Oscars 2016: "But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware"

I don't watch many films, partly because they flood me with so many references, so many cross connections, it's actually uncomfortable.  And while I leave film criticism to my betters, I offer some thoughts on a few films before the 88th Academy Awards.

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There are three Best Picture nominated films that are deeply connected for me: Brooklyn; Spotlight; Room. That's the order I saw them in. They are tied together in my psyche by the two forces of nature that is Irish Catholicism.

"For on the night he was betrayed he himself took bread, and giving you thanks he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying:

Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a stylized snapshot of the emotional, inner life of the Irish who left the Emerald Isle and crossed the ocean in near steerage like "bricks for the Grand City Hall in New York. " {If you're of Irish heritage, you'll recognize that line.}

Some find it saccharine, and I can see why. That early elegiac scene with Eilis Lacey on the boat to the new world waving to her mother and sister on the dock feels contrived and cliched, and yet true. Generations of Irish parents watched as their sons and daughters left for a better life.  That took an enormous emotional toll on those people, those families. This film gives us a chance to feel some of that heartache, despair, sacrifice.

Eilis's entry to the US is sponsored by a priest from her village who left for the States long ago. He is like a fairy godmother: he gets her a place to live, and a job, the 2 most crucial needs for an immigrant. It seemed surprising to me that such an opportunity would be given to a young woman in the 1950s, and that the priest who sponsors her is not sinister. Imagine. An Irish priest from the bad old days (as opposed to the recent bad days) who is not abusing the protagonist. And I don't say that facetiously.

The film weaves its visual tale of Eilis overcoming homesickness, falling in love with an Italian American, and coming to terms with the duality of being an Irishwoman in New York. It evokes the era with the precision and beauty of Mad Men. And surprisingly, Eilis is not harmed. For some reason I kept waiting for something terrible to happen to her. I assumed Jessica Pare's shop supervisor was going to be cruel to her, and I was completely surprised by her compassion.

As a film, I think it has the most resonance for, well,  people of Irish Catholic heritage.

TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT: FOR THIS IS MY BODY WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.

Spotlight
The telling of the Boston Globe's exposure of the systemic protection of abusive priests within the Catholic Church is a superb film.

It captures the journalistic process of the sickening discovery of an evil reality with no gratuitous sensationalizing of the monstrous evilness of the criminals, both the offending priests and all of their protectors.

As it happened, it's Globe's new editor, Marty Baron, the ultimate outsider-- "an unmarried man of the Jewish faith who doesn't like baseball" played with searing humorlessness by Liev Scriber--who asks the team why they haven't followed up on the case of John Geoghan, a priest who actually had been accused of molesting young boys.  The small investigative  team who write under the special section of Spotlight is then focused and slowly uncovers the systematic reassignment of priests who their superiors knew had abused children, instead of calling the cops.

And it's Baron who insists that for the investigation to be effective, it all has to tie to the highest authority, to Bernard Cardinal Law. Which the team is able to do. Michael Keaton, John Slattery, Rachel McAdams, and Mark Ruffalo are all standouts as "real" people who have to come to terms with what until then had been the unthinkable.

Many of the reporters at the Globe are the progeny of the historic kinfolk of Brooklyn's  Eilis Lacey from County Wexford.

Only today I saw a tweet of a plaque from somewhere in Boston that reads:

"In 1847 alone, 37,000 Irish refugees landed in Boston, on the edge of death and despair, impoverished and sick."

It would take the clarity of the Boston Globe's reporting, the home-team paper, to help raise the consciousness of these people whose religion and its institutions were part of their identity.

It's been hard for me, for many, to reconcile the magnitude of the evil of the institutional church alongside the power and mystery of the Mass that Christ entrusted to it.

The Globe reporting ran in January 2002, just months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The numbness of those murders slid into the numbness of this other kind of evil.

Following in the years after 2002, when so much of the abuse came to light, and the millions, or is it billions now? of dollars of collective settlements were reported, a friend told me her sister was converting to Catholicism. She had been raised Presbyterian, not practiced, and was in her 40s.  I remember thinking, how can anyone be attracted to this institution now, to this overwhelming corruption. And yet, at each Easter vigil, there are people of all ages, races, sexual orientation, taking the Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults.

