Ok, make that 7..hawks. I saw my 7th today, well now it's already tomorrow. At first I thought it didn't count, the 7th hawk, cuz it was on a t-shirt and all it said was "the hawk" and in the middle was a silhouette picture of a hawk, in perfect v formation; swooping. It looked just the 6 I've seen this far.
So, after consulting my mom, who was with me, she said it definitely counted, and then I had to agree. I mean, there was this random man standing at a bus stop and I just happened to glimpse at his shirt which just happened to have a hawk on it, just as I was on my way to have (more) dental surgery. It counts!
Lately I've been re-reading old plays I love. Why plays and not novels, no real reason. I've re-read Death of a Salesman, and Angels in America(AIA), both parts, and read, for the first time, The Government Inspector, by Gogol, I also started to revisit the Orestian Trilogy by Aeschylus. I got all involved in the intro; which is a full-on historical essay, it's really interesting.
Death of a Salesman is pretty amazing, especially the second time around. Re-reading it I found out that the waiter, Jake? is suicidal. He says a line about how lucky Happy is for having gone to the war and how he wishes he could've gone too, so that he could've died and wouldn't have had to still be living. He says it so quickly and casually that if you blink, literally and figuratively, you truly miss it. I had to re-read that part about four times in a row to really allow what had just been said to seep in to me. It's such a tragic play, and yet I always feel upset at not knowing who I despise more (or less).
Speaking of intensely layered works; I think Tony Kushner's a genius! Here's a line from Perestroika, (which is AIA, Part 2), in which Belize the nurse/drag queen is talking to Louis about racist, white America. Louis the forever ambivalent can't seem to figure out who's more racist; himself or America. ( He's also just recently walked out on his long-term lover, Prior, Belize's best friend. Prior has just found out he's got(full-blown( a term I hate) AIDS.)
Belize says: "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me..." (pgs 94-94, Perestroika, )
Near the Old Man of Storr, Scotland I took this in 2004
