To Keep the Body in Good Health is a Duty...

"I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen

Over the years this blog has charted its writer's various experiences with illness, physical injury and dental emergency. Last Thursday I managed to achieve all three in one day. I suppose it saves time.  I am mostly recovered - ongoing physiotherapy aside - and the only lasting impact probably comes from something my GP said to me. "Don't worry," he reassured me "this has nothing to do with your ticker.". Naturally, I had never previously given a moment's thought to the possibility that there might be anything wrong with my heart. Cue hypochondria on a heroic scale. 

Leaving the furrow

“But the point is, now, at this moment, or at any moment, we're only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us -- the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.”

- J.B. Priestley, Time and the Conways

I have been back to the Bradford Literature Festival, this time for a talk on “Mysticism in the Work of J.B. Priestley”, which was fascinating stuff, demonstrating once again just how ahead of his time the man was. Since attending a talk at last year’s festival on his theories of time (clearly as Priestley is by some way Bradford’s most distinguished literary son there is something about him every year) I have read “An Experiment With Time”, by J.W. Dunne, a book which influenced Jack (as I believe he would have wished me to call him) enormously. My reaction to Dunne’s work was essentially “Hmmmm…”, and to be honest I am not suggesting that you follow my lead. I did try the experiment on myself, with results that failed to prove anything about me and what I dream about that I couldn't have told you in the first place.

As usual I came away from the talk with some reading to do, this time around the concept of bardo; it’s just possible that it will provide an explanation as to what has happened to wargaming activity in the Casa Epictetus over the last few months.

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!

 “Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding.”

And so to the opera. I'd never seen Der Rosenkavalier before and being both too lazy to do any research and too mean to buy a programme I was surprised to gradually realise that it was a Mozart pastiche, even to the extent of being over long. Still if one is going to find inspiration anywhere then why not start at the very top?

It's not really about the Rosebearer or indeed, as the original title apparently had it, about the Baron for whom he bears the the rose. Instead its central character is surely the Marschallin, a woman sent by her family into marriage with a much older man who willingly sacrifices happiness so others may marry for love. As the Buddha said “In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?".

Musically the highlight is the trio at the end where the voices of the three sopranos - the male lead is played by a woman and in a Shakespearean twist spends a lot of time pretending to be a woman - combine to mark the turning point in all their lives. For the Marschallin, as she subsequently leaves the stage on the arm of the father of the bride, a recognition that time has passed. As for the wisdom of having an affair with someone the best part of twenty years one's junior in the first place, Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal pass no moral judgement; therefore neither will I.