Oh yes, because, the faith exists outside of the institutional church.

Spotlight affirms that smart, talented people can still investigate parts of the world that others want to keep hidden. And that there are equally talented storytellers who can bring their work into the broad cultural space that is mainstream moviegoing.

In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice, and giving you thanks he said the blessing, and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying:

Room
When I heard Room was from a novel by Emma Donoghue, I wondered if she was related to my old NYU professor Denis Donoghue, and yes,  she is his daughter.

Professor Donoghue, a leading literary scholar of Irish, English, and American literature, is one of those innately literary souls, and I enjoyed studying with him immensely. I also enjoyed his memoirs, Warrenpoint, of growing up Catholic in Northern Ireland. Denis met and married Frances Rutledge, and they had 8 children.

From an interview with Emma about her mother: "I'm her eighth child (the runt of the litter, she used to say fondly) and it's her boundless, playful and unsentimental kind of mother-love that I tried to pour into Room."

Emma was born and lived in Dublin for her first 9 years and was sent to Catholic Convent schools. I have no idea what her faith is now, but the knowledge is in her DNA.

In 2010 she published a novel about an evil and depravity of sickening proportions.  A man who kidnaps a 17 year old girl and imprisons her in a suburban shed to rape her every evening.

After 2 years a baby boy is born. The captor lets the baby live, and time moves on.

When the film begins, Jack has turned 5, and we see the routine of their lives together. Ma, as we first meet her, is doing an extraordinary job of giving Jack as happy a life as possible. He has no context for their dire situation, and so he accepts, and he laughs and plays like any other 5 year old.  We learn that Ma must be teaching Jack literary classics, as he knows the story of Alice in Wonderland very well. The egg-shell caterpillar, the toilet paper roll maze, the daily run around the tiny shed: all speak to the ingenuity, creativity, and staggering love of this mother for her son.

Brie Larson and Jack Tremblay both give luminous performances.

But the evil is so pervasive.

Like the priests who prey on children.


TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT: FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT; WHICH WILL BE POURED OUT FOR YOU AND FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.

It's hard for anyone to reconcile evil with an all-loving God.  Satan, Original Sin, all the explanations pale in the sight of horrifically hurt people.

And with so much pain in the different worlds of these films, a song drifted up from my memory:

"I hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware"

Such a simple, melodic song from the musician we knew as Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Georgiou), who after a spiritual journey became Yusuf Islam back in 1978.  My BFF had an older sister, which is how Tea for the Tillerman came into my life, back in the day. I didn't know it was written for Patti D'arbanville, but the "remember there's a lot of bad and beware" struck me, even at 10 years old.

I love this line from Yusuf's Wikipedia entry: "Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Swedish Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School."



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So what do I think should win Best Picture?

The Martian.

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 Mapeel     2/27/2016     Film, Ireland, literature, Oscars   

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: Death Amid the Beauty

A cautionary tale about the beauty of the snow from 2010.

“Whose woods these are I think I know”

Central Park. The genius of Olmstead and Vaux's landscaped naturalness, an oasis of primordial power amid the world's greatest concrete canyon. Its majesty and magic beckons city dwellers, even on

“the darkest evening of the year”

when the city is being socked by a monstrous mixture of wet, heavy snow, sleet ice, rain, wind.

No equine is present in this tableau to give a harness bell a shake,
But there is some sense of cosmic mistake.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”

That is our park, especially with the fairy land decoration of snow amidst its arboreal splendor of 80-foot high American elms trees.


“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

Robert Frost captured for the ages a man’s pause, hinting at the weariness of life and evoking a moment of ambivalence about the point of going on.

The man who was killed today in Central Park when a 100-pound branch fell and struck him directly had no such moment. He was walking through the woods on a snowy evening, and then he was dead.

If this tragic scene wasn’t poignant enough, he was walking on the Mall, through the Literary Walk stretch, where Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Friedrich Schiller and others stood helpless witness to his death.

