The Ghost of Christmas Multiverse

Author's Note: Thursdays for the next couple of weeks will be major holidays and so I will not be sending anything new until after the New Year. 

So it is with gratitude both for your dedication as regular receivers of this blog, and your comments in email and in person, that I wish you a warm and peaceful Yule and a Happy New Year.

See you Thursdays after the holidays!

Ebenezer Scrooge awoke on Christmas morning to find himself a new human, having faced his past, his present, and then looked fearfully into the yawning maw of his future. His experience awoke within him a sense of the importance of things beyond money and gain. He made his amends and started anew. It is a lesson we could all use, daily, not just yearly. Of the many uplifting Christmas tales, this is the one we are all familiar with at some level, even today, and it resounds with a potency that reaches even the hardest hearts.

Recently, though, I found myself contemplating a possibility beyond Dickens’ three time frames of past, present, and future. What if another spirit arrived and brought Scrooge, not through time, but through the foam of possible realities? It is fascinating to consider, especially from the modern realm of scientific theories regarding the fabric of reality. This is not to divest Dickens of all of his cleverness and moral potency. Using his three spirits, he managed to write possibly the first science fiction story involving time travel. He even anticipated some of the main rules of the genre that are often adopted in modern time fiction. He can perhaps be forgiven for being limited to a literary understanding, but we are not, as science and fiction together have built upon his formidable foundation and provided us with libraries full of speculative writing about traveling through time.

Modern science has postulated the quantum many-worlds theory, where every quantum event with multiple possible events has all those outcomes realized as different probable worlds. For every Frostian “road less traveled” there is a reality where the road was also not taken, and there, reality splits into the two possibilities. Thus, there is a reality where I write this essay and another where I write a different essay, and both of those realities are realized in a branching timeline of universal waveforms. For each choice, each possible outcome any (and all) of us makes, another universe, just like ours, but a little different, pops into existence. Thus, the foam of uncountable possible realities fluffs out like soap bubbles in the Thanksgiving casserole dish. We are unaware of these other realities, and we cannot travel through them on our own, though we can ponder the consequences of other decisions easily enough.

Thus, rather than traveling through time (or visiting the times that each ghost is master of), it is possible for there to be another, somewhat nerdier ghost, who saves time (perhaps literally) by taking Ebenezer through possible realities.Therefore, I invented another spirit—the Ghost of Christmas Multiverse—in honor of Dickens and physics. This interdimensional specter alleviates the necessity for the other spirits, as it merely shows him the infinite possibilities of his choices had he been fortunate enough to make different ones. Scrooge can then see what his life could, is, and will have been like without the need for all the dawdling. The resulting spectral experience is no less life-changing, and the final change is not diminished in the slightest.

As Scrooge is confronted by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley, he is told that he will be escorted by one spirit through all the many choices of his life. Scrooge hesitates and then lies down to await this visitor in the night. When the spirit arrives, it isn’t a ghost but someone who resembles Dr. Richard Feynman, but glowing like Obi-Wan Kenobi. This spectral physics master takes Ebenezer’s bony claw and, waving something that looks remarkably like a pocket calculator, opens a portal through reality.

As a lad, we are told that Scrooge was abandoned by his family on the Christmas holidays, forced to stay at school, because his father blamed the lad for the death of his mother in childbirth. The Ghost of Christmas Multiverse shows Ebenezer what might have happened if his mother did not die. He also shows him what happens if his sister also survived Fred’s birth. Maybe he is shown how, rather than leaving the employ of Mr. Fezziwig, Scrooge stays on and eventually inherits the business, marries one of Fezziwig’s daughters, and has a large and rollicking brood.Rather than growing cynical and fearful of death, Ebenezer grows to contemplate just how fortunate he has been despite the challenges and trials of his life. He and Jacob Marley become friends, but it is a friendship of deep trust, loyalty, and affection.

Later, Scrooge is shown with himself and the woman he loves, but when she comes to rebuke his lust for gold, rather than doubling down, as we see him do in the book, he demurs and repents his greed, choosing love instead, and goes on to great happiness and is redeemed by the love and faith of an adoring wife.Instead of the Ghost of Christmas Present showing Scrooge all of the people, poor and wealthy, great and small, celebrating the holiday, and then landing at the Cratchits’ home, Multiverse brings Scrooge through other Londons. In one, Christmas is forbidden by a mad, puritanical ruler; in another, Christmas is celebrated the whole year literally.

Then, diving in to show other variations of Bob Cratchit and his family, there is one universe in which Bob is a drunkard and a domestic tyrant and another in which he dies of disease, leaving Mrs. Cratchit and young Peter to fend for the family. Perhaps most painfully, there is one reality in which Mrs. Cratchit dies in childbirth with Tiny Tim, and rather than adoring his young, frail boy, Bob blames and loathes the child and sends him off to school and abandons him. That might pluck the old miser’s heartstrings a bit, eh?Later, at Fred’s, we find that rather than a cheery and upbeat young man devoted to his wife, Scrooge’s nephew has inherited that miserly grasping nature, and is living a life not of love and joy, but of wretched penny-pinching, mistreating all who cross him. Like his uncle before him, Fred is given the chance to choose love, but chooses rather the master passion of gain. How much pain might it cause Ebenezer to see that his one real relation is turning out to be no different than himself?

Finally, stepping in for the gaunt and dreadful Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, Multiverse shows Scrooge many variants of the future beyond his death. Instead of his grave, Scrooge beholds himself, but not in his customary black, but brightly dressed with Tiny Tim, now thriving, perched on his shoulder. Perhaps, instead of Mrs. Dilber, the charwoman, and the undertaker seeking to make themselves a pittance on the items stolen from his deathbed, Scrooge is witness to himself as a kind and benevolent master, doling out gold pieces as gifts, and thoughtfully rendering kindnesses the value of which cannot be measured against the pound sterling.

How could such visions fail to move Scrooge if he sees the best versions of himself? Or, what if, by some strange and loathsome set of choices, Scrooge runs for parliament and, in the House of Commons, creates legislation to enact his antithetical ideologies about the destitute? Scrooge, seeing himself as the worst possible monster, persecuting those with less as the ultimate end of his current miserly fetishes, might repent his ways in horror.

If you think that I have gone around the bend a bit, rendering a nearly perfect classic into a scientific mish mash, then I beg you to watch the myriad cinematic versions of the fable this year. Each, in its own way, occupies a slightly nudged variation of the original theme from the book. Although true to the spirit (there’s that word again) of Dickens’ tale, each version is a slightly dislodged example of the whole. True, no film can ever capture the beauty of the novella. Dickens had a way with words and a scalpel-like wit for pointing out the best and worst of humanity in his era. To capture that skill would be to attempt the impossible, but I maintain that each movie is, in a way, a kind of quantum many-worlds view of the book.Take, for instance, my favorite of all the Christmas Carol versions, the 1951 classic with the miser played by Alistair Sim. In this fantastically dark tale, Scrooge doesn’t just leave his apprenticeship with Fezziwig, he buys the business with Jacob Marley and puts Fezziwig on the street. Ebenezer’s sister, “Fan,” died in childbirth with Fred, but because of his passionate resentment at her loss, he misses her plea to take care of her son before she expires in a heartwrenching scene that gives emotional depth to Ebenezer.

Although the film takes special care to cover all of the most important parts of Scrooge’s “reclamation,” it is nevertheless necessary to make the story a little more logical to the audiences who watched it, over a century after the book was published in 1843. As such, things at which Dickens merely hints are drawn out in clear, stark lines, and although it is not a horror per se, the film gives a most Gothic performance of the story and captures the sardonic, cruel-hearted Scrooge mirrored against his nearly mad, joyful, childlike redemption at the end. The movie feels haunted, as if the emotions within Scrooge dampen and blur the experience, which adds to the grim but delightfully terrifying portrayal.

The other of my favorites, a made-for-TV film starring George C. Scott, from 1984, skips over much and also makes up much. Whereas there is never a mention of Scrooge’s lost love interest in the previous film after they split, the screenwriters go to great lengths to show that she went on to be happy after leaving Ebenezer. Both show the children beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Present, but the latter gives a much less threatening promise about them.

There is a heartier, robust performance of the lad Tiny Tim and added dialog and depth to the Cratchits, while not getting their family numbers right as in the book. Scott’s Scrooge is also a more grounded, naturalistic character, and the particular London makes the viewer feel like you’re in a Victorian painting, where ghosts just happen to be part of the scenery.

The very farthest, nearly unwatchable version of the beloved tale is the 1999 TV movie, with Sir Patrick Stewart playing Scrooge. The whole thing feels flat and overacted, with large parts getting skipped over, relying on the audience’s familiarity with the story, perhaps, to cover a multitude of evils perpetrated against the story. Of all the versions, this is the one that feels less like a Christmas movie and more like a TV commercial or parody. Even so, it seems to have the benefit of fitting in the multiverse reality, where multiple Scrooges all eventually make it through to a redeeming end.

