Feast Night (and Moonlit Fantasies)
Well, dear reader, it's been a busy weekend. On Friday I taught class as usual (starting Les Miserables now). It went off quite well, only of course we didn't get into the half of a third of a quarter of an eighth of all there is to say about the first 100 pages of that magnificent epic. Ah well. That evening I had the opportunity to relax at the home of friends and enjoy fellowship with two or three couples and their children. I got absolutely trounced in a video game playoff with their thirteen-year-old son, but it serves me right for trying to pick up where I left off six years ago---you really do lose the touch after awhile, I guess. Anyway, it was good for my pride.
The next morning was equally pleasant: we had a great Bible study led by the head of the family with whom I was staying; then breakfast and a two-mile walk and suddenly it was time to start getting ready for Feast Night. This particular Feast Night was to involve early nineteenth-century garb, music, poetry readings, pledges, hymns, songs, prayers, a diplomatic game, and dancing.
Through no fault of my own, I found myself Co-MC of the evening. Also through no fault of my own, I was made responsible for three young ladies' hair and teaching the Virginia Reel. I guess I need to stop asking questions like "So, are you all set to MC?" and "Were you going to do a dance or something during the social time?" As for the hairdressing, all I can say is I'm glad I thought to bring my curling iron and pins to do one girl's hair, because otherwise I would've been completely blindsided.
At 2:30 PM the madness began. I guess I swallowed a plateful of food sometime between 11:00 AM and 9 PM, but I don't remember precisely how or when. All I really recall, physically speaking, is that sometime around 4:30 PM my upper back started to ache intolerably from doing hair for two hours and that by 8:30 PM the same sensation occurred in my feet.
Physics aside, I pinned and curled and discussed schedules and fixed cravats and listened to practice poetry recitations and reassured girls that they really did look nice in their dresses and argued and bantered and tried to wrap my mind around the details of the evening (which I only half-understood) until it was time to go. I will say that I was very proud of my young ladies: they looked beautiful in their dresses and I didn't foul anybody's hair (thank God!) and everything was got through mostly on time. What delightful madness it is to dress up for an evening of make-believe! It reminded me of the old days, when we used to have two hours to get a cast of 30 ready for a play performance. And oh!---what fun those nights were! And oh!---how we laughed and joked and teased and bantered! There is magic and mischief and a splendid camaraderie that arise at such times, almost as if the spirit of fun itself gets loose.
To return. On this occasion, once we arrived at the small, rather charming (I thought) community center where the evening's event was to be held, it was time to turn my attention to the dance. I had half-reluctantly, half-eagerly agreed to teach the Virginia Reel if (a big "if") I could remember it, and if I could find the music and if the students could learn it, etc. I was sure that everybody would enjoy it if we could pull it off, but that "if" bothered me something dreadful. My friend and hostess, who has more faith than I, put the dance on the schedule regardless.
When we got there, however, it was time to turn "if" into "yes" or "no" in a hurry. Fortunately, though I only remembered the first half of the dance clearly and completely forgot the "reel" part of the Virginia Reel, my Co-MC remembered the other half, though he was as bad as my teenage boys about doing it in the first place and shocked my students by giving me orders. (As if I cannot be given orders simply because I am their teacher! Silly dears.) The boys tried continually to slip away and we had to haul them periodically out of the bathroom. Fortunately, as I have said, the place was small and there weren't many good hiding spots.
The girls, of course, were as shy as only young girls can be. One of them asked me, anxiously, "You do mean girls partnering girls and boys partnering boys, don't you?"
"No," I said calmly. "I mean boys and girls together."
"Oh."
The only merciful thing to do in such a situation is to assign partners, because otherwise it is horribly awkward for everybody. Somehow, being told to dance with so-and-so obviates the embarrassment---probably because it also removes the responsibility. If you didn't volunteer to dance with Girl A or Boy B, then you can't be blamed for it, can you?
