At the Vodbon Retreat for Classical Studies, the rigor is much vaunted among the members, the supraintelligentsia. Located on 500 acres of virgin, verdant vicinage, it is a fecund setting for the fifty carefully selected men and women (minimum age 44 for men, 26 for women) who find themselves in the enviable position of, not only having a great love of Latin, Geek, and Sanskrit, but who have been vouchsafed complete contentment because of that love. They are amateurs, in the root, precise meaning of the word; far above the merely professional, so called, academicians – perhaps even deluded into thinking Aristotle, himself, had indeed left the place to them in a will!

These fifty have no outside domestic encumbrances – they are, as it were, between those permanent relationships. The average length of stay at the Vodbon retreat is seven years, open to individual preferrence. There is no minimum, of course, but once a Vodbon Scholar, you are welcomed back at any time, for any length of time, in the Graduate Pavilion, nearby the main compound. Pavilionites, as they are called, in their numbers usually hover around an additional forty to fifty classicists. Of these there is a slight preponderance on the distaff side, which is more or less true in toto too. The approximate locus (it has been said by the extreme few aware of its existence; who are not Vodbon themselves) may be in Virginia.

Along with honor and privilege come rules and regulations. All scholars, while on campus, dress in period Roman, Greek, or Hindu robes and sandals. Additionally, persons of the pavilion are allowed to adorn themselves with a simple laurel made from sassafras-like greenery. Tinted lenses or shades may be used, if one wishes.

Five villas, each home to ten Vodbon initiates, surround the vast library and free book dispensary. Within this same circle are an outdoor amphitheater, and the AVC lab building (audio, visual, computer) which is part of the seminar building. In this same structure is the ever popular Classics Trivia Game Lounge (w/wetbar wo/cash register) where many good-natured, but often rather heated, contests occur on a relatively informal schedule. In my experience, there has never been a wait longer than, if I remember accurately, two or three days for a book acquisition request to be filled – loaners or keepers – I really don’t know how they manage that; and especially because I order some arcane tomes. Once they pulled this off when all I gave them by way of order information was a Xerox of Roderick Usher and Friend’s reading list from Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Check it out for yourself, if you don’t easily recall that to which I refer in the story, and you’ll understand better what I’m saying. They had all ten books, two in first edition – priceless - in my hands as keepers, within 48 hours. Now you tell me... And then as if that weren’t enough, Winifred Portsmouth, the head librarian, apologized to me personally, and gave me a good bottle of sherry, so I should

not to tell "the head man" (more on this reference anon) about taking so long. I mean... Winifred is famous, at Vodbon anyway, and is often quoted for having said: "Ideas and works of the imagination, of the intellect, of the heart, and of verbal art should not be sold for profit. It is wrong." (I shall not make any comment regarding the rumor, in outside academia, of their being a special room at the Vodbon Library which holds over a thousand scrolls from the lost collection of the Library of Alexandria, burned down, as you know, in 640 AD, during the Arab conquest.)

This afternoon I was looking at a journal that I kept during my first year here. I found this old eclogue of mine folded up and tucked into it. It may help me to tell you about Vodbon if you experience how I first felt when new to it myself:

Toupalitus: Do not look so glad to see me Darwinian, it wants to spoil

The careful humility instilled by my parents, and theirs.

Darwinian: It is not you, good Toupalitus of Rena – whom the military

call Counsel, and the maidens Lykes, after that animal which

Toupalitus: What say you? Your patron goddess’ petals fall not within the

secluded groves of your poetry? Then, what raises her ire?

Perhaps, if you give me my answer, I might intercede when next

I stand before the temple at Rena.

Darwinian: I fear not brave friend. For it is the hills themselves which

Toupalitus: (Laughing) You can not mean this, Darwinian, surely the

Darwinian: Perhaps this is so, let then this campaign begin, for the parchment in my sack grows brittle and the ink n my vial

turns to vinnegar – only mark well, Toupalitus, it is not a

maiden from the village school you choose to bring to my

my service, but a power; whom I must serve.

Toupalitus: (Disgusted) Aagh! Your words would make Great Bacchus return

wine from his stomach.

Add the letter to attorney called "The safety of the people is the highest law."

Add a little more history each time _______. Two channel.

{New section} DISTOPIAN Word/Thought/Legal Events which caused actual physical shock and trauma scars.

Two Times Two Stories

"First door on the right, just past the bust of Beethoven, Dr. Emmanuel.." A downpour swept in on a bluster of wind and, with rainwater dripping off his taupe-colored trenchcoat onto the black and white patterned floor of the entryway, Chad Deleroix gave his new friend the directions he'd needed since they'd left the rehearsal hall. They had come from another long session working with telavurt technicians, and the entire Composers' Opera Company, in a part of town near upper Broadway that gave poor odds on finding a public bathroom. Of course, the composer thought, Emmanuel could have used a dressing room at the hall, considering they were open precisely for this reason; for all the musicians and singers, and televurt people. Moreover, made available on a day when the Manhattan School of Music facility would normally be antiseptically locked-up against tobacco-hooked predatory thieves and homeless AIDS4-infected prostitutes. "The guy must be forgetful about such bothers; but I'm a poor one to fault that." he mused.

