Times Square is truly a magical place.
I’ve seen freak snowstorms that could only indicate someone falling in love. Naked cowboys and dreams and nightmares and celebrities in cages.
Yesterday, while talking to a coworker beside my desk, I looked over their shoulder and there, floating in the air, I saw the logo for the small private education agency I used to work for. I then stared at the Reuters screen for five minutes, waiting for it to reappear, but it didn’t. A quick look at their website reveals that they are running a public service campaign right now, which probably explains it, but still, it was a somewhat creepy experience. Particularly for a day in which half the office thought I was leaving (due to a somewhat convoluted announcement regarding the fact that my job is splitting – it seems that, once again, I’ve been doing a job that required two people. Fortunately, this one seems to be working out just fine.)
Last night I went to see Journey’s End, a dark yet compelling World War I piece. The show also illustrated something that I could give lectures about for all I’ve yammered on about it, namely matching the physical space to the show. I’ve seen shows that excelled in this area and shows that bombed in this area, and this is one of the best ever. The Belsasco is a dark, eerie, foreboding theatre, and the show’s candlelit underground bunker wouldn’t have looked half as good on the stage at the Booth or the Helen Hayes. Dracula was also a good match for this theatre, although – alas. Journey’s End was not a show I would want to see again, but it was worth it for a single visit. A single, PTSD-ridden visit. I had nightmares last night.
Journey’s End was also the second piece out of the three I’ve seen this week to quote from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter“, the first being the Buglisi dance piece at the Joyce featuring Michael Arthur. They even quoted the part that stuck out in my mind the most:
‘”The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”‘
Sometimes the universe tries to tell you odd things. I’ve had dreams about people just before they came back into my life, I’ve had things fall together at the exact right moment to create something fortuitous, I’ve had the universe shove me away from things that I thought I wanted but didn’t need.
But then sometimes, a walrus is just a walrus.
