the rest is silence and snow
The snow is coming down in spades right now, and it looks to be getting worse in the inches department into tonight. This slap of winter seems sudden and impertinent since we've only had a light dusting in the last month or so. Usually, these kinds of systems don't blow through until December, but with climate change, who knows? There are days when the dreariness seems personal. Like it has it in for me. Thanksgiving, admittedly, may have been one of the worst days of my life as November continued to serve the usual shit sandwich. We had resigned ourselves to Bella's slow decline over the early part of the week, and she was in the process of expiring (mostly conscious-less after not moving around much on Tuesday night into Wednesday.) As she was in her final hours early Thursday, Max started acting strangely and stumbling around. Since he was only 14 (elderly, but still younger) and the turn was sudden, we wound up taking both to the vet,--Bella just to drop off for cremation, and Max, who kept declining as we arrived there. Facing the vet's suggestion of nearly a thousand dollars in blood tests that wouldn't even cover treatment or guarantee success, we had to euthanise. As a result, I spent part of Thanksgiving in the emergency vets office, then came home afterwards, mourning not just one, but two cats. So its been a rough ride. I try to be prepared as pets get older for losing them at some point--but two in one day nearly broke me.
We stayed close to home over the next day, but did get out last night, in an attempt of distraction to see both Eternity, a fun smart rom-comish visit to the afterlife, and Hamnet, which explored, through the lens of Shakespeare's (and his wife's) loss of their young child, how that translated into his creation of Hamlet. The later was gorgeous and cinematic and woefully sad. How Shakespeare was healed by creating it and his wife healed by seeing it. We are planning to see the stage version later this winter at Chicago Shakespeare, so I am curious to see that version, which may even prompt me to read the original novel by Maggie O'Farell. While we don't have any theater plans for the next couple of weeks until we go see A Christmas Carol in mid-December, we subscribed to the National Theatre streaming app, and so got to watch a very interesting version of Frankenstein that had amazing stage lighting and a much darker take on the creature than Del Toro's kind giant. Even more interesting, Benedict Cumberbatch as Viktor and his antagonist swapped roles,.so we plan to next watch the one where he plays the creature. The streamer looks to have some interesting versions of Tennessee Williams and more Shakespeare that we would love to explore.
Today, I am hiding inside from the snow, drinking lot of tea, and assembling chapbooks. I may work on the last couple scenes of the play. I would love to finish it out in at least a first draft form, set it aside, then revisit after the new year with fresh eyes. I won't really know til then if this past month's endeavor was fruitful or just a wash, but I guess I can hope for the best.
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