The students caught on to the dance pretty quickly, though I'm sure we were slightly off-tempo every time we did it (which was either my fault or else the MP3 track wasn't arranged for dancing). Anyway, it went off surprisingly well and today I was informed by email that it has started a dance craze which is expected to culminate in contra dancing in my host family's basement sometime in the months ahead. Yikes! More on that in forthcoming posts, doubtless, though really I ought to have foreseen this. Was there ever a small community in which contra dancing did not become a craze as soon as it was introduced? We certainly did enough of it at PHC!
I daresay my teenage boys will put up a fuss. However, I suspect that they enjoy it more than they are presently willing to admit. I suppose their mothers will make them participate in any case and privately I can't help feeling that it's a good thing. Boys ought to learn to dance with poise and skill and enjoyment. Why? Well, I don't know, but they should. How's that for circular reasoning? Anyway, my brothers and father are all excellent dancers, and to me that is enough reason for any of my boy students to learn.
I have to confess that the dressing-up and dancing most interested me, probably because those were the parts of the evening that required an investment of time and effort on my part, and therefore gave me an interest in their success. The diplomatic game was... well... let's call it "tame." The students are either not as stubborn and vengeful or not as enterprising as my own class was when we played the same game several years ago. However, they did their work to the best of their ability, and I was proud of them, and proud of their tall elegance as they went about with glasses of "champagne," arranging last-minute negotiations.
The "champagne" was cider (I had some) and there was dessert (I didn't have any; I never can make myself eat at parties). The tables were beautiful, and so were the displays (I snatched a few minutes to look at them.) There were children dressed up in every imaginable variation of period or semi-period costume. There was even a child who I swear could have passed for a miniature Napoleon!
The role of MC went surprisingly well, much better than I expected. I wasn't eager to take it up, but doing so alleviated some of the strain for the evening's chief organizer, and it was a way to serve and to have something to do, so I agreed. God gave me grace to grasp each thing as it came (and usually just before it came!). I shall never be a stand-up comedian, but ten weeks of teaching have made me a reasonably competent speaker and I had a forgiving audience, so it all went off.
To me perhaps the the loveliest thing about the whole evening was the thirty seconds or so during which I was able to slip out, alone, onto a balcony overlooking the pool attached to the community center. Parties of all sorts, but especially large and noisy parties, are overexciting to me---I always need a few minutes to myself in the middle of things to recover. This time being no exception, I found great pleasure in the cold night scene of gray stone and glistering midnight-blue water. My imagination had conceived half of a fantastical landscape and a quarter of a couple of characters and the beginning of a scene in a story---then pop! I was interrupted with information about the diplomacy game, then asked whether the children might come out to the balcony too, and suddenly there was no more lonely moon-filled night of water and magic.
Of course this is the sort of thing that happens to grown-ups all the time, but on some other evening I hope I shall be able to just play the child dreamer and finish that fragment of story on the balcony overlooking the pool. It reminded me of a solitary turn I took once in a garden outside the place where our annual college ball was being held. I shall never forget the stillness and fragrance of that chilly April night, nor the exhilaration of being alone in a beautiful dress in a moonlit garden. Anything, anything might happen at such a time in such a dress and such a setting. Of course, in a girl's imagination what is really wanted is what never actually occurs: an unexpected meeting with a mysterious TDS (Tall Dark Stranger).
The conversation between lady and TDS is always vaguely understood, in the girlish mind, to consist of equal parts strangeness and sweetness. It is also supposed to leave the impression of having been all a dream. I wonder what they actually would talk about? The garden itself, probably, and doubtless one another's identities. Yes, I think I can begin to see how it would go... as follows:
Scene: Lady, alone, center stage, unmasked, in a beautiful white dress, vivid against the fragrant dark cypress trees. In the foreground, a fountain. In the background, a large lighted house of stone, from which music emenates. Around the fountain and leading to either side among ornamentally-trimmed groves, a maze of graveled paths. Enter TDS, masked and in a black cloak, at stage right from the cover of the grove.
Lady: Hearing a footstep on the gravel, rises uncertainly but silently (excepting a slight gasp) from her seat on the lip of the fountain.
