Musings.8: Barbara

There are some I suppose, perhaps many, who dismiss the appearance of immortals bearing gifts at a wedding ceremony in Melissa's last dream. It does have the ring of a fairy tale about it - remember the nasty fairy who showed up uninvited to the christening of the infant princess Sleeping Beauty and cursed the babe for the slight? - but I propose that this theme has appeared in Melissa's dreams precisely because it must be seriously considered.

I confess that I was surprised to see the theme of immortality take root and unfurl as a major theme in my exploration of Melissa's background. I was guilty of thinking 'background' meant simply her experiences, wishes, goals from her birth to the time I picked up her story.

I set out to learn what makes Melissa who she is and I see some esteemed poets are stepping up to help me piece together this portrait. T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" introduces the theme, "Do I dare to eat a peach?" from the goddess Xi Wang Mu's garden, and tells us right at the top that it is a love song. In case she did not make the connection between the peach of immortality and songs of love as a result of her tea party with the goddesses, the Dreaming Universe sends her off to a heavenly wedding. There is no mistaking the peaches, the immortals, or the love songs for anything other than what they are - perfectly elegant symbols of immortal love.













Many nights before I turn out the light I open a book or two of poetry at random and read what I find. The night after I published that post about 'Uncle Joe's Wedding' Will Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and Pablo Neruda's sonnet XLIV from "100 Love Sonnets," translated by Stephen Tapscott, opened up for me. "... Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds/ ... it is an ever -fixed mark/ ... Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle's compass come./ Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/ But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom."

Melissa witnessed a bridal party spanning ages process before Uncle Joe and address him as 'husband' as he awaited his bride. Perhaps she is being asked to see that the life she thought could be measured "with coffee spoons" stretches farther than she would imagine, and encompasses a love like 'Uncle Joe', "That looks on tempests and is never shaken;/It is the star to every wand'ring bark."

Neruda's sonnet, then, gives a poignant clue to Melissa's story, I think:
I love you in order to begin to love you,
to start infinity again
and never to stop loving you:
that's why I do not love you yet.

I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held
keys in my hand: to a future of joy -
a wretched, muddled fate -

Now, just as I write this I see the references circle back to Will Shakespeare! Neruda's "I love you, and I do not love you" seem an echo of Prince Hamlet's disjointed declarations to the fair Ophelia in Act Three, Scene One of "Hamlet" (lines 125, 129 in the Folger Shakespeare Library edition) just before the "Get thee to a nunnery" speech.

I wonder if Ophelia offers a clue about Melissa, or vice versa?

I will keep you posted, as it were!









[The photos were taken at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. in Dec. 2005. Yes, that is me in front of the stage in the Library's theater. The relief of "Hamlet" is one of the many carved on the buildings exterior. The mosaic is a portion of the floor in the lobby.]