Trolleys, bunnies, and Keats

Three inordinate affections of mine in one entry!

The trolley is decked out for Christmas. I have not mastered the art of photographing it, although I try every chance I get. But I think you can at least dimly sense how attractive it is.

About the bunny: the more I think about this adorable creature that will soon share my home, the less I can understand why anyone would ever want any other kind of animal. Bunnies seem to have all the merits and none of the drawbacks of pets in general. My friend cautioned me tonight—after I had mentioned how much I already missed having the bunny, and when I dismissed today’s woes by saying that everything would be better when I got a bunny—that maybe I needed to lower my expectations or risk serious disappointment. All I can say is, be prepared for Christmas cards with photos of me and the bunny next year. Maybe the best way to end one’s annoyance with pet-obsessed people is to become one.

Now I’m going to finally catch up with my reportage of Keatsmas. There’s no way I can write about it without writing about my friend the gorgon. I feel like an imposter, really, when people act like Keats is my specialty, because Medusa is the one who first loved Keats. I enjoy Keats, but I’m sure I’ve never understood him like she did.

Our little group of literature majors studying abroad one summer found no end of amusement at how seriously she took the dead poet. I must admit some embarrassment, some uncertainty about whether to lose track of the rest of the group or leave her behind as she trudged ever more slowly up Hampstead Heath to the house where Keats had stayed in his illness, muttering things like, “I’m not sure I can handle this.” The towering, brooding Greek with her long, dark waves of hair and the five-foot-two-inch Cockney poet, existential status aside, were an odd couple indeed.

Inside I was wholly charmed by her passionate spirit, her determination to care about things. The day we spent at Blenheim Palace—she, I, and the complete poems and letters of Keats that she insisted on reading entirely, no matter what the syllabus said—is one of the most perfect days of my life. I have no idea what I was reading or writing on that grassy bank overlooking the water, but I relished the frequent excerpts and reactions erupting by my side.

I have celebrated the high holy days pretty religiously, reciting “To Autumn” on October 31, his birthday, and eating only bread and water on February 23, the day of his death at 25. I’m pretty good at slavish rituals, even though for the last few years I thought Medusa had moved on. It has occurred to me that in venerating Keats maybe I have really been venerating my dear gorgon. It made me so happy, almost Blenheim-happy, when she e-mailed me this year and said we must celebrate together.

I never let myself have high expectations for Keatsmas—the only time we’ve celebrated it together in person, it went so dreadfully wrong that Medusa has forbidden me to ever speak of it.

This year I had two pleasant Keatsmas experiences. A few days early I recited “To Autumn” in a dugout for the first time, with an intensely poetic friend, someone who recites poetry better than anyone I’ve ever heard, as we gazed at barred clouds across the baseball diamond; and then that evening I recited it via cell phone to the gorgon as she was being rowed to her sailboat in a dinghy off the coast of Massachusetts. I’m sure she had never heard “To Autumn” in a dinghy.

I hate the double-minded,
but I love your law.
You are my hiding place and my shield;
I hope in your word.
Depart from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commandments of my God.
Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live,
and let me not be put to shame in my hope!
Hold me up, that I may be safe
and have regard for your statutes continually!
You spurn all who go astray from your statutes,
for their cunning is in vain.
All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross,
therefore I love your testimonies.
My flesh trembles for fear of you,
and I am afraid of your judgments.