Aw, hell. I was doing okay until I started reading all these heartbreakingly eloquent emails. I think I had fooled myself into thinking that you guys were all just on a particularly long run to the Mercantile. I'm still wondering why I didn't see Zig traipsing through my front yard at 1 a.m. last night while I lay out on the hammock and tried to gaze up at the stars, which was damn near impossible because they were mostly washed out by the city glare. I knew the Milky Way was up there somewhere in all its dazzling glory, just as I knew the Barn was sitting out in that meadow in the night, eloquent in its dark silhouette and its deep silence, and that all of you were in your homes or in a way station on the way to that destination, replaying the week in your minds as I was.
Family life and its particular challenges took over immediately after an hour-and-a-half drive through the late-afternoon heat in that un-air-conditioned Volvo, and I'm trying to experience all the cleaning and work and play going on here (a nephew in town from Massachusetts staying with us for a week) as an extension of the lovely Sunday morning we spent cleaning the Barn, and of everything that led up to that final moment. But I'm really craving time to process the week in some way. And really really missing each one of you, and all the characters you inhabited and brought once more to life. For some reason I miss Justice Shallow most of all right now...!
Augie once said, when a Camper was talking about a wave of feeling homesick, that it was the "worst sick of all." I think my heavy heart is telling me I'm homesick for a place that is a home to me, to all of us. A home for the soul. But it's not a place we can live forever. I felt that particularly keenly as I drove away and left Joy, red-eyed, as the final Weeklonger at the Barn, sitting out in the shade on a picnic table awaiting the arrival of her husband. I think of Antipholus S., heading out into the world, a drop of water seeking another drop. And yet I'm home now, too, where I belong. It's a paradox, one we are fortunate to be able to tangle (tango) with over the years, decades.
I hope to gather with some more of you water drops and get a storm or a little stream (clear, I hope) going sometime soon. Zig, thanks for the invite, with the nephew in town I probably can't get away, but will try to negotiate a swing-by at least.
I'll write more anon. In the meantime, still wondering if I'm sleeping or waking, mad or well advised... and when Madge is going to come around the corner so we can work on the schedule for tomorrow!
A health to you all -- and to those that you love --
Love,
Clayton
PS Bob, say hi to Cicely H. for me, would ya?
On Aug 16, 2010, at 12:44 PM, Bruce Meyer wrote:
I, too, returned to the 'real world" at 0630 today to deal with recruitment strategies, cost over-runs, and unrealistic expectations. I will admit that I am having a very hard time not speaking in meter, not singing for my supper, and not sweating through my clothes and "checking my stream". Bob put it eloquently. I am already in withdrawal from the magic....
"Pees, Robert" rpees@AkinGump.com 8/16/2010 11:39 AM >>>
This morning I returned to my job as a tinker of sorts. I took the D Train, which, by the way, is not "fleeter than the roe." For me, last week was exhilarating-to have such wonderful people convince you that you are a lord indeed is true magic. I am so grateful to all of you. Right now I'm typing this in an office on the forty-first floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, but it is not nearly as high as the throne you created for me on a wooden platform in a converted hay barn in Fayette County Texas.
All my love, Bob
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Clayton Stromberger Outreach Coordinator, UT Shakespeare at Winedale College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin www.shakespeare-winedale.org cell: 512-228-1055, cell #2 (backup): 512-363-6864 UT Sh. at W. office: 512-471-4726