Will, Bill, and Me

IndyDJ — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:50:47 GMT

by David L. Johns

I have a friend called Bill and I drive to his town to visit him as often as I can. He’s at least twenty years older than I am. Although we never talk about our age difference, it might be among the first things you notice when you see us together in a restaurant.

Bill retired last summer after teaching literature in the university for over forty years. I’ve been teaching for about fifteen years, which means I’m only a third of the professor Bill is.

He’s living an active retirement, playing double Bridge, taking piano lessons, and visiting his family who live on both coasts. He traveled to Austria last year on a Mozart tour. I’m envious. But I had to work, so I couldn’t go with him.

Bill regularly attends theatre productions in Stratford, Ontario, in Chicago, and at the Globe in England. He’s still writing theatre reviews and offering arts commentary on a NPR affiliate.

So, no matter what people think when they see us chatting over lunch, I’m glad to be with him.

We talk about many things, but always the subject turns to Shakespeare. And, since we talk about Shakespeare, of course, we talk about everything worth talking about—life, love, sorrow, betrayal, desire, ambition. Last summer we attended a performance of Much Ado About Nothing. I sat next to Bill, which meant I had the best seat in the house.

“I just saw the Indianapolis Repertory Theatre’s production of King Lear,” I told him. “The staging was striking and brilliant, in a minimalist way,” I said, trying hard to sound like one of his reviews. He smiled at my effort. “I cried when Lear realized it was his daughter Cordelia who loved him truly.”

Bill has seen more stage productions of this one play than Liz Taylor has had husbands, so he can draw comparisons I can’t.

“It left me a little cold,” he said. “But, every Lear has to live up to my first.” This was my first Lear.

Bill taught Shakespeare for years, he’s acted in the Bard’s plays, he’s even contributed to the prestigious, Shakespeare Quarterly and the Riverside Shakespeare. He knows his stuff. But this isn’t shop-talk; this is Shakespeare in the skin and deep in the belly—not “will-this-be-on-the-exam?” It’s wisdom from someone nearly four hundred years dead passed along to two real men eating quiche in a restaurant, one a senior, the other middle aged.

That’s the way it is with great literature—it fires the imagination. It makes friends out of strangers by showing that there is more uniting humanity over the ages than some care to admit.

Which brings me back to Bill and me eating lunch talking about our friend Will.

Have fun, be safe, and send me a postcard.

David

A blog about Being Somewhere

I'm on My Space...and I'm here too: being_somewhere@yahoo.com

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A Camera for My Trip

IndyDJ — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:36:00 GMT

By David L. Johns

I’m shopping for a camera to take on my trip to Honduras. Somewhere along the way, while planning this international jaunt, I convinced myself that I need a digital camera. It’s much smaller and will travel better than our 35 mm camera. It will take clearer images than the camera I have now. Besides, I can email vacation photos to anyone who sends me Viagra advertisements.

I don’t need a digital camera; I realize this. I just think I do. But, I’ll probably buy one anyway.

I have mixed feeling about toting a camera of any kind on this trip. I’m not afraid that it will be stolen. I’m not even afraid that, like I’ve done with a dozen umbrellas and hats, I’ll leave it on a plane.

I’m worried about what I’ll miss while “capturing memories.” It’s hard enough to experience all that is happening around me. It’s more difficult when I try to experience the world through a one-inch square, or even the enormous three-inch viewfinder of the camera I’m probably going to buy.

I do enjoy having something to look at after a trip and I even have moments of nostalgia when I’ll thumb through a couple dozen photographs. However, what usually happens is this: I look through the pictures immediately after they’re developed. I do this in the store parking lot. I pull out one or two to send to family, and throw away a couple blurry shots of my shoes. I stuff the rest into a musty antique trunk that is nearly overflowing with photos from two lifetimes.

Several years ago at the Cleveland Zoo, I watched someone take a picture of a family. Mom and dad were haranguing the children trying to rein them in for a pose. The kids were tired and wanted to ride the camel. The bellowing from this family was embarrassing to those at the zoo who were supposed to be the wild animals. However, on the count of three, there were six beautiful orthodontured smiles. After the camera clicked, the group dissolved back into chaos.

What do they remember when they look at that photo? Do they remember the public bedlam? Or, do they only recall the 1/500 of a second when all was serene?

What do we believe about images of our own past—our memory of it, or the photograph? How soon does the photograph replace our memory so that all that remains of our vacation, or our senior prom, or of our aunt Mabel is a 5x7 with a smudgy fingerprint in the corner? But how much would I have forgotten without a few snapshots through the years?

I’ve made up my mind to buy the camera and I’ll take plenty of pictures. But I’ll try to keep my eyes open and not squeeze the world into a three-inch box. It’s not what I stuff in the trunk when I get back that will be important, but what settles into my heart.

Have fun, be safe, and send me a postcard.

David

A blog about Being Somewhere

I'm on My Space...and I'm here too: being_somewhere@yahoo.com

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