A mighty tree branch, falling under the weight of snow and hitting one individual: you can almost see Death himself leaning on a power saw at the base of the tree, pulling his dark robes tighter around him as the sleet starts bouncing off his bones.

May this gentleman, at this writing not yet named, find peace in eternal rest, as surprised as he will be to be approaching the Pearly Gates.

 “How strange, I was just walking through the Park on my way home . . . “

I hope St. Peter gently fills him in on the details.

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 Mapeel     1/23/2016     current events, literature   

A Tale of Driving in the Blizzard Meets O. Henry

In honor of today's blizzard, here is a New Yorker’s first-hand account I found of driving in a blizzard from Teterboro, New Jersey to Massapequa Park, Long Island. I like it for its detail of the great roads of the Metropolitan area and the sheer driving description. Though a city girl with no car, I love the roadways of Gotham and the car culture of the people who know them intimately.

Plus, there is an O. Henry-like twist at the end.

“I left Teterboro (NJ) at 3 pm and the ground was already covered. The snow fell heavily (but fine)—about 2 to 3 inches per hour.

"I made good time to the GW Bridge, but then the back-ups began. We moved ever so slowly along the entire length of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (Ha!). After finally navigating a rise at the juncture of the CBX and The New England Thruway the way was pretty open to the Throgs Neck Bridge. It was difficult, though, because the road had not been plowed, and the snow was blowing and blinding and my windshield wipers were not working very well.

"The rise in the road I mentioned was part of the problem with the CBX and set the stage for the rest of the trip—many cars (the drivers really) could not climb even the slightest incline without skidding and getting stuck. Quite a few of them ended up perpendicular to the traffic flow.

"I took the Throgs Neck without a problem and the Clearview Expressway to Northern Blvd., where I got gas (Thank God!) This phase of the trip was relatively uneventful.

"Back on the Cross-Island things crept along. (I had thought about staying on Northern Blvd. but I knew the further East I went the hillier it would become so I decided against it.) No one could get on or off the L.I.E. because the entrance ramp/incline was blocked by snow.

"We inched along, sliding and avoiding the abandoned cars. It was incredibly slow going.

"Finally, after getting up an incline near New Hyde Park road I saw another world---there was no backed-up traffic! Eureka! There were a few cars moving in front of me in a single file and I joined the procession. There was only one lane open (still no plowing, but some plows passed us on the other side, going into Queens), and with my windshield wipers not working at all by this time, I found it difficult to keep in line, but somehow I managed.

"This strange caravan wound its way to the junction of Northern State and Meadowbrook Pkwy and since the cars in front of me went on Northern State, I did too. Soon the three cars in front of me pulled to the side to either rest or clean their windshields or whatever. That left me in the lead!

"I was virtually driving blind. I sat forward as far as I could with my forehead practically pressed against the windshield with my chin on the steering wheel. Besides struggling to stay in the lane that had been traveled before (and de facto plowed) I had to be careful not to hit the abandoned cars. Grueling doesn’t begin to describe it. And it just didn’t end.

"The whiteout effect was so strong that I missed the turnoff for Wantagh Pkwy, which I had intended to take. I finally managed to cross-country (practically) at Hicksville Rd and make my exit. I was making progress when I ran into a snow bank on my left and the snow blew up and completely blocked my windshield so I had to stop and clean it off.

I must say it was quite an ordeal. I was really afraid I would not make it home. I finally did, NINE HOURS later. I had a triple martini.”

(As a point of reference, Teterboro to Massapequa Park is a 2-hour trip.)

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Here’s the thing about this description: it’s from a letter my father wrote in me on Ash Wednesday, 1983, when I was away in England as a senior in college!

He wrote me letters once or twice a week, this being the world before email. My father was an expert driver-—I love the swipe he takes at the drivers who can’t keep from skidding (it’s not the cars, it’s them).

Holding the letter in my hand brought me back to my flat at Southampton University, sitting on my bed reading it for the first time. He had a distinct, beautiful hand writing that some people found hard to read.

He could not have imagined me rereading it in the 21st century. Nor did he know he would die two years after writing it. We know not the hour nor the day.

