about the origin of tragedy.
“ Tragos, ” he said, in a gruff voice, “which means goat dance. The first tragedies were enactments, songs and dances to praise the god Dionysus. Now we are not only robbed of our rituals. Even the gods and goddesses we have left—the actors and actresses we worship in films whom we can identify with all the traits of the traditional deities—are forced to enact mostly comedy, works with no tragic element or with potentially tragic elements that are resolved in Hollywood’s so-called happy endings. Without the performance to contain it, the tragic seeps into our daily lives with acts of real violence.”
And as I sat there, looking down the steep sides of the dark auditorium to the small circle of light where the goat-like professor stood, I thought of Jeni again. And I thought of John’s question about the soul. Had Jeni vanished because someone had lost their soul? Could someone who killed children have a soul? Did Jeni’s soul continue on? In what form? I put my burning forehead down on the cool wood of the desk, wondering if I could set it on fire this way, and tried to stop the questions from forming again and again in my brain.
* * *
I was sitting on the steps by myself, forcing myself to eat some lunch, when Melinda Story walked by. Stopped.
“Hi, Ariel. How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said. “You?”
“I wondered how you like Professor French’s class,” Melinda said. She was scrutinizing my face.
“Well, I only had one so far but it seems great. Thank you for recommending me.”
I was shielding my eyes from the sun to look at her so she sat down next to me in the shade.
“May I ask you a personal question?”
I knew what she was going to ask and I didn’t want her to.
“I’m concerned. Are you getting some support?”
“Oh, I’m really fine,” I said as brightly as I could. “I got all As last semester and I like my classes.”
“I just want to make sure you’re not pushing yourself too much. I did the same thing my first year and I had to drop out. I almost never made it back.”
“No, really, everything’s okay,” I told her.
“Do you have friends to talk to?” There were worry lines in her brow. She was so sweet. Why did I want her to leave?
“Oh, I have friends, yeah. They’re great. They’ve been really supportive.”
“Good, that’s what I want to hear.” Melinda patted my shoulder. “But if you need another friend, you’re welcome to come have dinner with me sometime.”
* * *
I hadn’t lied to her, really. I’d gotten straight As and I did like my classes so far. And I had friends. Well, not really friends, but people. I had shared two meals with them, worn their clothes; we had laughed and talked and danced and touched. I just wasn’t sure why they had let me into their lives and if I would be allowed to stay. I wasn’t sure if they would even call me again when they returned from wherever they had gone.
Eleanor French was a slim woman in her forties who wore beautiful silk blouses, tailored tweed skirts and designer heels. She rhapsodized about the modernist poets in a smoky voice and it made me feel drunk when I listened to her. She started with Yeats, reading aloud from The Celtic Twilight about the Sidhe:
“‘Love with them never grows weary, nor can the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet.’”
“What did these beings symbolize for Yeats?” she asked. “What was his fascination at a time when God was being questioned?”
I had wondered about the Sidhe before; my parents were always reading me folk and fairy tales when I was little. But somehow rediscovering them in this book, which seemed, especially when read by Professor French, to be written as factual evidence of mystical experience, startled me, even more so in the state I found myself.
I thought again of the defining characteristics of the schizoid personality, of Tania’s long arms as she waved them above her
“ Tragos, ” he said, in a gruff voice, “which means goat dance. The first tragedies were enactments, songs and dances to praise the god Dionysus. Now we are not only robbed of our rituals. Even the gods and goddesses we have left—the actors and actresses we worship in films whom we can identify with all the traits of the traditional deities—are forced to enact mostly comedy, works with no tragic element or with potentially tragic elements that are resolved in Hollywood’s so-called happy endings. Without the performance to contain it, the tragic seeps into our daily lives with acts of real violence.”
And as I sat there, looking down the steep sides of the dark auditorium to the small circle of light where the goat-like professor stood, I thought of Jeni again. And I thought of John’s question about the soul. Had Jeni vanished because someone had lost their soul? Could someone who killed children have a soul? Did Jeni’s soul continue on? In what form? I put my burning forehead down on the cool wood of the desk, wondering if I could set it on fire this way, and tried to stop the questions from forming again and again in my brain.
* * *
I was sitting on the steps by myself, forcing myself to eat some lunch, when Melinda Story walked by. Stopped.
“Hi, Ariel. How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said. “You?”
“I wondered how you like Professor French’s class,” Melinda said. She was scrutinizing my face.
“Well, I only had one so far but it seems great. Thank you for recommending me.”
I was shielding my eyes from the sun to look at her so she sat down next to me in the shade.
“May I ask you a personal question?”
I knew what she was going to ask and I didn’t want her to.
“I’m concerned. Are you getting some support?”
“Oh, I’m really fine,” I said as brightly as I could. “I got all As last semester and I like my classes.”
“I just want to make sure you’re not pushing yourself too much. I did the same thing my first year and I had to drop out. I almost never made it back.”
“No, really, everything’s okay,” I told her.
“Do you have friends to talk to?” There were worry lines in her brow. She was so sweet. Why did I want her to leave?
“Oh, I have friends, yeah. They’re great. They’ve been really supportive.”
“Good, that’s what I want to hear.” Melinda patted my shoulder. “But if you need another friend, you’re welcome to come have dinner with me sometime.”
* * *
I hadn’t lied to her, really. I’d gotten straight As and I did like my classes so far. And I had friends. Well, not really friends, but people. I had shared two meals with them, worn their clothes; we had laughed and talked and danced and touched. I just wasn’t sure why they had let me into their lives and if I would be allowed to stay. I wasn’t sure if they would even call me again when they returned from wherever they had gone.
Eleanor French was a slim woman in her forties who wore beautiful silk blouses, tailored tweed skirts and designer heels. She rhapsodized about the modernist poets in a smoky voice and it made me feel drunk when I listened to her. She started with Yeats, reading aloud from The Celtic Twilight about the Sidhe:
“‘Love with them never grows weary, nor can the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet.’”
“What did these beings symbolize for Yeats?” she asked. “What was his fascination at a time when God was being questioned?”
I had wondered about the Sidhe before; my parents were always reading me folk and fairy tales when I was little. But somehow rediscovering them in this book, which seemed, especially when read by Professor French, to be written as factual evidence of mystical experience, startled me, even more so in the state I found myself.
I thought again of the defining characteristics of the schizoid personality, of Tania’s long arms as she waved them above her
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