The door closed on some light-hearted comment, drowned-out in any case by a bellicose report of thunder outside, but possibly concerning where Chad had directed Beethoven to stand guard. Alone with himself now in the foyer for the first time in many long hours of whining and bitching, and gratification and joy, his richly appointed front hall consoled; revered him, as always. The strangeness of being involved in a project with a second person, even now, stirred him to reviewing that decision. He had agreed, after all the years of ritualistically maintaining insular work habits, to double-up with a collaborator on an opera commission.. Straining against it, he had considered the libretto with developing interest over a period of several weeks at his daughter's home in New Hampshire, finally agreeing. When he did so, his daughter, Fidelio, looked worriedly at him. The breach of his world, which a partner represented, was still so new that he had vented; loudly reminding her how often she got that look since her divorce from the "Lochinvar pianist" he had warned and threatened about, to no avail, back in 2005.

The Poet came striding back down the hall, adjusting himself. "Nice locus classicus, thank you sir." As they walked down two steps into a tabernacle-sized drawing room with a great black Steinway, Emmanuel took up a conversation from the previous day, "Now, once more if you please Chad, what is it you find so appealing about the Goethe?"

"The Answer is in the opera." was the reply; spoken while looking, not at his colleague, but across the room at a portrait hanging between two dark and immense mahogany bookcases built into the wall. "In The Final Warning of Eisenhower."

Dr. Emmanuel, who had written the libretto and spent yet another afternoon working at this, their mutual - some were already saying - masterpiece, raised an eyebrow. He was nonplussed by the unexpected answer to a question designed to effect a hopefully refreshing (not to say polite) shift to a new area of discourse. "How's that?" he asked, somewhat resignedly then settled into a black leather chair under the portrait. Adjoining this chair, an antique chessboard, upon which pieces of light and dark colored marble deployed in medias res. The implied opponent and source of the gift itself, he knew, was Wilhelm Bitzleitner, current conductor of the Paris Opera. Maestro Bitzleitner was an early and perpetual firebrand for Deleroix's artistic output.

"What would you think of me if I told you the reason for my intense interest in our Eisenhower was to be found in the writings of your Goethe?" A pregnant moment passed. Dr. Emmanuel watched Chad Deleroix move to a twin of the chair in which he sat in silence, thinking about what seemed the most unusual utterance from his friend during the year they had known one another. No small assertion, given the frequency of queer, prima facie that is to say, comments of which Deleroix was perhaps famous. Indirect light in the room suffused a mise-en-scène quality that eliminated the sense of walls or corners in the surroundings: there were only the two, with the game between.

"I would not say anything, my friend, I would sit here and listen to what you have to tell me." Said Dr. Emmanuel.

"Good. But you must tell me your thoughts, when I am finished. Not only because I have come to value your intellectual judgement, but also, please do not react right away, give this a little time, at the very least the time it takes for me to make my little speech..."

"Not at all, sir, you are not given to speeches."

"...well then, fine; I am necessarily looking forward to your reaction because I believe we must alter, radically the third act." Chad Deleroix held his hand up like a traffic cop then, just ahead of a truncated, on the threshold of audible inhalation. "Let me begin by telling you that there are certain passages in Goethe's Divan of West and East, and elsewhere, pertaining to rapprochement with the Eastern sphere, that permanently altered my discernment of both history and our prospects for a future.

Dr. Emmanuel stood to walk over to the decanter on a table across from them in order to pour a glass of port, but within a few steps he stopped and returned to his seat. "What, do you mean: 'alter'?". His lips were a thin, impregnable, straight line.

"In his Faust, Goethe, you will recall, Herr Doktor Emmanuel..."

Emmanuel's line became perceptibly thinner, he had never liked Chad's jocular use of this appellation.

"...wrote these words: ' He who seizes the right moment, is the right man."

"Certainly, yes, but please tell me why, with the vurtaping nearly ready to be done, why -- how you could think of changing my libretto? An entire act, Chad! The entire third act!?"

"But there is a thing I must tell you about first...it is an odd thing – but I doubt if, without this first understanding, you will understand the utterness of this need for the third act change."

"Well...yes, but...I see, Chad. Please, continue."

"When I was in my early 50’s and still working on my Turn of the Screw; before all..." he looked around at the splendid accommodations, "...this. I was alone in Munich then, and my life as Kappelmeister was well into becoming tedious and stark."

"Yes, I too have had such a time – perhaps we all do."

"No, not like this, my friend."

"Tell me about what was wrong."

"It is how I handled what was wrong that is important. I felt a need that, the intensity of perhaps, is beyond explanation. It had to do with a need for the hope of perfection in my life. So I took some action, I had to try to provide myself with the hope of perfection.

"I see. What action. Tell me."

"On the Uberbahnhoffstrasse, I took a flat, an empty flat that had no windows, and that was removed at the top of an old nineteenth century converted mansion."