Pomegrantes: My madeleine to La dolce vita & the Zeffiro Villa, Sicily

Pomegrantes. I had pomegrantes as a garnish this evening with some lamb tacos, and they had the amazing effect of the Proustian "episode of the madeleines." 

I traveled to Sicily in 2008, which is mythically linked to Persephone and the fateful 6 pomegranates that Hades tricked her into eating. 

As the snow storm clouds gather over NYC, and you can feel the freezing moisture in the air, I dreamily think of the beauty and warmth of Sicily. From 2008:

Persephone first crossed our path in Rome, freed as she was from the block of marble by the hands of Bernini only to be captured by Hades and forced into the underworld. Some legends say that she was playing in fields on Sicily when the earth swallowed her up.

When her mother, Demeter, the goddess of all fertility, goes after her, she deprives the earth of its ability to grow food. Hades relents to the mother, and says Persephone can go, if she hasn’t eaten anything; he then tricks her into eating six pomegranate seeds. Demeter still strikes a deal with Hades: Persephone will spend 6 months in the underworld, during which her mother is sad and nothing grows, and then 6 months on earth, and her mother is so joyous that the earth blossoms into spring.

From Rome we went to Sicily, and one evening entered a Fellini film . . .

It’s dusk in July in Triscina, a small beach town adjacent to the great Greek temple site of Selinunte. Pre-dinner cocktail hour is commencing on the patio of a house that sits at the end of a public beach of beautiful, fine white sand.

A man appears in frame beside a bareback horse. He slowly leads the appaloosa into the water, gently deeper and deeper, until they both cannot stand. Floating man and beast, as the sun continues to set.

Next a pair of men appear, one older, with white hair, dressed in white linen, and a younger beatnik looking man, with goatee. They stand together on the bottom step on the public access beside the house. The younger man takes out a sheet of paper, and reads something aloud to the sea. Then they walk on to the beach, and away from the house.

Original man and beast then emerge from the water, cross the short depth of the sand to the same stairs and ascend, leaving the line of sight.

As the party reassembles on the patio, an ultralight--one of the man-in-a-flying chair marvels--buzzes across the water line right above our heads. We wave at the pilot and he waves back.

And, CUT. That’s a wrap.

Only, we weren’t in a Fellini film (from the later art years). It just felt like it. We were on vacation in Sicily. Intriguing, extraordinary Sicily, and all this actually happened within 20 minutes one sultry evening.

I didn’t know what to expect in the great island of the south. As a city dweller I was so happy to be on the beach for a week. I rented the Villa Zeffiro from Gabriella Becchina, whose family makes the exquisite Olio Verde products from their olive grove in Castlevetrano.

Triscina does not see many Americans, nor even our British cousins. The southwest of Sicily has the strong African influence and the remnants of the great Greek civilization. In an homogenized world, it is still exotic, while the teenagers hanging out at night on the beach were beautifully eternal.
 
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Mary Taylor Simeti, who wrote the engaging Persephone’s Island, has her own take on the myth: “Persephone, the eternal expatriate, the goddess of unreconciled contrasts and alternate allegiances, chose to eat the seeds of the pomegranate, that she might enjoy two roles, two worlds.”

Nice idea, or just making lemonade from her abduction.

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 Mapeel     1/21/2016     Italy   

Life on Mars: A Telling Critique on Life and TV Watching Itself, and a David Bowie Homage

David Bowie died yesterday,  January 10, 2016. I wrote this post back in 2008, when I discovered the compelling BBC series Life on Mars in a marathon (that being the days before the present-day bingeing.) I am the age of those for whom David Bowie was truly the soundtrack of our lives. I will admit that by 2008 I had not connected with that towering talent for a while, since the days of dancing in clubs. And so reconnecting with Bowie was another thrill of finding this series and one of my personal memories when I heard of our enormous cultural loss.

I have this photo of the great Bowie above my desk at work, I have for years, and oddly enough, I found myself wearing a poncho this week. The seventies seep in wherever they can.