TDS: Catching sight of her in the moonlight. Don't be frightened.
Lady: Oh, I'm not! That is, you merely startled me.
TDS: There's nothing to be afraid of.
Lady: I was just taking the air.
The lady looks down and away. The TDS scrutinizes her silently.
TDS: Shifting his weight, not awkwardly, but there is tenseness or impatience in the movement. Have you a particular fondness for this garden?
Lady: Oh yes! Especially at night.
TDS: Why especially at night?
Lady: Dreamily. I feel the strangeness of it, at night, both awakens and soothes my senses. I am aware of each separate drop of water and every leaf, but yet they all run together in a rushing and rustling dimness.
TDS: Ah.
Lady: Don't you agree?
TDS: A little mocking. In a way. The night certainly heightens a man's senses, no doubt as compensation for the lack of sight in this dim landscape of yours. However, the setting is seldom as tranquil as this, nor the cause for walking in the dark as tame as that of an evening stroll.
Lady: Feeling that he is condescending or even rude, but of course too courteous to show it. I imagine that under more... dangerous circumstances such as you intimate, the darkness and indistinctness might be be rather unnerving than soothing, whereas the perception of individual things may be heightened to a painful extreme.
TDS: Still more drily. You imagine correctly, as naturally a lady of your rank and good breeding would.
Lady: Determined to be courteous, and also in fact a little curious. I give you thanks for that speech... but would give it more properly if I knew whom I addressed?
TDS: Lightly, to turn aside her question. My lady, why should we not both be part of the enchanting indistinctness of this setting---you a whisp of moonlight in your white dress---I nothing but a shadow?
Lady: Now either truly frightened or truly annoyed, but still polite. In that case, moonlight glides on and so shall I, back to my friends in the house.
TDS: Relieved to have her moving back inside, which was the object of his coldness. It is a shadow's part to humbly attend the light---May I follow you to the door?
Lady: She inclines her head in assent, but is sufficiently stung by his previous comments to say, What a pity it is that humility, a beautiful virtue, should be so common to shadows and so comparatively rare in men. Wouldn't you agree?
TDS: I do, and yet if all men were judged with charity, and circumstances taken into account, perhaps their pride would not appear so great to those observing them. Will you take my arm?
Lady: She does so, silently, pondering his words.
The two proceed back up the pathway to the house, mute but studying each other, their shadows streaming like long black fingers behind them, pointing to the fountain. The TDS hands the Lady to the door and stops just outside.
Lady: Aren't you coming in?
TDS: Visibly agitated now. No.
Lady: Again, good breeding prevents her from prying. Good evening, then.
TDS: Good evening. As she turns to go, he reaches inside and catches her hand, speaking rapidly at the same time in a low voice, and with a sudden earnestness of appeal. Listen, moonlight lady! If you have a forgiving spirit as well as a gracious manner, say a prayer tonight for your attendant shadow despite his lack of humility---will you?
Lady: Caught by his tone and responding intuitively to this strange plea for intercession. Yes, that I will!
TDS: Thank you. Unworthy of it though he is, you may judge him better hereafter. And one word more---whatever happens, don't leave the house again. Promise!
Lady: But what---
TDS: Hush! My time is out in bringing you back. Promise!
Lady: I promise.
TDS: And the other ladies, try to keep them in.
Lady: Yes, yes!
TDS: He bows. For this, I thank you---most truly. Good night.
He vanishes into the dimness of the garden, truly like a shadow for silence and quickness. She reenters the ballroom, a little dazed at what has passed. Five minutes pass slowly, and then there is a sudden commotion in the garden: a volley of shots and a cry of pain. The scene fades to black on the lady, standing at the door with her face to the audience and straining to see better into the indistinct garden.
Anyway, it could go like that. But that is precisely what never happens, and so the dreamer is able to dream it alone in a nighttime garden or on a nighttime balcony---until the party reestablishes its existence and prominence. Which is of course what happened to me, and there is nothing left to tell but that when we were finished with our Feast Night the room was disassembled with remarkable efficiency and we collected everything and went home and took pictures and then I drove back down to my house, turning over in my mind the events of the day and tidying them into various files marked A) pleasant memory, B) for further review, C) add this to that list of traits for such-and-such a student or thus-and-such a parent, D) to be studied in greater detail, E) etc.
