Romance Studies: Memory Lane Repost

This was published a year ago, and is one of those pieces that has the germs of several good short stories scattered about -- so many fine characters, such unique situations.  But mostly it serves as a reminder of the importance of friends, in all the classifications and confusions inherent to those relationships.  From demanding divas to mealy-mouthed geniuses, make the time to swipe a bandanna stained with their salty sweat, or maybe a sweater as soft to the skin as that friend was to your fragility, in some truck stop before dawn.
Just don't take anything that they need.  Or divulge what you all pinkie-swore to protect as private.

Faust poster, Milan, 1863

Hello, Dear Readers!

I've been quiet here, but pretty darned loud, elsewhere.  The mapping coordinates of my new "elsewhere"?  Ha!  What do you think I am, gullible?  Excuse me one moment, la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore calls -- she is down with The Crud, from which Fred and I are just now escaping, and the poor child needs fresh, microwaved arboreal rice heating packs, wrapped in the organic flannel of my favorite old shirt. Apparently there is no softer organic flannel in the world... than my favorite... old... beloved... shirt.

It's over-sized, not being really mine. Over-sized soft things are perfect for CRPSers.  And, until The Milanese Nightingale made me wash it ten times straight,then douse it with Snuggles laundry softener, it still smelled like the man I "borrowed" it from.  Okay, so some people leave relationships with pre-fabricated legal divisions, half of the children, the beach house but not the in-town condo.  I leave with pieces of favored fashion -- in this case, Matthew's well-worn plaid organic cotton shirt.

Matthew vies with Brother-Units Grader Boob and TW for Total Sweetness Quotient.  No offense to TW, but as I recall, he is on the normal side of height, and no offense to Grader Boob, all of six feet and four, but if Matt didn't slouch, he topped The Boob by another good four inches.  And while years of grading have added girth to The Boob, Matt is genetically determined to skeletal aspirations. Also, he forgets to eat.

Matt had no love relationship with me.  He may have secretly hated me, but I'm pretty sure that'd be both beyond his capabilities and just not the case, being unwarranted.  So how dare I have stolen his long, soft, well-worn organic cotton blue plaid shirt?

Okay, and a V-neck sweater, baby blue.  That's it.  I swear.

Well, I had a huge crush on him, of course.

Matthew mumbles.  Probably not now, as he's established as a biggie in the academic world, is a father and a husband -- to a strong, beautiful woman who just wouldn't tolerate mumbling if that mumbling were controllable.  She's also a doctor, and so I think Matthew gets a Mumbling Pass due to some mild condition, maybe an oral deformity of some kind, or larynx liabilities.  Cathy wouldn't spend her life with a Mumbler-By-Choice.

Cathy was there when I met Matt, fell head over heels for Matt, and knew, as did I, the complete impossibility of my infatuation.  I liked her a lot.  Smart, calm, swift, pretty, private.

The thing is, you get used to it, Matt's mumbles.  Also, he garners a few benefits from this minor affliction.  People shut up when he speaks, the better to hear him.  And thank the Lord above, he doesn't waste the opportunity with a bunch of yaddayadda.  Unfortunately, the Devil on his broad shoulders has him convinced that he can tell a good joke.  Ay.  Oy.  The Devil double dogged him, too, as Matt thought he played a decent hand of poker.  We wagered match sticks, poverty-stricken academics that we were.

Matt hosted prodigious dinners, always themed by color.  White dinners were good, and pretty easy to digest.  Orange dinners called for antacids.

Those broad shoulders.  That beautiful long black hair, always one day late for a shampoo, in a pony tail.  Speckled with grey back then, probably all grey now, though I hope not.  A bodacious beard, neatly trimmed.

No butt, but legs from here to there.  I never saw him on a bed that didn't look like a fun house set up, his knees usually marking the end of the mattress, his honker feet hanging in the air. Unfortunately, unless Cathy was there to shape the spoon, he liked to spread out in sleep, no curling up, no tucking of those grandaddy long legs.

I met him at my first campus Amnesty International chapter meeting. New to the Gothic Wonderland, I wanted some activities outside the scintillating world of Romance Studies, something I think anyone could understand.

