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The “Little Tree” and The Nutcracker Suite

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

Godfather Drosselmeier

Well. It’s about time.

I’m in full-blown Christmas cleaning/decorating/wrapping mode. There’s not that much to wrap and if UPS can’t figure out how to get up my hill, there may be next to nothing to wrap.

No matter.

I’m putting up the “little tree” and I’ve got The Nutcracker: The Motion Picture on the VHS player. Yes. Video TAPE. I suppose I ought to go about procuring it on DVD.

Tchaikovsky is filling the air and I’m a ballerina en pointe arabesquing about the house in a Martha Stewart Meets Minny Pearl mashup of holiday décor.

[I keep pricetags on some of the “priceless” ornaments as I think it may amuse my great-great-children to see what my treasures cost.]

The Prince and Clara

Back during a different geologic era when I was a youngun, I happened upon The Nutcracker Ballet on television. I’ve always thought it was PBS, but I’m not sure. This version of the ballet has reached legendary status in my mind because I can’t find a copy of it anywhere and I can’t find anyone who even knows what I’m talking about. I do remember watching it once a year from about the age of 9 or so through junior high – 1968 to 1973. Maybe earlier, maybe later.

This version opened with large double doors opening slowly to show the mother lighting the candles on the Christmas tree. That opening scene took the breath of the little girl I once was. So much so that I have worshipped Christmas trees ever since. To the point that I have candles on my Christmas tree – though never lit. And so much so that it’s just not Christmas without watching The Nutcracker.

Sugar Plum Fairy

In my early 20s, I saw the Milwaukee Ballet and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra perform the piece. Cross my heart, it was one of the best versions ever. I particularly remember the eroticism of “the silk scarf” wrapping herself around the gift recipient’s neck. The entire audience gasped.

Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are joined forces with the Pacific Northwest Ballet company and the lot of them produced The Nutcracker: The Motion Picture which was released in 1986. It’s a lush, gorgeous, edgy, hypnotic piece of Christmas tradition. It doesn’t haven’t a silk scarf to get the juices of the audience flowing, but it has other charms.

When I first procured the tape, the Ex and Chef Boy ‘R Mine were less than pleased I was pre-empting football playoffs to watch it. The Ex wandered off, but The Boy and I were glued to it. The next year I had it playing while preparing Christmas dinner. My brother arrived early. The next thing I knew, he and my son were sprawled on the floor, hands propping chins, and so thoroughly engrossed my brother didn’t hear me ask if he wanted a beer. [Possibly the first time my brother didn’t hear the offer of a beer.]

There’s a reason these things become classics. Experts will tell you this is one Tchaikovsky’s worst pieces of music. Ballet folk insist the ballet is mediocre at best. The two of them twirled together in snow, candy canes and twinkle lights are a gestalt that defies explanation. Having watched the whole thing, twice through while I decorate the tree, the holidays now feel like a joyous, magical time and not the period of obligations they felt like yesterday.

Lord! Is it ever going to be done?

Christmas trees are my favorite part of the holiday and the “little tree” took flippin’ forever to put up, in part, because I kept resting on Memory Lane. This tree is comprised of all the ornaments most likely to please children, big and small. It’s out of control and tomorrow I have to fiddle with it to find room for the ornaments from my childhood that my mother is giving me. At the moment it’s covered in Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Star Trek, The Nutcracker, 12 Days of Christmas, bears, cows, pigs, flamingos, Green Bay Packers, dogs, Santas, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, M&Ms, lobsters and Chef Boy ‘R Mine’s ornaments made in school. It’s a treasure.

Tomorrow, I’ll start the the “big tree” – a truly monumental undertaking.  While the “little tree” is all whimsy and chaos, the “big tree” is all elegance and sparkle.  It too will provoke stop-overs on Memory Lane.  Most of the ornaments were chosen with care to provoke remembrance of people, events, places and things.  And it’s dubbed the “big tree” because the amount of stuff on it is testament to my penchant for excess.

O.K. Mostly done!

But, it’s all good. Last year, what with one thing and another, I didn’t decorate at all. This year, it’s all coming out and going up, down, on or in. Most of it will be up for months as I’m using this time of relatively empty closets to paint them, shelf them, and, ahem, organize the hell out of them.  There will be whining.  Right now, however, I’m glorying in my favorite part of the holiday – Christmas trees.

