this is awkward.

Fiddler on the Roof is always poignant, no matter how you slice it, but the current tour--and Topol’s farewell run, as I understand it--hit me at several particularly vulnerable spots, such that bare finger skin had to suffice, during Act 2, for the tissues I forgot to bring. There’s the whole 3 daughters on the verge of flitting thing, their interactions with Tevye, the father, and the moment where the parents--married 25 years--evaluate the meaning of love. (How long ago was 1984?...25, right.) Ouchy. It probably didn’t help that I’d been having a run of ring dreams. Ring dreams are when I’m just drifting into REM and something/someone/somethings swoop in to rip my wedding and engagement rings off. I don’t exactly wake up, except just barely...enough to realize I must remove the rings and place them on the bedside table. This, of course, is where dream logic and logic-logic do not coincide: How the table is safer than my fingers, I cannot say, but apparently it’s the taking of rings from me that is pertinent, as opposed to mere taking. And it’s just occurred to me that to take the rings off, but keep them, is a perfectly adept metaphor for the “emotional divorce” advocated by counselors to Alzheimer spouses. It’s a sort of emotional cantilevering, without a nice sturdy iron I-beam. Rather awkward for years on end. But life is, in general, awkward. Awkward is not entirely bad. I’ve liked many an awkward creature.