Romance studies is an umbrella academic discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak a Romance language. Romance studies departments usually include the study of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Additional languages of study include Catalan and Romanian, among others.
Romance studies departments differ from single- or two-language departments in that they attempt to break down the barriers in scholarship among the various languages, through interdisciplinary or comparative work. These departments differ from Romance language departments in that they place a heavier emphasis on connections between language and literature, on one hand, and culture, history, and politics on the other hand.
Because most places in Latin America speak a Romance language, Latin America is also studied in Romance studies departments. As a result, non-Romance languages in use in Latin America, such as Quechua, are sometimes also taught in Romance studies departments.

For some reason, I remember one moment with the intricacy of a sharply focused journalistic photograph.  There were five us crammed inside the car of our recently deceased boss -- she was killed in a car accident while vacationing in Portugal, and we inherited her car, her overwrought, shrill coven, and her tribe of feral cats.

Along with her life, the semester had just ended and we had an unmet grading deadline or something -- for some reason, we were frantic to get to the Languages Building, do whatever it was needed doing, pile back in the car, and be on our own way to vacation, which, if I recall correctly, was a Latin American studies conference in New Orleans.  We were flying in our own booze, being universally broke.

The campus was empty, bereft of rich kids, void of harried profs, a sucking vacuum free of administrative types -- though somewhere was a woman tapping her long, well-kept fingernails on the thin veneer of a big desk, waiting, waiting, waiting for those Romance Studies ne'er-do-wells who owed her a printout of grades.  Tap tap tap.

So being stopped by a campus cop was not helpful.  The Dead Boss' parking decal was out-of-date and no way were we going to be allowed to park in front of the bleeping chapel, just a hop, a skip, and a frantic sprint from the Languages Building.  Please note:  there were maybe four cars in sight and there was no way Mr. Campus Cop could know about the vodka bottle leaking on my underwear in the baggage crammed inside Dead Boss Lady's trunk.  Not that my drunk underwear should keep us from parking in front of the chapel but some people are judgmental.

Clearly, Campus Cop was bored, and we were the cure.

"So, where are y'all heading in such a hurry, anyway?" he asked, leaning into my space through the open window.

Like trained seals, we answered as one:  "205 Languages Building..." after which our chorus broke down into cacophonous parts of differing lengths and stresses.

I said, "...so that we can finish some important business for the Dean."
Alice said, "...'cause we gotta empty our mailboxes."
Alejandro added the ever useful "and we got schtuff to do!"
Scott, whom few managed to understand, tossed off a friendly "...and we have to deconstruct Calderón's historical adaptations of..."
And dear Valérie, a Phys Ed grad student from France, summed it all up with: "I have the besoin, the growing need, to use the Romance Studies' salle de bains... You must let us pass, you flic, you feuk...

Before Valérie's full bladder led her to further announcements in verlan, we regained our choral strength and declared, in striking unison, "We're faculty with Romance Studies!"

He pulled his considerable girth out of the car window, stood up straight, one hand on the radio clipped to his belt, right where one would expect a gun, and chuckled.

"Y'all are messed up.  You want me to believe they teach romance here?"

Anyway, it went on and on, we weren't able to get Valérie to shush, and it wasn't all that funny.  I can't even manage a "you had to be there!" -- because what was more memorable was how time froze and I saw the place for the first time in years.  Maybe because it was empty, maybe because we were driving a dead friend's car, anxious to get away from her coven mates, her feral cats, our grief.  Maybe because I could hear tunes in my head, mixed by a mean DJ -- "a winter's day.." and "Monday, monday, monday..." and various Jim Croce tunes, the most oft repeated being "I've got a name, I've got a name..."

The sky was grey, the trees and dead leaves were of no color at all.

Dana, our dead boss, had begun the transition from Romance Studies to Primatology, which makes a sort of sense.  The nattering of lemurs.

Matthew's clothing smelled like work.  Like his stories of raking cranberries in Wisconsin, harvesting blueberries in Maine.  Like his waking just minutes before his classes were to begin, dunking his head in water, shaking off excess with the vigor of a damp dog, running out the door in the same clothes he slept in.  A plaid blue shirt, covered by a misshapen baby blue v-neck pullover.  He taught philosophy and was finishing his dissertation, and saw brilliance in most every student he met.

He's the one to whom I gave the canvas, the huge canvas, that bore the explanation of my near death experience on the cliff -- do you remember, Dear Reader?  It doesn't matter, really.  What matters is that he is the one whose understanding I valued the most.  He hung it in his office, despite the fact that much of the "paint," not being paint at all, began to fall off the ill-prepared painting surface -- the gold hair foam, for instance, and some of the kaopectate.  It would have held up better kept horizontal, flat.

