The people of my dreams

One of my favorite songs from the play Les Miserables ( although all the songs are my favorites)  is the one with these lyrics:  There's a grief that can't be spoken
                                              Now my friends are dead and gone...
                                              There's a pain that goes on and on
                                               When my friends are here no more.

This has been a heartfelt month for me.  Three of my closest friends have died.  To compensate, I have a new gorgeous grandson.  As so poignantly expressed in the great novel Charlotte's Web, we are all inextricably woven into the threads of life and death.  What we must do is remember and cherish the wonderful experiences we had with those who have died in order to assuage our grief.

First, my friend Sandy died after a three and a half year battle with cancer.  She was the happiest person I have ever met.  She brought grace and joy wherever she went.  Her enthusiasm for all facets of life were her trademark, but she especially loved music.  Ten months before she died she began to take banjo lessons and this classically trained musician started to  play blue grass!
I have 3 special memories.  Once we were riding in my car and I turned on the radio.  The station was  playing a  concerto I had never heard before, and I prided myself on my musical knowledge.  Sandy listened intently to 6 or 8 notes and declared, "That's a violin concerto by Jan Sibelius."  At the end of the work, the commentator  did indeed announce that he had played a very rare recording of the concerto by the great Finnish composer. Who else but Sandy would recognize such an obscure work?

On another evening we bought the cheapest seats in an amphitheater in a small town in Florida to hear Yitzhak Perlman play.  Thirty seconds before the  concert was about to begin, Sandy noticed 2 empty seats in the front row.  She asked the usher if we could sit there.  When the usher hesitated, Sandy said that Mr. Perlman would never notice if there were 2 empty seats in the last row, but if he saw unoccupied chairs in the first row, he might not want to return to our venue.  The usher promptly escorted us to the front and we sat together with Palm Beach royalty.  Since she neglected to give us programs, I had no idea what the maestro was going to play.  I said in a very loud voice since there was a great deal of hubbub, "I do hope he plays the Bruck."  Mr. Perlman glanced my way and smiled.  A few minutes later, the gorgeous strains of the opening bars of the Max Bruck Violin Concerto floated through the star filled night of the Mizner Amphitheater in Boca Raton.  At the end of the program, our husbands who stayed in the back row told us they could barely hear the music.  Because of Sandy, I heard the concerto at its most glorious with someone who loved it as much as I did.

Later, Sandy, who did not belong to my book discussion group, asked if she could attend a discussion of the book Strapless which I was going to lead.  This book depicts the history of  the painting of Virginie Gautreau (Madame X) by John Singer Sargent.  During the discussion I  mentioned that the painting which caused a great scandal for both the model and the painter is exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The next day I asked a group of people who belonged to the group if they wanted to go to the museum to see the painting.  Only Sandy wanted to make the 240 mile round trip from the Poconos to NYC with  me to view the magnificent painting. She made my excursion so enjoyable even though music, not art, was her forte.

These are just of the many, many precious moments we shared in our too brief 14 year friendship.
 
Two weeks ago, a dear friend of ours died.  Abe was a renowned doctor whom we only knew socially.  We met him and his wife in our Pocono community, and when we decided to become snowbirds which is the term applied to Northerners who spend the winters in Florida, we bought a house about 10 miles away from his.  One day I told him that I was able to acquire a position teaching literature at Palm Beach State College.
"What do you teach?" he asked.
"A play by Shakespeare, John Donne, John Keats, Dylan Thomas, Edwidge Danticat, Pablo
Neruda, and any other writer who belongs to the same ethnicity as any of my students. If I have a Chinese, African, or Muslim student, I discuss a story by an author from his or her culture."
"May I come to your class!
"Certainly," I replied, "but why?
"All my life I only read scientific and medical works.  I have never read a play by Shakespeare or studied poetry. I feel it's a real gap in my education."
Dear reader, Abe was 85 years old, successful, wealthy, and well-respected, and he was worried that he didn't know Dylan Thomas!  
He sat in the front row of my lit class and was an inspiration to the 18-22 year old students who appreciated every comment he made.

