Pericles

The sound that trains make when they pull out of stations reminds me of whale sounds.

Auntie Sarah and I only just caught our train from Cambridge to London, sitting down about thirty seconds before it began pulling out of the station. We made out way through dark and drippy London streets, including the by then deserted Borough Market, to get to Shakespeare's Globe.

The theater itself was a work of art - swinging candelabras and a ceiling painted with cherubs, the sky, and other mythic creatures (mostly human) We sat in seats with such a good view - I had not known what to expect since it was Mandy who had got the tickets and given them to us when she and her intended guests couldn't make it - and watched the actors emerge, humming, talking, before they entered the opening song.

Pericles is one of Shakespeare's later plays, and one I hadn't heard of before. It follows the sea journey of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, as he is likewise tossed by the waves of fortune. (a symbol made plain throughout the play in setting and dialogue) The young man who played Mercutio during the globe's 2015 tour appeared again in Pericles, and one of the other actors was recognised as Auntie Sarah as someone who had fallen and broken his leg in a production she had watched about 30 years ago when the Globe just opened.

I was so happy to see two young boys sitting across from me. Theater-going in England seems a lot more ingrained in the culture here as a habit to be cultivated from young. I would be surprised if the  two boys understood all of the play, but to be there and see the set, the slapstick, the costumes and emotion would suffice, I think, to give them a good show. I laughed, and I cried, and I enjoyed a critical review of the play from an elderly couple I sat across from during the interval, as I munched on my satsumas and banana.

It was perhaps the best Shakespeare I have seen (in my limited list of shows I have seen), and though (as usual) I thought the tragic hero over-acted, I still cried when Pericles was reunited with his daughter in the final act, after so long a separation.

As we drove back from the train station, the headlights caught so many rabbits grazing beside the highway, their eyes flashing red when they caught a beam of light. There were so many stars in the sky, which I could see even through the dusty window, I wish I could name them. Sometimes when I look at the sky, my mind wonders if it can pick out the oceans of faint stars behind the ones plain to our eyes, or if that is just my imagination compensating for light pollution. How wonderful that the light of stars that we see on earth has travelled through billion and millions of years to reach our eyes. When we gaze into space then we are truly travelling through infinity.

The headlights caught a sign saying something like 'You've just missed out on...' and I sat back in my seat and thought, I actually really haven't, I am so content.