"You moved to this studio?"

"No, I did not move." He touched , then rubbed at his temple, remembering things, a wish, as if to touch the thing remembered, to find the little indentations and curves and freeze the self-selection of chroma in the shapes at the right thought time. "I did not move in." Instead I had it cleaned, three times; by three different firms in different parts of the city."

"This is remark..."

"Then I paid the lease for three years in advance. There was no trouble at all, I made some excuse to the owners, who were very pleasant about it."

"Yes, one would expect that."

"But I did not expect it. I thought there would be some suspicion; especially when I forbid them to enter the premises at any time or for any reason, whatsoever. I made them sign a document, which I still keep to this day, in the desk next to my bed, indicating forfeiture of all the rents paid with a large additional amount -- a penalty."

"Yes, there would have to be a penalty..." Dr. Emmanuel’s voice had taken a slightly less animated tone, as if it were coming from a higher place in his thoughts.

"Then I put the first items into it. There was a very neatly built bookcase in the third room, just off the entrance. I dressed hurriedly that morning, forgetting to match my socks, I remember that. Then I put the first thing into my attaché and walked to the flat in great excitement, though with each block I gained, I became as though I were going into a light trance, in a way, I cannot describe it."

"You are doing fine, what did you have in your case?"

"It was the revurt of Rachmaninoff 3. Martha Argerich. From the 80’s. I took off my coat in the empty living room and placed it on the floor, next to the attaché. Then I put the attaché on top of my folded coat and opened it. I took the revurt, still in its stretch seal, and walked into the room with all of the clean shelves and placed it in its spot."

"You had no SeePee to run it on?"

"No."

"Just the Argerich Rachmaninoff in its stretch seal -- in its spot."

"I have not run this program, does she play well, Chad?"

"Yes. Quite above satisfactory. Without any splices, straight through all the way, I checked with the son of the engineer, who was a teenager then."

The next day I returned with a new pair of shoes, illegal material now, I had arranged to have sent from Paris the day before – after returning to my residence. I took them to the flat. I took them out of their package and put them, without even thinking of checking on the revurt, I could feel that it was alright -- still where I had put it, and that it was...right; I put the shoes in the empty bedroom closet.

Things started to get better for me almost right away."

"This is extraordinary, though I wish to be clear on how you knew what you wanted for this...sanctum."

"Not quite right...sanctum...not exactly that. The following day was a Saturday, I remember this very clearly, Dr. Emmanuel, it was a splendid day in June. I went to a shop I knew and purchased two, well nearly – virtually, identical chess sets that had been imported from Istanbul, not plastic, stone. The owner of the shop was someone I could trust and he assured me the had both been carved by the same artisan. There was something about these sets. For several months, after a rehearsal I would sometimes go past the window and look at them, they were so similar, I arranged for the shopkeeper to display them in juxtaposition from time to time. They were very expensive, quite exquisite, my friend agreed to do this when I told him that if I not correctly guess which was chess set #1 and which was #2, I would purchase them both.

On the day I bought them, immediately I went to see a man who was a sculptor in metals, whom I knew from years before when I had admired his exhibition at an opening one evening, to which I had been invited, accidentally, really, as it seemed to me then. I had him permanently affix the pieces on one of the boards, for I no longer could tell them apart, nor, to my delight, did I any longer attempt to do so. I thought it would bother me to watch, I was afraid he might place a piece incorrectly, and then what?"

"But this sculptor friend of yours played the game and knew the proper positions of the chessmen, yes?"

"I was not speaking of their relative positions, Herr Doktor, rather, their objective positions within the apropos squares."

"Yes, I see now...but only one set. Just the one, and the other."

Chad finished for him. "Suddenly, I recall the moment well, it occurred to me that this was an artist whose talent I believed in, and who had not asked about my purposes, and that it would be right.

"I paid my man handsomely and took the fixed set and the...operating set to the flat. I was indeed pleased to see a table had arrived and it was standing in front of...my door as I had arranged.

"When I had finished setting the two boards with their players on the shinny, refurbished Louis the 14^th table, done in coats of glossy black enamel,

I could see, standing there in the living room, in front of my latest acquisition, I could sense that it was right.

"That night I slept seamlessly, and woke refreshed as I had not in years.

The newsboy on the corner was there as usual and I bought a paper. I put this under my arm and went to a place where I had seen men lined up at 7:00 AM several times. The place was a bar that alcoholics frequented.

"I went inside and ordered a cup of coffee, then took it to a table by the window and read the front page over and over. The headline that morning was about The Catastrophe. The super-sinister seismic spasm in California. I remember I read it over and over, perhaps a dozen times, before it sunk in. The death toll was beyond comprehension; the estimate in that morning’s paper was that fully 2000 square miles of the southern part of the state had disappeared into the sea.

Part II

[Performance Direction] Eisenhower is standing before his aides de camp close on the shore of Dover, England, the night before the invasion of

Normandy. His foot is up on a chair at center stage, the men around in a near semi-circle:]

Lydian mode based on Eb:

Tenor Aria #71

"

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