Most of all, though, I just enjoyed it.
The next morning was equally pleasant: we had a great Bible study led by the head of the family with whom I was staying; then breakfast and a two-mile walk and suddenly it was time to start getting ready for Feast Night. This particular Feast Night was to involve early nineteenth-century garb, music, poetry readings, pledges, hymns, songs, prayers, a diplomatic game, and dancing.
Through no fault of my own, I found myself Co-MC of the evening. Also through no fault of my own, I was made responsible for three young ladies' hair and teaching the Virginia Reel. I guess I need to stop asking questions like "So, are you all set to MC?" and "Were you going to do a dance or something during the social time?" As for the hairdressing, all I can say is I'm glad I thought to bring my curling iron and pins to do one girl's hair, because otherwise I would've been completely blindsided.
At 2:30 PM the madness began. I guess I swallowed a plateful of food sometime between 11:00 AM and 9 PM, but I don't remember precisely how or when. All I really recall, physically speaking, is that sometime around 4:30 PM my upper back started to ache intolerably from doing hair for two hours and that by 8:30 PM the same sensation occurred in my feet.
Physics aside, I pinned and curled and discussed schedules and fixed cravats and listened to practice poetry recitations and reassured girls that they really did look nice in their dresses and argued and bantered and tried to wrap my mind around the details of the evening (which I only half-understood) until it was time to go. I will say that I was very proud of my young ladies: they looked beautiful in their dresses and I didn't foul anybody's hair (thank God!) and everything was got through mostly on time. What delightful madness it is to dress up for an evening of make-believe! It reminded me of the old days, when we used to have two hours to get a cast of 30 ready for a play performance. And oh!---what fun those nights were! And oh!---how we laughed and joked and teased and bantered! There is magic and mischief and a splendid camaraderie that arise at such times, almost as if the spirit of fun itself gets loose.
To return. On this occasion, once we arrived at the small, rather charming (I thought) community center where the evening's event was to be held, it was time to turn my attention to the dance. I had half-reluctantly, half-eagerly agreed to teach the Virginia Reel if (a big "if") I could remember it, and if I could find the music and if the students could learn it, etc. I was sure that everybody would enjoy it if we could pull it off, but that "if" bothered me something dreadful. My friend and hostess, who has more faith than I, put the dance on the schedule regardless.
When we got there, however, it was time to turn "if" into "yes" or "no" in a hurry. Fortunately, though I only remembered the first half of the dance clearly and completely forgot the "reel" part of the Virginia Reel, my Co-MC remembered the other half, though he was as bad as my teenage boys about doing it in the first place and shocked my students by giving me orders. (As if I cannot be given orders simply because I am their teacher! Silly dears.) The boys tried continually to slip away and we had to haul them periodically out of the bathroom. Fortunately, as I have said, the place was small and there weren't many good hiding spots.
The girls, of course, were as shy as only young girls can be. One of them asked me, anxiously, "You do mean girls partnering girls and boys partnering boys, don't you?"
"No," I said calmly. "I mean boys and girls together."
"Oh."
The only merciful thing to do in such a situation is to assign partners, because otherwise it is horribly awkward for everybody. Somehow, being told to dance with so-and-so obviates the embarrassment---probably because it also removes the responsibility. If you didn't volunteer to dance with Girl A or Boy B, then you can't be blamed for it, can you?
The students caught on to the dance pretty quickly, though I'm sure we were slightly off-tempo every time we did it (which was either my fault or else the MP3 track wasn't arranged for dancing). Anyway, it went off surprisingly well and today I was informed by email that it has started a dance craze which is expected to culminate in contra dancing in my host family's basement sometime in the months ahead. Yikes! More on that in forthcoming posts, doubtless, though really I ought to have foreseen this. Was there ever a small community in which contra dancing did not become a craze as soon as it was introduced? We certainly did enough of it at PHC!