Matt and I shared something else, that we, in turn, kind of kept under wraps -- our attempt to help a battered woman that I'd met while in the hospital.  It helped that Matt was so tall and broad, the prominence of his skeleton hidden by the bulk of shirt, sweater, and a weird black raincoat.  But she couldn't leave, wouldn't leave, despite our two trips to free her.

There was a custom in Matt's house, one that I picked up, of welcoming visitors who tend to stay, on average, for three years.  So always have a house with a porch, and hang on to the hammocks you collect, because they're perfect for 3-year visitors -- who will all be, I can assure you, Buddhists.  I don't know why.

Our battered woman was an evangelical Christian who still loved the man who had left old scars and new welts on her back from his predilection for belts with big metal buckles.  When I was helping her pack during our first visit, she packed several of those belts and cowboy buckles, rolling them up to save room, her hands lingering on the leather with a soft passion.

Matthew always loved Cathy;  Cathy loved no one but Matt.  But, and this is the one area in which we all snickered at Philosophy Boy, he did not believe in monogamy.  Despite remaining monogamous after meeting Cathy, if you don't count the sex he had with other women. They managed marriage after I left that scene, but I would love to have heard the reasonable conversations that had to have taken place.

Oops, Bianca is yelling -- to me, a sign of recovery and hope for a rapid cure for her beleaguered voice, her operatic instrument -- for another "hot flannel." Another bit of Matt, cut into strips, then basted together to make pockets for the arboreal rice The Castafiore insists upon as the best heat-retaining rice.

Believe it or not, Gounod's Faust is on the schedule at The Met, beginning Thursday, March 21, with the final production on 5 April.  It's been envisioned in a setting that encompasses our most recent World Wars, which I think suits the story well.  Bianca is cast as first understudy to Marguerite, Marina Poplavskaya.



Most importantly, not only will the Milanese Nightingale enjoy a fine time in New York City, but we will be free of Marguerite's Jewel Song for weeks, possibly even a month should the show tour...


It's expensive business, opera.  I just checked the cost of an orchestra seat, specifically Row Q, Seat 111 -- $235.  But "day of" standing room tickets go for between $17 and $40.  You'd have to really love Gounod to stand through 3+ hours of his Faust.

What's that?

The sweater?  Well, the night that Marmy Fluffy Butt decided to give birth to five kittens, though she quit in exasperation after four, leaving Fred to birth little Dobby, I grabbed the first, warmest, softest thing I could find, and that was Matthew's sweater.  The kittens, no offense to Marmy, seemed to love the sweater more than her own unreliable fluff, and so the sweater was donated to the cause.  When they finally were weaned and confident enough to travel any-and-every where, I retrieved it, washed it.  But the clawed holes and stains were permanent, as were my memories of my marble-mouthed philosopher friend, so I threw it away.

Well, she's launched into what might be considered a scream, so I'd best be going.  Please support The Met in this newly envisioned version of Gounod's Faust... as we would be both proud and just plain old ecstatic were it to hit the road in May for say, a six month university tour.  Yes, we'd miss Bianca's help during ManorFest 2013, when she's usually anchor to the night Rescue Squad that retrieves lost Maze Runners.  And I know the Manor Staff would regret not having her here to wax both the marble and the wood steps to our many magnificent stairs.  But as it is for the greater good, we will pull together and get by.

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Idiot Wind: Kicking Back on a Saturday Night at Marlinspike Hall

It's one of those soft, breezy in-between seasons kind of nights, when the heart is wide open, the pupils large, taking in everything, understanding flowing like God's own soft sainted waters.  Makes you want to listen to that same sort of evocative, loving, welcoming feeling in a tune. So, of course, La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore being in charge of our turntable and the vinyl platters this evening, she went with the obvious, and chose the dulcet tones and subtleties of Dylan's greatest lullaby:  Idiot Wind.  She's dedicating it to anyone who needs a clue. Admittedly, she was aided in her musical choice by The Feline Triumvirate, who think that people who harm defenseless animals are not only idiots, but cowards, and probably, sociopaths.  They are feisty, our kitty crowd, and they never cease to speak truth to those-deluded-into-thinking-they-have-power.

