Meeting Stanza
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Stanza lookalike signals her agreement with Vladimir |
Some law of logic should fix the number of coincidences, in a given domain, after which they cease to be coincidences, and form, instead, the living organism of a new truth.
—Vladimir Nabokov, Ada
May 4, 1994
After working late at the office, I cycled a few blocks to my favourite whole food restaurant, the Grain Exchange, named after the splendid old heritage building in which it resided. I had not got far into my meal before it settled gently into my awareness that my waitress, my tall, slender, golden-haired waitress, was an epochal beauty. My senses blunted by hunger and weariness, I hadn’t noticed, even when we conversed briefly about the merits of my glass of chardonnay. Yes, she had a charming little lisp and a quiet yet outgoing manner – an actress, I guessed, from her near-flawless diction – but it was only when I turned my head later and the sight of her caught me unawares that I said “oh, dear” to myself and turned all fussy and bashful and assiduous and thrust my nose into my volume of Rimbaud like an ill-prepared student trying to avoid being asked a question.When she gave me the check, I found it difficult to look at her directly, and when I did, I saw she was blushing most deeply, almost trembling, as if she were about to cry. Nothing to do with me, I told myself; she probably got barked at by some loutish line cook in the kitchen (she had cautioned me she was new to the job). But what an unbearable and unexpected strain of her beauty this was! I took note of her name as she'd written it on the bill – Zoë, complete with umlaut and a big, Zesty Z. Dazed and a bit giddy, I almost literally stumbled out of the place.
Zoë. Reminded me of having to look up the word "zoetrope" a few months back. And if I remembered rightly, the syllable zoë was Greek for LIFE. Also EVE.
Then, looking back for a fateful instant, I spotted, on the wall, directly above the table where I'd been sitting, hanging among the other antique farming implements and rustic gewgaws, a very old, no-nonsense, formidable-looking SICKLE. As in SCYTHE. As in GRIM REAPER. As in DEATH. Hanging over me, as it were.
Zoë, Life. Sickle, Death. Had I stumbled into another "matter of life and death"? A Matter of Life and Death was the original UK title of the classic 1946 Powell-Pressburger film released over here as Stairway to Heaven. So there was that.
Then, mounting my bike, I saw, directly across the street from where I had been sitting – on the wall of the old Alberta Hotel building – some of those damn gargoyles from the old Herald building again! The same gargoyles who had watched Kari and I introducing ourselves to each other seven years earlier under the big H at the university! Those silly antique creatures were up there grinning at me again!
Perhaps it was simply the intensity of the look Zoë had presented to me that explains what happened next. I went to bed, fell asleep in the normal way, but woke up next morning in a different room. It was clearly a dorm room, if a curiously well-appointed one, with wall-to-ceiling bookshelves of a dark and luxurious wood. I began unpacking books onto these shelves, wonderful volumes of (and about) Milton, Blake, Donne, Dante, all the heavy hitters I thought I’d never again have time for. Now it appeared I would, and I wondered to myself, chuckling aloud, who had bribed what corrupt university bureaucrat to get me back into school after I had flunked or dropped out three times.
I heard a knock at the door. The room was a large, comfortable L shape, so I had to turn a bit of a corner so my voice would carry as I beckoned my visitors to enter. As I did so, I noticed a striped, red-orange-rust-coloured scarf lying on the floor near the door. Now I wonder whose…
*******
Perhaps it was simply the intensity of the look Zoë had presented to me that explains what happened next. I went to bed, fell asleep in the normal way, but woke up next morning in a different room. It was clearly a dorm room, if a curiously well-appointed one, with wall-to-ceiling bookshelves of a dark and luxurious wood. I began unpacking books onto these shelves, wonderful volumes of (and about) Milton, Blake, Donne, Dante, all the heavy hitters I thought I’d never again have time for. Now it appeared I would, and I wondered to myself, chuckling aloud, who had bribed what corrupt university bureaucrat to get me back into school after I had flunked or dropped out three times.
I heard a knock at the door. The room was a large, comfortable L shape, so I had to turn a bit of a corner so my voice would carry as I beckoned my visitors to enter. As I did so, I noticed a striped, red-orange-rust-coloured scarf lying on the floor near the door. Now I wonder whose…
But my company had already entered and was making its way toward me. And it was rather a company: two dark-haired girls in front, two fair-haired lasses lagging behind.