The final reality is a now often maligned film, when not forgotten, the 1970 musical Scrooge, starring Albert Finney and Sir Alec Guinness (yes, that Alec Guinness), where each scene is punctuated by a very good and lovable song. One assumes that there is a universe in which we all break into song like a Disney princess after every few lines of spoken dialogue. This, if you can find it, is a worthy watch, even just for the novelty of it.

Finally, I think it would be fun if, as part of his journey, Scrooge was brought by Multiverse, through a sideslip where all the versions of his tale are shown, whether badly acted school plays or church sketches, or just any or all of the films, cartoons, and commercials ever made, to show Ebenezer how his transformation still resounds with all of us, even today, getting on to 200 years later.

If nothing else, I think he’s earned it. And if we have to live in any universe at all, then I’m glad it’s the one with A Christmas Carol in it.

Inevitability

All Things Must Pass

All things must pass, George Harrison asserted in his 1970 album of the same name, and he was correct. My favorite Beatle was referring to the undeniable reality that everything moves on, sunrise, sunset, love, fear, and eventually, life itself passes. To some mindsets, this idea seems somewhat morbid. It clouds the present with a sense of impending grief and loss, and I admit that, from a certain point of view, focusing on things eventually ending can seem maudlin. Just as dangerous, though, is the opposite. The idea that we go on forever and that our choices have no consequences presents a whole other set of problems.

I have found that there is balance in remembering that, as Bertie Wooster said, indirectly quoting the book of Isaiah, ‘all flesh is as grass.’ It’s not morbid to remember that we won’t be here forever. In fact, I tend to take this a step further, refusing to allow myself the false consolation of some realm beyond life where I might have another chance to do the “next right thing”. All we have is today. All we have is this moment. Nothing else is guaranteed to us. Today is the day, and the time is now. This is one of the foundational concepts in the philosophical school of Stoicism, and I have found great comfort in it over the years, especially when faced with the inevitability of loss.

I used the phrase “false consolation” earlier, and to some of my readers, this may appear to be somewhat harsh. Humans tend to deny the reality that when we lose a friend or loved one, we will never see them again. This idea is abhorrent to the imagination because we make powerful connections with others. It becomes impossible to imagine the world—our world—without them, and so, to cushion the horrible rending of loss, we try to create fabulous afterlives, where they live on. When I think of the monuments and rituals surrounding our loathing of the idea of death, I am moved to use the term ‘morbid’. 

Numb

This past week, with no warning, I lost one of my closest friends. I will not go into details, except to say that I wasn’t prepared for him not to be here anymore, and I felt gut-kicked by the news. Most of that first day, I spent on the phone with mutual friends. I was reeling. The shock of the news seemed unreal. My head flooded with questions and denials. ‘How could this be?’ ‘Surely it must be a mistake.’ Beneath this roiling sea of distress and profound disbelief was an implacable white mist of numbness. Most upsetting was the understanding that the fog would lift, pain would swell, and the tears would flow. In the meantime, I had to try to make rational sense of a scenario that was completely irrational.

No stranger to loss, I have come to believe that the numbness is there as a biological or psychological buffer. It protects our fragile sanity from the horrible cracks that form when part of our reality disappears from our lives. Just like a sleeping limb or the fat-jawed puffiness of a visit to the dentist's office, my whole body felt tingly, but emotionally unresponsive, except for dread of a slowly creeping sadness.

Sitting with the wolf

I’m no longer sure if the concept is Native American or Northern European, but at some point, I read about a non-traditional conception of grief. Most of us now know that grief comes in stages. The unpleasant truth is that, if we refuse to deal with these stages of grief, it can turn to poison and, worse, fracture us permanently. In the myth, grief is represented by a large, dark wolf. It doesn’t arrive right away, but it eventually shows up, and when it does, it won’t leave until we acknowledge it and look it in the eyes. The myth implied that, until we sit with the wolf, we cannot be whole again.

I’m aware that, as I write this, the wolf hasn’t come for me yet. I’m keeping an eye on the proverbial treeline, though, as I know that it will make an appearance, and when it does, I’ll need to be prepared to sit with it. There is no standard or timeline of grief. It takes how long it takes, but the one way to make sure it drags on forever is to pretend that the wolf hasn’t come to the door, yet. 

The real afterlife

There was a sycamore tree near my grandmother’s house, and over the years, one of the branches or boughs grew so close to the power or telephone lines that the wood eventually grew around the wires. When a storm damaged the old tree, the city took it down, but forever after, there was a small log floating up there with the wire running through it. The tree was long gone, but high in the air, there remained a tiny bit of proof that it had once existed.

A little more than a year ago, my aunt sent me a box containing papers, notes, forms, and documents from my great-grandfather and his father’s life. As I carefully paged through these artifacts, I realized something fairly profound. My ancestors had been real. They lived, breathed, had hopes, dreams, fears, and dreads, and they collected and compiled and left their mark on the world during their fleeting lives. For just a few moments, the light of my interest and curiosity brought them back into a direct connection with the current moment.

Loss is permanent and horrible. We’re not adept at dealing with it, and it often leaves us broken. And yet, given enough time to deal with the grief, we may find that the person we lost continues to live—not in some inaccessible afterlife fraught with rules and barriers, but within our hearts, right now.

This has been one of the most comforting realizations in a series of devastating losses throughout my fairly short life. Eventually, the pain subsides a little (it never goes away permanently), but the person awakens in us, grafted onto our hearts, part of us. As my youngest son eloquently said, “You keep on living as long as people keep saying your name.” 

As my thoughts turn to my aunt, to my mother, father-in-law, my grandparents, to Uncle Dan and all the people I’ve lost who mattered to me, their spark of life lights up and burns in my heart. Their deeds, words, heroic acts, mannerisms, personalities, and idiosyncrasies have become part of my own. The more we think of them, the more they continue, aiding us, providing wisdom and love, and some comfort to us.

The Next Right Thing

During the years we knew one another, my friend filled my mind with a series of his sayings. It was just his nature to share aphorisms that helped him with others and some of those sayings have stuck with me. There were times when he was clearly struggling with some aspect of his life that I would say, “hang in there,” or “one day at a time” and he would respond with, “I’ll do my level best.” However, the most common of his sayings had to do with proceeding through life on the sometimes shaky terms life throws at us. He would say to me, “Just do the next right thing.”

As I sit here, thinking about this new reality without him, I find that his words, mannerisms, irascible sense of humor, and genuine, sincere caring are already with me. I hope that maybe this means that when the wolf finally comes, I can share with it that the words and deeds of my friend helped me to deal with the grief of his loss while he was yet with us. I’m prepared to sit with the wolf, though, because no matter how philosophical I feel I can be now, it will take some time for me to come to terms with his loss.

The Undiscovered Country

The Bard spent much of his life and his writing contemplating the idea of death. Of all of his works, Hamlet seems to be the one that most powerfully examines all of our fears about what happens when we stop living. In one of the most famous and well-known soliloquies, the Prince of Denmark says, 

“The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns ...”

We cannot come back. Even in the major faiths, with a few exceptions in their accumulated stories, no one gets to undo the power of the end of our lives. This is the hard and shattering truth of life. Eventually, we all have to pass on, as George Harrison stated.

In the meantime, each moment we have here, each opportunity to help, to share our feelings, to be truthful, to care, to comfort, to grow and learn, to expand the walls of our minds, and to do the next right thing, is really the only opportunity we have to do it. We never know when the thing we’re doing in the moment, will be the last time.

This motivates me to spend a little more mental effort to remember how tenuous life is and to be a little better today than I was yesterday. Far from being a morbid concept, I find that this accomplishes something simply and without the emotional or spiritual coercion of fundamentalist dogmas. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, it is the concept of my own impending death that makes me better, not threats of torture or endless worship of a deity in the time after my own parting.

Eulogizing

I didn’t set out to write this essay this week. More than usual, my friend is on my mind. Although some of us were able to gather and celebrate his life, and it was joyful, though also sad, I realize that more tears are coming. When they do, I will try to remember the words spoken to Merry, Sam, and Pippin by Gandalf as they watched Frodo and Bilbo prepare to depart Middle-earth for the Undying Lands. “I will not say ‘do not weep’ for not all tears are an evil.” My own sadness feels like this.

Weirdly, I’m joyful and sad. I miss my friend. I’m sure I will miss him more as the days, months, and years go on. Yet, I have my memories and the many times that he made me laugh, stepped in to help or offer comfort, and the ongoing meandering conversations that we had will help to assuage the pain, until he becomes a memory that will not fade from my mind.

It is perhaps enough, for now, to say that I’m filled with gratitude that I was considered a dear friend by one of the best people I have ever known. Although he was sometimes aggravating, or irritating, or slightly inappropriate, he cared and was a loyal and devoted, and stout-hearted friend. He helped me become a better person, and I cannot adequately express my feelings at how lucky I was to be his friend.

This, That, and the Other

New Baby, Who Dis?

Last week, we welcomed the newest member of our expanding clan into the world. There were a few concerns in the weeks leading up to the moment of her birth, but she and her mommy managed very well and are doing fine.

Amazingly, the sensation of clutching the child to my chest for the first time did not diminish from two years earlier when I held her sister on the day of her birth. I was still a blubbering mess, but what pure joy flooded from her little form through me. I was immediately her servant and knew that we would share many stories, snacks, and adventures together. I can’t wait.

