Natalie Kertes Weaver

Venus and Mary by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Of the many things I have read recently, one thing stands out in my mind in high relief. It is the opening of Lucretius’ masterwork on Epicurean philosophy, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Here Lucretius invokes Venus to help him craft this work, identifying her as the governor of all nature and the one through whose light all else comes into being. With her help, Lucretius trusts that he can write his truths with confidence and ability in defiance of dominant philosophical norms.

Lucretius goes on to extol the great wisdom of that ancient Greek, Epicurus, claiming that the philosopher saved humankind from foully groveling upon the ground by liberating people from religious superstition. Superstition, he goes on to say, is the source of true impiety and criminality, made manifest in Lucretius’ example in the sacrifice of child virgins.

Why do people succumb to religious superstition and such horrible deeds, he queries rhetorically. Because of fear of death, terror at the anticipation of penalties in the afterlife, and the desire to avoid tribulations during life. So great is the fear of suffering that it makes people susceptible to religious exploitation and subordinate to the authority of priests, whose power rests exclusively on superstition. Such a ruinous condition can only be countered by the philosophical examination of nature, including all things celestial and terrestrial, spiritual and material. Having prayerfully introduced his case and the reason for his critique, Lucretius proceeds to explore the basic tenets of Epicurean metaphysics and ethics. Continue reading “Venus and Mary by Natalie Weaver”

A Cornucopia Sometimes Curiously Stuffed With Nothing by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited The summer is getting late. School supplies are coming in, and it is time to try on the uniform pants in order to get them hemmed before the first day. I always feel a little funny at this time of year, almost queasy from my mixture of nostalgia for waning days at the pool and excitement for crisp plaids and fresh notebooks. I continually miss the scents of summer skin, chlorine and suntan lotion, even while I look forward to the autumnal fragrances of newly sharpened pencils, cinnamon sticks, and rubbery Halloween costumes. Time, at this transitional time, is always pregnant with the promises of both bounty and loss, so I am not surprised by my wistfulness as we turn to fall. I am, however, taken by its depth for me this year. For, this transition has been a little heavier than usual as I ask myself, “Where did it go?” and “What did I do?”

You see, I wanted to travel more with the kids, but I became sick, or rather, a sickness I already had presented itself unmistakably and irrevocably just as the summer was getting under way. So, I slept a lot, but it was not the sleep of rest and recovery; it was lost time. I felt bad about my crankiness and limitations, so I tried to make up the time by adding more play to the times of day when I felt good. The kids weren’t playing along though, and I just felt more exhausted. I was a broken record, as I kept asking what anyone wanted to do. And, I felt like I was failing when we couldn’t arrive at activities, or menus, or destinations. Continue reading “A Cornucopia Sometimes Curiously Stuffed With Nothing by Natalie Weaver”

Gretchen Before and After by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited In May, I attended the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust. This work, featuring four soloists, a full choir and orchestra, and a children’s choir, was first performed in Hungary in 1846. Its composition was inspired by a French translation of Goethe’s Faust, following the basic storyline of Faust in four acts: Faust’s disillusionment; Faust’s encounter with Mephistopheles and the allure of happiness; Faust’s seduction of Marguerite; and Faust’s damnation/ Marguerite’s redemption. With such limited space, the opera/cantata plays more as a précis of Faust than a full telling of the story, which is perhaps why the dramatis personae seem rather more like caricatures of themselves than richly developed characters. There were beautiful moments in the music, and the performances were brilliant, but the whole left me feeling apathetic… that is, until I went to the bathroom.

While waiting beneath the gorgeous mosaics of Cleveland’s Severence Hall for use of one of three (or four?) petite little stalls in the ladies’ room on the atrium level, I chatted with one of the regular elders I have come to know in line over the years. She complained to me, “I don’t know why Marguerite gets saved and Faust is damned. After all, Marguerite is the one who poisons her mother. Marguerite is really at fault here, don’t you think?” Ah, I thought, here it is. The woman is blamed, but for what? For murder (occasioned by Marguerite’s carrying out Faust’s directive); or for her beauty (Faust cedes to Mephisto’s power to seduce because he is, in his own way, seduced first by Marguerite’s appearance); or for having sex with someone outside of marriage (Marguerite carries the burden of responsibility for shaming her family and for her own destruction). My bathroom friend would have been happy to see Marguerite pay for these crimes and found it dissatisfying that she was delivered from them. Continue reading “Gretchen Before and After by Natalie Weaver”