And, yes, the dark-haired one on the left was Kari. She approached me with her left arm outstretched, about to present to me her companion, who at first glance looked an awful lot like her. I was immersed for a moment in déjà vu. Was she going to introduce me to her "little sister" Larisa again? That made no sense, but this certainly felt like a strong echo of that day in November 1988, with the two near-twins walking toward me. No, this girl was not Kari's little sister Larisa; she was shorter, darker, Mediterranean-looking, perhaps Italian, Greek or Jewish. In any case, very cute, with her hair tied back under a ball cap she wore with the peak pulled down so low that its shadow almost, but not quite, hid her dark, very striking eyes, eyes that were now turning up expectantly at me as her expression uncoiled itself into an easygoing smile.
With a flourish of modest formality, Kari laid her palm out flat and spoke. “Peter. This is the poet I was telling you about. This is Stanga.”
“Stanga,” I said, shaking her hand eagerly, but I hoped not too eagerly. “Stanga. Is that, like, an anagram?” For some reason, I assumed that this was not in fact the final take on her name. Turned out I was right.
“No. One letter’s difference,” and she tilted her head most deliciously when she said it. Cultured voice. No accent, but perfect diction. Just loud enough to be heard.
One letter’s difference. Those magic words that had run through the story from the beginning. So, she knows. I got the impression Kari was pretty relieved to have introduced us, both of us being poets and all, and she was probably thinking, Maybe Stanga will know what he’s on about some of the time. It had all the hallmarks of a classic matchmaking moment, something that might find its way (mischievously embellished, no doubt) into a wedding toast some day.
So Stanga and I chatted for a bit about poetry, Milton mostly, and I recall the term “metrical alchemy” being tossed around by one of us. The fair-haired girls sat on the spare bed (yes, I had a double room to myself!) and argued about the significance of the scarf. I think Stanga quipped, in a stage voice, something to the effect that “that can wait for another day,” and then, under her breath, "They'll never get it."
So we never did solve the scarf puzzle, but Stanga took it with her when she left. We were definitely going to “see each other around.” Oh, yes. She seemed soaked in poetic and Hermetic lore, and somehow, she knew the gist of my story as well. Suddenly it seemed possible that my creative loneliness was at an end, that some wonderful and transcendent work would come of all this after all. And she was cute, in every possible meaning of the word.
Later I ran into my father on campus. He was driving the niftiest looking sporty little white convertible, and he looked great, as always. Poetry still wasn’t his thing, but hey, when you’re doing that well, who needs poetry?
When I woke up again eventually, in my (now tawdry) little one-bedroom, I was shocked and genuinely offended that it had all been a dream. “No, there must be some mistake. I'm sure I was back in university...” I muttered drowsily as I showered.
At the breakfast table, it was hard to bring real life back into focus. Beside my plate, for instance, was the Norton Complete Poetry of Henry Vaughan that Alex had lent me some weeks before. I’d promised I’d return it to him that day and didn’t want to forget it. I’d been combing through it intermittently for weeks, trying, unsuccessfully, to find this couplet I’d seen quoted in some Arvo Pärt liner notes. The writer was talking about the Edenic quality of the music and by way of illustration quoted Vaughan: “Man in those early days was not all stone and earth/He shined a little, and by those weak rays had some glimpse of his birth.” He cited no specific poem, and I was beginning to wonder if he’d even got the right poet. I just couldn’t find it.
And, yes, the dark-haired one on the left was Kari. She approached me with her left arm outstretched, about to present to me her companion, who at first glance looked an awful lot like her. I was immersed for a moment in déjà vu. Was she going to introduce me to her "little sister" Larisa again? That made no sense, but this certainly felt like a strong echo of that day in November 1988, with the two near-twins walking toward me. No, this girl was not Kari's little sister Larisa; she was shorter, darker, Mediterranean-looking, perhaps Italian, Greek or Jewish. In any case, very cute, with her hair tied back under a ball cap she wore with the peak pulled down so low that its shadow almost, but not quite, hid her dark, very striking eyes, eyes that were now turning up expectantly at me as her expression uncoiled itself into an easygoing smile.