Children of the Future

I work with kids and teens as part of my job, so I’m used to other people’s children, generally. However, it is such a nice change of pace to spend time with kids in the family. Our nieces and their husbands came for the holiday week, and the eldest brought her two amazing children. I’m biased, of course, but they are such sweet, genuine, bright, and funny kids, and we all had a blast keeping them entertained. We’ve decided that we need to invest in some construction paper for their next visit, as both kids are super crafters.

As we cooked and baked and played with them, I suddenly got very excited for the time when our two granddaughters are of a similar age. What fun it will be to hold entire conversations, read books, make up stories, and goof around in the backyard when they are school-aged. I’m in no rush, of course. I’m so happy to spend time with them, even though they are quite young, but it was a nice flash forward, for sure.

Bachman’s Dead

Once he was found out, Stephen King jokingly (and somewhat bitterly) said that his alter-ego, Richard Bachman had died as a result of cancer of the pseudonym. Most King fans don’t know, but King’s first published novel was written as Richard Bachman (Rage, 1977) and only later did Carrie come out under his real name.

I never cared for the Bachman stories, myself. King admitted in an interview I saw a long time ago, that he felt that Bachman allowed him to write things that his own persona couldn’t or wouldn’t. And to be sure, Bachman’s stories are controversial. Because of the release of a cinematic version of two of those books recently, though (The Running Man and The Long Walk) I have decided to revisit them and rate them with an eye toward understanding this nuanced difference between the author and himself as a nom de plume. I’m a third of the way through The Long Walk, and it is interesting to say the least. It seems more of a challenge to write than to read, but I’m slowly getting into it. I may review both in a coming essay.

Leaf Me Alone

The reality of my front yard is unpleasant to me right now. Because we had family coming in, I wanted to get a head start on hanging up the Christmas lights and it took me most of the beginning part of November to get things set the way I like them. Between rain, busy weekends, and other commitments, I didn’t get as much time to deal with the leaves from our big oak, so the front yard looks like a giant mess. Because I mow the leaves right now (my blower is kaput) and because the yard is strewn with cords for the Christmas lights, it is hard to manage this, but in the coming weeks, I’ll get it in better shape.

It doesn’t help that the big oak tree only releases its leaves in waves, beginning in mid-October and continuing to drop batches every few days until the end of November. Which means that, even when I do get to dealing with them regularly, it is still a challenge to keep things looking neat. I guess, given the choice, I’d rather have leaves than hot and sultry weather, so there’s that.

Parade Goeth Before the Fall

As you read this, I’m preparing for our sixth year participating in all the local town Christmas parades, which occur throughout this coming weekend. Micki is headed to the kids to help with the new baby, and I’d like nothing more than to be with her, but I will say that driving the Mobile Library in the parades is fun and helps get me in the mood for the holidays. Between Thursday night and Sunday, I’ll drive in four parades, so good luck to me getting any chores done this weekend, I guess.

Washer Step!

Last weekend, when the house was too quiet again, after the kids went home, I heard a nagging pinging coming from the basement. Our washer, it turns out, was not filling. So I called our appliance guy. Before he could answer, though, I happened to catch up with my brother, who told me what the problem was (he’s had the same issue) and what to do to fix it. So, I ordered the parts and, when I’m not driving in the parades, I guess I’ll be in the basement with the family cats, working on getting our washer going again. 

In the meantime, our Elliott has graciously allowed us the freedom to trek to his side of the house with detergent packets and dryer sheets and full baskets until we can get things sorted. You never realize how much you take appliances for granted until you don’t have them working. And this year has been a time of realization, for sure.

Final December Thoughts and what’s coming next

So, this was a potpourri just to get things back on track after the busy and fun Thanksgiving week. Next week, I’ll get back to regular, full-length essays, and one of those will hopefully be entertaining, if not comment-inducing. 

I have a longer essay on a topic of physics in Dickens in the pipe and one on personality tests, too. In the New Year, I will revisit some of my previously-mentioned drafts and brush them up a bit for public comsumption.

Anyway, I hope you all had a happy and enjoyable Thanksgiving and got to see family or go on adventures or both. Yay winter and Yule!

Family Connections

Family Connections

Author’s Note: If you got this link in your inbox and we’re related, then this is for you. It’s part of an ongoing series of loosely related essays and opinions, and nonsense appropriately named “Dave Rambles On”, that I was encouraged to start up again by your mom/our aunt. I would love it if you read this and also dug around a bit through the other work here. If you want, I will add you to the email list.

Please find the sentiments here sincere, and please share them with the rest of us Bare Grandchildren.

A year ago, as we were preparing for Thanksgiving, I texted my father’s eldest sister to check in with her. She had been having some health issues, and I was anxious to hear how she was feeling. She replied that she had been connecting with my other aunt’s eldest daughter. I noted that I hadn't seen that cousin since I was a little fellow and that my primary memory of her had been a picture of her when she was Ms. Wisconsin in a prominent place on my grandmother's wall.

My aunt encouraged me to get in contact with my cousin, and, as was common with her, when she said to do something, it was expected that we do it. So, I texted my cousin. In these days of busy schedules and copiously filled daily planners, I lost track and didn’t follow up. I’ve never been a very good communicator, at least not by letter, text, or email.

In the intervening year, my aunt's health declined significantly to the point where she was rendered nearly helpless. I still communicated with her, primarily via text, and continued to send her my weekly essays. I dreaded that, at her venerable age, things might not go back to how they were. I took the opportunity to tell her exactly how I felt about her after we were alerted that she was getting hospice care. I’m glad I did. I kept sending her pictures of our family, our granddaughter, and sending uplifting messages, which her daughter and caretakers dutifully read to her. 

Then, the inevitable happened, but like all such things, it takes a while to get the idea through the cranium. For almost a decade, my aunt had always been there, either a call, an email, or a text away. I corresponded with her more than with anyone else except Pop Bare, and I cannot say how important that was for me and how grateful I am that she was there. 

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My aunt was the eldest of my grandparents' three children. My father was the youngest. She had five children, their middle sister had four, and Pop Bare had my brother and me. My aunt's eldest son is the oldest of the grandchildren (also named Dave), and I am the youngest by far. As I've shared before, I came along 12 years after my brother, who is closer in age to all of them. 

Although my grandparents grew up and lived in PA their entire lives, both my aunts moved away as young adults. My parents continued to live in Pennsylvania, while my cousins all grew up in the Midwest. When my folks split, my mother got custody and remarried, and we moved to the country. I was quite small then. My cousins visited rarely, and we had even rarer family events that drew us together. When they were visiting, though, I was always excited. We have no cousins on our mother’s side, so to me, they felt like intensely cool older siblings. I grew up loving and admiring and even idolizing them. I also felt alienated from them because of my home situation. They were basically adults, and I was a kid. They lived in Chicago and Wisconsin, and I lived in the Pennsylvania countryside. They were all college grads, funny, smart, and very hip. I was just a farm boy in hand-me-downs. Aside from them always making me feel loved and special when they visited, we were never able to develop deep closeness, and that was a lot to do with the distance, but also, their families were more enlightened and progressive. This isn’t a criticism of my parents at all. Just an observation of the reality.

I’ve always been terrible with birthdays and holiday cards. They used to send me books and cards, but I was terrible at correspondence. It’s only more recently that I have made even a little effort to stay in contact, and it’s been paltry at best. The person I wrote and stayed in contact with most was my aunt, which proves that I can do it and so all excuses vanish.

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This past weekend (as I'm writing this), our family gathered to honor my aunt at a celebration of her life, and though we were not able to attend in person, my cousin Dave made it possible for us to be there via the wonders of the Internet. Micki and me, Pop Bare, and my brother watched from different states as our first and second cousins told stories and celebrated the remarkable woman that she was. We wanted to be there in person. We would have been, had things been different, but too many intersecting contingencies prevented it at home. Nonetheless, it was a moving and lovely experience. I’m so glad we were able to witness it.

It was also wonderful to see the family and hear their tributes. As the hour of the digital visit neared its end, my other aunt’s eldest cousin rose and spoke. It was the first time I had seen her in the Internet Age’s version of “in person” in many decades. As she paid her tribute, I began to understand that she had valued and been close to our aunt, similarly to me. She had been an elder counselor, a support structure, and a valued provider of context for the Bare family, its eccentricities, historical realities, and lore. My cousin then ended with a potent suggestion. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for the next funeral before we all get together again, she said. Although my mic was on “mute”, I heartily “hear-heared”. 

Then it was over. The hour passed too quickly. As I packed up my laptop, I had a painful realization. For years, my aunt had been a point of connection for me to the family. History and memory, yes, but also to my cousins and their kids. For some of that time, too, among many other things, she reminded me that I was family despite being the youngest and living so far away. More than this, she stipulated that the responsibility was mine to reach out and connect and keep those connections open.

