The Wren’s Nest

I was minding my own business, ensconced in reading a journal, my eyes downcast when I met Her. My life has not yet returned to normal. She occupies my thoughts.

vita non est vivere sed valere vita est           (life is more than merely staying alive)

Or another way of saying it “Death is a part of Life”

I’ve never been especially religious although I was brought up in a very Lutheran environment. I try to do the whole ‘10 Commandments’ bit, and ‘Do unto others” but I am ready to meet my maker at any point. Death, just like Life I’m sure - is a journey.

In a few days I will turn 45. It hardly seems believable to me that this is so, but it is. I have been on God’s planet for this long.

I have a secret weapon working for me though - I have the love of a beautiful woman - Nina. When she calls me I feel like I’m 17.  I forget battle-hardened scars. I want to take her ballroom dancing, dip her, twirl her, show her off. She simple giggles a bit. So incredibly cute. If this is what getting ‘older’ is all about, then I can’t say I mind it.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny.
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

- Yates

I’m writing two posts tonight - one about hate - one about love.

———

They dropped our asses in Mogidishu, Somalia, God’s Hell-hole on earth. If you ever wanted to know what happened to miscreants, well the buck starts here.

Right when we got dropped, there was the “RAT-A-TAT-RAT-A-TAT” sound of machine gun fire. These fuckers were trying to kill me and I took a personal interest in it. I stood up an surveyed the landscape until my mates dragged me down. But I was pissed. I am fully qualified with weapons and I was going to prove it to these bastards. I pulled my service weapon and started shooting back. I never chambered a round. My mates rounded me-up.

There are times. There are times. There are times when the right thing is not really the right thing. Never to kill another human being no matter how much you want to do so.

———

I was classically trained in Latin and Greek. I also speak Russian, Polish and can get by with a few other Eastern-European Languages.

But when I look at Nina she must think I’m a mental cretin because my jaw just drops and hangs there. It’s not really my fault - honest! She is gorgeous! She is the most beautiful woman I know! When I am away from her, all I want to do is to be back to her!

Danny Boy

September 2007
J. Wren Hunt

I’ve seen grown men on numerable occasions cry like newborn babes when listening to  “Danny Boy”. Its haunting melody and strangely piercing lyrical lamentations I think could not help but soften the heart of even the  crustiest bastard.

My own experience with Danny Boy began years ago, when I heard the wondrous Charlotte Church perform it. As the title of her 1st CD says, she has “The Voice of an Angel”. And I believe it. A diminutive 14-year old at the time, I believe she could hit the notes of any song she chose like Annie Oakley could shoot a rifle. I listened to her, my eyes closed, and I could see in my mind’s eye how she caressed the notes out of her bosom, up, up, up, up, ever higher  into the air where they lingered momentarily – and before they had a chance to fall, before they plateaued,  she collared them, lassoed them, wrangled them, caressed them,  and got each note to do precisely her bidding, each to each.  Sound in its purest essence. That’s how I always hear “Danny Boy”.

But that’s not what I came here to tell you about. I came to talk about a different Danny Boy.

Over the weekend I found that my feet had taken me to my local neighborhood pub, as often feet are wont to of their own accord or bidding, not really asking their owner of intent. I was there to catch-up on some reading, do a little belated writing, and grab a bite of dinner. I was not expecting to meet anyone and was dressed in “loose casual” - Nantucket red sweatshirt, shorts, tennis shoes. I certainly was not  out to wile wimin (note correct Tennessean spelling of “women”).

I finished my reading; my writing was rather desultory at best, and in a moment of reflection decided to concentrate my attention on the Irish band waxing merry as they do every Sunday afternoon. As I was engaged in this a young man sat down next to me. In his late twenties I’d guess, he had a huge gymbag and was clutching a product catalog of shoes with white-knuckled-intensity.

“Hi!” he said. “I’m Danny”, and extended his hand.

I shook the proferred limb and said “My name’s Wren”

“Where you from? You from around here?”

“I live in Cambridge” I replied. “I’m originally from Tennessee.” I always say that as an afterword, as a way to explain the “accent”.

Danny twitched a bit and then turned to his right to strike up a conversation with the lady sitting next to him. Now I found this sufficiently odd that he would engage me in conversation, then suddenly switch to someone else that I found myself attempting to do a bit of eavesdropping. With the music playing and his head away from me I couldn’t tell what he was saying but by watching the body language of the lady next to him I could pretty much guess the gist – he was asking her the same questions he had just asked of me.