I hope that right now you are doing what it is that you most love about this time of year. And if you’re not, that you will be soon. Now, of course, you and I both realize that the best part of this time of year is spending time with the folks we love. I’ve been doing some of that and will be doing more of it in the days to come, but right now I’m in a decorating frenzy and loving every second of it.

Is it a small world? After all?

/ wvfurandroot / 7 Comments

Now and again I find myself in a daydream thinking about what people are doing while I’m thinking about what they’re doing. For example, right now I’m convinced that somewhere someone is:

  • Painting their toenails and wincing because it hurts their back to do so;
  • Standing in a line that is not moving;
  • Explaining to an officer of the law what happened;
  • Winding duct tape around something;
  • Encouraging a child to either do or not do something;
  • Trying to hold back tears;
  • Crying;
  • Begging for food;
  • Praying;
  • Cursing;
  • Singing in the shower;
  • Having an orgasm;
  • Having a heart attack;
  • Bursting with pride;
  • Suffering shame;
  • Drifting to sleep;
  • Awakening;
  • Falling in love;
  • Falling into despair;
  • Picking their nose;
  • Picking a china pattern;
  • Picking ripe tomatoes;
  • Picking a casket;
  • Entering life;
  • Exiting life.

I imagine these people oblivious to the knowledge that I’m wondering what they’re doing. And why. And how. And taking some comfort that the wheel goes round and round and round; that we endure and not endure and struggle and relax. That, viewed from a distance, there’s a symmetry and a balance to it all until peering in close to see the broken heart in juxtaposition to the joyous one; the ridiculousness of painted toes in comparison to the struggle for nutrition. There are injustices wrought by the arbitrary lines of geopolitical divides; and injustices wrought by economic gerrymandering. Injustices of opportunity and means. Injustice against the person. Injustice against the self.

It’s all silly, poignant, important, meaningless, and cruel, but most people in their last breaths think, “Oh, please. Not yet.” At least I think they do.

And if you were wondering — I’m sprawled on my couch lamenting chipped nail polish and economic injustice. I’m writing this drivel and plotting, yet again, the best way to infuse my puny little life with meaning wondering all the while if by virtue of existence it already has meaning or if that’s a pig in a poke bought in the cosmic market square on credit at an interest rate I can’t afford. I’m also thinking somewhere else someone is riding a similar thought train. I’m also thinking about how much I’d really like a taco and for It’s a Small World to quit ricocheting around my brain.

Redemption

/ wvfurandroot / 8 Comments

Faulkner could have written a short story about this heat – the heat and the spiders and the beer going down like a gulf sunset at 78 degrees past midnight – the t-shirt plastered to my back and the mosquito bites rimming my ankles.

What Faulkner would have done with my character is something to ponder. Maybe I’m more of a Tennessee Williams kind of chick.

Either way, I’m a careworn woman living alone in an old ramshackle house where the heat intensifies my age, coloring it with angry reds and slashes of orange. The arrival of midnight mutes those colors, moonlight softening to pink and tangerine, taking out the hard edges. I might be beautiful in this light.

The house is cooling down and this beer tastes like sweet relief.

The big white floor fan is just behind me. The sweat is drying, gritty and tight. My hair is damp and there’s a blister on my finger from scrubbing the lawn furniture – trying to keep the mildew at bay.

I succumbed and turned the dryer on for want of sweet towels. With the beer, the fan and 78 degrees past midnight, I think I can bear the heat of the dryer.

I can smell the bleach I used in the house to battle the debris of a dirt road, the mold of a wet summer, and the joy of three small dogs.

The beer and the fan are deep pleasures..

The youngest of the old dogs is licking my arm. I lick to taste what she tastes. I’m salty from the heat and work of the day. A tepid shower and straightforward soap will strip my skin of the salt and the dirt and the honesty of a day spent in yard work, housework. Will sluice the worries of a ramshackle house and the cares of a woman who might have been a character in the story of an old, southern writer.

It’s 78 degrees past midnight and this beer tastes like redemption.