I ran into a marathon of the British Life on Mars one recent Saturday on BBC America, and I was enthralled. How great that Bowie's song could inspire an entire series, and such an imaginative one at that.

[Spoilers now.]

DCI Sam Tyler of the Greater Manchester Police gives a quick, clear exposition for the series in the opening credits: "My name’s Sam Tyler. I had an accident and I woke up back in 1973. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever's happened, it's like I've landed on a different planet. Now, maybe if I can work out the reason, I can get home."

It’s a tantalizing premise. Sam (John Simm, the Master for Doctor Who fans) walks into his police precinct, but it’s filled with typewriters and old style lightening, men in wide ties and leisure suits. To his cop colleagues, he has been transferred from Hyde. He starts to work cases—what else is he going to do?

The center of the show is his relationship with boss DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), and the clash of cultures, methods, sensibilities, and knowledge. The music, the writing, the acting, the storytelling are all stellar.

And the mystery. Things start seeping into Sam’s world. He hears voices of doctors. He hears his mother say she’s still with him. He hears deafening sounds. Which start to stack the deck to his being in a coma, but the suspense is very well played out.

And now for a word about the American version: for me it pales in comparison, but it may grow into its own solid new piece. I also agree with added issue of the American Sam waking up at the base of the World Trade Center. He didn’t have enough of the emotional response that anyone would have with that experience. For great discussion on this, pop over to Alan Sepinwall

Back to the Brits. What also gives the series its strength is the ending. For the whole series, Sam just wants to go home. This homesickness is a powerful, poignant part of his character. Finally, in a life-and-death shootout between his colleagues and the bad guys, he wakes up in the hospital. He has been in a coma. The series has been in his head.

Now we are all back in 2006. Sam gets out of the hospital, and returns to work to the wistfully distinctive strains of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole’s “Over the Rainbow.”

The coloring becomes cold blues and blacks, instead of the warmth of the seventies color palette. That visual sums up what he’s feeling: his friends, his life is back with Gene and the guys and WPC Annie Cartwright in 1973.

And so he walks out of a meeting, goes to the roof, and jumps. It is a startling moment of television.

He wakes up back in the action in 1973, between the cops and the bad guys.

I had two strong reactions to that ending. The first is an inverse-Hamlet fear. “There’s the rub.” How did Sam know he would get back to 1973? What if he committed suicide, and didn’t “perchance to dream?”

But more importantly, the theme of “living in your head” was a subtle subtext to the series. If real life is boring, you can create a whole world in your head that is preferable. And that includes the worlds we ingest while watching television. At the very end of the series, the Test Patern girl-—a British institution who popped up on various episodes-—appears with her clown, and leans forward and turns off the tv. That wakes us the viewer up. That puts the viewer back into 2008. We are all Sam Tyler.

Watching tv or a film is a reality, but it is also in place of reality. I never met a Sonny Crockett, but I was attracted to that character-—as I would have been to a man if I had met him--and wanted to spend time with him. And so watching Miami Vice on Friday night when it was first on was more enjoyable than going out.

All these ideas enriched the Brit Life on Mars. We’ll see if the American version offers anything more on the subject. (Update 2016: It did. Let's just say that it took the Bowie song very literally, 8 years before The Martian.)

Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?



And the character DCI Gene Hunt naturally lead to a spate of fan videos set to the great "Jean Genie."

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 Mapeel     1/11/2016     television   

Melchior, His Cousin Fred, Gaspar, & Balthazar: A Four Wise Guy Epiphany

Robin is now right. It's the 12th day of Christmas, Little Christmas, the appearance of the Magi, aka Epiphany. Christmas is over.

The word epiphany comes from the Greek “epiphaneia” meaning “manifestation." The feast originated in the Greek Orthodox faith, there called Theophany, and it celebrates when the Christ child’s divinity shone through his humanity, as acknowledged by the Magi’s adoration.

James Joyce is generally credited with the crossover of such a religiously charged word to secular life and literature. A Google search brings this definition: "Epiphany in fiction, when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself; a truth that is grasped in an ordinary rather than a melodramatic moment."