Daphne’s Salvation? by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited

The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra last week put on a two-night production of Richard Strauss’s Daphne: A Bucolic Tragedy in One Act. It was an outstanding collaboration between conductor, singers, instruments, and the stage and costume production and design team. Included in the show was a lone Dancer who represented the emotional content of the music (as opposed to representing a single voice or persona in opera). She nimbly wove about the stage painting a sort of visual poem of tones and feelings rather than articulated concepts.

I went to the show, expecting something really beautiful as I always find Strauss somehow soft on the ears. And, it was a masterpiece to be sure. Franz Wesler-Most, the symphony’s Music Director and the opera’s conductor, commented on the production in the program notes, observing that this opera is rarely performed because it is so difficult to sing, especially the role of Apollo. This team made it look effortless, and it was as a result a tremendously satisfying, rich, and edifying night out. Continue reading “Daphne’s Salvation? by Natalie Weaver”

Um… Happy Mother’s Day? By Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited In the Smithsonian Museum of American History, there is an exhibit on food and the way it has changed on the American table over the years. It is an interesting exhibit for a number of reasons. It shows, for example, a reproduction of Julia Child’s kitchen. It shows the advent of T.V. trays and Swanson frozen dinners. It shows when wine became a staple beverage. And, there is one of the most entertaining images in all of Washington, D.C. …

In what I believe was a 70s era campaign to popularize frozen food, there is a magazine article featuring a woman on the floor, cleaning up a milky cereal mess. The caption above her reads, “My favorite part of breakfast is when it is over.” At first, I thought the woman had vomited her food, emphasizing (if not also explaining) the point that she hates breakfast. Then, I noticed the dejected-looking child in a highchair, scowling at her mother, down on the ground, managing what was in fact a spill. In the center panel, a mother looks on at her frowning child, who is this time refusing to eat lunch. In the third and final panel, a miserable child now rejects dinner, but mom, still working the situation, observes, “Dinner isn’t so bad because it is almost over.” One understands that soon the unhappy little darling will be in bed, and mom won’t have to do this again until tomorrow. Continue reading “Um… Happy Mother’s Day? By Natalie Weaver”

Gretchen at Her Spinning Wheel by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited In my continuing music education, I was recently introduced to Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (hear, for example, Renee Flemming’s performance of this work). The song is a setting of Goethe’s poem “Gretchens Stube,” in which Gretchen, a poor but upright maiden, sits alone in her room at the wheel, thinking longingly of Faust. Gretchen spins her mind and her threads on the cusp of ruin.

Faust desires Gretchen and with the help of his demonic wingman Mephistopheles (to whom he has bartered his soul in exchange for worldly favors), Faust has laid a trap to seduce Gretchen. Faust eventually gives Gretchen a sleeping potion to administer to her mother so he can come to Gretchen at night undisturbed. Contrary to the assurances of Faust, the potion kills Gretchen’s mother, even as Gretchen is conceiving a child from the illicit union, with the voyeur-devil panting in the wings. Gretchen’s enraged soldier-brother is subsequently fatally wounded in a brawl over the sordid matter, living just long enough to tell Gretchen exactly what he thinks of her. Destitute, Gretchen drowns her illegitimate child, is imprisoned, and dies burdened with grief. In Goethe’s Faust, Gretchen is ultimately saved because she was once so stainless a figure and in her failings became so sufficiently penitential. Stripped of her name and transformed as una poenitentium, her soul re-appears in the final scene of the second act of the tragedy among the choir of angels receiving Faust in his own redemption, who, by those same angels, is himself bewilderingly whisked away from the clutches of a very confused Mephistopheles.