With a flourish of modest formality, Kari laid her palm out flat and spoke. “Peter. This is the poet I was telling you about. This is Stanga.”
“Stanga,” I said, shaking her hand eagerly, but I hoped not too eagerly. “Stanga. Is that, like, an anagram?” For some reason, I assumed that this was not in fact the final take on her name. Turned out I was right.
“No. One letter’s difference,” and she tilted her head most deliciously when she said it. Cultured voice. No accent, but perfect diction. Just loud enough to be heard.
One letter’s difference. Those magic words that had run through the story from the beginning. So, she knows. I got the impression Kari was pretty relieved to have introduced us, both of us being poets and all, and she was probably thinking, Maybe Stanga will know what he’s on about some of the time. It had all the hallmarks of a classic matchmaking moment, something that might find its way (mischievously embellished, no doubt) into a wedding toast some day.
So Stanga and I chatted for a bit about poetry, Milton mostly, and I recall the term “metrical alchemy” being tossed around by one of us. The fair-haired girls sat on the spare bed (yes, I had a double room to myself!) and argued about the significance of the scarf. I think Stanga quipped, in a stage voice, something to the effect that “that can wait for another day,” and then, under her breath, "They'll never get it."
So we never did solve the scarf puzzle, but Stanga took it with her when she left. We were definitely going to “see each other around.” Oh, yes. She seemed soaked in poetic and Hermetic lore, and somehow, she knew the gist of my story as well. Suddenly it seemed possible that my creative loneliness was at an end, that some wonderful and transcendent work would come of all this after all. And she was cute, in every possible meaning of the word.
Later I ran into my father on campus. He was driving the niftiest looking sporty little white convertible, and he looked great, as always. Poetry still wasn’t his thing, but hey, when you’re doing that well, who needs poetry?
******
When I woke up again eventually, in my (now tawdry) little one-bedroom, I was shocked and genuinely offended that it had all been a dream. “No, there must be some mistake. I'm sure I was back in university...” I muttered drowsily as I showered.
At the breakfast table, it was hard to bring real life back into focus. Beside my plate, for instance, was the Norton Complete Poetry of Henry Vaughan that Alex had lent me some weeks before. I’d promised I’d return it to him that day and didn’t want to forget it. I’d been combing through it intermittently for weeks, trying, unsuccessfully, to find this couplet I’d seen quoted in some Arvo Pärt liner notes. The writer was talking about the Edenic quality of the music and by way of illustration quoted Vaughan: “Man in those early days was not all stone and earth/He shined a little, and by those weak rays had some glimpse of his birth.” He cited no specific poem, and I was beginning to wonder if he’d even got the right poet. I just couldn’t find it.
Then I absently flipped the book open, and … there it was! On page 196, the poem “Corruption.” I hadn’t been able to find it because the writer had started the quotation in mid-line. The beginning of the line had been missing:
SURE, IT WAS SO. Man in those early days
Was not all stone, and Earth,
He shin’d a little, and by those weak Rays
Had some glimpse of his birth.
He saw Heaven o’er his head, and knew from whence
He came (condemned,) hither,
And, as first love draws strongest, so from hence
His mind sure progress’d thither.
So – presto – there was the missing stanza.
The missing WHAT?!?! I knew her name couldn’t be Stanga! I’d never heard those strange syllables used as a word before, let alone a name. And there it was – one letter’s difference! How obvious in retrospect! And the one letter's difference was, of course, the Z from Zoë. I hoped StanGa – er, StanZa – didn’t think me too stupid for not getting her name right off. I was all confused, thinking of her still as someone I’d just met. The dream had been that vivid, and it stayed with me for days as an actual experience. Yeah, I met this neat girl in my dorm room and I hope I see her again sometime. But where had I met her? The stanza for which she was named seemed to suggest Heaven (my mind, apparently, had "sure progressed thither"), a sort of Neoplatonic heaven perhaps, a realm where the dead were living and the living were larger than life. The fact that I had chatted with my deceased – but there thriving and much younger – father seemed to confirm this. Typical wishful dream thinking, to be sure, but almost unbearably vivid, dynamic, and energizing. I really felt as if I’d been somewhere new and met someone new, someone unlike anyone I’d met before.