Sadly, he did go gentle into that good night recently. My husband and I will miss his sweet smile and compassionate manner.

Fourteen years ago I fell in love with the saddest, most poignant eyes I have ever seen.  They belonged to a 2 pound, 2 ounce great soul who was sitting in a cage.  I asked the attendant to let me hold him him in my hand, and  the little dog begged me so eloquently with those mournful eyes,"please don"t put me back in that cage."  I looked at the wee puppy and an electrical spark flew between us that only happens once or twice in a  lifetime if one is fortunate.  It was a moment in which we both knew that we would love each other completely and devotedly.  Until July 2 we were inseparable.  He thought his main duty in life was to protect me, and he did-all 12 pounds of him.  I will not enumerate all the exasperating and wonderful experiences we shared, but he was, as  Auden said, " My north, my south, my east, my west, my workday week, my Sunday rest.  Bless you Macduff, who could not love enough.
But he came to me last night in my dream, and I reminded him that he
was my muse who sat by my side as I wrote my book The Conspiracies of Dreams.  I composed much of it on our many walks.  The world is so empty without him.

SandyDidner's Dreams: A dog came to me in my dream last night

SandyDidner's Dreams: A dog came to me in my dream last night: A song from Les Miserables has the lines:  there's a grief that can't be spoken, now my friends are dead and gone.  There's a pa...

Fantastic Day.  My grandson is 8 days old and we had a huge party to celebrate his Brit Milah this afternoon.  Before I describe the marvelous occasion I was astounded  to see some of the guests. One young man who has been a close friend of my son since the boys were 18 months old came hundreds of miles just for the event.   As I looked at this person whom I hadn't seen in a few years I remembered one Saturday night I left the 2 boys ( who were all of 13 years old)  alone on a Saturday night and came home to find an absolute mess in the kitchen because they spent the entire evening baking a German Chocolate  Black Forest Cake which was Julia Child delicious.  How many teenage boys would do that to surprise parents?  Another guest was my son's college roommate who is now the head of a history foundation at Southern Methodist  University and came all the way from Texas to our son's home in Pa.  I was so touched that he would travel such a great  distance to celebrate with us.  The mohel was also a cantor and  after the ritual everyone joined in many songs.  Thanks to lidocaine and Manischevitz wine my grandson slept through the entire procedure.  Above all, my son's giant 4 month old puppy who now weighs 43 pounds and is chewing every piece of furniture in sight behaved.  Of course, my husband walked her for an hour early this morning and I walked her twice before the guests arrived, so she,as well as my grandson, slept during the party.  A Brit Milah is the only kind of party in which one hopes the guest of honor sleeps through the event.  At one point, both grandmothers, the grandfather, the parents, and the baby posed for a photo.  The love flows from generation to generation.
Unfortunately, one of the deserts was a chocolate rum, Elysian concoction truffle which was absolutely addictive; however, I couldn't eat too many because I had eaten tons of  peanut butter-banana ice cream parfaits.  Since I am a vegan, the menu included a barley-mushroom pilaf and Chinese sesame noodles.  Those who were not vegans dined on incredible edibles, and the house was filled with the joy that only great meals accompanied by great conversations can provide.

Tomorrow, my husband and I return to the flat, tropical land of alligators, egrets, and blue herons.
I will miss the rolling hills, rhododendrons, robins, and maple trees of the land of my birth:  Pa.  I love her Appalachian mountains and rivers, but I can no longer tolerate the 16 degree below winters when I walk my little dogs.

