Distant Sighs

This day brought an odd confluence of whispers, telling of death.

I attended a play with a friend. Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound was a very funny spoof of a whodunit. I had seen his Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead at some time during 2011 by the same acting company, but I found it annoying and impossible to follow. What a difference 13 months' sobriety makes for the mind! It was a wonderful performance and a very fine play tonight.

The play folds in on itself. Two of the actors play audience members who wind up acting in the play they're watching, and both get killed in the action. One actor spends the entire play lying on the floor as a dead body, saying nothing. BUT in real life Reuben Mitchell, one of the actors cast in this real play died in a motorcycle accident about a mile from the playhouse, a few weeks before the show opened. He was 31 years old.

In the minutes before the show began I read a note that had come to me at an old address. It was from Laurent, who adopted my cat Georgie before I left Paris seven years ago. My old fuzzy friend (whose story I double-blipped here (1) and here (2) ) is well, but his companion Moon-Moon has died of old age. It was a very thoughtful and touching note from the 6th arrondissement. L and his partner buried the old moggy at the base of a "century tree," in a park, early in the morning.

A full day of work, spectacle, and dark whispers.