2-4-6

It has been seven weeks since I last checked in with you on the blog. I have been on my summer sabbatical in the United States doing perhaps what I do best—talking and eating. I take a sabbatical from the blog on one hand since I am not in work mode, and do not sit at a computer much in the summer, but also because I don’t know if my list of friends I see makes for interesting reading. Not that my friends are not interesting, but we often do not plow new ground, but re-connect, re-live, re-invigorate important relationships. I don’t know if the list of meals and friends makes for profound reading. I mean, in all of these wonderful and soul-stirring reconnections, nothing here is exactly new, but that is why I enjoy them so much. My summer is a collection of “my greatest hits” of relationships, and I enjoy the familiarity of them so much.

The title of this blog entry has to do with the way much of my summer is handled. I spend a good deal of time in the summer with my calendar out, scheduling friends and family for meals and visits. I choose “vacation” spots based on who I get to see, not a new locale, or incredible new beach, or really a new sight at all. I look at where I can go and with whom I can re-connect. Then in a rather OCD kind of fashion, I “schedule” people into time slots of generally 2-hour, 4-hour or 6-hour durations. That sounds so clinical, and I guess even impersonal, but my summer is actually one long personal re-connection with loved ones. This summer my travel companion Anne and I went to the Seattle area not just to revel in the beauty of the Olympic mountains and lakes of the Northwest region, but also to revel in the beauty of relationships with former students. However, even I have to chuckle at how the summer seems to break down into those 2-4-6 hour blocks. I will visit with dear friend Tony for four hours, go to a concert with dear friend Sylvia and enjoy a two hour visit, or since Dawn is always on warp speed, a 2-hour meal is sped by in lightning speed.

Two weeks ago I had a “cancellation,” i.e. one of my former students slotted for a “two hour” had a death in the family and had to jet off to Florida. Into this unexpected free time I went to the movies with Christy to see Woody Allen’s 41st film, Midnight in Paris. What a charming movie! It opens with a couple on holiday in Paris with her parents. The couple, Gil and Inez, are officially in love; he’s at work on a novel about “a guy who owns a nostalgia shop” and at the same time indulging in the virtual time travel that Paris affords a certain kind of visitor. Gil yearns to sit at a table where Hemingway drank wine or meet Scott and Zelda—and imagine that they just stepped out to take the air. Ahhhh…nostalgia…the good old days.

The definitive poem in English on the subject of cultural nostalgia may be a short verse by Robert Browning called “Memorabilia.” It begins with a gasp of astonishment — “Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?” — and ends with a shrug: “Well, I forget the rest.” Isn’t that always how it goes? The past seems so much more vivid, more substantial, than the present, and then it evaporates with the cold touch of reality. Some good old days are so alluring because we were not around, however much we wish we were. Midnight in Paris imagines what would happen if that wish came true. It is marvelously romantic, even though — or precisely because — it acknowledges the disappointment that shadows every genuine expression of romanticism. Midnight in Paris shows a Paris both golden and gray, breezy and melancholy, and immune to its own abundant clichés. Paris in the 1920s—now THAT was a time! Pablo Picasso, on the cusp of his painterly brilliance; Ernest Hemingway, hunting wild beasts and churning out prose of inner bravado; Gertrude Stein, at the hub of it all. And the surrealists—Dali, Bunuel, and Man Ray—striving valiantly to live life in the non sequitur.

And then it happens. One night as Gil is out for a midnight stroll, an extended vintage motor carriage comes by and picks him up. This is his magical ride to the Paris of yore, the Paris he's been pining for, the Paris he's been utterly romanticizing. All the luminaries are there. He takes this trip each night, developing relationships with them, and realizing their own human neuroses. Pablo Picasso, the uncertain lover; Ernest Hemingway, the unblinking blowhard; Gertrude Stein, enduring mother hen. And the surrealists—Dali, Bunuel, and Man Ray—striving ridiculously to live life in the non sequitur. This humanization of these icons of the art world is as amusing to Gil as it is to us. The electricity of the time is felt as he makes not just priceless connections and contacts, but friendships. The magic and charm of 1920s Paris is right out in front of everything, but at the same time, the imperfections begin to show, and not just the contrasts, but the comparisons to his present-time situation grow all the more evident. In fact, he realizes that the gift of nostalgia, the present of nostalgia, is actually a better understanding of the present day.

As I watched the film, and enjoyed the delightful return to a certain time period, the 1920s, and then La Belle Epoque, I realized that my summer was like this movie. Over and over this summer I have been like Gil, enjoying a trip into the past, reveling in the excitement of another age and the relationships of that time.
I began the summer with the ultimate trip down memory lane, a reunion of the Denison Singers, an event chronicled in the blog before, when we had met in the spring of 2008 and again in the fall of 2010. This four-day love-fest/song-fest is a doorway to the the 1980s, rekindling friendships and love of music that had been so important to my college years.

But the summer proved to have many doors to my past. This summer I found an old friend from the 1970s, a friend from Kirkwood that had meant so much for a decade, then as time does, we traveled down different paths. This friend David and I started visiting on Facebook, then on the phone, and we laughed about old jokes and fun times from our youth. On a trip to Gastonia and Charlotte, North Carolina, I opened the doors to the late 1980s as I visited with Cookie, and the early 1990s as I visited with Chuck. In my two weeks in the New York area, I opened the doors to the late 20th century and early 21st century as I visited with friends from the Hackley chapter of my life.

On the trip to Seattle, I visited with Stefan and Sean, such important figures in my 2000-2006 life, but then for a day, for a great four-hour slot I got to see Louise again (first time since 1993) and enjoyed the doorway to 1991-92.

Have I done anything new? Oh, I saw theater productions in New York, and especially enjoyed the phenomenal play, Warhorse, but my summer really has been like Gil’s happy adventures in Midnight in Paris—through the portals of a happy past. At the Frick Museum I bumped into Rika Burnham, the greatest museum educator I have ever known, and that little 10-minute slot was a wonderful doorway remembering how she electrified and inspired me in 1994-95. Then two nights ago when my dad and I went out to dinner in Cincinnati, we bumped into my two greatest high school teachers, sisters Mrs. Michaels and Mrs. Schneider. It was Mrs. Michaels’ birthday, and I got to enjoy these two icons and remember my debt to them for 30 years. I had a two-hour slot with Miss Wilson in July, the third in the troika of my greatest teachers of my youth…

As I look back over this summer, nothing here is exactly new, and that is what I wanted in my summer. But—and here is the important part of my summer and the parallel to this gem of a movie—very little is stale either. Woody Allen has gracefully evaded the trap of nostalgia with a credible blend of whimsy and wisdom. The movie makes clear that those good old days are seen through the clichéd rose-colored glasses, but the greatest point is how we live in the present, and the “present” of the present. That a shared love of Cole Porter’s music allows the movie character Gil to forge a connection in the present (and conceivably the future) with a young Parisian woman is a sign that his fetishizing of bygone days has been based on a mistake. Paris is perpetually alive, not because it houses the ghosts of the famous dead but because it is the repository and setting of so much of their work. And the purpose of all that old stuff is not to consign us to the past but rather to animate and enliven the present.

That is how I have felt about my 2-4-6 appointments of the summer! When I visited with Laura Hirschberg at Carmine’s Italian eatery (the scene of so many delightful meals for me in 1994-95) or enjoyed the annual visit with Sharon, it was not a musty trip down the ghosts on memory lane, but a reminder of where we come from, and how that animates and enlivens our present.

Ah, did I once see these childhood friends plain? How strange they seem, and new. And relevant. And enlivening.