the air and my heartbeat has found a new, quicker rhythm.
It's a tough call, but I tell my libido to take five.
"What do you mean by 'dream-starved?' " I ask him.
He sits back on his furry haunches and the sexual charge that's built up between us eases somewhat.
"I see a storm in your soul," he says, "held at bay by a grey cloud of uncomfortable reason."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask.
But I know. I know exactly what he's talking about: how everything that ever made me happy seems to have been washed away. I smile, but there's no light behind the smile. I laugh, but the sound is hollow. I don't know how it happened, but it all went away. I do have a storm inside me, but it can't seem to get out and I don't know how to help it. All I do know is that I don't want to feel like a robot anymore, like I took a walk-on bit as a zombie for some B-movie only to find that I can't shake the part once my scene's in the can.
"When was the last time you felt truly alive?" he asks.
I look back through my memories, but everything seems dismal and grey. It's like walking into a room where all the furniture is covered with sheets, dust lies thick on the floor, all color has been sucked away.
"I... I can't remember...."
"It was not always so."
A statement, not a question, but I still nod my head in slow agreement.
"What bedevils you," he says, "is that you have misplaced the ability to see— to truly see behind the shadow, into the heart of a thing— and so you no longer think to look. And the more you do not look, the less able you are to see. Wait long enough, and you'll wander the world as one blind."
"I already feel that way."
"Then open your eyes and see."
"See what?"
Puck shrugs. "It makes no difference. You can look upon the most common thing and see the whole of the cosmos reflected within."
"Intellectually, I know what you're talking about," I tell him. "I understand— really I do. But in here—" I lay the palm of one hand between my breasts and cover it with the palm of the other "— it's not so clear. My heart just feels too heavy to even think about sunshine and light, little say look for them in anything."
"Then free your heart from your mind," he says. "Embrace wonder for one moment without the need to consider how that wonder came to be, without the need to justify if it be real or not."
"I... I don t know how."
His lips shape that puckish smile then. "If you would forget thought for a time, let me love you."
He cups my chin with his hand and brings his lips close to mine. At the touch, being so close to those wild eyes of his, I can feel the warmth again, the fire in my loins that rises up into my belly.
"Let the storm loose," he whispers.
I want to, I'm going to, I can't seem to stop myself, yet I manage to pull back from him.
"I'll try," I say. "But first, and I don t know where this thought comes from, "first— tell me a story."
"A... story."
It's all happening too fast for me. I need to slow down.
"Tell me what happened when Titania found out that Oberon had taken her changeling into his court."
He smiles. He rests his back against a tree and pulls me close so that my head's on his shoulder. I need this breathing space. I need the quiet sound of his voice, the intimacy it builds between us. Without it, fairy enchantment or not, the act of making love with him would be no different than if I did it with one of those homeboys who pulled up beside the curb earlier in the evening.
He's a good storyteller I hope the Tree's listening.
When the story's done, he sits quietly beside me, as taken away by the story he's let unfold between us as I am. I'm the one who has to unbutton my blouse, who reaches for his hand and puts it against my breast.
6
I woke with the morning sun in my eyes, stiff and chilled from having spent the night on the damp grass. I sat up and used my fingers as a comb to pull the grass and leaves from my hair. My dream was still vivid. Puck's advice rang like a clarion bell inside my mind.
You can look upon the most common thing and see the whole of the cosmos reflected within.
But I couldn't seem to do it. I could feel the storm inside me, yearning to be freed, but the veil was over my eyes again and everything seemed to be shrouded with the fine covering of its fabric.
Free your heart from your mind. Embrace wonder for one moment without the need to consider how that wonder came to be, without the need to justify... if... it...
Already the advice was fading. I found myself thinking, it was only a dream, There's no more wisdom in a dream than in anything you might make up. It's just shadows. Without substance.
I tried to tell myself that it wasn't true. I might make up my poems, but when they work, when the line of communication runs true between my heart and whoever's reading them, they touch a real truth.
But the argument didn't seem worth pursuing.
Above me, the sky was grey, overcast. The morning was cool and it probably wouldn't get much warmer. So much for summer. So much for my life. But it seemed so unfair.