My son who flew in from Oregon for this wonderful event is giving me tips on adapting my book The Conspiracies of Dreams into a film script.  After all, he was one of my editors, and he gave me much valuable advice as I was writing my novel.  Yet, I have seen so many movies that fall far short of their literary twins.  I think only The Wizard of Oz  and Smoke Signals are better than their prose versions;  let us see what will happen if my novel is ever made into a visual medium.  I will try to finish the script this summer after I complete my summer session at Palm Beach State College.  I cannot teach 3 classes, take care of my dogs, play tennis, practice the piano, and write creatively at the same time.  So I am waiting for summertime when Gershwin said the "livin' is easy."

My book The Conspiracies of Dreams is available from every on line distributor and independent bookstore.  Please support the independents.  Their businesses are unique and wonderful places to inhale the wonders of literature.

May you all have as great day as I had today.

What Do Your Dreams Say About You?

Yesterday I taught a story by Sherman Alexie called "This is What They Mean When They Say Phoenix, Arizona".  One phrase in the story particularly affected the class.  The protagonist, a Native American, states that most of the people on the reservation only have a bottle of alcohol and broken dreams.  We had a discussion in which we defined the term "broken dreams."  One of the students recalled Langston Hughes" poem "What Happens to a Dream Deferred?"  For those of you who may not be familiar with this which so tersely and eloquently depicts the frustrations of those who realize their dreams are two inches beyond their farthest grasp I quote it here:

                         What happens to a dream deferred?
                         Does it dry up
                         like a raisin in the sun?
                         Or fester like a sore-
                         And then run?
                          Does it stink like rotten meat?
                          Or crust and sugar over--
                          Like a syrupy sweet?
                   
                          Maybe it just sags
                           Like a heavy load.

                           Or does it explode?

      So many of us hope our dreams will not be deferred.  My students are in college because they have dreams.  I teach them because I want them to accomplish their dreams.  I love to see them experience epiphanies.  It is marvelous to see the glow in their eyes when they achieve a great goal, grasp a new idea, or learn the difference between fact and opinion and begin to think critically.

What happens, however, when dreams of individuals, groups,  cultures, and nations go unrealized?   So many athletes at the Olympic Games have dreamed for years of winning a medal and only three will.  I have watched those who win silver cry in disappointment on the podium.  I see buildings go up in flames because citizens are disappointed with their governments, presidents kill their citizens because they must maintain their dream of power, and states endure endless wars over shattered dreams.

Can a person, a culture, a nation be defined by his or her or its dreams?  Or to rephrase the question, "What makes us happy?"  Dreams are perhaps the conscious or unconscious expression of our deepest desires.    If we stop dreaming, do we stop existing?  What is the difference between a dream and a nightmare?

I use this line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream:
      
       Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream
       It shall be called Bottom's Dream because it has no bottom.

as the epigram for my novel The Conspiracies of Dreams since Bottom was  transformed into an ass from the waist up while the manly part of him was was on the lowest rung of the social ladder.  Yet  the part of him that was human dreamed of achieving the highest heights and for one wonderful night he did.  

Every character in my novel, even the donkey (seems nicer to call her a donkey instead of an ass) has a dream.  Each is a dream shared by all humans for eternity:  reciprocal love, respect, a safe homeland, and a search for that which gives spiritual meaning to one's life. 

And I have a dream that everyone will keep on dreaming dreams that will fulfill him or her.              

                                                Macduff and I


Fourteen  years ago I fell in love with the saddest, most poignant eyes I had ever seen.  They belonged to a 2 pound ,4 ounce mournful puppy who was looking at me beseechingly from a wire cage which, as we all recognize, is a shelter's euphemism for a prison.  I asked an attendant if he would take the little dog out of the cage and let me hold him.  The puppy  sat in my hand and his eyes asked me as eloquently as any tongue can speak, "Please don't put me back in that cage again."

I looked at the mournful little mite; he gazed hopefully at me, and a spark that I have only felt when I met my husband and when I saw each of my three children for the first time ignited.  I knew that the dog and I had bonded in the same way:  total, reciprocal, unconditional love which would never be broken.
"As long as I live," I promised him solemnly, "you will never be placed in a cage ever again."

