Joseph’s Dream

IN the end was the beginning and in the beginning was the end.

"Good morning," began Prof. Joseph K. Ambrose, distinguished professor of English literature and Religious studies at Merton, greeting each student as they walked into the lecture hall with a slight nod of the head, while at the same time adjusting his spectacles in order to maintain a close proximity to the machine in which he was now so fully engaged.

Each student in turn looked rather inquisitively at the device. "There," said Prof. Ambrose after the last student had seated himself in the North Wall Theater.

"As you will all no doubt recall," said the professor, "We spoke in our last class about the tragedy of Hamlet and how replete the ending is with action. One does not necessarily see Claudius' death in light of the Reawakening of the Senses in terms of the Enlightenment of the 19th C., and yet each successive generation of audiences creates their own special version of Shakespeare's Plays."

"Now, what is it about these plays--Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Lear--that appeal to so many people, especially among the young, in terms of a Hero, and in terms of the anti-Hero."

"That is to say, what is so appealing about these plays, such that they are heavy with male, central characters and that these characters like the plays change over time. So, what do we as readers of Shakespeare today glean from an "holistic" approach, looking at both the Page and the Stage, of Shakespeare?"

At this, Prof. Ambrose cast a wide, searching look around the room. He was evidently seeking for inspiration in the moment and found it on the far wall in a bust of Shakespeare's head.

"Look," he said, pointing at the bust, "Could this head contain all the brilliance that we find herein? Come now, we must not now say, 'No'."

"It is truly remarkable," continued Prof. Ambrose, "That Shakespeare was able to write everything that we knew him to have written, and yet who among us here today thinks that he or she could write like him?"

"I would argue," continued Prof. Ambrose on aside, "That Shakespeare was indeed one-of-a-kind. But that there will come another. Mark my words, but that one day, he will come again."

"Class dismissed," iterated Prof. Ambrose. And with that, he walked out of the lecture hall and down the venerated hallways of Merton with a rarefied air, such that his tails touched the ground and dragged along behind him. He had been teaching for some twenty years as the English Chair, and had risen to some prominence in his sphere, having authored such books as "Shake-ing the World" and having edited the Merton Edition of Shakespeare's plays, in addition to the most recent Cambridge Anthology of Shakespeare.

Prof. Ambrose was then well on his way to becoming the foremost authority on Shakespeare living in the 21st C. He would naturally then have to admit that only his colleagues at Harvard could rival his own expertise across the Pond. But suffice it to say, those colleagues were falling out of favor these days, ever since their attempts to become more literally progressive in both their teaching methods and material.

Prof. Ambrose, on the other hand, was a traditionalist. He did not seek out the more controversial topics related to Shakespeare and considered the rise in female English teachers in America as an indication of a backwards sliding in Shakespearean scholarship, which included their preoccupation with post-colonial and queer theory. It furthermore irked Prof. Ambrose that they relied so heavily and insisted upon commenting on such motifs as feminism in Hamlet and shades of the slave trade in Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

Prof. Ambrose found all of this to be profoundly affecting material, Earth-shaking and a sign of decadence within English faculties world-wide. Therefore, he had decided a long time ago against voicing his opinions publicly, but rather authored a rather longish article in an obscure literary journal about both Shakespeare's Dark Lady and on Shakespeare more generally from a traditionalist's perspective. That is, a perspective which set Shakespeare in his proper place as the definitive authority on human nature.

Prof. Ambrose himself had had dreams of the Dark Lady who had been as dark in hair as she was in her plain features. She may very well have been the Lady of the Sonnets. So, perhaps Prof. Ambrose had a double purpose in the writing of his book. For it would serve both to resurrect his Lady and Shakespeare at the same time for all time. And moreover, it would give Prof. Ambrose a chance to set the record straight on Mr. William Shakespeare.

Coming to the third floor of his dormitory, Prof. Ambrose found his cat, which never could seem to catch the mice which plagued his office. In fact, they never left him. But Prof. Ambrose also kept the radio on usually quite loudly, so as to distract him from the activities of the mice in his office.

He opened the bottom drawer of his bureau, having seated himself at his desk, and glanced up at the portrait of Shakespeare on the wall. He also had two pictures of his mentors on either side of his desk. They had been instrumental in his having received his post at Merton. And under all those papers, filled with "Words, words, words...": Love poems to his Dark Lad(ies).

But then there it was, her picture--A picture of her beside a rose bush in full bloom. When he looked at it, so many memories flooded back into his mind's eye, such that Prof. Ambrose could not hold back his emotion, and tears of nostalgia came to his eyes. It was the time at which one might say he was happiest, but then again, Prof. Ambrose had not always been "Prof. Ambrose."

There had been a time when he had been known simply as just plain "Joe." In fact, that had been the time at which he had found himself most in keeping with that period of his life of which he was fondest. Joseph Ambrose was in fact so fond of this time in his life that he sought every opportunity, when not teaching or writing, to revisit and sought to bring those memories back as often as possible, in order to bring that time back most assuredly into his mind. Such was the nature of the Professor that he longed, inexorably longed for his long-forgotten Dark Lady.

That night had been the one special night upon which Joe had decided to woo the lady of his fondest desires. And yet, did he woo the lady or but the sign of she? He had had an inkling of her affections and designs upon his virtue, seeking at all times and at every juncture to be in accordance with her wishes.

"Eh, Joe," said Suzie when Joe pulled up to her bungalow in his Silver Maserati. She had been walking her cats around the block when Joe had called to say he was in the vicinity.

Suzie was very open to accepting visitors when they were in the vicinity. She and Joe had been classmates together at Hunter College in N.Y.C. and together they had managed the commute on the subway and even shared an apartment for a time in their Junior year.