The Bible does not delineate three Magi, but three gifts: gold as a symbol of kingship on earth, frankincense as a symbol of deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) as a symbol of death.

Catholic tradition added a name and slight identity to each: Melchior representing, Europe; Gaspar, Asia; and Balthazar, Africa, and so the trio has shown up in creches since the 16th century.

And So, The tale of Melchior and Fred

My mother handmade me a nativity set many years ago. The figures are soft sculpture dolls filled with old nylon stockings. The set is a perfect representation of faith, love, and talent.

For the Wise Men, she used hat pins that had been her mother's as the jewels in each of their crowns. For the gifts, she found small trinkets for two of them, and wrapped up a sugar cube in tinfoil for the third, Melchior in fact.

Fast forward 20 years or so. When I open the Nativity box I see that the front of Melchior's robe is completely stained brown. Over the years, the sugar cube had finally liquified, or something, and that's what stained.

It was a shame, because the front panel of his midnight blue robe was a beautiful silver sparkle material.  So my mother took Melchior home to fix the robe.

A few months later I open a small present from my Mom, and it's Melchior, in another robe. Well, it turns out it's not my old Melchior, it's a new king, whom I call Fred, with a fourth jeweled hat pin.

The oddest thing had happened. My mother lost Melchior. She had brought him down to her favorite thrift store to look for a remnant of material, and he disappeared. The thrift store ladies were as baffled as she. They had looked at him together, and then my Mom put him down to look for the fabric, and  when she was ready to leave, my little king was simply gone.  The ladies said they were sure he would turn up, and so my mom left.

The months passed, and the little king did not turn up. So that's when my mother made another one. Luckily she had one more hat pin, and so Fred joined Gaspar and Balthazar at Christmas 2011. He did a good job.

Fast forward to my birthday, October 2012. I open a present, and it's the original Melchior! After more than a year, he did turn up at the thrift store.

Where had he been?  It's such a cinematic story.

He had fallen, unnoticed, into an open box in the thrift store while everyone's attention was elsewhere engaged.  Maybe someone's elbow knocked him, maybe when someone opened the door enough breeze came in and he teetered down. It would be fascinating to have a videotape of what actually happened.

He fell straight to the bottom of a box, below the other things on top. Later that day a lid was put on that box, and it was put into a storage room. Echoes of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, right?

In the summer of 2012, the thrift store did an entire overhaul of their space, and that storage space had to be emptied. To do that, every box was opened and looked through, and that's when the thrift store lady found him. She could not believe it.  And thank goodness it was one of the ladies who knew about the Nativity set and my mother. She could not wait to give it back.

My Mom finished the repair on the robe, and gave it to me in October. What a surprise. If I were an animator, I would make this tale into a Toy Story-like movie, detailing Melchior's adventures in that box for a year. Like Woody and Buzz he probably got out of the box a bunch of times and bonded with other dolls stuck in that storage room, always waiting and hoping for the time when he would get back to his mission to bring gold to the Christ child.

And so for Epiphany, I have 4 kings in the creche. A reminder that where's there's life, there's hope, in all things. Always.

Up Max Steiner music.

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 Mapeel     1/03/2016     Christmas, Film   

Travels with Cadfael: A New Year's Tale of Two Feasts, Rome and New York

Nothing exotic this New Years, but fond memories of a New Year's Eve in Trastevere, Rome, with my Benedictine monk friend Cadfael—whom I had met while I was studying chant in Solemes, which lead to a series of terrific travel adventures—while my then recent ex walked down the aisle in New York.

When you experience it, it’s not a cliche:

It was the best of times and the worst of times. We were in an epoch of belief and an epoch of incredulity, in a season of Darkness and a season of Light. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

There was to be a feast in Rome that I would attend, and one in New York that I would not. And so we will come to the end of the tale of the Talented Mr. Ripley and me (with no snide remarks from you, Steed), when he walked down the aisle with his ready-made family in my own parish in New York while I was in Rome getting some comfort from the monks.

Cadfael and I had spent Christmas in Galway,  and then landed in a Rome of grey skies and drizzle for New Year's. The weather fit my mood. We buzzed around town a bit on the Vespa to say goodbye and good riddance to the old year.

