No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition! Or, Scenes From My Medieval Life
Occasionally I lament the fact that shiny new technology makes us think we have nothing in common with the great majority of everyday human life in the past, except as we read and make stories about it. But then my life becomes medieval and I realize it's just as much a mixed bag as everything else.
Take today as a case in point. A Sunday morning in Easter season: I get up and go to church, with plans to walk down to Springfield's annual ArtsFest afterward. The Drury (University) Singers are guests at Christ Church, and they open their Prelude with a madrigal by Palestrina. The regular choir is sardined in at the front with the rest of us: I find myself among the children's choir, watching them fidget in front of me and adjust their hoods (uselessly, as they are always askew). For the gradual hymn our guests sang a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Peace," written by a man who sings in our regular choir. It's a festive day; the Lord's Day.
The sun's shining, unlike the downpour that dampened ArtsFest yesterday, and though there are clouds building up in the west, the air is carnival. I walk down blocked-off Walnut Street, toward the tents in rows, warmed by a long silk shirt over my white T-shirt. I'm alone, which is quite all right; it gives me a chance to observe without comment. There's a seemingly endless double row of white tents down the street, and wonders to see in each. There are many people, many dogs on leashes, children, concession tents, buskers with accordions and fiddles and various percussion instruments worn on the person or spread out on the street.
There is pottery. There is a lovely tent filled with paper cuts all done by a Japanese man; I drool over the framed zodiac cut, but it's $199 and I move on. There is jewelry made from homemade glass beads, from colorful clays, from antique buttons (I toy with the thought of hitting the portable ATM for a gift for my mother's birthday, but can't find the right piece that's within my range). There are watercolors and photos of all kinds. There are whistles carved into the shapes of animals, blown glass baubles and vases, suncatchers; a tent filled with tinted lithographs of saints -- St. Jerome, the patron saint of librarians, catches my eye -- oh, for another $200. I work my way back up the street, looking at the sea of human bodies before me as the street inclines upward. There's a funnel cake tent. There's a man juggling while a respectful group gathers. I feel my spirits lifting even as it begins to rain: I'm in a market -- a medieval carnival, taking part in a human event centuries old. I buy a bag of cotton candy but do not open it, as it's starting to rain quite hard.
I head back up the street toward my car. It's really raining now and people are dressing their tents and popping open umbrellas. I have no raingear, so I walk comfortably in the rain, my glasses speckling and fogging, my hair getting stringy and cold. I make it back to my car and drive home.
Except when I pull into the driveway and attempt to back up, my poor car goes into a high-pitched gravelly whine and refuses to reverse. I pull back onto the street, dither, go inside, get Dad H. to open the garage so I can get out the transmission fluid and a funnel. I dose my car with tranny fluid. It still doesn't work. I give up and circle around to repark it directly in front of the house. It doesn't like being in drive anymore either. So it looks like my transmission's shot. I have no money whatsoever except what will meet my minimum bills for the month. If this were the medieval era, I'd have to sign up as an indentured servant probably. Well, actually, if this were the medieval era I'd probably have lost all my teeth and popped out about five babies if I were still alive at 28.
Nobody else I know has money either, so I don't know exactly how my car's going to get fixed. Yet.
I need to learn to stop saying that I think my luck's beginning to change. It can always get worse.
I'm signed up with another temp agency, I've got a lead on another job, and hope's not completely dead. But it's the time of waiting again, to see what pans out, and endurance of stresses that continue to bear down. And of course there is always the vague suspicion I bear about me, that I deserve the things that happen to me like this. That too I suppose is medieval -- or at least Calvinist; I could stand to shed that, I suppose.
It never ceases to amaze me how the same day can contain such a mosaic of misery and jubilance.
Occasionally I lament the fact that shiny new technology makes us think we have nothing in common with the great majority of everyday human life in the past, except as we read and make stories about it. But then my life becomes medieval and I realize it's just as much a mixed bag as everything else.
Take today as a case in point. A Sunday morning in Easter season: I get up and go to church, with plans to walk down to Springfield's annual ArtsFest afterward. The Drury (University) Singers are guests at Christ Church, and they open their Prelude with a madrigal by Palestrina. The regular choir is sardined in at the front with the rest of us: I find myself among the children's choir, watching them fidget in front of me and adjust their hoods (uselessly, as they are always askew). For the gradual hymn our guests sang a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Peace," written by a man who sings in our regular choir. It's a festive day; the Lord's Day.
The sun's shining, unlike the downpour that dampened ArtsFest yesterday, and though there are clouds building up in the west, the air is carnival. I walk down blocked-off Walnut Street, toward the tents in rows, warmed by a long silk shirt over my white T-shirt. I'm alone, which is quite all right; it gives me a chance to observe without comment. There's a seemingly endless double row of white tents down the street, and wonders to see in each. There are many people, many dogs on leashes, children, concession tents, buskers with accordions and fiddles and various percussion instruments worn on the person or spread out on the street.
There is pottery. There is a lovely tent filled with paper cuts all done by a Japanese man; I drool over the framed zodiac cut, but it's $199 and I move on. There is jewelry made from homemade glass beads, from colorful clays, from antique buttons (I toy with the thought of hitting the portable ATM for a gift for my mother's birthday, but can't find the right piece that's within my range). There are watercolors and photos of all kinds. There are whistles carved into the shapes of animals, blown glass baubles and vases, suncatchers; a tent filled with tinted lithographs of saints -- St. Jerome, the patron saint of librarians, catches my eye -- oh, for another $200. I work my way back up the street, looking at the sea of human bodies before me as the street inclines upward. There's a funnel cake tent. There's a man juggling while a respectful group gathers. I feel my spirits lifting even as it begins to rain: I'm in a market -- a medieval carnival, taking part in a human event centuries old. I buy a bag of cotton candy but do not open it, as it's starting to rain quite hard.
I head back up the street toward my car. It's really raining now and people are dressing their tents and popping open umbrellas. I have no raingear, so I walk comfortably in the rain, my glasses speckling and fogging, my hair getting stringy and cold. I make it back to my car and drive home.
Except when I pull into the driveway and attempt to back up, my poor car goes into a high-pitched gravelly whine and refuses to reverse. I pull back onto the street, dither, go inside, get Dad H. to open the garage so I can get out the transmission fluid and a funnel. I dose my car with tranny fluid. It still doesn't work. I give up and circle around to repark it directly in front of the house. It doesn't like being in drive anymore either. So it looks like my transmission's shot. I have no money whatsoever except what will meet my minimum bills for the month. If this were the medieval era, I'd have to sign up as an indentured servant probably. Well, actually, if this were the medieval era I'd probably have lost all my teeth and popped out about five babies if I were still alive at 28.
Nobody else I know has money either, so I don't know exactly how my car's going to get fixed. Yet.
I need to learn to stop saying that I think my luck's beginning to change. It can always get worse.
I'm signed up with another temp agency, I've got a lead on another job, and hope's not completely dead. But it's the time of waiting again, to see what pans out, and endurance of stresses that continue to bear down. And of course there is always the vague suspicion I bear about me, that I deserve the things that happen to me like this. That too I suppose is medieval -- or at least Calvinist; I could stand to shed that, I suppose.
It never ceases to amaze me how the same day can contain such a mosaic of misery and jubilance.
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