Leaving off for the time being the interesting and important question of men writing women’s stories, the whole of Faust, and specifically Gretchen’s song within it, engaged me in a feminist religious critique in ways I found counter-intuitive. On one level, I could not help but read Faust as a Promethean sort of hero. Here you have an accomplished scholar who is simply exhausted by the futility of his work, and especially the shortcomings of theology. He is seeking empirical knowledge from any place that it can at last be found. Minus his grandiose local stature, he kind of reminds me of myself (and lots of other academicians in theology who have glimpsed religious faith and myth in their most tiresome and dangerous social distortions). I incline to commend Faust for entertaining the background, the darkness, the animal, the bodily, the elemental, the unspeakable – for, that is also classically the “feminine,” yes? Continue reading “Gretchen at Her Spinning Wheel by Natalie Weaver”

Normativity, Naming, and the Divine Image by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Over the past two days, I have been considering the challenges and competing perspectives on Carol Christ’s post, “Who is Gender Queer?” I’d like to weigh in with some thoughts on normativity, naming, and the divine image.

I do not identify as genderqueer. But, like Carol describes in her post, I have often felt misfit or misnamed. As we all do, I internalized categories of masculine and feminine in childhood and somehow felt myself to be “masculine” in my physicality, my dark eyebrows (which people – frequently strangers – felt regularly inclined to describe, critique, and even molest in bathrooms, checkout lines, and salons), my hairy legs (which seemed hairier than my girlfriends’ legs in grade school), my interests, even the way I thought. My sense of my sexual self felt somehow masculine because I never experienced my body passively. I climbed and jumped and ran more than my female classmates, and I had much smaller breasts than the women in my family. The real proof for me, though, was that I never had a period on a 28-day cycle. I grew up thinking I was defective and generally not a very good female. All of this, of course, I now know merely reflects the onslaught of normative messages I unwittingly accepted in my formation about the experience, presentation, and performance of physical sex and gender. Continue reading “Normativity, Naming, and the Divine Image by Natalie Weaver”

Six Degrees of Separation, Hungarian Royalty Chefs, & A Trip to Lens Crafters by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited We were playing six-degrees of separation, I think. I don’t know if there are rules to follow. It was after dinner, and we were talking about people we had encountered and their linkages to others. Surprisingly quickly, we found ourselves connected to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Elvis, Winston Churchill, and the Queen of England, herself. My mom had autographs from Jerry Lee Lewis, Duke Ellington, the Globe Trotters, and a gaggle of NFL players and professional golfers. She once chatted up Tori Spelling in a bathroom in Canton, Ohio at a Football Hall of Fame Induction ceremony. My husband worked in film in Los Angeles and Cleveland, meeting a crowd of stars and politicians over the years. One time he had a chance, face-to-face encounter with Prince (the artist himself!) as one rode up and the other rode down an escalator at a Borders in Chicago. As the distance between them closed, my husband quietly acknowledged him, saying, “Bravo!” Prince, whose head was angled away so as to avoid having to say anything, apparently, after a moment of consideration, looked back over his shoulder as they passed and silently mouthed, “Thank you.” I still give my husband kudos here… I mean, what else do you say to Prince? This connection, moreover, gave us our links to Morris Day, Jerome, Apollonia, and Shelia E., so we were all excited at his impressive list. I had a far less remarkable cast of characters to contribute, but I could offer a Vatican insider acquaintance, providing thereby a papal connection, which gave us our links to several world leaders. I felt I had contributed my part, even without autographs and celebrities.

With the exception of a Robert Redford encounter while volunteering on a political campaign, the couple that was with us had fewer serendipitous meetings to report. But, we did learn that there was a grandfather in their mix who had served as a royal cook in Hungary. The game now shifted to linkages in history. Who were our notable ancestors? Who were our ancestors, period? Continue reading “Six Degrees of Separation, Hungarian Royalty Chefs, & A Trip to Lens Crafters by Natalie Weaver”

Stories for (Re)creation in the New Year by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Two New Years’ Eves ago, I came to the realization that I did not need to watch the television countdown to ring in midnight and begin the New Year. I had always watched the show with my family as a child, and even while it made me feel curiously bad, I still somehow felt like it was an obligatory component of the day, right up there with kisses, well wishes, blowers, horns, and sparkling wine. Since we seldom went to an actual New Year’s party, it was a way of connecting with the world. I gave it up, though, when I ultimately deemed the musical guests and hosts to be unviewable.