The plan was to have a late New Year’s Eve dinner in a small neighborhood place in Trastevere, with 2 of Cadfael’s English monk friends, Rupert and Lambert. For me it would be like having a monk shield against the sad thoughts of a disappointing year.

And what a shield it was.  Rupert is a dazzling dissipate. He is a living cross between Lord Sebastian Flyte and C.S.Lewis. A compact man, fortyish, his boyish good looks starting to fade, he is a compelling presence of sweetness and darkness. Lambert is a little younger and on the surface, very uncomplicated; he’s 6 feet 2 of warm openness.

The trio called for me at my hotel, the Villa San Pio on the Aventine, and we walked through the small, winding alleys of that most charming of Roman neighborhoods. We were led to a great table in the back of the taverna, where I sat against the wall looking into the room through the ring of Benedictines. In the deep haze of cigarette smoke the large Italian families were in full, noisy animation. I felt safe.

We got bottles of wine, and then more bottles. The monks reminded me of the sailors from my schooner sailing days. When they are on duty, it’s all business, but when they are off duty, they know how to relax, and drink. Our conversation danced to all corners—-American pop culture, Leeds, childhood stories, life in Italy. We laughed and laughed and at midnight sang a sotto voce “Auld lang syne” to each other. For a table of damaged people in a foreign city, we were doing very well as 2003 became 2004.

January 1 is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. I was in the church of Collegio Sant'Anselmo, where Cadfael was studying. It is a surprisingly modern church, all white inside. The sun was pouring in as I sat in the dazzling light tightly wrapped in my New York black coat, watching my dinner companions in their community, serving at Mass. They seemed familiar and unknowable at the same time.

After Mass, Cadfael said that the Abbott had granted permission for me to join Cad at the holiday meal. Visitors are only allowed in the refectory on special occasions, and it is an honor to be invited to eat with the community. We walked into the huge dining room with long tables set around its perimeter with almost 100 place settings for 100 men, and me. I was seated next to Cad, thank goodness, while a special holiday meal was served: classic antipasto, saltimbocca, potatoes au gratin, fresh bread, haricourt verts, spumanti for dessert, all with the correct wines from proseccio to champagne and a fabulous espresso.

Men eat faster than I do, and monks eat very fast. I tried to keep up but plates were flying around me left and right. The monastery is built on hierarchy: junior brothers serve, and everyone is seated by seniority. Usually a reader reads a text during a silent meal, but not on holidays.

After the meal, the assembly broke up pretty quickly. Cad and I went over to the Abbott, who is Spanish, so I could say thank you. We started to leave, when Rupert and Lambert came up behind us.

“Happy New Year”

Rupert sparked a conversation about Praxiteles, one of the greatest of the Attic sculptors, only for Lambert to jump in with the "Phidias was greater" argument. Did I mention they are both serious classicists. Their knowledge was startling, and they were showing off, but since it had the spirit of Monty Python about it, it was a riot instead of insufferable. We lingered in the room for two hours of nonstop cigarettes, chatter, and laughter. I wish I had captured it all on video--I would love to watch it again.

Finally we needed to go. Rupert walked me out, crooning an early Bing Crosby tune in his madly eccentric way:

Oh, Please.
Lend your little ear to my pleas
Lend a ray of cheer to my pleas
Tell me that you love me too.

Right words, wrong man.

Another wrong man was just starting his feast, his wedding reception in New York.  Ronald Coleman popped into my head as I imagined Ripley at the altar: "It was a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done." For a brief minute I wondered what could be going through his mind as he surveyed the buffet in the old, run-down parish basement as I enjoyed the magnificence of Rome.

That was not the end of it. I took a short break from my choir of 15 years—did I mention he was the choir director—and when I then wanted to return, he said he needed to regroup, and he couldn't do that if I were there.  So I was barred from my own choir, and I had no monks in New York to help assuage the hurt.

As for Cad and me, we had one more trip ahead of us, before things would change forever.

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 Mapeel     12/31/2015     Italy, New Years, Travels with Cadfael