Chronology
here is getting a little twisted as I put this most-crucial moment down. I've
tried to write in such a way that each experience informs the next, but I've
taken my time to get to this point. Part of that comes from my own poor use of
time--it's been the better part of a year since I last tried carving out anything
else about the Bard. I've been a negligent disciple in many ways and to many of
my passions.
At any rate, I
repeat here what I've written elsewhere in an extended quote of myself. I will
provide some small context before launching into this, however, as I'm
approaching the anniversary of my trip to London.
At school, we
devote the first three weeks of January to a special type of class called
Winterim. I have, over the years, taught classes on video games, short film,
garage bands, Harry Potter, and comic books. In January 2014, I went with a
handful of students on a 10 day trip to England. Ostensibly, we were there to
get a feel for English literature, but when I first proposed the trip, I only
had my own passions to guide me. "What do you want to do?" the email
query from EF Tours (the touring company) asked.
"Uh,"
I said aloud, "I don't know. See Shakespeare's grave. And Milton's.
And...uh, the Harry Potter tour?"
I couldn't
get around the concept of seeing Stratford-upon-Avon, so everything else kind
of plopped into place as a spasm of afterthoughts and desperation.
Let me be
honest: I didn't think the Winterim would pan out. We needed a certain number
of kids to buy in for us to be able to go, and the cost was easily over
$3,000--before tips, souvenirs, and food. Who would pay for that? And why would
parents pay for their kid to go along and
some scrawny teacher with a Shakespeare fetish? In an effort to keep my
potential disappointment low, I refused to believe we were actually headed to London.
Yet the day
came--okay, it came before we went to
London. As the Group Leader of the tour, I had the opportunity to go to Paris
for a four-day training trip two months before going to England. That was the
moment that made me realize I really would end up on the British Isles--and
soon. (Also, while I was there, I found a Shakespeare and Co. bookstore that's
spitting distance from the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was very neat. I
almost bought a Shakespeare book there, but decided not to, since I would be
picking up a new copy in Stratford come January.)
When we
arrived--jet-lagged but excited--in England, we started a whirl-wind tour of
the place with hardly a moment to pause. Each night I tried to jot down the
major events of the day, an exercise that I'm now quite grateful for. I've
looked at some of the entries and they reignite my memories, filling me with
the double-edged pain of gratitude and longing. I still really miss England,
and while I'm glad that I have what I have--and whom--I will likely always feel
that I'm living on the wrong continent.
(I couldn't
drive on those roads, though. The left-side driving was terrifying.)
A little more
than half-way through the tour, we departed London (where I visited Milton's
grave, though with a significantly less profound experience than what I'm about
to relate). Heading into the midlands, we approached Warwickshire, where Stratford-upon-Avon
is located.
The day
started at Warwick Castle, then proceeded into our tour guide, Becky's, hometown
of Stratford. As we approached our lunch's stopping place, I had the feeling to
look up and to my left. Like an electric shock, I realized the run-down
building just outside my window was Shakespeare's home. I couldn't prove it--I
couldn't even tell Gayle to look before it was gone--but I just knew it. I
can't explain it in any other terms than that.
We circled
around to a car park and I let the kids out of the coach. The anticipation,
disbelief, and excitement culminated in the weakest of knees. I couldn't stand
for fear of collapsing.
After some
moments to recover myself, we wandered down the small street on which the young
Shakespeare would have played, staring at shops that were centuries away from his
existence. We ate at the shops, took
pictures, and generally marveled. In my journal that night, I wrote this--along
with greater detail--about the experience. I had purchased my new 'baby William'
already and was floating fairly high on just a general Shakespeare rush when we
piled into the coach, drove past the RSC theater (Royal Shakespeare Company
Theatre, I guess), and stopped before the church in which Shakespeare was
buried.
"We pulled
up in front of the Holy Trinity Church and there walked up through the short
graveyard to the entrance. Moss-covered tombstones toothed their way through
the grass. A feeling of transcendence began to float over me.
Normally,
when I enter a European church, I'm overwhelmed by the architecture and the
piety that's plastered over the walls. That's how I felt in Saint Giles' Church
at Cripplegate.
Not so here.
It's
sacrilegious to say that I was almost irritated by having the Bible being read
aloud by a little woman off on one side, but I think it was because it was
background noise; the words of Holy Writ weren't penetrating my disbelieving
fog: I was in the chapel of Shakespeare's resting place.
Paying the
four pounds admission wasn't even a thought--though Gayle kept trying to tease
me about not being able to afford it--and then we were there. I listened with
half an ear to the tour guide, Allen, explaining interesting things about the
chapel and its most famous occupant, but I really only had eyes for the grave.
Leaning
against the thigh-high railing, I looked at the tomb, outlined with blue rope,
a gleaming placard at the foot of it. Above the space, printed in the original
spelling, was the epitaph--the last thing likely penned by the Bard--which encouraged
none to disturb his 'dust'--his quintessence.
Even thinking
back on that moment fills me with an ineffable surge of proximity. I did feel a
little light headed, and, when I thought of how close I was to whatever is left
of him, I am not ashamed to admit I nearly wept.
I don't know
why it mattered so much, but it did. It wasn't a grieving sort of feeling--I'm
totally over the fact that he and Milton are dead. It was almost...gratitude.
I've been
thinking about this a lot, lately, as to why I find belief in God so necessary.
It's because I feel like having someone to feel grateful toward helps fulfill
the experiences of my life. I really like saying thank you. So when it comes to
Shakespeare--a man who has for seven years now definitively shaped my life,
while also doing so less overtly for all of it--I feel a deep and certain
gratitude for what he wrought. He has, more than any other writer, inspired my
deepest thoughts and my greatest ambitions. He has fueled my imagination,
sparked my vocabulary, and transported me to new levels of artistic craft. When
I think of who I'd most like to write like, it's Shakespeare. I cut my poetic
teeth on the juicy meats of Shakespearean sonnets; I have a job because of
Shakespeare.
Being so
close to his quintessential dust was an opportunity to experience gratitude. I
didn't mouth the words--in fact, I didn't process the experience until now, as
I'm writing--but that's the emotion that I felt. And, in much the same way I
feel an unexpressed gratitude to Peter's surgeons for saving his life--and in a
lesser way to how I feel toward God for having saved (and given us) Peter's
life--I expressed that by being there.
Five thousand
miles were not too many to traverse for this experience.
In terms of
gratitude, I will be forever grateful for what I felt and saw here today. It is
sweet and nigh-on spiritual. I recognize that not everyone can understand or
appreciate what happened. But that's what transcendence is: Beyond the pale of
what we can literalize and conceptualize via language. And that is exactly what
I feel toward Shakespeare now--it isn't a worshipful, deific kind of
appreciation. I don't see Shakespeare in that way. I see him as a man who has
helped me to understand the world and myself better.
I see nothing
wrong with being grateful for that."
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