I daresay my teenage boys will put up a fuss. However, I suspect that they enjoy it more than they are presently willing to admit. I suppose their mothers will make them participate in any case and privately I can't help feeling that it's a good thing. Boys ought to learn to dance with poise and skill and enjoyment. Why? Well, I don't know, but they should. How's that for circular reasoning? Anyway, my brothers and father are all excellent dancers, and to me that is enough reason for any of my boy students to learn.
I have to confess that the dressing-up and dancing most interested me, probably because those were the parts of the evening that required an investment of time and effort on my part, and therefore gave me an interest in their success. The diplomatic game was... well... let's call it "tame." The students are either not as stubborn and vengeful or not as enterprising as my own class was when we played the same game several years ago. However, they did their work to the best of their ability, and I was proud of them, and proud of their tall elegance as they went about with glasses of "champagne," arranging last-minute negotiations.
The "champagne" was cider (I had some) and there was dessert (I didn't have any; I never can make myself eat at parties). The tables were beautiful, and so were the displays (I snatched a few minutes to look at them.) There were children dressed up in every imaginable variation of period or semi-period costume. There was even a child who I swear could have passed for a miniature Napoleon!
The role of MC went surprisingly well, much better than I expected. I wasn't eager to take it up, but doing so alleviated some of the strain for the evening's chief organizer, and it was a way to serve and to have something to do, so I agreed. God gave me grace to grasp each thing as it came (and usually just before it came!). I shall never be a stand-up comedian, but ten weeks of teaching have made me a reasonably competent speaker and I had a forgiving audience, so it all went off.
To me perhaps the the loveliest thing about the whole evening was the thirty seconds or so during which I was able to slip out, alone, onto a balcony overlooking the pool attached to the community center. Parties of all sorts, but especially large and noisy parties, are overexciting to me---I always need a few minutes to myself in the middle of things to recover. This time being no exception, I found great pleasure in the cold night scene of gray stone and glistering midnight-blue water. My imagination had conceived half of a fantastical landscape and a quarter of a couple of characters and the beginning of a scene in a story---then pop! I was interrupted with information about the diplomacy game, then asked whether the children might come out to the balcony too, and suddenly there was no more lonely moon-filled night of water and magic.
Of course this is the sort of thing that happens to grown-ups all the time, but on some other evening I hope I shall be able to just play the child dreamer and finish that fragment of story on the balcony overlooking the pool. It reminded me of a solitary turn I took once in a garden outside the place where our annual college ball was being held. I shall never forget the stillness and fragrance of that chilly April night, nor the exhilaration of being alone in a beautiful dress in a moonlit garden. Anything, anything might happen at such a time in such a dress and such a setting. Of course, in a girl's imagination what is really wanted is what never actually occurs: an unexpected meeting with a mysterious TDS (Tall Dark Stranger).
The conversation between lady and TDS is always vaguely understood, in the girlish mind, to consist of equal parts strangeness and sweetness. It is also supposed to leave the impression of having been all a dream. I wonder what they actually would talk about? The garden itself, probably, and doubtless one another's identities. Yes, I think I can begin to see how it would go... as follows:
Scene: Lady, alone, center stage, unmasked, in a beautiful white dress, vivid against the fragrant dark cypress trees. In the foreground, a fountain. In the background, a large lighted house of stone, from which music emenates. Around the fountain and leading to either side among ornamentally-trimmed groves, a maze of graveled paths. Enter TDS, masked and in a black cloak, at stage right from the cover of the grove.
Lady: Hearing a footstep on the gravel, rises uncertainly but silently (excepting a slight gasp) from her seat on the lip of the fountain.
TDS: Catching sight of her in the moonlight. Don't be frightened.
Lady: Oh, I'm not! That is, you merely startled me.
TDS: There's nothing to be afraid of.
Lady: I was just taking the air.
The lady looks down and away. The TDS scrutinizes her silently.
TDS: Shifting his weight, not awkwardly, but there is tenseness or impatience in the movement. Have you a particular fondness for this garden?