As if I weren’t strange enough already.
And proclaiming the existence and charms of a girl you’ve met only in a dream is not going to open many doors for you in the daytime world. I did share the dream with a few of my cherished initiates at Carswell, one of whom, a film buff, urged me to see A Portrait of Jennie, in which Jennifer Jones visits Joseph Cotten from the land of the dead, he paints her to great acclaim, and (what my film buff mischievously left me to find out for myself) in the end she departs, and all he has left, the only material evidence of her existence, is a scarf she leaves behind.
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| Exhibit S: Jennie's scarf |
As with the Kari situation, it took many years for all the facts to come out. Stanza would make cameo appearances in my dreams from time to time, but only as a member of a group of us having drinks, where I would overhear the odd fragmentary comment from her. Her best quip, describing our friendship to someone else: “Our relationship is strictly Neoplatonic.” (In my dreams, people get those jokes.) The Hermetic, Neoplatonic aspect remained strong – not surprising, given the stanza I had christened her with. Henry Vaughan, it turned out, had a TWIN BROTHER named Thomas who was a noted alchemist and Neoplatonic/Hermetic magus in his day and wrote extensively on the subject. And in the final couplet of Vaughan’s poem I found a decidedly apocalyptic echo of my Grain Exchange experience:
But hark! what trumpets that? what Angel cries
‘Arise! Thrust in thy SICKLE.’
When I finally gained access to the Internet in 1999, our “friendship” deepened. I discovered to my surprise that Stanga was:
- a common surname; a certain Peter Stanga was editor of the European Romantic Review (ERR), where, not surprisingly, articles on Blake featured prominently;
- the Maltese word for ‘bar’ or ‘nightclub.’ If I ever find myself in Malta, I will of course use this as an excuse to go out for a drink or two.
- the B-side of a single recorded by Sly & the Family Stone’s female backup singers in 1970. Sly had set up a subsidiary, Stone Flower Records, to record them, and they called themselves Little Sister because their leader, Vaetta Stewart, was Sly’s younger sister. It holds the distinction of being the first popular recording to use a drum machine. The A-side of the single was called “Somebody’s Watching You.” That number and their only other recording, “You’re the One, Pts. 1 & 2” both made the top 30, but that was it for Little Sister. Why they would call a song "Stanga" I still haven’t been able to find out (and we're in 2018 now).
Stanga. Somebody’s Watching You. You’re the One.
Hmm. A guy could get ideas.
Stanza, it turned out, was a common short form of Constanza, so I looked both names up, unearthing:
- a post-punk anarchist-type girl (‘hi i’m stanza’) in California who claimed not to exist (‘about me: I don’t exist’) and yet wanted someone to write her a (fictional, bogus) LETTER so she could get some sort of grant to go to school (so ‘please write me a letter,’ essentially);
- the ‘character sheet’ for a certain Constanza, an imaginary character in an online Hermetic role-playing game.** She is rated according to her empathic and intuitive abilities, her knowledge of Hermetic lore, her psychic/precognitive abilities, you name it. And at the bottom, her Chief Phobia: "Evidence she’s not real."
And what about the ‘real’ Stanza—my Stanza: she’s after all just imaginary, right?
She herself is rather coy on the subject (admittedly a sensitive one for her). In one dream colloquy, she stood up and proclaimed (I think she'd had a few pints): “To be AND not to be, THAT is the answer!” And later, more calmly, in the same dream: “Well, Esse est percipi, I guess.”
To be is to be perceived. And, put more precisely, to be perceived is to be. Maybe we should leave it there for now.
But the morning after I had that dream, in August 2002, I found, on the floor of the book warehouse where I then worked, two identical signatures from the same book, just lying there, for no good reason. Twin signatures. I had never seen anything like it there before, nor did I again. It was the opening signature of the book, which was a collection of essays on aesthetics. The title page(s) on top said it all:
Uncontrollable Beauty
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| A certain FB profile pic, whose owner shall remain nameless |
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| Sigh. Another bloody swan[n]. |
**"Such things exist?! Why have I not been told of this?!" I exclaimed at the time. Now, years later, I wonder to myself whether this whole crazy Story isn't some sort of impromptu Hermetic role-playing game.
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