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In the Spring of 2017, during what would be our last visit, my aunt reminded me that there is nothing more important than family. While hanging out with her and my cousin and his family that weekend, I felt something truly eye-opening. Here were people with whom I had a genetic bond. The gestures, shapes, ways of thinking, and seeing the world weren’t just happenstance. This sense of connection is the basis of and the joy of family. We flew home, and I felt for the first time in a long time a growing understanding of the fact that I was a part of this group, regardless of how I’d felt throughout my life until then. 

As the years between then and now unfolded, I got better at keeping in touch with my aunt, who was always a call or email, or text away. She recommended books, critiqued my writing, encouraged Micki’s writing career, and was an avid cheerleader to us both in all things. Along with the amazing example that she lived in her own life, she was a deeply important source of family connection, as I’ve said, and that meant the world to me.

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It is an odd feeling to love and feel a connection with your close kin and yet feel so far from them at the same time. Family pride is something I feel keenly. And yet, life goes on, and we grow. Micki and I find ourselves in middle age with elderly parents. We have adult children, grandkids, busy jobs, and many of those damned pesky intersecting contingencies I mentioned before. John Lennon spoke sagely when he said that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. While this is certainly true, it actually makes me think that we need to work harder to keep the connections that matter to us in spite of the frenetic and hectic tendencies of daily life.

The night after the celebration of my aunt’s life, my mind spun like a squeaky merry-go-round at a school playground. I kept looping back to my cousin, saying that we needed to not wait to all get together soon. That next Sunday was spent shopping and preparing for visiting family, and putting up holiday lights, and as darkness fell and bedtime rolled around, again, my mind was racing as I lay there trying to sleep. It was in the wee hours, as I stood outside in the chill, waiting for our elderly pug to find the right spo,t that I formulated a plan.

My favorite aunt’s words resounded in my head. “You’re family. Get in contact and stay there.” At the risk of being pesty (though I’ll stop well short of that, I hope), I want to be a better cousin. While they too suffer the loss of a parent and aunt, I truly believe that we can help one another in the way that family is supposed to help. We can assuage our pain and loss. We can share stories. We can even—it is devoutly to be wished—all get together soon and be together as a family again. In this modern era of communication and connectivity, nothing is stopping me.

To my cousins, fellow grandchildren of our grandparents, bearers of our genetic heritage, I say, thank you. Thank you for being the coolest, smartest people a little kid ever knew, and thank you for setting an amazing example for me. I was, like you all, the first from our little branch to go to college and get out of Reading and expand my horizons with (so far) only one tentative trip abroad, but many more to come. 

We are family. Life continuously proves that it is too short to be remote with the people we care about. I ask that you forgive me for being lousy at communicating my affection for you over the years. I’m so lucky to be part of such an intelligent, good-looking (well, most of us), intensely funny, wonderfully eccentric group of grandkids, and even though I’m the youngest, farthest bookend all the way down the shelf, I’m proud to be of common heritage with you. You’ll be hearing from me soon, and I cannot wait to start new conversations with you. Think of all we can learn from each other. To me, it will be following the directive of my favorite and most admired aunt, but more than that, I hope it will help to fill the gap of her loss for all of us.

Here’s to her. Here’s to us. Here’s to family.

Operation Opera

Attached is a picture from the 1990s of the three vocalists from our band, called Walk in the Light. You may recognize at least one of these youthful hooligans as yours truly. Early in our high school careers, the three of us (from left: Lee Houtz, Josh Jeremiah, and me) were invited to local churches to sing. Of the three of us, Josh had the best voice by far and had spent his early years performing all over the place. We often referred to his vocal talents as “chocolatey goodness”. Quoting Jeeves’s review of Bertie’s voice, I could not truthfully say that Josh has a pleasant, light baritone, but rather that he can swoop down to the basso prufundo or up to the tenor with something like god-tier skill. 

Lee and I always knew that we were mere mortals next to this Apollo of vocal power. In later years, when we expanded our group to include guitars, bass, and drums, Josh and Lee took center stage, and I sat well back behind the kit and admired the incredible talent of our friend. We did many live shows and spent some time in the studio to create an album (well, a tape, really), and had a blast. However, like all good things, the band didn't survive Lee and me leaving for college in Indiana. That was nearly 30 years ago, now. Much water has traversed beneath the proverbial bridge.

Of the three of us, after graduation, Lee went on to get a job as a music minister for a small but growing church in Indiana. I wound up back in PA after the first year, where I taught myself to play guitar on top of the piano and drums, but I never ended up in the professional music field. More’s the pity. Josh had a year left to finish high school, but then he went to Shenandoah University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in voice and opera. Later, he attended the University of Cincinnati, where he earned both a Master’s Degree in voice and opera and also an Artist’s Degree in opera. He’s been on stage belting it out for most of his life, but although I had some sense that he was still melting audiences with his deep, rich baritone, we lost track after a while.

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I first met Josh while hanging out with his older brother, Jacob, when I lived in Schaefferstown. I can remember the three of us goofing around in Jake’s room, playing video games, and being boys. I had no sense of Josh’s voice, then. Once we got to middle school and started to audition for the chorus and select choir, all of us of a musical bent immediately understood that Josh was not like the rest of us. He was immensely fun to sing with, though, and I think it was around that time that Lee and I became friends, too. I have distinct memories of going into men’s rooms and stairwells, where the acoustics provided sustained echoes, and doing our version of impromptu Gregorian chants. It wouldn’t be long before the three of us started to understand that we had a gift for close harmony and could thrill the old ladies in the pews around us by singing three of the four parts written in most hymnals. The rest is history..

After his education, Josh’s voice carried him throughout the world and across many stages and through the portrayal of many characters. He’s tackled iconic roles like Rigoletto, Macbeth, and Escamillo, and starred in world premieres such as Riders of the Purple Sage and Persona. His versatility shines in everything from Verdi and Puccini to Rodgers and Hammerstein, and he’s worked for companies like Sacramento Philharmonic, New Orleans Opera, Arizona Opera, and Minnesota Opera. Beyond opera, he’s performed with major symphony orchestras and at venues like Alice Tully Hall. He’s also a former Young Artist with the Seattle and Cincinnati Operas, blending classical baritone depth with his well-known and charismatic stage presence. His CV is mighty, and he definitely has the chops to back it up.

I lost contact with Josh between moving to NC in 2001 and 2011, when Facebook and Twitter allowed many former school friends to reconnect on social media. We connected briefly, sharing stories, pictures, and commenting on one another’s posts. After the Facebook thing got old with me, I lost track again, until last week when Josh reached out to me. We chatted about this and that and asked about each other’s families and marveled at how many years had passed. Then he told me that he would be in our neck of the woods and asked if we’d like tickets to see him perform in Pagliacci in Winston-Salem over the weekend. Honored and struck by his generosity, we of course said yes.

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Micki and I are adventurous. We like to do new things together, and the spontaneity of getting free opera tickets fits well with our tendency to try the unexpected. Throughout the day of the opera, Micki would pause writing to ask me questions about Josh, how I knew him, etc. As I paid out a length of memories to her, I realized more and more keenly how long it had been since Josh and I had met or spoken. I was in a thoughtful mood, therefore, as we donned our fancy duds and headed up the road to Winston-Salem.

Micki and I are now old hands at going to shows. We’ve had season tickets to the Broadway shows offered by the Tanger Center for one and a half seasons, so we are familiar with getting dressed up, heading to a venue, queuing through security, getting a snack and a drink, and then following a sherpa to our nosebleed seats so we can squint at that week’s Broadway masterpiece. Going to the opera presented only one or two minor differences.

First, of course, we were headed to Winston, not Greensboro, and the venue wasn’t a theatre so much as an event center venue that had once been a post office. So, as we parked and strode to the next block, the long lines of tuxedoed men and gowned women I was expecting were not evident. In fact, there was only one man in a tux, but he merely welcomed us in and let us wander the foyers. We eventually found signs informing us of a “pre-show opera talk” near a drinks counter, and so I got us refreshments, and we sat in the art-deco space, took selfies, and frowned a bit at how sparsely attended the whole thing appeared to be.

Soon enough, it became obvious that the talk was starting, so we went into a dark, but garishly lit side room, where two volunteers filled bags with popcorn and a raspy-voiced history professor from Wake Forest tried to tell us about Pagliacci in a reedy squeak that was, despite its presence nearby, apparently allergic to the microphone at his elbow. We soon departed. However, we had done some research leading up to the night and had a sense of what to expect.

Pagliacci, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s searing 1892 masterpiece of Italian verismo—a style of operatic realism which was exceedingly popular in its time—spins a taut tale where the performers’ painted faces barely conceal the raw pain beneath. Leoncavallo, a composer and librettist from Naples, penned both words and music, drawing from a real-life crime and crafting an opera whose brutal honesty, iconic tenor aria  “Vesti la giubba,” made popular in films like The Untouchables, and blending of tragic violence and fleeting dark humor earned it instant and lasting acclaim after its Milan premiere under Toscanini’s baton. 