I was not looking to make a new tradition per se that year when I decided to light a hunk of myrrh in the fireplace. The myrrh had come to me as a gift in a Three Kings Christmas set. It made a pretty decent blaze because I had placed it atop a bed of shallow candle wax from an old votive candle. Let me say, while it smelled lovely and burned a long time, I do not recommend doing this – the fire became alarmingly vigorous for a little while. Anyway, I spread a cloth on the floor and set out some food, calling my family together to sit in a circle by the hearth. We dimmed the lights, and by fire I read the Epic of Gilgamesh (with some tasteful PG 13 edits) from 11:00 pm until 1:00 am. I had been reading great epics to the kids, and it seemed somehow appropriate to return to Babylon that year. We did not mark the New Year at a precise moment but rather sailed into it on the tides of an ancient tale. It was a revelation to us all, mostly because we were reclaiming that night from the media usurpers who had defined it for us for most of our lives.

This year, we intended to do something similar until we ended up throwing an impromptu party for some friends and their children. I knew they would all have limited interest in my second annual fire reading, so we just fed them and eventually counted down the final moments of 2014 on my watch. But, after they left, we returned to the myth, this time reading the Babylonian Epic of Creation. We hit the mark, as the story itself was ritually performed at each New Year. It carried us deep into the first day of 2015 and was also a great revelation. Continue reading “Stories for (Re)creation in the New Year by Natalie Weaver”

The Wedding Dress by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited A few weeks back, I was digging around for a picture, and in the process of looking for one picture I uncovered decades worth of memories. Here I was by the pool one Thanksgiving at my old apartment in California. That was where I cooked my first turkey. Here, in another photo, it was Christmas Eve at my mom’s house. I was with my best friend, wearing matching Santa hats. She was so beautiful as a girl. I have become accustomed to her as a woman and had forgotten how much I loved and admired her then as well. Weren’t we supposed to take off and travel the world together? And, then, here were the wedding photos of our Christmas wedding.

I noticed that it was an intimate party. At one point in the service, my father-in-law was holding my flowers since my sister was fixing my veil. He was chided the rest of the night for being my flower girl. I remembered that I did not have my hair professionally coiffed when I saw the backstage image of myself taking out bobby-pinned curls in lingerie before I dressed. Did I look like that? Who took that picture? The flowers were white roses, accented with holly berries and leaves, and my bouquet was a solid bundle of red roses. Oh yes, and, here was our friend from Chicago… with his hair dyed blond? Why was he hanging out with my girlfriends in my room the night before I was married? And, didn’t my mom inadvertently catch his shirt on fire with some incense? Yes, that’s right. Very innocently, smilingly, moving casually, she patted out the near tragedy sparking on his back side, saying in her best southern accent, “Oh, my! We put a little hole in you, didn’t we?” A little disgruntled, he muttered, “That was a new shirt.”

The one great indulgence of the wedding was the dress itself. It was ivory with blush colored roses embroidered on the tulle overlay of the big skirt. I was not concerned that people would think me a non-virgin in ivory, but it was mentioned to me as a consideration. I loved the bustle in the back that was gathered from the generous material of the gown’s train so that I could walk and dance at the reception. The friendly ladies who sold me the dress came to the wedding specifically to make sure the bustle was perfectly drawn. The bodice had a gentle piping, which made the top sort of stand on its own. The same ladies also insisted that I have some extra padding in the top. Come to think of it, they seemed to have been globally concerned with the success of the garment and me in it. I wore a white silk wrap around my shoulders, which made me feel like Grace Kelly. The covering was my favorite part, which I added at the last minute. The photos prompted me to get out the dress once again, for I had not looked at it in the nearly fifteen years since I had it hermetically preserved following the wedding. So far, it had not yellowed. I was surprised to see how funerary it looked through the peep window, sealed up as it was in a box around cardboard shaped like my torso. It made me think that perhaps I should be buried in it some day. This thought has discomfited me with a complexity of sacramentality, morbidity, practicality, humor, despair, love and sorrow that I have yet to comprehend or shirk. Continue reading “The Wedding Dress by Natalie Weaver”