I took him home and my children who were still mourning the death of our 120 pound Samoyed who had died 8 years ago stared at the pygmy and pronounced, "That's not a dog; that's a rat."

Undeterred by my sons' negativity,  the tiny Yorkie wobbled over to my sneaker which was twice as big as he was, seized it ferociously in his teeth and shook it vigorously.  We all laughed at the sight of the chutzpah of the midget tilting against his giant windmill.  Since I had been teaching the Shakespearean play Macbeth that day I shouted, "Lay on Macduff, and damned by the sneaker who first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"

The name could not have been more appropriate.  Macuff truly believes it is his duty to protect me.  He has bitten or threatened the wallpaper hanger, the carpenter, the exterminator,  the painter, and the electrician.  .  On the other hand, my New York  next door neighbor whose house was burglarized every  winter when she went to to Florida was never robbed again after Macduff protected  her back yard.

When we moved to the Pocono mountains I would take him and his little friend Pippen, whom I acquired to keep Macduff company while I worked long hours both as a nurse and an adjunct instructor at a college,on 5 mile walks every day.   While  we walked they sniffed every three inches of the hike and sprinkled their pee mail on the next three inches.  It took hours to walk the miles and we often took a swim in a mountain lake half way through the hike.  Therefore, I kept a little notebook with me and began to write my novel while we hiked and lolled on the beach.  After 10 years the notes evolved into my novel The Conspiracies of Dreams.

Now Macduff is 14, suffering from arthritis, and Pippen has cataracts and hypothyroidism.  Thus, our daily walks are limited to the twice daily visits to Okeeheelee dog park.

Macduff still loves to listen to me play the piano, still gazes at me with all the love I have ever seen in another living creature, and still barks protectively whenever anyone comes to the door.

He is inspiring me to adapt my novel into a screen play and Louise Penny, the great Canadian mystery writer has given me permission to quote this line from her last book How the Light Get In which has been nominated for the Agatha Award.  In her novel she describes the  fictional detective Armand Gamache's dog , Henri, as a dog who is so dumb he will never get into Harvard but he knows two things;  he knows he is loved and he knows how to love."  What better compliment can be given to anyone? Lay on Macduff, and blessed be you who can never love enough!

My book The Conspiracies of Dreams which  is a story which is 90 per cent true about an Egyptian spy who falls in love with an Israeli and must decide if he will be true to the only woman he will every love or betray his religion, his country, and his religion.  It also reveals the political intrigue involved in the 1956 Suez War in which MI6 agents betrayed England and France bribed Israel to attack Egypt.  Above all, a donkey is the true victim.  Intrigued?  the novel is available as an ebook for $2.99 from Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, com, Ibooks.com and as a paperback for $12.99 from the same sources.

Adapting a novel to a film

Last night I saw Saving Mr. Banks and understood completely how protective Mary Travers was of her characters as Walt Disney adapted her book into the wonderful film Mary Poppins.  As she said, the characters in her novel are family.  I feel the same way about the characters in my novel The Conspiracies of Dream,s, and I know how I want the cast to interpret my words, and the cinematographer to film the scenes.  I know how a cast can change the entire tenor of a film.  Do you know that originally Ronald Reagan and Anne Baxter were to star in Casablanca and Shirley Temple and W.C. Fields were the first choice to play Dorothy and the wizard in The Wizard of Oz?  What different films they would be.

The same is true of readers who peruse my book.  I have had about 15 presentations of my novel, and at the end of each talk I ask the attendees what they think the theme of the novel is.  So far, the audience has given me 8 different answers, and while each is valid,  none is the one I have in mind.  Therefore, literature is a two way path:  the writer writes and the reader interprets what he or she will.  Sometimes the reader understands all that the writer intended; sometimes the reader surprises the writer by surmising more than the creator realized he had imparted in his work.  That has happened to me when someone in my audience says something about my book that I did not realize I had implied.  Serendipity!

