And, for the record, I really like my shower curtain.

Last night. Oh, my, last night…

Full house. Standing ovation. Sheer exhaustion. After party. Kudos. The usuals.

Totally worth it…all the rehearsals, which in this case were rather tightly thrown together and quickly so, and the lines…oh god, the lines…I’ve never been that close to Shakespeare (he seems standoffish like my cousin Jonathan – sure, sure, he’ll speak, he’ll pass you the potato salad if you ask him, but he won’t really like doing it, and you’ll be able to tell from the look on his face, but it’ll be a private thing, not broadcast to the whole dinner table).

But, last night, Shakespeare finally gave me the potato salad and did so with a smile. 

No Holds Bard.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged] is the show I’m currently in; we’re performing it as a fundraiser to help take our theatre to AACT for nationals. It’s a community theatre organization, and we’ve won state and regional competitions so far with Laddy Sartin’s play, Catfish Moon. 

He’s another Mississippi playwright. Though, we’ve not met.

This show, Shakespeare [abridged], is a physical tour-de-force. I not only had to learn to sword fight and master the art of the *quick-change*, but I had to do so while wearing tights and performing Hamlet backwards. Also, there are probably over 2,531 props that must be handled in each scene…and all for the viewing pleasure of You, the theatre-going audience.

(You’re welcome).

…it was fun, such fun, and illuminating, intoxicating…as was the after-party.

But, then, came 8:00 this morning. Morning and Night, two sisters who hate each other with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  

Ah, 8:00.

That’s when I realized that I was teaching summer school at the local community college, here…when and why I agreed to do this, I cannot now recall. I’m sure it had to do with money. But, so revved up was I last night after seeing the paycheck our hard work rendered (READ: standing ovation, not dollars), I simply couldn’t tear myself away from the after party.

And not from consumption of alcohol, per se, we were drinking something far more damaging: applause and adulation.

I think I perhaps got to bed around 2:45 in the bold A.M. (capital letters only please).

I don’t remember waking up but that’s only because I don’t remember sleeping. I vaguely recall hot water, so I trust I took a shower – don’t I usually? My bones were sad enough for the whole body, but my muscles did all the crying. Oh, that’s right, I said, the death scene…scenes…the falling down, the jumping up, the tackle in the football scene with Lear, all of it was slowly, achingly reminding me that I was a) not in my 20’s anymore, and b) neither was my body.

I got to campus with minutes to spare, and realized then that I had to make copies of my syllabus, and I didn’t even know how many to make. I tore off down the hall to the copy room, and there, as I should have expected, was a line of middle-aged women dressed entirely too well for 8:00 AM. I shot a quick look at myself; I had put on clothes, right?

Yes, so…good, so…yeah, so far so good.

I finally got my turn at the copy machine and that’s when it refused to cooperate. Murphy, I muttered under my breath. Paper Jam, Door 6B, Tray 3X-12A, whatever, whatever…it’s madness. Copiers.

Xerox this.

The jammed paper was located, pulled out and the machine continued, agonizingly slow, of course. Take a breath, Kris, you’re here, you’re the Professor, calm down. So, I did. I walked over to the teacher’s mail boxes and reached up to grab the rosters for the classes I was about to begin teaching. Took another deep breath, and trudged forward.

I checked the first roster to see what room number I was going to be in for the dreaded 8:00 AM class, and then, strolled toward that classroom.  This was going to be fine, I just need to get more sleep, that’s all, and I would tonight; there’d be no party, for starters. I opened the door, and there they sat, the students, with nerves pinched, and bright-eyed (I think mostly nerds take summer classes at 8:oo in the morning, right?  I mean, I did), and all but one student had already purchased the text book. Good sign, right?

Actually, that textbook. That was my first clue. The first sign that all was not well. For some reason they all had textbooks claiming the Fundamentals of Public Speaking.

But, for some reason, I didn’t register it, fast enough.

I walked to the front of the class, and was just about to begin my “Welcome to Comp. II” spiel, when a second professor walked in, with a book that matched everyone else’s. I knew him; I know him, rather. He is a very nice fellow, and though I knew instantly I had a significant and dangerously embarrassing situation on my hands, even if I wasn’t clear yet as to its full nature, I also knew he’d understand what I was slowly coming to realize myself: I was in the wrong classroom.

