Mentally vivacious

A recent culture experience has me feeling mentally vivacious (also mentally loquacious, if that is possible) and not at all erudite.

I went to a performance of the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre yesterday. After a day of concentrating closely on my computer screen, a total blow-out of my bicycle tire on my commute home, and a rather mundane supper of leftover ham in a stale tortilla (not even as tasty as it might sound, I am afraid), the play was a whoosh of energy and wit. Just exactly what my brain needed.

The play swivels between a garden setting in the early 1800s and modern times. The modern setting is trying to uncover piece by piece what happened centuries ago. As the audience, we are privy to the truth of the earlier situation involving Lord Byron, a crazy family, a tutor, and his precocious tutee, Thomasina. We also get to listen in on the conversations of modern truth-seekers unearthing clues from old books and a gaming log. The dialog of the three-hour piece zips along and moves from philosophy to Latin to mathematics to poetry ... Ashamedly, I am sure that I missed many references, but, nonetheless, I was captivated and enthralled. More than anything, it made me think about education and the kinds of thinking that we dedicate ourselves to in today's real world. It seems to me that there is a value to exploring both classical education and dreamy romanticism.

No pithy synthesis, I am afraid. I just wanted to share my enchantment.