Well into 2009 . . .

Well into 2009—almost two weeks, give or take a day or three—and the snow hasn’t fallen yet, but the temperature is dropping rapidly. Rumor says that next week the temperature will not rise above zero even in the middle of the day. There is a sense of comfort in this cold: everything seems to come to a standstill, and I have no need to go anywhere. I do mosey out to my cabin, and of course, I shop at the Coop, and I will have to go to school for a workshop this week. Well, yes, I will be outside not a little, but the cold means that the world hibernates and so can I. It is a comforting idea, even if I don’t act on it.

Saw the play Frost/Nixon. I am not sure I even watched the original interview. By 1977, I hated Nixon so deeply that I couldn’t bear to see his face. And the play was interesting enough as a portrayal of the unraveling of the man who just couldn’t’ manage to hold it together when actually confronted with his complicity. Indeed, the play didn’t show Frost as the matador (an image in the play), but as Nixon as the self-destructive bull impaling himself on the sword which had to finally destroy him. I mean, he was guilty.

Lately, I have been enjoying live theater, a form I eschewed in New York well, because of the price of tickets. I thought I couldn’t afford them (I could have), and I thought that theater had nothing to offer me (I was wrong), though perhaps at the time I was right for me. But I have been regularly these seasons to the Guthrie, and to the Penumbra, and have tickets every week for the next month. Shakespeare, and Albee, and Shakespeare again. Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun, and Tony Kushner and even some Beckett. Being in the theater makes me feel quite alive again. And just in time.

The news is all bad. And though there is only ten days away until the Inauguration, it is impossible to avoid the doom in the newspapers. The economy. The war. Bernie Madoff and Ponzi schemes. The Middle East. Afghanistan. Mumbai. And the Republicans are crying foul with Obama’s appointments who apparently are not as squeaky clean as the Republicans have been for the past eight years. Hypocrites all, they should all be ashamed of themselves. And the horror is that they wouldn’t think of being humble.