I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. One side effect of growing up at Millsaps and having ADHD is that I’ll notice even the smallest thing not being where it should be. Millsaps doesn’t really have landscaping; we have a botanical collection curated by generations of dimly remembered biology and botany professors. There are half-covered and badly tarnished plaques all over campus giving the unpronounceable Latin name of the greenery in front of you and the distinguished professor who put it there.
I was on campus today for a joint event between the English Department, Lemuria Books, and the Mississippi Book Festival. I noticed that some of our trees suffered mortally during last year’s drought, and now they’re ex-shrubbery.
I’ve written before about the unusual and ill-advised relationship between myself and the trees of Millsaps. Even though these stories might be romanticized, they are all true, even the one about Michael Jarrat’s Boa Constrictor and the Oak Tree in front of the Chi Omega house.
It will be painful to cut down some of these old friends and replace them with saplings, but life is about death, and rebirth is the most exciting part. We’re in better shape than UMMC. If these droughts keep happening, we’ll have to figure out ways to keep our trees alive.
I wasn’t familiar with Gabrielle Zevin, who was the subject of today’s book talk. She’s about a hundred years younger than I, but her reviews are remarkable. I would have gone either way, but the ticket price entitled me to a signed copy of her book “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.” and I was intrigued.
The title references a speech from Shakespeare that you don’t often see people like me discuss because it’s cursed, and people have died.
Macbeth knows that men are coming to kill him. He receives news that his dangerously ambitious wife, who started this game of heads, has just died. Macbeth considers not only the meaning of her life and his life but also the meaning of all lives.
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Now that I’ve said it, I have to spit, turn around three times, and ask to be let back in.
You don’t have to agree with McBeth’s bleak view of life to see the beauty in this speech. I much prefer it to the one in Hamlet. Many authors found something eternal in it. Faulkner and Hemingway both incorporated it into their works. There are parallels between McBeth and Old Man and the Sea. One of Faulkner’s most notable works was The Sound and The Fury.
Faulkner and Hemmingway had something of an informal contest in real life as to who could be the most dour. Ultimately, Hemmingway won, but he used a shotgun to cheat.
I haven’t read Zevin’s book yet, but it’s sitting on my table. I was waiting on my complimentary copy, but I look forward to it. It’s hard for me to read paper books, so I may order a Kindle copy.
Zevin herself, I thought, was charming. The moderator was Katy Simpson Smith. When I first met Katy, she was three feet tall and running around her father’s office. Her parents were something of a power couple at Millsaps. He taught religion and Philosophy, and she taught Art History. To get a degree in either, you had to go through them. In my mind, they will always be part of the “young faculty,” although I’m pretty sure they’re both retired now.
Millsaps College is both temporal and eternal. That’s part of what makes it special. There have been times when Millsaps was so far ahead of every other school in Mississippi that they had to struggle to keep up with us. When we got Phi Beta Kappa before Ole Miss, a feud almost started.
Because Millsaps is small, private, independent, and religious, it must reinvent itself every thirty or forty years to remain relevant. I actually find the molting process exciting. It means we’re alive. Some people find it fearful and worrisome. I can’t really help that. You have to trust the process.
I sat with a girl who was in my sister’s class. She ended up as one of the top officers at Chi Omega. I knew a boy who loved her to pieces, but he was terrified to speak to her—I don’t think he ever did. She was anxious to meet the new President, Frank Neville.
Neville is from Georgia and a few years younger than us. He’s extremely energetic, which is good because he’ll need it. He delivered some short remarks before the Book Lecture. I listened closely to the right words that told me he understood what we were about and even more closely to the words that told me he had his own vision for the college. Whatever else is true, he’s a fast study. He’s only been here about five weeks, and he’s already found the pulse of the place. That’s a good sign.
After the talk, I planned to meet a friend at Bravo for dinner. Her child was having a crisis, so I went alone. Dating when you’re a hundred and dating when you’re twenty isn’t that different, except everything happens much more slowly, and if you get stood up, you don’t really care. There comes a point where you’ve let so many amazing fish swim through your net that one more or less won’t matter.
My waitress was a delightful young ballerina who was waiting tables because that’s what you do when you’re a dancer. I have always been amazed and deeply pleased that Mississippi can attract so many artists from every discipline.
Before Bravo was Bravo, it was Sundancer, a storied but cursed place. When Jeff and Danny bought the place, they burned sage and held a ceremony to cleanse the Sundancer demons out of the woodwork. They might have gotten rid of the demons, but ghosts in that place will be there for good.
I tend to experience the present, the future, and the past all at once. It’s been one of those nights. Life's but a walking shadow, signifying more than you’ve been led to believe.
