Ophelia's Nun

A: That's a big ole book ya got there.
B: Er, yes. Yes, it is.
A: That's a lot of reading.
B: Hmmm. It is.

(pause)

A: Don't think I'd have the patience.

(pause)

I mean, that print's small. My eyes wouldn't hack that strain. Reading the paper's bad enough. I suppose you read one of them big ole papers. I said I suppose you read one of them big ole papers! Not the papers us sort as read.

B: Yes, yes. Maybe. Ahem.
A: What's it about?
B: What's what about?
A: Your book?
B: Oh. It's a play. Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare.
A: Shakespeare. Never could be doing with Shakespeare. Lot of talking backwards, I reckon. And he didn't write them plays himself. I read his servant did. Man Friday.
B: Would you excuse me please? I'm trying to finish this. I've got to attend a lecture on it tomorrow.
A: Ooooh. Student, are you? Studying Shakespeare?
B: Amongst other things.
A: What are you going to do with that after you finish college, though?
B: What am I what?
A: what are you going to do with all that learning Shakespeare when you finish? What jobs are in that? I mean, with a trade you can do something, and in computers. I don't know much about computers. That Internet and that. But some fellas, I heard they makes about two hundred an hour. More even. That's good money. But you wouldn't make money like that reading books. It's like learning Latin. Mind you, lawyers knows Latin, and they makes money. Are you training to be a lawyer?
B: No, I'm training to be a chef. I like to make pies. I'm reading Titus Andronicus for recipes. Now if you'll excuse me I'll get back to my book.

(pause)

A: Yes, yes. Of course. Sorry.

(pause)

Didn't mean to disturb you.

(pause)

I mean, I should have thought.

(pause)

It must be irritating.

(pause)

I mean, when you're trying to read, and all.

(pause)

And someone keeps interrupting ----

B: EXACTLY!!!!!!

A: I mean, my wife pointed that out the other day: she said, I'm trying to read my stars here and you keep talking and I've been reading the same line six times --

B: I know how she feels!

A: -- and what's more, I've been readng Virgo by mistake, because, you see, my wife, she's a Libra, or well, she is and she isn't. She would have been alright reading Virgo because she was on the cusp, and in fact, sometimes she's Virgo and sometimes she's Libra, but I don't know much about it. Do you know about it? They were into all that astrology stuff in Shakespeare's time, weren't they? Witches and spells and whatnot --

B: WILL YOU BE QUIET!!!!!!!!!

A: There's no need to take that tone with me, young man. I'm only making polite conversation.

B: I DON'T WANT CONVERSATION!! I WANT TO READ MY BOOK!!!

A: Well read your bloomin' book then! What's stoppin' yer?

(pause)

So, what happens in this play then?

Penny remembered. At that introductory morning session, on enrolling at the Open University, Penny had laughed with the others in the classroom. The lecturer had enthused (while hopping about the tiled floor in his squeaky tennis shoes and matching navy blue cords/v-neck sweater combo), that "Educating Rita" was pretty accurate and that many students found themselves after the Foundation year of study leaving their boring partners and suburban Thursday morning tupperware parties, to go hiking around Bangladesh with a troupe of radical jugglers instead. But, of this, she was sure. She hadn't laughed quite as loudly as some others, though. Yes, she remembered that.

Had she an inkling of what would follow, even then, or was she transposing her knowledge of following events onto her memory of her feelings of that moment? She wasn't certain. Trying to capture the memory of feeling seemed to her to be like trying to remember the thoughts that encircled the brain at the moment of waking from a dream that was still carrying on slightly.

She knew that it had, ironically, been Nigel all along who had encouraged her to take the course. She had been bored from day to day in the first couple of years after work brought them back from a stint in Singapore to their Essex hometown. Nigel was now commuting to London every day; the kids were at school and surprisingly well settled , but Penny's days had been empty, filled with fears that the old depression was coming back. The new house to her was box-like, 1980s built, spacious but cold and square. Everything she'd done to make the decor more homely had only accentuated the soullessness of the place. The antique chests of drawers and dining sets seemed like someone else's furniture to her, hoarded by possessive ghosts. And ha!, when she would go to visit Nigel's sister for daytime company (well, duty, she knew) she'd see the same decor, the same borrowed histories and hear her voice laugh emptily, echoing on beige matt walls to half-hearted gossip about people she didn't even know.

