Journey to 1993: Edmund Spenser, Prophetic Dreams, Surprising Love Poems and Armin Shimerman's Quark

Thinkest thou I’ll tease the smile
of one so far and distant placed,
and self-protective, all the while
in public eye, to be embraced?
Methinks the man will soon be chased,
by one who seeks his visage fair
Not caring I, he lewd or chaste,
More wishing I be with him there ...
Me, 1993, “Good Grief”

An interesting day, reliving 1993.  Believe it or not, that was actually generated after having watched a VHS tape of an original Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton.  They had included a song with the episode – but the song made me think of Edmund Spenser.  From what I recall, the song was about having loved someone forever.  THAT brought to mind a conversation with the awesome Armin Shimerman I’d had when a friend dragged me to a Star Trek convention across the street from Penn Station.  I forget why she was so desperate to go – some actor SHE was off the deep end over - but I liked Deep Space Nine, so said, “Sure!”  and went along with her.

I actually had a great time – very enjoyable.  And really enjoyed a brief chat with Armin Shimerman (who played Quark in that series) – and who is also one of the most gifted and well-read Shakespearean actors on the planet.  In that conversation, Edmund Spenser came up; I’d gone out after the conversation and bought a collection of his works.

Coincidentally, Armin also played a character named Pascal in the same Beauty and the Beast series; so this was an entire synchronicity of events happening here like a chain of dominos.  One thing reminded me of the next.  Watching the episode, I was reminded of Armin Shimerman who reminded me of Edmund Spenser who reminded me of his sonnets, while listening to a love song that reminded me of first loves that had felt like they went on forever, because I had never forgotten them.

With me so far?  So guess who who that opening love poem – dashed off without thinking, really, while this line of dominos was falling – was about?  I actually gave it the title, “Good Grief”, because I thought it sounded so ... silly and obsessive (considering that it was 1993 and I thought at the time that the man I had written the Spenserian inspired love poem about had disappeared off the face of the planet 20 years earlier in the early 1970’s) when I wrote it.

Give you a hint:  I just met him for the first time a week ago and nearly fainted on him.  Yup.

Anyway, I just found it today and grinned from ear to ear.  And thank goodness I hadn’t found this yet when I wrote him the letter I handed him!  Good grief indeed:  he would have taken one look at that and said the same thing; although hopefully I would have had the sense not to reprint it in the letter.

What happened today was that I located a file folder containing all of the pages from a journal I kept in 1993.  Most of it is wincingly ridiculous, but I found another very strange entry:  Wednesday, October 27, 1993.  I had a cold at the time and had taken a cold medicine that made me very groggy before going to sleep:

“Had a horrible sleep last night, which I still don’t understand; maybe it resulted from too many doses of Nyquil or something.  It was of being shot on the subway.  All I remember of it was a man with a gun.  He shot at me, and I fell off the seat to my left and landed face down on the floor.  Question rose in mind mind:  was I faking it, or had he really shot me?  I could sense him pointing the gun a second time at my back as I lay there.  Then I woke up, struggling out of a deep sleep.”

What makes that entry a little odd is that on December 7, 1993, on the LIRR, Colin Ferguson “pulled out his gun and started firing at passengers. He killed six and wounded nineteen before being stopped by three of the passengers.”  I recall even thinking, “I think I dreamed about this,” at the time – meaning, I heard about it on the news, and thought, “This sounds familiar,” as though it had already happened.

I’m not sure if I even looked it up in my own journal to check – just had the thought and let it go – but I certainly dreamed something that shared some of the details with something that actually happened.  Not sure what I was supposed to DO with that – start jumping up and down and crying, “There’s going to be a shooting on a train – somewhere, sometime - by somebody”?  I couldn‘t, obviously, which makes me always wonder about the value of what appears to be precognitive dreams like that.  Nothing you can do about it – just stand there and watch it unfold when it does, and brag that you’re psychic or something?  And I never rode the LIRR, so it wasn’t even something that impacted me personally – my dream took place on a subway, because that’s what I rode every day.

I also had come up with the most awesomely creative idea for a quilted triptych based on Spenser’s Sonnet #71:

I joy to see how, in your drawen work,
Your selfe unto the Bee ye doe compare,
And me unto the Spyder, that doth lurke
In close awayt, to catch her unaware.
Right so your selfe were caught in cunning snare
Of a deare foe, and thralled to his love;
In whose streight bands ye now captived are
So firmely, that ye never may remove.
But as your worke is woven all about
With woodbynd flowers and fragrant eglantine,
So sweet your prison you in time shall prove,
With many deare delights bedecked fyne:
And all thensforth eternall peace shall see
Betweene the Spyder and the gentle Bee.

As I read the idea, I definitely remember laying the entire plan out in my Quilt Journal at the time ... one of the many valuable, irretrievable documents that made up the creativity of a human life that Carbonite utterly and permanently destroyed in their Epic Fail later on.  To this day, every time I see the name “Carbonite”, I want to shriek:  don’t fall for it, don’t do it!  they’re lying!  They’ll destroy your life’s documents like they destroyed mine!!

Yes, the damage they did carries on to this day, that’s how far reaching their failure was.  And is.

In fact, the destruction of my Quilt Journal was so massive, I couldn’t even work up the energy to start a new one until THIS YEAR – and it has been, what?  Five years since they lost the first one?  Six?  And the paltry one I have now will never come close to the one they destroyed.

(Yeah, I know:  hold grudges much?) (Why yes – something that overwhelmingly destructive?  Yes, I do.)

Another Spenserian sonnet I fell in love with in 1993.  I had changed the gender of the piece – he had been writing about a woman; I rewrote it for a man:

Was it the work of nature or of Art?
which tempred so the feature of his face:
that pride and mischief mixt by equall part,
do both appear t'adorn his beauties grace?
For with mild humor, which doth pride displace,
he to his love doth lookers eyes allure:
and with stern countenance back again doth chase
their looser lookes that stir up lusts impure,
With such strange terms his eyes he doth inure,
that with one look he doth my life dismay:
and with another doth it straight recure,
his smile me draws, his frown me drives away.
Thus doth he train and teach me with his looks,
such art of eyes I never read in books.
Sonnet 21 by Edmund Spenser

I don't remember who I had in mind with that Spenserian re-write.  You would think it was the same long-lost (at the time) "first crush" who inspired the quick love poem that opened this entry, but I'm not certain of that.  Other than these beauties, 1993 seemed to have been a rather angry year:  in a job I hated, working for a boss I didn’t like, not happy at all.  The only pleasure I seemed to derive from the year was a burst of creativity that Carbonite completely destroyed all records of ... and some really nice poetry, thanks to a Shakespearean-loving Ferengi.  I wonder if I ever thanked him for that.