At late night, I do have energy to write. The classic writers would call it “my Muse”; ancient Christian writers “the unction of the Spirit.” I guess I’ll have to let a draft sit overnight before posting it.

I’ve tackled several intellectual projects (1) to fend off brain deterioration and (2) to avoid anxious brooding about moving into an elder community:

• For Father’s Day my darlin’ girl gave me Cesar Chavez: a triumph of spirit by Griswold del Castillo and RA Garcia (University of Oklahoma, 1995). I’m delighted. As the preface says, Chavez is the closest thing Latinos have to a national hero; his model was St. Francis of Assisi, whose biography sent me into orbit last year.
• I’m doing my 2^nd annual audio survey of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. By this time I get about 70% of the Elizabethan speech. The survey reminds me how much I love the Bard. Penguin issued the plays in single volumes that are easy to hold while listening to the Arkangel disks.
• Films I’ve seen:
  • Bright Star, an exquisitely filmed telling of John Keats’ and Fanny Brawne’s love affair. Keats began to show symptoms of the TB of which he died at 26. Because he was poor, they couldn’t marry. It struck me deeply. On my desktop I put a shortcut to Project Guttenberg’s file of Keats’ 1820 volume of verse.
  • The Blind Side. Yes! That from a guy who doesn’t enjoy sports films a lot.

So I’ve got a lot on my plate. Why? For the same reason people climb Everest or run marathons.

I need input especially at the moment, as we are researching residential elder communities. Dad kept promising he would make his move to community living when the time was right; but in fact he delayed until we children had to make wrenching decisions for him. I don’t want to do that.

The African model of community has much to teach us. Why do American elders prefer to hole up in isolated homes, rather than gather in clusters of care? I don’t want to be dependent, or lose freedom; but neither do I want to be alone.

As Boomers age, we’re going to force society to adjust as we have through each decade. When we were school age, cities and towns had to build schools. Now they will have to change to accommodate large numbers of older adults.

A culture without elders, in effect, suffers from sociological Alzheimer’s. That’s America. We need to reach back to Native American traditions about elders (and others), to season our culture with wisdom that cherishes elders, rather than disposing of them.

Part 1

It’s been awhile since I spent serious time with Shakespeare, which I find cleansing, rigorous—aerobic exercise for mind and spirit. So I recently tackled Antony and Cleopatra, reading and re-reading.

Then I hear the newsbyte that John Edwards has had an affair. Damn! He was talking about the poor, like no other presidential candidate.

Is this getting old, or what? Maybe if we can find a public official who hasn’t had an affair, he or she should get the headline.

Having read John 8, I’m not one to throw stones. But I’d like to understand what’s going on here. That’s why we read classics like Shakespeare, isn’t it, to understand the human condition?

So we begin. Married to Fulvia, later to Octavia, Mark Antony is having the time of his life—with Cleopatra. He says to her:

There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch / Without some pleasure now. 1.1.46-47

Sounds like a guy planning his retirement, doesn’t he?

At the same time, he recognizes that the affair is doing damage:

I must from this enchanting queen break off:
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch. 1.2.127-129

Of course, he doesn’t do it.

During the decisive battle at Actium, Cleopatra flees and, abandoning his forces, Antony follows her. His soldier Scarus says:

We’ve kiss’d away / Kingdoms 3.10.7-8

I never saw an action of such shame;
Experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before
Did violate so itself. 3.10.22-24

Antony confesses,

…  I / Have lost my way forever. 3.11.3-4

He dismisses his soldiers, rejecting their arguments that they should stay with him. Realizing he has reduced himself to a thing, he says:

 Let that be left / Which leaves itself. 3.11.19-20 

He confronts Cleopatra with her total control over him:

 O’er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me. 3.11.59-61 

Just as a cloud “that’s dragonish, / a vapour sometime like a bear or lion,” vanishes before his eyes, he is disappearing:

Even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water. 4.14.11-13

Next, he calls on his servant Eros to kill him. Instead, Eros himself suicides. Antony fumbles, wounding himself but remaining alive for yet one more love scene with Cleopatra. Rather than being taken to Rome as a prisoner, Cleopatra has servants bring in vipers to bite her to death.

Shakespeare paints a fascinating, indepth portrait of persons who are poisonous for each other.

In Part 2, I’ll share my own reflections.