If this introduction seems obscure to you, and even more odd than what you usually find here?  That's because I am really badmouthing a relative but using guile and subterfuge to get it done, see?  Now can we get back to pretending that this is just an average blog post and not more disappointment at the dysfunction of my genetic heritage?

No matter what, "Idiot Wind" is one of the Zimmer's best songs, a cutting edge turn of the blade that Sara never saw coming, I'm sure!  Blood on the Tracks, the album in which it first featured, was probably a total eye-opener for the lass. And if anyone knows where I can get a copy of the May 23, 1976 performance, at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado, I hear that's especially well-delivered.  Not with snark... snark is easy, common... no, we're talking smooth and well-delivered, yes, but with lip-curling, lip-smacking snarl. Snarl is... real.

Just a rhetorical... something that the cats want translated from Cyrillic Felis Cactus  into Modern English:
Is anyone really shocked that someone who would rob the woman who gave him life -- rob her of dignity as well as of tangible means of support -- would then, like a cornered man-boobed boor, take the life of someone's pet by poison?  (Don't worry, I'll leave my reprobate relatives behind, just let the bile flow, for the bile must flow, and better here than than up and down the highways of my esophagus.)

Where the cats come up with these strange rhetoricals, we don't know.  But Marmy is sporting her wrap-around shades, Dobby is sharpening his nails, and Buddy is getting a rubdown, keeping it all very loose.  I've switched over to my Bond issue Power Chair, equipped with mini-hydrogen bombs chemically designed to target low-testosterone wimpy sorts.  Fred is in total chill mode.  He keeps pointing at The Castafiore's stiletto heels, recognized as weaponry by any thinking soul, and reminding me that we are also protected by the power of our next door neighbors, the Cistercians, an enlivened group these days, really loving Pope Francis, their new El Papa Francisco .  The tone, explained Abbot Truffatore to a community gathered for the monthly Communion Wine Tasting last evening, is new: "It's like we have permission to swing away, to go for justice, so long as we remember to yodel out, 'Hey, who are we to judge, eh?' after we sink in the rear naked choke. It's a new Liberation Theology."

We understand Abbot Truffatore about as much as we do the Feline Triumvirate, or Bianca on a bender, but since we love and trust them all, we're gathering our Bear Repellent and sanctifying our loins with readings from the Good Books.  I'm reading The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Fred is enjoying the Canterbury Tales, Bianca and Sven are reading different versions of Faust, and a couple of the Perpetual Postulants and the more enervated Saturday night escapees from the Novitiate seem to have Marvel Comics tucked inside their breviaries.

I'm in the "Man's Way" section of Book II, and it's Madame Gautier who is speaking to Jane Pittman. My eyes just landed on her version of "Idiot Wind":

That's man's way. To prove something. Day in, day out he must prove he is a man. Poor Fool.

Being snarky (not snarly), I rapid-fired Fred to give me a version of "Idiot Wind" from Chaucer. He's feeling much better, by the way, and responded first with a very sexy eyebrow raise.  Then, without letting more than a second pass, he channeled the perfect 14th century zap of a verbal prat fall:

Then the Miller fell off his horse.

Ever equitable, I turned to Sven and my Dear Castafiore, noting that they were a bit more intertwined than separate authors might lead one to expect, and gave a polite cough.  "*Ack*-*Ack*," added Marmy Fluffy Butt, peering at this odd couple over her stern shades. "What," laughed Sven, "you want us to choose a passage from FAUST to encapsulate 'Idiot Wind'!  No offense, dear Prof, but don't you think that's rather... stupid?"

He had a point. He also had Goethe.  I gave Bianca the Hairy Eyeball, and she promptly stood, hoisted her bust with firmly crossed arms, and belted out you-know-what -- Gounod's precious Jewel Song.  At which point Marmy turned it over to Dylan and we all enjoyed a cold beverage.  And so it was that a soprano's "Ah ! je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir..." seamlessly married with Dylan's adenoidal "Someone's got it in for me..."

I couldn't help but laugh.  Always, at moments of such intersection, I hear our gruff benefactor, Captain Haddock, crying out from the wild sea:  "She's in fine voice tonight."

The little monks, still treating their stinging baby tonsures with gentle baths of Witch Hazel, were spared quoting from their comic books, as they were saved by the bells marking the beginning of the Great Silence*.  Brother Fratulence grinned at me and waved a copy of The Hulk.