Pagliacci starts off with Tonio (as played by my old friend, Josh) breaking the fourth wall, warning us that this isn’t just a show—it’s raw, bleeding edge of real life. Act I then commences with the comedy troupe setting up in a tiny village where jealousy bubbles—Canio’s wife, Nedda, is sneaking around with Silvio, and Canio’s suspicions tear him up inside. Act II blurs the lines completely: the play within the opera becomes real violence as Canio, crushed by betrayal, stabs Nedda and Silvio right on stage, ending with that chilling line, “The comedy is over,” or,  “La commedia è finita!” before taking his own life. It’s brutal, tragic, and unforgettable—just like life—wrapped in a fierce, intense music that cuts straight to the heart. The opera’s theatrical self-awareness and gut-punch conclusion have cemented its place as the defining achievement of Leoncavallo’s career and one of the most enduring works in the operatic canon. 

More than this operatic masterpiece, though, was a deeper level of realization as Josh, playing the brutish and deformed Tonio, comes out onto the stage after a brief overture and sings the prologue. I had a pang and said, perhaps too loudly for the comfort of those sitting near us, “That’s him!” With tears in my eyes, not just because of his powerful, warm, dark voice dripping with unearthly resonance and pathos of the character and words, but because here was a friend that I had known since my disheveled boyhood, who knew my roots and remembered a younger version of myself from before the life of the writer took a weirdly Dickensian turn. Like a memory come to life, this person with whom I had spent so many hours singing and performing was suddenly there, large as life. The memories and the realization of the time that has already passed added to the poignance of the opera.

After the opera, we waited near the cast and crew entrance, hoping that he would find us as promised. Families and patrons of the Piedmont Opera came and hugged their loved ones and took selfies with the performers. We waited, and I felt a sincere excitement and longing to see my very old friend. Then, the curtain parted, and there he was, no longer in the white and greasepaint of the second act, but in a dapper sport coat and fancy shirt. His long, very curly hair was pulled up in a knot. As he approached, I saw how larger than life he was, towering over my 6’3’’ frame. He grabbed me and we hugged, and then I introduced him to Micki. She had the presence of mind to ask someone nearby to take a picture of the three of us, included below. Actually, it was the tenor who had played Canio, and he appeared a little chagrinned that he had been relegated to photographer after his magnificent performance as an emotionally wrecked clown, but he will forgive us, knowing that it had been 30 years since two of the three in the photo had seen one another.

Josh had to dash, sadly, going to a fundraiser event after, but we spoke for ten minutes, reliving memories, sharing updates, catching Micki up on names and details. He hasn’t changed a bit. He still has a deep, thunderous voice, a magnificent sense of humor, and a generous and sincere disposition. Micki liked him immediately, as most people do. We parted company and then we made our way to a local Irish pub to feed ourselves, before heading back home. As we walked back to the parking garage, we saw him again and spoke for a few more moments before parting.

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I’ve made very few friends from that part of my life with whom I have stayed connected, except Lee Houtz. As my very best childhood friend, Lee and I have drifted, but we’re also prone to send birthday texts and warm wishes at the holidays or randomly talk about football or music. This is how things go. We grow, we move, we build our lives in other places and with other people. It is true that some who graduated from Asheboro High School years ago still live and work and meet one another all these years later, and that may be true of some of my former classmates, in PA, as well. For me, though, because I pulled up stakes and moved to the South, I lost connection with people who had been of incredible importance to me in the formative years of my life.

This past weekend, I got to see and spend an all-too-short time with one of the most talented and genuine people I have ever known, and I count myself fortunate to have had the opportunity. If you’re reading this and you ever have the chance to see an opera or show with Josh Jeremiah performing, trust me, do everything you can to not miss it. You won’t regret it. 

To Josh, I say, thank you, my friend. The flood of memories, the chance to hear you sing again, and the adventure of going to the opera were a lovely gift. It was great to be in your presence again, if only briefly. Here’s to old times!

The Importance of Family Storytelling

 The Importance of Family Storytelling

Author’s Note: In mid-October, my Good Aunt passed away after a rather long and debilitating struggle at the venerable age of 91. I am devastated by her loss. She lived an amazing, adventurous, and fearless life, galavanting all over the world, from the Holy Land, where she swam in the Dead Sea, to Antarctica, and beyond. She was a writer, a family historian, a singer, a seamstress, an actor, a poet, a cook, and a baker. To me, she was the one person on the Bare side of my family with whom I felt a real connection, not just as an aunt and nephew, but as someone with whom I had a great deal in common. She was a kindred spirit and someone who seemed to understand the specific challenges I had, feeling like the black sheep for most of my life.

Over the years, we racked up quite a pile of correspondence, in letters and cards, emails, texts, and the occasional calls. She often reviewed and critiqued my short stories or challenged me to finally write a “whole damn novel”. She helped me to understand and appreciate our family’s history, filling in details and sharing with me points of connection with our ancestors that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. When I wrote a poem about building a fire using traditional skills with our middle son, she basically ordered me to share it with any poetry periodical I could, which I did, to no avail, but I’m not disappointed that I tried. 

More than anything, though, she cemented in me the importance of telling stories. Not just the scary fictional ones, but the important tales of one’s family, especially to the newer generations. So it is that I dedicate this essay to my Aunt Jayne, who was a friend and a support and a heroine of mine, and whose memory I will carry with me and whose story I will share.

My maternal grandfather was something of a hero. Over the years of my development from a child to a young adult, I heard many tales from many different people about him. Combined with pictures that I have from the family albums, this oral compendium of stories and visuals helped me to create a solid human from the memories of others. I can think of him and refer to him and even share tales about him, having never met the man myself. This is the power and the importance of storytelling.

Daniel D. Swavely Sr. died in 1965 at age 55 from an aneurysm that was a complication of an earlier incident. While riding a horse, the animal reared and slipped and fell back on him, badly injuring his genitals, breaking ribs, and his arm. Several months later, complaining of a headache, he slipped into unconsciousness, and two days after that, he died. My brother was one year old; I wouldn’t come around for another decade or so. My mother was twenty-six years old.

Everything that I know about Grandpop Swavely comes from oral history shared with me by my mother, grandmother, Uncle Dan, and Pop Bare. Their tales wove together to form a thin, but still tangible specter of the man I would never meet. From an early age, I was very interested in learning about him, so I asked questions about him and internalized everything. Other times, though, I was given breadcrumbs about him through regular family interactions. While upset with me about something, my mother would say, “My father would never have put up with this.” All of it came together in a way that made me understand that, even though I had never met him, I still understood him and knew him as well as I could.

My mother, Uncle Dan, and my Nana are all gone now. The only people who remember him are my brother, Pop Bare, and me. When I see his picture in our living room, I am grateful for the opportunity to be his grandson despite never knowing him. His life, his genetics, and his name all form part of who I am. With the tales told about him, I feel very fortunate that my family took sharing details about his life so seriously. It was a gift of incredible proportions.

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When my father-in-law died, we were crushed. Especially, though, I felt a pang for our young sons. They were very much closer to him, both in nature and in looks, than they understood, but Micki worked hard to make sure that she told stories to them about their grandfather and always pointed out when they were behaving like he did. One of the tropes in our family is to call the boys “Gary” when they act like he would have in a similar situation. I knew him for less than a decade, but we were close, and I was so grateful for his role in all of our lives. I’m glad the boys knew him. They were young when he passed, so it was important to make sure they understood the man their grandfather was in life.

Similarly, almost by habit, I tell them about Pop Bare, with whom they spent less time, sadly, but who is no less important in understanding me. Though they do not share genetic bonds with me or the Bare family, the people who formed the foundation of my life are just as important to them in understanding me and my “side” of the family. 

Sharing tales can provide context, but it also broadens and deepens our connections. The boys never met my mother, but they knew Uncle Dan. Stories we’ve told and experiences they’ve shared with us have given them a perspective about the people who came before. Someday, I’ll be gone, and they will wonder, as I often have, about my family history or their mother’s ancestors, and because we have always been intentional about sharing important stories and details, I think they won’t lack much in piecing together the people that defined us.

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Sadly, I think that family storytelling is a habit of the previous generations that hasn’t transferred to the modern moment. I hope I’m wrong about this. Genealogical help is far more available and, in many cases, as in our library, free these days. This means that anyone can come to the library and start the process of finding out about their history. Like many of our online resources, though, just because they’re freely available doesn’t mean that people understand or even want to make use of them. In fact, one of our challenges has always been getting the public to understand that we offer more than just books.

I couldn’t imagine not knowing about my family, but I suspect that for some, sharing family history is not a priority. My family’s maternal and paternal sides are natural storytellers, and there is a historical bent on both sides. My father’s uncle and my good aunt did a lot of work to compile the family histories, too, so I had a lot to work with. It was worrying to think that there are families out there that have not been sharing stories, or that there are young people who just aren’t interested in knowing. 

I have to acknowledge that part of this is that some people don’t really care about history and genealogy. I’m not trying to sound old, but the social platforms provide a lot of distractions that are hard to ignore. It may not be something that interests them. I thought every family had at least one person who had to collect and save family histories, but I may be wrong. My experience might not be universal.

I spent many evenings at both grandmothers’ tables, eating homemade pies and drinking milked-down coffee, listening to my family regale one another with tales of people from all the way back. Legends that they both told me, or that my parents and their siblings shared, formed not only the basis of the family history I hold dear but also gave me a sense of where I fit in the whole skein. 