And yes, the course had more than filled a void. She physically felt her mind expand as she'd spent nights in the little study she'd designed for herself, with the pc and rapidly filling shelves of devoured books,
poring over Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" for an assignment to be sent in to the tutor in the post, the following week. She'd stopped meeting the in-laws after about the second year of study; Nigel had mentioned once in the car, quite sternly on one brief moment of togetherness during a Saturday shopping trip, that it had been commented on that she'd seemed sullen on those last visits to his sister, not even smiling and looking bored. Nigel had added that she was turning strange when she rejoined that she was too happy to laugh these days. The kids had started to make noises in the back, to know what was going on and they'd spent the rest of the drive and day in Nigel's boiling silence.

She remembered studying in her room for that essay, the kids being long asleep, and Nigel still at some late night party with colleagues in London. He was at these nights more and more, but she by then was past caring. If he had been here, what would that have signified?

And then in the third year came the summer residential school in York. She'd drifted with her folders under her arm to breakfast each morning, through geese waddling across the rolling Heslington campus, past the Ouse brimming deeply the shadows of Langwith and Vanbrugh, and with other students laughing a new laugh she could laugh herself, deep with resonances of Fauvist canvasses, Yeats's mythologies, all the mysteries of a consciousness suggested in the language of willow rustle and grass glaze shimmerings.

And now, here, in the delicious shade of nodding chestnut boughs, a man in her embrace was looking deeply in her eyes, weaving her golden hair in fingertip tapestries of a beginning touch of love, and the river was lapping, the river was calling, the river was calling, a kiss, a kiss, a kiss, a kiss, the river, an ocean, the waves, a kiss, a kiss, and in that moment she remembered all, and her shoulders felt the press of duty, the dilemma of commitment against the recklessness of touch, the hopelessness of a moment. To kiss? To kiss?

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

That's why I love Beckett.

In fact, I love talk radio more than Beckett. A host will belittle a caller for having poor listening skills and for just rehearsing what they're going to say next, after the host has finished pontificating and talking over the caller's original point.

olderman wrote:

so talk radio in the uk is much the same as talk radio in the usa

must be that the universal appeal of talk radio is in the chastisement of anyone who dares to call and debate an issue

Yeah. I wonder why. I'm thinking, Talk radio came about in the 1970s when the BBC lost its radio broadcasting monopoly and commercial stations popped up. Commercial stations tend to be owned and run by conservatives, so the slightly more laid back or liberal talk radio hosts are going to get bogged down with presenting competitions, while the shock jocks and gobshites are allowed to rant, leashless.

I guess the same thing goes on everywhere. With the Internet I can sample US talk radio too. But wasn't there a left orientated station? One with Al Franken? I forget.

Thank you!

Now, on the topic of the radio, here's just about the best broadcast I've ever heard regarding the medium.

http://www.swldxer.co.uk/bbcr4.wma


It's all about Numbers stations. Mindbending. Maybe it will inspire some far out poetry, to check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

Editeditedit wrote:

Check out the links about if you've time

Check out the links above if you've time, I mean.

was his chauffeur, you know. I used to drive him around. He was staying up at the Mulranny Hotel, the hotel with all the windows, looking out over the bay to Croagh Patrick. He'd flown in by helicopter. And he owned Dorinish Island, just near here. The island was uninhabited but he thought it could give him peace of mind if he built a house. He said he knew he had ancestors around here, and that put him in great humour. He told me that when he grew up in Liverpool he was raised by his aunt and often dreamed of knowing where he came from. And he loved it in Mayo. But he had his head screwed on, he wasn't this weirdo hippy type, though he had the name of course. Not to my mind. So when I was driving him around he would ask me things about the tides and erosion and getting back on the mainland from where he was. He was interested in the whole place. He'd been out before then, and that's how I met him the first time. He had this big psychedelic caravan out on the island to stay in, and he'd put it on a raft and he'd go out on the sea with it. He was in Ballycroy too, he was. Both times, I think. In fact, he went up to where your father's farm is, and then down to the shore in Fahy, down on the shingle and rocks. And at that time there was more of Grainuaile's castle than there is now, not just the gable and a bit of wall. And he was filming the whole thing on his cine camera. He loved it. And he was walking around the place in his cap and his wellies. One night they say he was in Cleary's singing rebel songs and someone taped it, but it wasn't Cleary's, it was in Newport, I think, if I remember rightly. He went everywhere with me. Here's a photo of him up at my house. A great man he was, down to earth and proud of his heritage. And the last I heard, several years later, he was renewing planning permission on the house and hoping to come back to visit and maybe stay. I had a postcard from him not long before, before he was shot. I think Yoko sold the island a couple of years after that.

Anyone want to do the Numbers Stations exercise?