But the play is not the thing.  So much depends on the cast, the director, the cinematographer, even the music, and especially the publicity, the marketing, and the distribution.

So, I will write away this winter break and who knows?  Perhaps I will finish the script; someone will be interested, and my dream of seeing The Conspiracies of Dreams on the screen will come true.  Will the film be better than the movie?  Perhaps they will both be excellent.  A girl can dream, can't she?  

Although I am a teacher,I am the one who is learning from my students

My class of college freshmen and sophomores are extremely diverse.  My students' ages range between 17 to mid 50's.  Some of them have only been in America for two years, others claim Cherokee and Taino  heritage.  A few can barely read English, but they know how to solve an algebraic equation with two unknown quantities. One young man, who was persecuted for his Ba Hai faith in Iran, told me of his harrowing escape through mountain passes during many dangerous nights, while another told me how she and her family were threatened by the Tonton Moucoutes in Haiti. Despite their disparate backgrounds and lack of the cultural and educational opportunities people who belong to the upper middle class take for granted, they have insights many of the privileged do not have.  One girl broke down in class when she analyzed the poem "The Black Snake" by Mary Oliver because the poet compares the snake to "a beautiful dead brother" and her brother had just died.  Another boy analyzed "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen  because he had returned from Afghanistan and saw the horrors of war.  Now he will be redeployed to that forsaken land the day before his wife is due to give birth to his first child.

Despite their lack of knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary they have an immense hunger to learn.  They are amazed that "gh" in the word "enough" and "ph" in the word "physician" and "f" in the word "farm" all have the same sound.  Why does " a part of" mean "belong" when the words are written separately, but "apart" when written as one word means "separate?  The word  which completely confuses them is "sanction" since it has 2 completely opposite meanings.  If one plays in a sanctioned tournament, the match is approved by a  board, and one acquires a ranking.  If the United States applies sanctions to another country, we do not approve of that country's actions.

I was born in a very homogeneous town, went to colleges whose student bodies also were very homogeneous in the Northeast, and lived in a community where everyone was my race and religion. To read about other cultures or see them portrayed in movies or on television is not the same as interacting with people of different races in a very intimate setting..  Until I began to teach in Florida, I was not aware of the myriad linguistic, cultural, racial, and religious difficulties that our diverse populations confront every day. These problems are major obstacles to getting an education, a job, even an apartment. 

The most wonderful moment, however, happened this week.  I did not teach my class last Saturday because it was the holiest day in my religion, and a professor who is not Jewish covered for me.  On Tuesday, a concerned Haitian student inquired why I did not come to class.
"Were you sick?" she asked.
  I told her I did not come because it was the most sacred holiday in my religion. 
 "You're Jewish?" she exclaimed.. 
 I nodded, and she gave me a big hug and yelled out to the rest of the class, "Hey, everybody wish Professor Didner  La Shanah Tovah." 
"How did you know how to say "Happy New Year" in Hebrew?" I asked her in astonishment.
"I work for Jewish people" she  replied. "Boy, Jews have great food on their holidays."
I told her that my definition of a Jew is someone who feeds you before you sit down to eat, and the entire class roared with laughter.
"Is that why you always bring us Dunkin Donuts if we answer a hard question?" someone asked.  (I always ask a difficult question at least once a month and bring the donuts if someone finds the answer).
"No, I bring you donuts, blueberries, grapes, and strawberries because I want you  to know that learning is sweet," I smiled.
The class applauded in appreciation, and then we settled down to analyzing Langston Hughes poem "A Dream Deferred."  

I hope their dreams will not be deferred.

By the way, my book The Conspiracies of Dreams will be featured on the web site www.indieauthorland.com  It is available until December 31 at the discounted price of $2.99.  Also, look at the other books featured on this site.  They all are good reads.