Harper’s Valley is known to some as the “Valley of the Sun”. There is ice floating on the top of the pool. To paraphrase a friend; the world is going to hell in the handbag of Hieronymus Bosch.
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All posts for the month January, 2013
So says Dr. Dysart in Act II of Peter Shaffer’s play Equus. He is in the throes of an existential crisis that goes far beyond the routine ‘mid-life’ variety associated with successful professional men of a certain age who find themselves in loveless marriages and careers that no longer fulfill them. Throughout the course of the play he also comes to realize his doubts are more fundamental than the “professional menopause” diagnosis he has given himself at the beginning.
The story line of the play is deceptively simple. In a small regional community in 1970’s England, a 17 year-old boy has committed a shocking crime. He has blinded six horses in a local stable with a metal spike. The local magistrate brings him to the area’s mental hospital and asks one of the psychiatrists on staff to treat him. Over the course of the play we come to understand what led the young man to his crime and the prospects and true costs of his healing.
I love this play. I have a very well-worn copy I bought when I first became aware of it more than 30 years ago. I have seen the less-than-brilliant Richard Burton film version several times. Tonight’s production by Phoenix’s Nearly Naked Theatre was the third time I’d seen it on the stage. There are many reasons why this play resonates so strongly for me. Some of them are quite personal and center on the young man’s relationship with his parents. Some are more universal involving the meaning and value of religion and the way society deals with people who live outside what is defined, often arbitrarily, as “normal”. Still others are truly transcendent exploring the human need to worship and challenge to society by extreme passions. The play is also highly sexual and, at times, embarrassingly erotic.
The local production was very good. The director, who has a clear passion for the play, chose to present it as a period piece in its original 1970’s setting. His reason for doing so is that, in an age when news covers events like the recent tragedy in Newtown, the blinding of horses would not have the same shocking impact it had when the play was first produced in 1973. I am not sure I agree that the play would be less powerful with a contemporary setting but certainly nothing is lost by presenting it in its original context. The acting is wonderful. The set and staging are conceptual and effective. I thought the sexual elements of the play are more overstated than I have seen in previous productions which causes them to overshadow some of the more existential elements but there is nothing I recall from the previous visits to this material that was missing from this production.
[Spoiler Alert!]
The ending of the play is ambiguous. The doctor tells his young patient that his breakthrough will result in his recovery. To himself he acknowledges that this may or may not be true in the short term. In the long term he is confident he can return the young man to a life within the bounds of “normal” behavior but at the cost of much of what makes the man unique. “Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created. You will not gallop any more. Horses will be quite safe.”.
In the end he acknowledges that his patient will be “more or less completely without pain”. The way he says it tells us that is not entirely something to be wished.
There is only one word to describe the dog park this morning; COLD!
I understand the sympathy from readers where winter is measured in months rather than days will be minimal at best but this is the coldest it has been in the 7.5 years I have lived in Arizona. More importantly, it is the coldest day of Harper’s life. When we arrived at the dog park it was 27*F. As always, I brought a water dish but it was for naught today. The pipe to the faucet at the park was frozen.
This all seemed to matter much more to the humans, however, than to the dogs. The crowd was noticeably smaller but the dogs present seemed to be ignoring the cold. Every dog in the “Small Dogs” enclosure was wearing a sweater or a coat but every dog, save one, on our side of the fence was wearing only the outer-wear the good Lord gave them.
Fewer pictures today. The iPhone seems to work better while not wearing gloves. My fingers, however, seemed to work better with them. Maybe I am just out of practice working with gloves.
BFF du jour was Boomer, a 14 month old boxer mix with, sadly, the worst case of hip dysplasia I have seen in a dog so young.
Boomer was not the fastest runner in the park but when he planted his feet he could frolic with the best of them.
Boomer’s litter mate, Buster, was a little less outgoing but was very friendly. He has one blue eye and one brown eye.
Buster was quite smitten with a long-haired labradoodle named Sophie.
Nothing matters much once a pack forms. They are going to run. Stay out of the way.
My grandmother embraced many of the superstitions she learned as a child. Since she lived in our household, or we hers, throughout my childhood and adolescence I learned many of these as well. There are two holiday superstitions, I prefer to call them traditions, about which she was quite strict.
The first required that all Christmas decorations be taken down no later than New Year’s Eve. The only explanation I ever received for this was that carrying anything over from one year to the next was bad luck. I observed this tradition all my single life. Both Harper’s Other Dad and my previous partner are Catholics. I’m advised the Catholic view is that the holidays should be observed through “twelfth night” or Epiphany. Given the outspoken views on matters of religion of many in the part of the country where my grandmother grew up, it is quite possible that her tradition was based entirely on differentiating which households were Baptists; 95% of them; and which were Catholics. Over the years Harper’s Other Dad and I have adopted an unspoken compromise. We take the decoration down when the spirit moves us as long as it is completed by Epiphany. My grandmother would disapprove but I suspect on the spectrum of things about my life of which she would disapprove this would probably not make the top 10.
Granny would be horified by serving them in the Christmas china.
The second holiday tradition is one I observe quite diligently. One must, without fail, eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. This tradition dates back to the Civil War. Black-eyed peas were raised in the south, primarily to feed livestock (and later as a food staple for slaves). During the war, the northern armies commandeered or destroyed all the available foodstuffs but, for whatever reason, left the black-eyed pea field untouched. During the Reconstruction era the peas were the difference between survival and starvation for most of the former Confederacy. As a result it became a custom to eat them on New Year’s Day to ensure luck and prosperity in the year ahead.
There are a number of variations of belief on how they should be prepared. Most recipes include some kind of pork and some kind of greens. I’ve read there is one tradition that involves cooking them with a coin; a penny or dime, in the pot to attract wealth in the coming year. In our home, Christmas dinner usually includes ham so I make the New Year’s peas with the ham bone and left-over ham. They will never be my favorite food but I make them every year. Harper’s Other Dad is a good sport about eating at least one serving. Harper gets the bone after it cools. I eat enough of them to keep my grandmother from spinning in her grave.
New Year’s celebration for Harper was a double treat. Not only did she get to go to the Dog Park with both her dads, but we visited a Dog Park she’d never been to before. All the dogs were strangers but she still managed to have a good time.
Harper meets her BFF du jour; Luna.
You can tell from Harper’s ‘Larry Craig’ stance. There is about the be a romp
“You ain’t all that!”
If at first you don’t succeed…
Try
Try Again
This park has ramps!
Top of the world!
Harper's Valley 