Lady: Oh yes! Especially at night.
TDS: Why especially at night?
Lady: Dreamily. I feel the strangeness of it, at night, both awakens and soothes my senses. I am aware of each separate drop of water and every leaf, but yet they all run together in a rushing and rustling dimness.
TDS: Ah.
Lady: Don't you agree?
TDS: A little mocking. In a way. The night certainly heightens a man's senses, no doubt as compensation for the lack of sight in this dim landscape of yours. However, the setting is seldom as tranquil as this, nor the cause for walking in the dark as tame as that of an evening stroll.
Lady: Feeling that he is condescending or even rude, but of course too courteous to show it. I imagine that under more... dangerous circumstances such as you intimate, the darkness and indistinctness might be be rather unnerving than soothing, whereas the perception of individual things may be heightened to a painful extreme.
TDS: Still more drily. You imagine correctly, as naturally a lady of your rank and good breeding would.
Lady: Determined to be courteous, and also in fact a little curious. I give you thanks for that speech... but would give it more properly if I knew whom I addressed?
TDS: Lightly, to turn aside her question. My lady, why should we not both be part of the enchanting indistinctness of this setting---you a whisp of moonlight in your white dress---I nothing but a shadow?
Lady: Now either truly frightened or truly annoyed, but still polite. In that case, moonlight glides on and so shall I, back to my friends in the house.
TDS: Relieved to have her moving back inside, which was the object of his coldness. It is a shadow's part to humbly attend the light---May I follow you to the door?
Lady: She inclines her head in assent, but is sufficiently stung by his previous comments to say, What a pity it is that humility, a beautiful virtue, should be so common to shadows and so comparatively rare in men. Wouldn't you agree?
TDS: I do, and yet if all men were judged with charity, and circumstances taken into account, perhaps their pride would not appear so great to those observing them. Will you take my arm?
Lady: She does so, silently, pondering his words.
The two proceed back up the pathway to the house, mute but studying each other, their shadows streaming like long black fingers behind them, pointing to the fountain. The TDS hands the Lady to the door and stops just outside.
Lady: Aren't you coming in?
TDS: Visibly agitated now. No.
Lady: Again, good breeding prevents her from prying. Good evening, then.
TDS: Good evening. As she turns to go, he reaches inside and catches her hand, speaking rapidly at the same time in a low voice, and with a sudden earnestness of appeal. Listen, moonlight lady! If you have a forgiving spirit as well as a gracious manner, say a prayer tonight for your attendant shadow despite his lack of humility---will you?
Lady: Caught by his tone and responding intuitively to this strange plea for intercession. Yes, that I will!
TDS: Thank you. Unworthy of it though he is, you may judge him better hereafter. And one word more---whatever happens, don't leave the house again. Promise!
Lady: But what---
TDS: Hush! My time is out in bringing you back. Promise!
Lady: I promise.
TDS: And the other ladies, try to keep them in.
Lady: Yes, yes!
TDS: He bows. For this, I thank you---most truly. Good night.
He vanishes into the dimness of the garden, truly like a shadow for silence and quickness. She reenters the ballroom, a little dazed at what has passed. Five minutes pass slowly, and then there is a sudden commotion in the garden: a volley of shots and a cry of pain. The scene fades to black on the lady, standing at the door with her face to the audience and straining to see better into the indistinct garden.
Anyway, it could go like that. But that is precisely what never happens, and so the dreamer is able to dream it alone in a nighttime garden or on a nighttime balcony---until the party reestablishes its existence and prominence. Which is of course what happened to me, and there is nothing left to tell but that when we were finished with our Feast Night the room was disassembled with remarkable efficiency and we collected everything and went home and took pictures and then I drove back down to my house, turning over in my mind the events of the day and tidying them into various files marked A) pleasant memory, B) for further review, C) add this to that list of traits for such-and-such a student or thus-and-such a parent, D) to be studied in greater detail, E) etc.
Most of all, though, I just enjoyed it.
posted by Praelucor at 8:43 PM
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