Recently, while speaking to my eldest cousin, I was momentarily caught by how much time had gone by since we’d seen each other. I’m the youngest of the grandchildren, so he’s twenty years my senior. He quipped in response to my astonishment, “I know how old you are. I was there when you were born.” That tiny bit of history filled me with a particularly Bare sense of connection, because it gave me one more thread to weave into the tapestry, sharing context and reinforcing that I’m actually a member of my family.

I have always struggled a bit with that feeling of belonging and connection. I’m not adopted or estranged from my family, per se, but I did spend a good portion of my adolescence feeling as though the people to whom I belonged didn’t see me as family. In fact, for most of my life, because of my age and the distance I lived from my cousins, especially, I always felt alienated. When they would visit Pennsylvania, or when, on the rare times we visited them, I absolutely relished the sense of connection that I felt. These are people who had the same grandparents as me after all. They had 50 percent of my heritage. Pop Bare’s sisters are older, so their kids are all older, but even so, these were the people with whom I shared family resemblance, facial features, body shapes, gestures, and ways of thinking and seeing the world that were not odd or weird, but quite common in our lineage.

Like the pictures of my late maternal grandfather, these similarities helped me to build a sense of belonging and connection that are so important to me. They wouldn’t exist without the stories that we tell one another about our family, our heritage, and the way we fit into those tales. 

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Part of the reason that I write these essays for DRO is so that there is a record, not just of what I think, but also of stories that I have told about my experiences, my family, my heritage, and my ancestors. Although we can’t sit around the table with my grandparents anymore, and most of us live many hours away, our connection with one another may be strained by distance and life, but at least it isn’t nonexistent. We have context. We have a connection. We have a sense of shared history, and we understand the tapestry of our family’s stories.

Someday, this page will go dark. Maybe I will have stopped writing, or will no longer be able to put two coherent thoughts together. For my kids and theirs, I want there to be a place where they can go to read what I thought and learn about who I was. Along with the many pictures of me that they may wish to look at, it may help them build a picture in their mind of who I was, the things that mattered to me, the topics that interested me, my strengths and weaknesses. And maybe, as I have done, they will tell stories about me, referencing tales that they heard told about me by Micki or the boys, or our many nieces and nephews, that help to make me real for them in the same way.

As I wrote this essay, though, it occurred to me that the most important way that most people learn is through behavior modeled in the home. Ironically, this works with positive and negative behavior. There is something to be said for starting new traditions. A few years ago, a “family-oriented” ad campaign challenged busy families to take time to sit at dinner and talk. Although this seemed somewhat hokey at the time, it nevertheless proved something that I also learned in my youth: unless we take the time to talk with our kids and tell them the family tales, then there is no way they can either develop a love for them or understand the importance of them.

In a few weeks (as I write this), we are looking forward to family coming for the Thanksgiving Holiday. It will be a perfect time to not only share some family stories, but also, with a new generation, introduce them to the family in a way that I hope will fill them with a sense of belonging and position and interest to know more about our vast, ever-changing family.

Five Stories for Halloween

It’s that time of year again. Autumn is “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” according to Keats, but to me, it is the season of things lurking in the shadows under the eaves of forests, under tables and beds, and certainly in the back of our minds. To celebrate, I’m sharing five more short stories at this, my favorite part of the year: Scary Season. Each Thursday in October, I will be posting a brand new short story on my blog, Shadows Lengthen.

This year's collection is listed below. Read them and enjoy ... IF YOU DARE (insert maniacal laughter).

Punch Buggy

Two sisters embark on a tense road trip to visit their ailing grandmother, navigating sibling rivalry and the stresses of the journey. But as they near their destination, a mysterious vehicle with a single headlight looms behind them, turning their drive into a chilling fight for survival.

Improv Cats

When jazz prodigy Wen-Dawg unleashes haunting, otherworldly music from his mysterious silver saxophone, his amateur bandmates find themselves drawn into a mesmerizing world. As the power of the music grows within them, they must confront the cost of brilliance and the truth lurking behind the notes.

The Downfall of Roddy Merton*

Roddy Merton, once a feared school bully shaped by his own violent upbringing, finds himself haunted by the memories and victims of his past in a chilling reckoning that forces him to face both his former deeds and the darkness in his own soul.

*Sensitive themes include emotional and physical abuse, homophobic language, neglect, violence, and deep psychological wounds—reader discretion is strongly advised.

“On a Country Road”

A man walks a lonely country road. Another man stops to change a tire and finds that his fascination with the walking man is a deadly thing.

“Gancho’s Haul”

Gancho, an ancient imp, moves in the shadows of life, stealing what we lose and feeding forces beyond our understanding with our sadness and disappointment. Mischievous and older than time, he keeps the balance between order and chaos delicately poised—beware what vanishes, for it may mean more than you realize.

As always, if spooky short stories aren't your cup of Irish breakfast tea, please feel free to scoop back through the previous DRO essays you may have skipped or missed. Back to my regular fare, come November.

Happy October! 

The Prince and I

Author’s Note: Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and 1601, is his longest and one of the most influential tragedies. Its story is based on an ancient Scandinavian legend about Prince Amleth, first recorded in the 12th century by the Saxon historian Saxo Grammaticus. The legend tells of a prince who feigns madness to avenge his murdered father, a tale Shakespeare adapted and enriched with Renaissance humanism and Elizabethan political themes.

The play was likely first performed around 1600, during the late years of Queen Elizabeth I's reign—a period marked by political strife and uncertainty because Elizabeth had no clear heir, paralleling the play's themes of succession and legitimacy. Early performances include one at the Globe Theatre and, unusually, a documented staging aboard the East India Company's ship The Dragon in 1607. Hamlet remains Shakespeare's most performed and studied drama, deeply rooted in the cultural and political anxieties of its time and drawing on earlier Elizabethan revenge tragedies such as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy.

While we were in London, during our England trip in 2017, we did see a play in the New Globe theater, but it was Twelfth Night and not Hamlet, more’s the pity. It was no less enjoyable, but I hope to get back there one day to see the Prince where he once was played. 

Also, the 2022 action drama film, The Northman, is the tale as it may have happened based on Saxo Grammaticus’ telling. Worth seeing. Those familiar with Hamlet will see the connections.

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Shakespeare, to most people, evokes a sense of someone who may have existed and written some plays and poems in another era. We typically have to read some of his works in school, but the language of the time feels full of thees and thous and references to things that make no sense to us in the modern era. He and his works don't feel relevant, may seem impenetrable, and are difficult, if not impossible, to read.

During my time in high school, we read Romeo and Juliet. I think it was chosen mainly because the “star-crossed lovers” are themselves but teens, and the “hectic in the blood” is raging with hormones and drama for us, too, so they seem relatable. Even so, despite the play's ability to make sense to students for this set of topics, it fails to really click with us. This is true of any of The Bard's plays. As I said to a friend of mine who expressed a lack of appeal in Shakespeare, mainly because it was hard to understand, you have to see the plays performed. They are meant to be acted, not read, and, if performed correctly and well by those thespians trained in the art of Shakespeare's genius, they come alive in a way where we cannot miss the themes and moral lessons built in.

I have always been a bit of a nerd, of course. I fell in love with Shakespeare in middle school, when a family member bought me a graphic novel version of Hamlet. It was suitably dark, gloomy, and with themes of betrayal, poisoning, vengeance, and ghosts that suited me right down to my Doc Martins, and it captured my imagination. It was abridged, as I would find out later, and it glossed over some of the best bits, but it was one of my favorite stories. This was when I began to understand the significance of that particular play, but also the Bard as a writer and genius generally.

When it came to learning Romeo and Juliet, in high school, Mrs. Hooven did the play justice. She managed, somehow, to make it relevant, but the sessions in class where we circled our desks and were assigned parts to read were intolerable. With no context, Elizabethan stage English is not the most clear. When we watched the Franco Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet film in class, which employed actual teenagers (and won several Oscars, as I recall), the story made sense and suddenly felt poignant and stirred emotions and other feelings, too.

That tiny glimpse of power was not felt again for me until the January term of my first year of college in Indiana, where I took a classic cinema course and we watched the 1948 Hamlet adaptation with the Prince of Denmark played by Sir Laurence Olivier. Again, my spirit was moved. Here was a tale that resounded in me. A son whose parent has died, expelled from his inheritance, and with a distracted, dramatic disposition, no self-confidence, and feeling lost and filmed moodily in deep shades of black and white. My situation wasn't exact, but it was close enough to feel a connection. Except for the “everyone dies at the end”, obviously.

This was when I started to become a Hamlet freak. I memorized the Yorick speech (“Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio”) that everyone remembers because the prince holding a skull is primarily what we think of when we think of Shakespeare. This may also be around the time when I started to feel more comfortable, more myself, like the prince, dressed all in black.

Later, I watched the Mel Gibson version, and secretly loved the atmosphere but hated Gibson's prince. He missed the nuance and the emotional anguish and, in place, gave a histrionic performance that missed even the most obvious rhythms of the iambic pentameter the play is written in. I must not pretend to have understood all this, yet. That came later, but I knew somehow it was wrong. Also, sadly, once again, the Gibson version cut out much of the original play. 