Don't let this domestic scene of Marlinspike Hall at play on a Saturday night reassure you that all anger at senseless murderous rage has been set aside.  Don't be an idiot, babe.

Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick but when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky.

People see me all the time and they just can't remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts
Even you yesterday you had to ask me where it was at
I couldn't believe after all these years you didn't know even me better than that
Sweet lady.

Idiot wind blowing every time your move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads heading south
Idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

I ran into the fortune-teller who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven't known peace and quit for so long I can't remember what it's like
There's a lone soldier on the cross smoke pouring out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it you didn't think it could be done in the final end he won the wars
After losing every battle.

I woke up on the roadside daydreaming about the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are making me see stars
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzing around your eyes
Blood on your saddle.

Idiot wind blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn't enough to change my heart
Now everything's a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What's good is bad what's bad is good you'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom.I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can't remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed your eyes don't look
Into mine
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone faced while the
Building burned
I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees while the
Springtime turned
Slowly into autumn.

Idiot wind blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind blowing every time you move you teeth
You're an idiot babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I can't feel you anymore, I can't even touch the books you've read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishing I was somebody else instead
Down the highway down the tracks down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars hounded by your memory
And all you raging glory.

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffered not the pain I raise above
And I'll never know the same about you your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Idiot wind blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

***  *******  ***          ***  *******  ***          ***  *******  ***

* When I used to step aside from life and go vacation in a nearby monastery (long before we moved to Tête de Hergé) twice a year, I had enough hubris to replicate the monks' hours, and kept the silences, etc. Wikipedia has an excellent tripartite explanation of the benefits of such silence -- which is far, far different from, say, the notion of "keeping quiet." Listed under the entry "Vow of Silence," are these saving graces:

• As an aid to the practice of good, for silence is kept with Man, in order to better to speak with God, because an unguarded tongue dissipates the soul, rendering the mind almost, if not quite, incapable of prayer. The mere abstaining from speech, without this purpose, would be the "idle silence" which St. Ambrose so strongly condemns.
• As a preventative of evil. Seneca, quoted by Thomas à Kempis, complains that "As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned less a man" (Imitation, Book I, c. 20).
• The practice of silence involves much self-denial and restraint, and is therefore a wholesome penance, and as such is needed by all

I bring this up, of course, because this is the type of post, the type of speech, that is so raucous that one needs to accept that old and dear invitation:  "Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while."  [Read:  "and shut up that noisy mouth and mind..."]

Thanksgiving Wordle Challenge 2009 [#10]

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, Darling Readers! I sense the frenzy of defrosting, parboiling, baking, and scrubbing of toilets going on out there. I feel, and share, your pain.

Oh, who are we kidding? We love it!

Still, it makes all kinds of sense to take the occasional Wordle Break, cleansing the mind even as we make devious culinary plans to cleanse palates.

This is the second in our Thanksgiving Wordle Challenge 2009 series. Ms. Marmy the Fluffy Butted Feline has been reading over my shoulder, advising me on wordle style and color choices. At her suggestion, I reined in my urge to use weird fonts and out-of-this-world color choices, and have stayed in the realm of plodding realism.

The Magical Ms. Marmy has given this wordle her famous "*ack*:*ack*" of approval.

{cough::cough} [What do you think, La Fresca? Too many hints? Well, in my defense, 'tis the season for giving, yo.]

Directions: Unscramble the Wordle below, then identify the novel and author from which the Wordle was formed.

To see the History of Wordle Challenges, go here.


At this time, we're thinking that Thanksgiving Wordle Challenge 2009 will consist of a total of four Wordle Challenges. Two down, two to go. And yes, as promised on Twitter by @The_Castafiore, we are attempting to represent a different continent per wordle. Should you happen to be a representative of the continents we fail to honor, I beg your pardon and beseech your forbearance.

Because @The_Castafiore could not restrain her wagging tongue and tip-tapping fingers, we are also committed to featuring Island Nations during the Xmas Wordle Challenges.

What's that? Hmm? Oh, the prize! Tickets for you and four of your closest friends to the 2010 New Year's Day 9:20 AM début of Gounod's Faust, that which keeps La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore busy and out of trouble. Unfortunately, we cannot swing the cost of transportation to Tête de Hergé and hope that won't deter you from the competition. We'll get you here somehow, even if we have to send the submarine.