News of Various Sorts

* The cinnamon sofa is in residence. Yes, I know, it's almost too exciting. The delivery was almost a rerun of the episode of the Couch That Didn't Fit. First, one of the two guys, the one in charge, was the same one who came the other time, the time they had to take the couch away. He seemed to have absolutely no recollection of the whole episode, which seemed odd to me. When I said, "Don't you remember me?" he looked at me somewhat blankly and said, "You look a little familiar." I guess it's like when you see your doctor out of context--he or she has so many patients, and you have just one doctor.

They got the sofa past the tricky first-floor landing, and I was sure it would a breeze after that. Then came the part that was almost a rerun. They got the sofa up to my floor, and then the guy who was in charge looked at the doorway to my apartment and said, dolefully, "It might not fit." I thought he was just being needlessly pessimistic (and somewhat dramatic) but they did have a really hard time getting it through the narrow doorway. I thought, please, not again. I really had not anticipated any problem getting through the doorway because I knew it was high enough, but I guess this sofa is deeper than the ones I've had before, and the width of the door became a problem.

But they did manage, to my immense relief, and now I have a sofa again.

I'll take a picture so you can all see how pretty it is. I have to say I'm still getting used to it--it's kind of like having a new roommate.

* On another topic, I impulsively decided to go to the theater this afternoon, and got myself a ticket for Cymbeline, Shakespeare's rarely performed late romance, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center. I love going to Lincoln Center--my parents took me to things there fairly often when I was a child, so I have that association of an exciting day out with my parents. And I like the feeling of being around all that culture--ballet, symphony, opera--it's reassuring somehow. I had a great time--it was really fun seeing a play by Shakespeare that I had never read, let alone seen. And the play is magical--lots of pagan stuff, ancient Romans and ancient Britons, beautiful costumes, beautiful music, ghosts, and even Jupiter coming down from the heavens on his eagle. As the little write-up in Playbill points out, it has a lot of familiar elements from previous Shakespeare plays: a Lear-like king who fails to see the merits of his daughter, an Iago-like villain who plants suspicion in the mind of a husband, lovers in cross-dressing or other kinds of disguise. And I got to hear the "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" poem that I only knew as a reference in Mrs. Dalloway, read over the seemingly dead body of the heroine by her two brothers, who do not know either that she is a woman (she is disguised as a boy) or that she is their sister (they were kidnapped as children and have grown up living in the forest). That was a haunting moment, one among many.