They had taken one Creative Writing class together, since it was a requirement of all students at Hunter. In that class, Joe had authored a paper on "Watching Paint Dry," a time-honored tradition for that particular course. Suzie had thought it to be a silly assignment, but Joe had taken to it with aplomb, having spoken of three boys who had hid in an abandoned house after baseball practice. As the paper read, the boys eventually find themselves in another world through the act of watching paint dry. It had all been very funny at the time and had been read out-loud by Joe and Suzie's teacher, leading Suzie to remark that Joe must have been drinking absinthe when he wrote it. Joe however had smiled from ear-to-ear at this, saying nothing more on the subject.

"Do you like her?" asked Suzie then when she heard of Joe's Dark Lady. "Oh," said Joe, "I do!"

"Well," said Suzie, "Then I think you should go for it!"

"Really?!" asked Joe, "I'm not really so sure..."

"No," said Suzie, "If you like her...How else are you supposed to meet people?"

"That's a good point," said Joe.

At the next rehearsal, Joe noticed his Dark Lady out of the corner of his eye and like a Vronsky noticing Anna for the first time at the ball passed by her. She was dressed in black. As if initiating a dance step, he circled round, as the others were cleaning up, taken in by this macabre dance of wills.

As Joe soon found out, his Dark Lady had been a ballet student as a child and still held something of the disposition and posture of a Dark Swan. But Joe was not attracted to her childlike or Oriental features as such. He approached her as she was coming down the stairs.

"Konbanwa," he said.

They went the following weekend together to the Ambassador's Residence. Before the presentation, the flute sounded: It was the sweet, melodious music of Takako that sounded, playing the National Anthem of Japan. It was a like a soft snow falling on cedars.

It sounded at the same time as they indulged in the sushi platter. They ate alone among many member of the Armed Service. She seemed then like a goddess, the Goddess of the Cherry Blossom Flowers.

When they had separated from the others, she began to demand of things in particular: "No," Joe had said, "I do not run everyday; perhaps we can exercise together!"

After a time, she asked him, "Where are we going?"

He responded by saying, "We are going to the Old Chapel."

"Eh," she said, "The Chapel, then lunch?"

They went together to hold conference outside and lunch. The red hairs were brilliant in the sun and she seemed like an angel, like a Beatrice. The rays of the sun shone off the Old Chapel and hit his eyelashes many times like a whip.

He did not dare to touch her hair because he was afraid that his vision would vanish from sight.

Having risen at an early hour, he walked onto the ancient school bus. He had not sensed his old friend for a long time, but had seated himself next to him on the bus. It seemed like Fate.

Joe could not remember much of that day, save the excitement of his classmates, and his having trailed her down the mountain, her hair flying behind her. In fact, it seemed like the film "E.T." in which the alien flies up into the night sky. Similarly, he had wished her good luck, that time on the Magic Mountain. What surprise when she gave him a hug; it was the first time that he had touched her long, flowing hair.

"Stay in touch!" he had said. She had smiled and left him standing there forever, transfixed within the shades of True Love's perception.

The Nor'Easter came down like a soft snow and was general all over the land. Together with his trusty Spaniel, Joe set out in search of his Beloved. He had not intended to follow that path that day, but decided on that way, as it had seemed the right thing to do.

And so, they continued into the Dark Wood on that snowy day, going deeper and deeper into the woods along the trail reserved for horses. But Joe knew that they would not be encountering any, for they were in search of the Dark Lady.

After about an hour of walking, mostly uphill, they came upon the stables. A few African-Americans dressed in dark clothing were talking amongst themselves and Joe caught sight of a Yellow Terrier near the offices. Indeed, the horses there were a symbol of his fear, for Joe was afraid of horses. He remembered how his Dark Lady had wanted him to be her knight, mounted on a horse perhaps. Perhaps if Joe had conquered this fear, he could have won her back, conquering both his fears and his Dark Lady.

Coming upon the Nature Center, Joe remembered where he had been with the Dark Lady once upon a midnight blue. She had sat upon a log. Now it was covered with snow. Like his past, Joe regarded the log as some forgotten thing, covered over with the whiteness of the past. And then he looked up beyond that log in the direction of the Real Lady and the place where he had once beheld her face. An ambulance went up the road with sirens blaring. Whiteness covered the fields all around and in the distance. Then Joe happened to look up into all that snow falling from the sky and recalled what his Great Aunt in Vermont had said to him all those years before: "It is snowing here," she had written, "But what is IT?!"

Well, Joe now thought he had a sense of it; he was discovering the true secrets of it. Indeed, he had seen her Secret Garden once upon a midnight blue and it had been beautiful to behold, truly a Great Beauty, and still had hopes that he might be able to see and speak with her again. But staring into all that blinding snow and across the fields of white, he considered for a moment that perhaps it was his fate that day solely to remember, to regret and recall that place and say a prayer in the direction of the Beloved, his "Beatrice Japonese."

And like the Underground Man and his Underground Woman, only to go halfway out in the snow in pursuit of her. And so he turned back by another way, for he knew his way back from that place, having traveled there many a time before. And followed the Western Ridge Trail as far as it would go back towards home, taking the long way back with the snow still falling.

Now Prof. Ambrose thought to himself as he sat at his desk up high on the third floor of the Merton dormitory's rooms, writing these notes to himself, looking out at the snow-covered tree and thinking of how his Dark Lady was looking out at the same snow-covered trees, too. It had been a sign when he, Prof. Joseph K. Ambrose, had run into those Japanese dentists from abroad, from Honshu, the homeland of the Beloved. And as he thought of it, it made him think, meditating on all that had passed, of his beautiful, Japanese Beatrice as he had first truly seen her beneath the cherry blossom tree.