I remembered the dream. I remembered Puck— my Puck, not Shakespeare's, not some actor, not somebody else's interpretation of him. I remembered the magic in his voice. The gentleness in his touch. The wild enchantment in his eyes. Somehow I managed, if only in a dream, to pull aside the curtain that separates strangeness from the world we've all agreed on, and find a piece of wonder that I could bring back with me. But now that I've woken, I find that all I've brought back is more of what it seems I've always had. Greyness. Boredom. No meaning in anything.
And that seemed the most unfair thing of all.
I lay back down on the grass and stared up into the Tree of Tales, my gaze veiled with tears. I could see the gloom that had spread throughout me during the summer, just deepening and deepening until it swallowed me whole. I was so sick of feeling sorry for myself, but I just couldn't seem to stop myself.
And then a small bird landed on a branch above my head— I don t even know what kind. A sparrow? A wren? It lifted up its head and warbled a few notes and for no good reason at all, I felt happy.
I didn't see the singer as a small drab brown bird on an equally drab branch, but as a microcosm that reflected every living thing. I didn't hear its song as a few warbled notes, quickly swallowed by the sounds of traffic beyond the confines of the park, but as an echo of all the music that was ever sung.
I sat up and looked around and nothing seemed the same. It was as though someone had just told me some unbelievably good news and simply by hearing it, my perspective on everything was changed.
7
Someone once described the theory of right and left brain to me and I read up on it myself later. Basically, it boils down to this: The left brain is the logical one, the rationalist, the scientist, the one that sees us through the everyday. It's the one that lets us conduct normal business, walk safely across a busy street, that, kind of thing. And it's the one we know best.
The right brain belongs to the artist and its mostly a stranger because we don't call on it very often. In the general course of our lives, we don't need to. But fey though it is, this stranger inside us is the one that keeps us sane. It's the one that imparts meaning to what we do, that allows us to see beyond the drone of the everyday.
It's always trying to remind us of its existence. It's the one that's responsible for synchronicities and other small wonders, strange dreams or really seeing a small drab brown bird. It'll do anything to shake us up. But mostly we don't pay attention to it. And when we sink low enough, we don't hear its voice at all.
And that's such a shame, because that stranger is the Puck in the midden, the part of us that makes gold out of trash, poetry out of nonsense. It calls art forth from common sights and music f
rom ordinary sound and without it, the world would be a very grey place indeed. Trust me, I know— from my own all-too-unpleasant experience with that world. But I'm working on never going through a summer like that again.
The stranger, that Puck in my midden, showed me how.
When I think of that Puck now, I'm always reminded of how he came to me— not just from out of a dream, but from a dream that was based on someone else's dream, put to words, enacted on the stage, centuries after his death. And l believe now that Shakespeare did write the plays that bear his name.
I doubt we'll ever know for sure. In this case, the historical version's lost, while the stories everybody else has to tell contradict one another— as so often they do. But I'll pick from between the lines and say it was old Will.
Because the dream also reminds me of the Tree of Tales, and I think maybe that's what Shakespeare was: a kind of human Tree of Tales. He got told all these stories and then he reshaped them into his plays so that they wouldn't be forgotten.
It doesn't matter where he got those stories. What matters is that he was able to put them into the forms they have now so that they could and can live on: small sparks of wisdom and joy, drama and buffoonery, that touch the stranger inside us so that she'll remind us what we're all here for. Not just to plod through life, but to celebrate it.
But knowing all of that, believing in it as I do, the mystery of authorship still remains for most people, I suppose. The scholars and historians. But that's their problem; I've solved it to my own satisfaction. There's only one thing I'd ask old Will if I ever ran into him. I'd love to know who told him about Puck.
I'll bet she had a tempest in her eyes.
Saxophone Joe And The Woman in Black
A cat has nine lives. For three he
plays, for three he strays, and for
the last three he stays.
— American folklore
I love this city.
Even now, with things getting worse the way they do: Too many people hungry, or cold, or got nowhere to sleep, and here's winter creeping up on us, earlier each year, and staying later. The warm grate doesn't do much when the sleet's coming down, giving everything the picture-perfect prettiness of a fairy tale— just saying you've got the wherewithal to admire a thing like that, instead of always worrying how the ends are going to meet.
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