10.10.11

 
The theatre was a large circular building at the north end of campus. On the outside it was layered with dull pink and beige rock; on the inside it was layered with Athens and Ireland; the streets of fair Vienna, the dismal tombs of Danish kingdoms. Like any theatre house, in this one there were those that dared believe, dared become, dared die upon those foreign scapes, crying out in terror to a sea of watchful ghosts who observed this mortal strife in true attitude of ghastly phantasms - viewing, hurting, pleading, laughing, wondering, lamenting, but never helping, their hands tied in painful diaphaneity and words inaudible to the poor characters strutting or crawling round in disastrous humanity.

But ironically, both can feel both - the ghosts and the players - perhaps so like life in which we strut and crawl almost oblivious to the myriads of hands and hearts and voices of those invisible; dead to us as we die in solemn loneliness, but alive in us as though each generation amplifies the next. This is the audience of the stage: the emotional might of the collective channeled through the individual - him given a powerful responsibility, the giant chest of his theatre laying open, bleeding its unbridled passions upon him, begging him, daring him to express them with what before were only words. And grabbing hold he does so, pulling on the reigns of some colossus beast as though it were the sea, commanding it, tugging with what talent he have at hopes and interests and imaginations, screaming the incantations of some long-dead sorcerer as he feels a force he cannot see, as he dreams a face that cannot be. Is this as the angels are to us?

I see my friend Jamie as she walks into New England, walks into Sarah; Mike into James. With her hands Sarah weaves her story for us, inquirers looking through a part-time veil. Sarah cannot speak and passionately resists the efforts of James to train her to do so. Without word, she is perfect - her expressions are beautiful, her emotion conveyed in silent brilliance, like a candle flame, flickering soundless meanings to which we ghosts can still relate. James translates for her, but only the words. They were the children of us lesser gods, we watching from the stars and clouds that then surrounded our New England. They prayed to us and we listened. And we prayed for them, in turn, to greater gods.

Outside the play house there is a small parking lot where, one day, a group of us are waiting. It is a Saturday, I believe - just practice today. The sun is still low and the air is dry and cool, but not cold. What soon becomes extraordinary is the wind - that day the wind blew powerfully from somewhere southeast, coming through our groups in strong, exhaling breathes. Most of us stayed in our cars or huddled near the theatre doors, but Mike went and sat on the small white fence in front of the lot, his arms high, the leather of his jacket snapping like a thick flag as it blew freely behind him - Michael was our archangel. I left my car and stood to watch him for a moment. Then I closed my eyes and slightly lifted my own arms, leaning into the sweeping pressure of Michael's beating wings.