So, I did what my addled brain often does when cast into an audience, mistakenly. I took advantage of the situation, and I introduced him to his unsuspecting class: I regaled him as a quality instructor, and ensured them that they’d learn a great deal about Public Speaking from this man, this hard-working colleague, who truly cared about his students, and was someone I should emulate more often in the classroom, myself.

He stood dumbfounded, wall-eyed, nearly; there was the softest hint of an irrational stare to his face, I should say.

I, in turn, welcomed him to his own class, and wished him well. All of them, I wished them all well. I don’t even want to think about what they talked about, or discussed, after I left.

I’m usually more aware than this.

Used to, I’d get to the classroom before any of the students, and take a seat in the classroom, pretending to be a student, myself. I’d sit there and talk about the course, how challenging, how exciting, it could be…did they know anything about the professor, etc. The whole works.

Let me tell you, they pay attention to you after that.  Though one young woman, I guess, felt betrayed by my action…she stayed in the class, but I’m not sure she ever forgave me.  I don’t know why, either, it’s not like I swapped state secrets with her and then ratted her out.

I still try to pull this shenanigan.  I won’t be young enough for much longer, and it makes me laugh to do it.

Summer terms, of course, are by definition shorter, and so the class times are much longer. I’m teaching back-to-back, too, (again, why?), and as soon as I got home today, I began what will now become my summer term ritual: a nap. I dreamed of wrestling water buffalo, this afternoon, so I guess that means the “game is on.”

To me, he looks just fine without a nose ring.

In the dream, I’d taken my shower curtain down, and removed the curtain rings to put in the noses of each buffalo I was wrestling; I know that’s often done in Asian countries or Bangladesh, when their plowing rice fields, and the like, but what scares me is that I have no idea what to do with this as a metaphor for this upcoming semester. Or, my students.

And, for the record, I really like my shower curtain.

Part Two: Aunt Lola

When and if I remember a dream it’s because it has some potent element to it; I’d like to think I made that point, clearly enough, in yesterday’s blog. And certainly, I would think so with the Billie Holiday dream; and those precious and upsetting few that have come true…all of which I’ve shared with you.

God is in there somewhere.

But the potency, when it’s there, is one that is, that must be, for me, necessarily Fascinating and Disturbing in its minutiae, as it invades my mind, my lobes, with its obsessive and small details; isn’t that where God is, according to van der Rohe? I make no bones about how my dreams are often too vivid and verbal, to the point of Hamletian madness; I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I lose what little sense I have left by Christmas.  (But, I would imagine, we all have dreams like that…and that we’ll all be mad by Christmas.  That seems to be the universal deadline).

So, true to fashion, here’s the Aunt Lola dream, one that has bothered me and moved me in myserious ways, since I dreamed it a couple of years ago. It has a residue that I can’t shake from off my soul.

I dreamed that I was running late for class, for Kay’s class, (this was toward the end of my graduate degree). I got to campus and there taped on the door was a scripted note telling me that she’d changed locations at the last minute, to an abandoned nursing home, one that I’d driven by many times, and wondered why it still stood. It was such an eyesore.

It seems as if she’d made this decision because of some research-oriented assignment – I vaguely could recall, I thought, her mentioning this, the research assignment, in a class the week before but in that announcement we were going to meet at the zoo in Jackson; no one, though, was upset either by the fact that we hadn’t gone to the zoo, as promised, nor by the fact that we were sitting on the floor in the large dining hall of this abandoned nursing home. Of course, being an Educator, we’re always striving to enhance the informational exchange rate, so to speak, so nothing really surprises us: zoos, nursing homes, a cow with a glass window in her one of her stomachs (this can be actually and physically viewed and touched at the Wise Center, the famous Vet School at Mississippi State University – look it up).  

Anyway, I’m late, and there’s the obligatory long hall that I’m desperately running down, (is that Archetypal? It seems so collectively Jungian) and there’s Kay, sitting crosslegged in the doorway of the dining hall. She’s motioning for me to hurry. We’re in the process of giving presentations today, and I’m next, she mouths. Did I forget?