In school in Greensboro, working on my English degree (this was before I went back to my home country of philosophy), I signed up for a Shakespeare class, but two minutes in, I hated it. Here was a syllabus for dullards who had to take an English credit, not for those who respected the Bard. In a panic, because I needed the class, I asked another professor if I could do an independent study with him, about Shakespeare. Dr. Rosenblum assented and, for the next semester, we wandered the many hills and valleys of William Shakespeare's four best tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth (or, The Scottish Play). I wrote four papers, read and watched each play done in various forms (it is the vogue now to set Shakespeare's plays in other eras), and found myself absolutely enamored of the brilliance not only of the Bard himself, but also of the many, many scholars and actors and directors—like Orson Welles, for example— who have managed to perform his plays with the true dedication and respect they deserve.

The BBC made a host of made-for-TV versions of the tragedies that were not abridgements. They combined the various available versions, from folios to quartos, to make a comprehensively accurate representation of the plays, using the same minimalist staging that would have been seen at The Globe Theater in London. The best version of Hamlet, at that point, was the 1980 version, called Shakespeare Tragedies: Hamlet, starring Sir Derek Jacobi as the indecisive prince and Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius. I cannot remember much about Macbeth or Lear, but this version of Hamlet struck me dumb, and I watched it over and over on our old VHS machine. At three hours, thirty minutes, it captured, at that time, the most comprehensive performance I was aware of.

I passed the class with an A and suddenly, as Dr. Rosenblum had predicted, the play was lodged in my soul. Later, but around that same time, I bought a book with the play in it, which had a dramatized radio version of Hamlet on a CD in the back cover. I ripped the CD, so that I could listen to the performance while choring. This Naxos version is now my absolute favorite and, in my opinion, the best. It stars Anton Lesser as Hamlet and has excellent Foley theatrics, pacing, and honor of the music that followed the several songs in the performance. Around that same time, I bought a book at the Friends of the Library Bookshop, downtown, called The Oxford Shakespeare Hamlet, a complete and annotated version of the play with every historical reference footnoted, the music, the means and timings, and the various folios and quartos. 

I also have Dr. Rosenblum's four-volume series called The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare, the massive Globe Illustrated Shakespeare, with The Complete Works Annotated, and volume two of Shakespeare for Students: The Tragedies. The only other truly faithful performance of Hamlet, based on all of these various versions (and depending heavily on the criticism by authors like Harold Bloom and Isaac Asimov—yes, that Asimov—of which I also own several copies, is Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version. This four-hour symphony gets almost everything right, accompanied by an all-star cast. It's not perfect, but it is well done and enjoyable. Branagh, who plays the ghost-addled prince, is too old (as were Gibson, Olivier, and Lesser) to capture a believable youth struggling with “an antic disposition,” but it serves as an excellent teaching mechanism for those not familiar.

When Elliott was learning about Hamlet in high school, and struggling, I was able to quote several passages “trippingly on the tongue,” obeying Hamlet's instructions to the Player King to a ‘T’. He kept asking questions because the play didn't make sense to him. It doesn't seem like a big thing to us, these days, perhaps because we're not monarchical or pestered by ghosts, but there is, as yet, a deeply moving story and one that “hath been taught us from a primal state”.

Hamlet, set amidst the looming stone walls of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, opens with a world unsettled by grief and suspicion. Prince Hamlet, reeling from the death of his father, is forced to confront a court reshaped by his mother’s hasty remarriage to Claudius, the new king, his uncle, and the suspected architect of his father’s demise. The supernatural makes its mark early: Hamlet’s late father’s ghost appears in the midnight gloom, urging his son to unveil the truth behind his “foul and most unnatural murder,” a command that changes Hamlet’s course and sets the shadows of revenge threading through the palace corridors.

As Hamlet grapples with the moral and existential weight of this revelation, the play becomes a study in delayed action and tangled emotions. Hamlet’s keen intellect and skepticism lead him to devise a play-within-a-play—“The Mousetrap”—meant to catch the king’s conscience, exposing Claudius’s guilt before the assembled court. All the while, the prince’s relationships fray: Ophelia, his lover, becomes collateral damage as Hamlet’s erratic behavior spirals and his trust in those closest to him—except Horatio—dissolves. As tension between outward appearances and inward truth grows, spies and double agents fill Claudius’s ranks, until nearly every character’s motives are suspect.

The tragedy explodes in the final act as the carefully set traps and grudges fester into violence. Poisoned chalices, rigged swords, and desperate confessions culminate in nearly universal destruction—royalty and innocent bystander alike. Hamlet, dying, finally enacts the ghost’s vengeance, but too late to save Denmark or himself. Amid the carnage, the play’s legacy sharpens: Hamlet’s struggle is both intensely personal and brutally political, highlighting the murky lines between action and inaction, justice and revenge, and the constant, restless search for truth in a world full of deception.

Like all of Shakespeare's plays, there are secondary and tertiary plots. After hastily—and accidentally—killing Polonius, while confronting his mother, Hamlet is set to be exiled to England, where he will be executed. Laertes, Plonius’ son and Ophelia's brother, returns from France in rage at his father's death and his sister's subsequent madness and questionable demise. Claudius and Laertes plot to kill Hamlet and make it look like an accident when he reappears on Danish soil. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, school friends sent by Claudius to spy on Hamlet, wind up on the chopping block in England, in the prince's stead. 

Meanwhile, the son of the king of Norway, in a posture of war toward Poland, invades Denmark under the cover of permission he had to cross the land, and usurp the Danish crown, but what he finds leaves him distraught, a hollow-eyed Horatio and the corpses of Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude, and, sadly, Hamlet himself.

The family is set up on a stage as a warning against all their sins, and so the play ends.

Despite the apparent differences in usage. Shakespeare's words from all his plays populate our language. His coinages are uncountable. We don't even know all of them. There are so many from Hamlet that I could write three essays, just listing them.

However, I feel compelled to share a few of my absolute favorites, and I encourage you to listen to or watch Hamlet again. Yes, I know it is gloomy, and everyone dies at the end (except Horatio), but you may learn something of value. And maybe, if you're lucky, you will find that it speaks to your soul.

Enjoy these quotes, but feel free to find ones that speak to you.

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”

“Sorrows come not in single spies, but in battalions.”

“Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honor's at the stake.”

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.”

 “Let the Devil wear black, I'll have a suit of sables.”. This one needs explanation: Hamlet is saying that the Devil may come ready for mischief, but that he (Hamlet) will be even more ready and better dressed in black fur.

“Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems." 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.” 

Esse quam videri about sums it up.

What Afterlife Will You Choose?

Author’s Note: 

Sometime in 2018 or 2019, I was accosted by a man holding a “Heaven or Hell?” sign while walking to get lunch at a local town festival. He was polite enough, but I’d had long years of preparation to answer his sign’s query. He didn’t like my answer. I quoted scripture to him, directly out of Jesus’s red ink, and he got rather peeved with me (the man, not Jesus). Later that day, police rounded up this man and his fellows because they did not have the proper paperwork to be at the festival, and they were made to depart. However, all of this got me thinking about what really happens after we die, and it is a topic I have returned to many times in the intervening years. 

The Scripture I quoted? It’s the one where Jesus tells people not to be performative with their piety. Matthew, 6:5: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” In this case, I’m pretty sure that reward is a reference back to one of the options on the man's sign. But who can know for sure?

I hope that, when the time comes for me to expire, I am surrounded by my loved ones. Nothing would please me more than to spend my final moments with the people I love most in the universe. If, however, that option is not left open to me, I have often fantasized about going out while doing something terribly heroic, saving lives or defending the innocent. I know that's not very likely, but I can honestly say, of all the possible endings, they both fit my philosophy.  

As Hamlet so eloquently points out, death is “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” Over the eons of human history, our species has created millions of possible afterlife scenarios, all of which are based on no evidence at all that we know of. A recent book about the topic, the 2010 bestseller *Heaven is For Real*, is ostensibly about a little boy’s trip to Heaven when he briefly “died” from complications of appendicitis. The book blew up, and I remember people putting it on hold and complaining that we didn’t have enough copies. In the years since its publication, though, it received a lot of criticism, mainly by other Christians who called it “Heaven Tourism” and a “cash grab to pay medical bills.” There’s no evidence to suggest that the boy in the book was ever clinically dead. The whole thing seems like a ploy to exploit rubes, like all such books and stories, but people still read it all the time and probably believe it.  

It’s not just Christianity. I know of no monotheistic religion that has ever managed to believably prove its own version of the afterlife. Not that most of them have created an appealing afterlife to begin with. Some seem brutal, others unspecific, still others cannot seem to agree among themselves about what their own books say. Despite this, they proclaim to know without doubt what each of us can expect when we, again quoting Hamlet, “shuffle off this mortal coil.”  

