Some more rediscovered texts to once more ramble through. These remind me of Joan Stapleton Boyd, 7th and 8th grade English teacher. Thought-provoking and sometimes evil, she's the one who made her classes do scenes from Romeo and Juliet. Yes, indeed: I was once Tybalt:
What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?
Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.
Ms. Boyd had us do some heavy lifting when it came to reading and thinking. Another play we studied, for instance, was The Firebugs / Herr Biedermann und die Brandstifter by Max Frisch. That was cool, in the arena of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which we also covered. In other words, the kinds of texts that make one take special note during a nightmare like the recent West Fertilizer Company explosion in West, Texas -- especially now that one Bryce Reed, a weird, very delighted-to-be-interviewed EMT volunteer, has been charged with possessing and then trying to hide the materials for assembling an explosive device. Makes you wonder.
Another play along the lines of The Firebugs is Guernica by Arrabal. This one reminds me of Syria, sure, not to mention a score of other "conflicts" occurring at the very time of this posting (there will be others). Arrabal seems to suggest that you can't really hide anywhere -- chance will change things and choices will be made, by you or for you, somewhere along the way. Might as well try to make some decisions for yourself, while remaining engaged with the world via some kind of philosophy (religious or non-religious) of freedom and responsibility. Existentialism redux.
Dig it, man. I still do -- because, and may we collectively not forget, they're still right on.
Today's Rune: Fertility.
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