Okay--I get it now
While I've always loved the play, I never could quite "buy" A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is largely because the notion of falling asleep, outside, on Midsummer Eve was just ludicrous. It is often in the 40s or 50s here on that night (Faherenheit for those of you who have succumbed to the pedantry of decimal mania), so just "falling asleep" in your clothes outside and waking up without a case of hypothermia just never "range true" to me. However, the next time I watch Puck and Bottom, Helena and Hermia, and the rest, the sleeping lovers will not make me shake my head in disbelief.
Tonight I got home from Eastern Star exhausted, weary--the stress of trying to buy the house in Utica, the commitments to Star and family, teaching two summer classes (which are more concentrated, and longer than each individual class is during the regular year, so twice as tiring), and the stress of packing are all seeming to hit at once. I felt barely able to put one foot in front of the other, but the puppies and kitties need things that can't be put off. Still in my long whites (we had initiation tonight), I walked the dogs--in a white lace top and a full, white lawn skirt. Even had white shoes on. And I was perfectly comfortable out in the yard, even with the leftover damp from last night's storm. Trying to watch the black dog in the darkness between the maples and the locust trees, trying to keep the nearly blind one away from the road, it was still beautiful. The quiet, the still air, the smell of iris and peonies a quiet note floating atop the scent of grass and earth.
And then I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A flash of almost blue white light in a streak across the sky. "Shooting star," I thought to myself. So I started looking at the sky to see if it was a shower of meteors. And then I saw another streak--beside the barn. And then I realized it was fireflies. The brightest, most dynamic fireflies I have ever seen. These were not twinkling lights in the lawn. These were brilliant globes of light moving in the grass, among the trees, all the way to the tops of some of the maples. And at the bases of many of the trees are little villages of mushrooms, brown and smooth.
Tonight, the subjects of Titania and Oberon let me see them preparing for two nights from now, and the Midsummer Revels.
Thank you.
Tonight I got home from Eastern Star exhausted, weary--the stress of trying to buy the house in Utica, the commitments to Star and family, teaching two summer classes (which are more concentrated, and longer than each individual class is during the regular year, so twice as tiring), and the stress of packing are all seeming to hit at once. I felt barely able to put one foot in front of the other, but the puppies and kitties need things that can't be put off. Still in my long whites (we had initiation tonight), I walked the dogs--in a white lace top and a full, white lawn skirt. Even had white shoes on. And I was perfectly comfortable out in the yard, even with the leftover damp from last night's storm. Trying to watch the black dog in the darkness between the maples and the locust trees, trying to keep the nearly blind one away from the road, it was still beautiful. The quiet, the still air, the smell of iris and peonies a quiet note floating atop the scent of grass and earth.
And then I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A flash of almost blue white light in a streak across the sky. "Shooting star," I thought to myself. So I started looking at the sky to see if it was a shower of meteors. And then I saw another streak--beside the barn. And then I realized it was fireflies. The brightest, most dynamic fireflies I have ever seen. These were not twinkling lights in the lawn. These were brilliant globes of light moving in the grass, among the trees, all the way to the tops of some of the maples. And at the bases of many of the trees are little villages of mushrooms, brown and smooth.
Tonight, the subjects of Titania and Oberon let me see them preparing for two nights from now, and the Midsummer Revels.
Thank you.