I did, but I’m almost to the room when I realize that I’ve got to go the bathroom, immediately, and I mouth this back, in response, to Kay, who grins (in real life, I often have to go to the bathroom; I say it’s because I have a tipped kidney), but she’s also silently adamant that I not miss my turn to go. She appreciates order and routine.

I won’t miss my turn, I assure her. I just need a minute or two.

I come out of the bathroom and am on my way to the “class”room, to give my presentation, when a voice to my right calls my name. I turn and it’s my Aunt Lola, who passed away several years ago, at the age of 98. She’s the same age, now, standing there looking at me, but without any complications, and most notably, without that crook in her back that bent her toward the grave before the rest of her was ready. I’d heard her say that many times before.

She looks radiant, youthful, active, if you will. She’s wearing a blue nightgown and matching robe, and again, I can’t quite describe it, but she’s beautiful, a light. There’s a corona, edging beyond her, that I am afraid to enter, to approach, and yet, I’m delighted that this fear has put me at a crossroads, a carrefour, especially in the presence of a woman I loved so deeply, as a child. This must be what happens to the dead; they become a tendril to their corporeal life. I’m sure they do that just as an effort to put us at ease, but slightly. I’m not saying I believe in apparitions anymore than I’m saying I don’t.

I cry, “How can you be here? How can you be alive?”

I’m ecstatic that she is, and I want everyone to know that God must be real, how else could she have returned; its’s so natural a thing to believe, blinded as I am by her softness. I mean, there’s no other way she could be talking to me if not for the fact that all my life the faith I’ve held in Christ and God is actual. She’s proof, right?

So, I rush down the hall to the class because I want them to know the truth, this truth.

You've been here before, right?

I’ve rarely been this fervent in real life, about anything, but all of a sudden, in my dream, this is what I must tell everyone. I must bring them into the hall and show them Aunt Lola. She will prove all things. I know this, you understand, in the dream. But Aunt Lola refuses.

Kay looks at me, upset, that I’d interrupt her class at so crucial a time.

“We’re doing presentations, for chrissake, Kris,” she says.

Aunt Lola pulls me back into the hall of this abandoned nursing home, and looks up into my face. I’m now racked with guilt. I admit to her how sorry I was that I didn’t ‘do right by her dying.’ I was indifferent; I was immature; I was afraid to see her stilled, against that plush casket. I tried looking at her in the casket, at Nowell’s, but I couldn’t. I was too overwhelmed; I’d never before been flooded with such simple reasons to not want someone to die: her homemade meatloaf, those beds and beds of calla lillies, helping her pick up pecans from the front yard.

It didn’t make sense. How amazingly, these simple things made her great in my eyes. I should have looked at her in the casket, I know, I should have. She overlooks this weakness, “Forget that. I have to tell you something.”

I can hardly look at her, she’s so bright, and she says, “You almost died the other night.”

This is the residue part. It is a chilling thing to have someone tell you that you almost died.

“I’ve come to tell you that it’s ok; it’s not time yet. Soon, but not yet. You need to live, first.”

“I am living,” I argue. I’m upset now, not just that I almost died, but also because she’d waste such time on so old a cliche. I’m hysterical at this point. She remains gentle; the dead, in my dreams, are always so gentle. She won’t tell me what I almost died from, what almost was responsible for taking my life; instead, she implies that I am not appreciating the normal, the mundane, and the ordinary.

So, now, of course, I intend to be suspicious of everything plain.

This shoe closet is messy. Sadly, it's also mine.

She tells me that’s ridiculous, guessing at my suspicion. She implies that God has put in these plain things a necessary, if to me, rudimentary, exuberance that surpasses human understanding. She is telling me to slow down, to take notice, and to take a breath.

And so that morning, when I woke up, I let my initial disappointment ebb, and found that I was quite happy, content. I crawled out of bed, and that’s when I rediscovered, and rather accidentally, a lost pair of favorite shoes.

Would that work as something simple? I felt that it would.

And that meant the whole world to me.