Evangelicals have very strong feelings about heaven. Indeed, they use it as one half of a hammer-and-anvil combo intended to guilt people into belief. Problematically, Evangelicals claim to want everyone to go to Heaven, while simultaneously holding the incoherent belief that not everyone can be “saved,” as they put it. This goes nowhere in explaining the incessant Bible-thumping. Yet, specific questions about heaven are rarely forthcoming. I was told, as a lad, that we would get to see our lost loved ones, live eternally, and enjoy things that our fragile terrestrial bodies couldn't manage while living. When I dug deeper, though, I was put off by what I found.  

Heaven, it turns out, is not endless ice cream without tummy aches and soaring like an eagle. Rather, it is the mindless worship of a capricious and disturbingly self-absorbed deity, who demands constant adoration for all eternity. That sounds too much like the DPRK to me. Even the examples of heaven given in the scriptures that differ from this are dubious. References to mansions, pearly gates, and storing up treasures feel too full of avarice and greed to be anything truly heavenly. The message seems to suspiciously address the poor masses with an unctuous promise: “Just wait till you die and things will get better.” If one is living in a Hobbesian nightmare, like serfs in a feudal dystopia, then images of relief from pain, being reunited with lost loved ones, and eternal joy probably sound great. Still, to enjoy that one has to cease to live. It feels like a scam.  

As a child, I was told that I would be able to meet members of my family who had gone on before, so long as they had accepted Jesus as their personal savior. Of course, there was no real way to know who had agreed to this proposition. A question of this nature plagued my mother about her father's position in that afterlife for most of her own life. Since she could never know, it was a source of doubt and pain. He became, in essence, Schrödinger's father, and the only way she could ever know was to “wait and see.” She truly suffered and yet said little, because we were also told that longing to see our loved ones in heaven was akin to ancestor worship and idolatry and therefore, a sin.  

As bald-faced and tawdry as these doctrines appear in hindsight, they are specifically designed to hold people hostage by their legitimate grief and longing to be reunited with those who have died. Emotional manipulation and coercion seem a high cost for the proclaimed certainty of heaven. When I see proselytizers holding signs with “Heaven or Hell?” painted on them, I have an answer prepared that might shock them if they ever ask me which I’d choose.  

Judaism has a heaven, possibly borrowed from its ancient Hellenic or Mesopotamian traditions, where we might be able to commune with our ancestors or great ones from ages of yore. I admit that this is desirable to me. Judaism is less of a gatekeeper than a speculator, it is true, and places more value on legacy in its most temporal sense than on some paradise in the clouds. Those who don't rate that afterlife wind up in Sheol, a bleak and gloomy underworld, sometimes translated as “the grave.” Hey, at least there isn’t eternal torture.  

It would be interesting to be able to commune with Einstein or Spinoza in a Judaic heaven. Sadly, a cherem was placed on Spinoza by his coreligionists for his writings, which they believed he composed to disprove God. This excommunication was intended to deny him access, among other things, to his faith's afterlife. Pretty audacious, we might think, but this sort of thing happens all the time in monotheistic faiths. However, Spinoza was far too humble and never said a word against his accusers. I take pleasure in noting that we remember him and his incredible contributions to philosophy and human thought, while the greedy and dogmatic mammals who signed the ostracism order have long been forgotten.  

◇◇◇  

Buddhism and Hinduism take pages from earlier, possibly pagan religions far older than Christianity or even Judaism, and add ancestor veneration as a noble and expected practice rather than a sin. Both describe Nirvana not as a place, but as the final achievement of absolute emptiness after eons of purgatorial reincarnation. Loved ones who live good lives may progress from human to more noble beasts, but weak or evil humans could be demoted to bugs or worms or other vermin. Eventually, if one lives well enough, ultimate emptiness can be achieved. This afterlife, although the multiple-lives aspect seems absurd to me, has the merit of at least nodding at the most likely physical reality, to which I am coming.  

The polytheisms and folk religions, generally, have no afterlife to speak of, but my favorites are those where the way one leads life determines their afterlife. The Norse mythologies depended heavily upon a fatalistic belief system. If one died in battle, a most desired end, one could be sent to Valhalla, to battle in the coming universe-ending cataclysm called Ragnarok. If one died at sea, one went to the realm of the sea god, Ran, and his wife, and ate roasted fish for eternity. A more underworld-like afterlife awaited those who died in bed because of illness. None of it is particularly attractive, but it says a lot about how people imagined that what they did in life echoed in eternity.  

The many natural religions, which are sometimes called heathen, pagan, or indigenous, seem to have a deeper respect not just for humanity, but for all life and the planet as well, and therefore, often feel like a more believable solution. In these faiths, after we die, our bodies go back to the earth to make something else grow. This seems a desirable form of eternal life and also puts the final, inarguable position into play: that we are made up of what makes up our planet, our galaxy, our universe, and that, in the end, we go back to it. As Carl Sagan so beautifully put it, “We are made of star stuff.”  

I find this deeply enchanting. It is likely the most reasonable and scientific reality as well, and as such, is the least problematic position. However, if one really feels the need for a defined afterlife, then I propose another option, which is that we make our own afterlife. And no, I'm not talking about consequences, as in Hell or damnation or reincarnation. Rather, I am suggesting that we literally compose our own afterlife, as we would like it to be.  

I'm not a fan of the traditional afterlife options, but I can take the best elements from some of them. I love the idea of huge tables of food, each surrounded with people one might wish to speak with. I would obviously choose Tolkien, Orwell, Lewis, Doyle, Churchill, the Cromwells (Thomas and Oliver), Socrates, members of my family that I have missed or never met. We could eat without getting full and chat without getting tired. We could even have debates, where I could continue to have the brilliant experience of learning and growing. I mean to say, why stop after death, right?  

Then, of course, there are the other desirable possibilities. I could imagine myself wandering the edges of a Scottish loch, dwelling in a deep pine forest on the side of a mountain, just sitting, listening, feeling, observing, never cold, hungry, wet, or tired.  

I could wish to see the progress of my children and grandchildren and other members of the family that go on without me. Since the one unbreakable rule seems to be that one cannot ever come back, though, it might cause stress or strain to wish to intervene, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, to the benefit of reputation or to aid in some way.  

Ironically, that brings me back to an aspect of the afterlife that has always fascinated me but which I find to be more daunting than any putative damnation. What if, when someone ceases to live, rather than passing on completely, they get stuck, unable to find peace, and wander in a twilight realm between life and death? Sounds too much like other silly ideas, like purgatory or limbo, to me. Still, it is a daunting idea.  

Speaking of Tolkien, his idea of Valinor, the Undying Lands beyond the western sea, has always been something I wished were true. The idea that death is not the end, and that we go on, is one that is a formative part of the way we see the universe. The hardest thing in the world is to imagine a world where one no longer exists in any way. This is impossible for a conscious mind to consider, specifically because consciousness cannot imagine no consciousness.  

The ancient works of Bushido, as written in The Book of Five Rings and Hagakure, both express the requirement of the human mind to contemplate death at every possible opportunity. This sounds morbid, but there is a point beyond the depressing nature of the topic. Thinking of oneself being burned alive, cut open, attacked with spears, swords, bullets, wasps, a gang of hoodlums, or even being rent to pink mush by a trampling rhino are all intended to get the mind used to the idea that we are impermanent. Life is fragile. None of us will get out alive.  

That thought is daunting. Our natural position is to fear death. We know at some very intuitive level that, to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, a thing we don't talk about at parties, that we are not here for long. We manage to convince ourselves otherwise and live in a veil of self-delusion. This deception is compounded by the lies told by religions that pretend there is something else beyond the wall of death, which both cheapens and ultimately negates our behavior in the moment.  

This mindset is off-putting. Why should I only do good in life because of a promised reward after death? I also shouldn't behave in life because I fear eternal punishment when I die. Neither of those positions puts the onus on us to be our best selves in the moment for the right reasons. This is why it seems that some monotheists are miserable.  

Focusing on death may seem to be a similar motivation, but there is one difference. Understanding that we are going to die—must die—and that our end can happen at any point and with little input from us, means that we have to try to take advantage of living in the moment. Understanding our mortality boosts our morality. If we know that this moment is all we have, we tend to behave better in that slice of time.  

It also helps us to be less egocentric. I’m not the only one who suffers and eventually will die. Everyone else is experiencing those things as well. How can I help them? By telling them that things will be better when they die, or by showing them the compassion and empathy of solidarity in mortality? I know which one seems right to me.  

I know what my answer would be to the “Heaven or Hell?” question on that sign, and I have and will give it again. Neither. I certainly don’t want to be remembered for spending my Saturdays holding up religious signs by the highway. To me, focusing on what happens after we die cheapens the one real miracle most of us take for granted every day: we’re alive now. Since I don’t know if I’ll be here later, or tomorrow, or even in a week, I want to spend more time with the people I love now. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.  

That’s the one thing that I think the Norse and Germanic folk religions get absolutely right. Our legacies are the part of ourselves that really do live on in the hearts and memories of those who knew and loved us. That is how we go on. Someday, when our grandchildren are old, they will look back, hopefully with joy, and remember me, and in that way, I will live on. When they tell their children and grandchildren about me, I will live on, just as my mother, her father, and my grandparents live on in my heart and mind. That’s the real afterlife. That’s the one that I will ultimately choose. Unlike other variants, the work starts here and now, and, it makes the most sense.