I had not seen her come in as I was ensconced in my journals – but as I took her in I noticed she was attractive – petite, short brownish-reddish hair, - no wedding band - but with a presence about her that suggested a panther looking down on its prey from some swampish everglades nook. She was not to be trifled with and I wasn’t about to engage her. I went back to my journal and gave a small chuckle at the poor bastard Danny sitting next to me as I expected him to be verbally eviscerated in short order.

“You live around here?” asked Danny querolously as the sudden question jolted me from my reverie and forced me to focus my attention back to him.

“Yeah, you just asked me that - remember?” I told him. “I live in Cambridge.”

“Oh yeah, I recognized the accent!” he said confidently.

Somewhat miffed I said “That’s not an accent from around here – I’m from Tennessee!” and I caught the eye of the lady on the other side of him and we both gave a little eye-roll like “What’s up with this guy!?”

Danny ordered some food, had the good sense to leave me alone, but perhaps the lesser sense to chat-up the lady. He ate his food with the frenzy of a whirling dervish; I’ve rarely seen anyone eat everything on their plate, including the garnish parsley. But Danny – Danny boy did. And then as quick as you could say “Bob’s your uncle” he picked up his bags and was off.

I can’t say as I minded Danny’s abrupt departure. Truth-be-told I sorta wanted to check out the lady he had been conversing with, in his own inimitable way. I wasn’t dressed for the occasion, but still – looking can’t hurt, right!?!?

But it was not to be. Within seconds a rather large woman plopped herself into the still warm seat Danny had left and completely blocked my view. Back to the books for me then.

I was back to watching the Irish band play a few jigs when the lady came over and sat in the stool next to me. She wanted to see the band and hear the music better she explained and we remarked over the character of Danny and it wasn’t long before we were engaged in a panopoly of topics for conversation.

Winston Churchill said of Franklin Roosevelt that meeting him was like owning a fine bottle of champagne and that knowing him was like drinking it. It was my sentiments exactly as I began to experience Nina. I found her engaging and fun even if a bit intimidating. I felt like a young midshipman being held at Captain’s Mast as she looked at me with those big brown eyes through imperious glasses.

“May I take these off?” I asked of her as I reached out to her face to remove her glasses.

Her visage changed instantly. No longer did she look like the intimidating person I had imagined her to be, but she had a kindly face with a beautiful smile and as the night progressed and we ultimately left, hand-in-hand, I could hear the strains of “Danny Boy”. It has never sounded so crystal and pure.

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.

And I shall hear, tho’ soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you’ll not fail to tell me that you love me
I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

When learning any language, a necessary part is the learning of adjectives. As I sat mentally construing events today I decided to take an exploratory run and describe Nina with English adjectives. (The next few days may bring Russian and Polish!) To wit she is:

Graceful. Witty. Gorgeous. Magnificent. Exotic. Erotic. Magnanomous. Beguiling. Bewitching. Enticing. Sexy. Voluptuous. Seducing. Beautiful. Curvaceous. Luscious. Lovely. Stunning.

She is the aspect in the heavens I have been looking for, for so long. Thanks Nina. Thanks for everything you’ve given me! I don’t know that I can ever repay you, but I shall certainly make the attempt!

There is a way to read poetry. No perhaps, not the only way, but a way I prefer. Especially when you are trying to find the perfect verse for the perfect woman. After all - is that not what poetry is all about?

At breakfast. Seated with tea and scrambled eggs. A good volume bound in velum, its musty scent emanating from its pages. The pages crinkling from years of non-use under one’s fingers. This is what it means to be an English speaker - By God the greatest language ever devised! Every nuance of the human condition can be so articulately consumated and described. This is the way to great love, great pleasure, great joy.

Earlier tonite I was doing some research for this (admittedly) wretched blog and needed a quotation from Shakespeare. It’s been 30 years since I read Macbeth so like any fool, I Googled it - imagine what I found!

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_40.epl

Now it’s called “No fear Shakespeare”!

I don’t know what to make of this. On the one hand it might be a noble attempt to put Shakespeare in modern parlance for modern times but then again the purist in me screams “WTF!?” We read Shakespeare, and Chaucer, and Milton because they are precisely that! Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton! For the same reason that English boarding schools give boys cold showers. They’re character builders. You read it and hammer the damn stuff through your thick skull until you smile and understand it.

By-the-way, the verse I was looking for was from Macbeth Act I, Scene VII:

“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th’ inventor”

In the ‘new’ ‘Modern’ version of ‘No fear Shakespeare’ they would have me use this tripe, this swill:

“But for crimes like these there are still punishments in this world. By committing violent crimes we only teach other people to commit violence, and the violence of our students will come back to plague us teachers.”

Call it what you will but please do not offend me by calling it Shakespeare.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats