Epiphany

I'm not convinced that Epiphanies actually happen very often. Sure I think there are times when we realise a change has occurred in our life, or other people notice it, but how often do we have that rinsai experience?

My daughter Alex was very affected last summer by the Bard on the Beach play we went to see when she was over. The play was Stoppard's 'Rosencranz and Guildenstern are dead' and it was extremely well done. I do think that live theatre IS an incredible experience, and I can easily bring to mind performances that uplifted me or took me to another place. Seeing Billy Whitelaw in Beckett's 'Footfalls' was one such. I swear to you that time and place stood still in that little theatre in Hammersmith. Well, Ok, place always stands still, or does it? Hold that thought. What I was really trying to say is that the space between myself and the stage seemed to alter so that there was no distance, I felt as though in the darkness I was hanging in the air breathing in the words. I was going to say 'my very existence defined by the words,' but that sounded too bloody pretentious, although it was how I felt.

Anthony Sher's Richard the third was another such performance. It was at the National, though I forget which theatre, probably the Lyttleton. When a great actor gets hold of a part like that, you are able to understand the character. Well duh. Ok, yeah but, no but, I don't think that always happens. Sometimes a character is portrayed but not always does the actor really MAKE you understand the motivation of whoever they are playing. Sher did that. I totally GOT Richard the third - well, Shakespeare's one - from his performance.

Although there is something special about live theatre, movies can have a similar effect especially when seen on the big screen. I do remember when I saw the first Matrix film at the cinema I was so drawn into this other world they had created that I felt odd leaving the cinema and having to push myself back into the 'real' world.

And one two, three, I'm back in the real world and beyond. Finally I am reading Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. I think it has been backwards and forwards across the Atlantic with me a couple of times, looks like Bill Bryson himself had the same problem. Well, not the travelling with me bit, but the going backwards and forwards across the Atlantic. It is proving to be a fascinating read. I never realised quite how crazy scientists can be. Newton, he tells us, 'once inserted a long needle into his eye socket and rubbed it around 'betwixt my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could' ' I mean...come again? what the hell was all that about Newton you crazy guy? Not sure either how he could have done it or what he could have gained from it apart from a certain notoriety. Prolly something to tell the lads down the pub. Oh well.
And the earth has to spin at an incredible rate to turn completely in a 24 hour cycle, place actually does move (and of course the earth). And the earth moves round the sun at a startling rate and very soon it's the 6th of January again.

The sixth of January, when we celebrate the arrival of wise men from the east who came to see the future king, the world changer, born in a stable in Bethlehem in Judaea. So the Jewish child, Jesus was shown to men from the east, at least one of whom must have been an astronomer/astrologer since they read the message in the stars and followed one. None of these men would have been Jews themselves and from the gifts they brought, they would have most likely been from the middle east.
Times of hope, times of change. Just like now.