Zephyrus

Even before I became involved with the San Francisco Olympians Festival, my family and I were naming our computers after Greek mythology (with one detour into the Hindu pantheon).

My first computer was Athena -- goddess of wisdom.

Then I had Sarasvati -- named after the Hindu goddess of art and literature, whose symbol is the swan.

Next came Orphée -- yes, you read that right, Orphée, not Orpheus. I used the French version of the name because I got the computer when I was in France (Sarasvati having sung her swan song) and was feeling inspired by Cocteau's quasi-mystical belief in the Orpheus legend.

But two weeks ago, Orphée descended into the Underworld and didn't come back, and rather than trying to resuscitate him, I decided it might be time for a new machine. Say hello to Zephyrus.

Zephyrus is a MacBook Air, and I think I'm in love. Who was it that said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?" (I remember being an imaginative little girl, wanting to believe that fairy tales were true, and asking my father "Daddy, do you believe in magic?" And, ever the computer geek, he would reply "Well, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic...") With Zephyrus, it's easy to feel the magic. It's amazing that everything I need or want in a computer can now fit into a machine that weighs less than three pounds. I have visions of myself toting it everywhere, writing in every coffee shop in town.

And as for the name? There are several reasons behind it:

• The computer is a MacBook Air, and Zephyrus is one of the four winds in Greek Mythology.


• Zephyrus is the gentle and propitious West Wind, and I live in a city where the wind predominantly comes from the West (and is rarely gentle and often chilling, but oh well).


• One of our upcoming Olympians plays is about Zephyrus. It falls on the weekend I'm producing, and I'm super excited about it: it's Brideshead Revisited crossed with Greek mythology!


• It just so happens that I got this new computer in April, and as Chaucer teaches us, there is a link between April and Zephyrus:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes...

The shoures soote

"Wheat Field in Rain" by Vincent Van Gogh. Image from vggallery.com

I seem to be developing a habit of shouting defiantly into the face of rainstorms. It combines several of my passions: for quotations, for heightened emotions, and for wet weather (blame my Oregon heart). Here are two examples I recall:

Between my junior and senior years of high school, I participated in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Summer Seminar, a 2-week program that taught 70 or so kids about the inner workings of a big repertory theater. We lived in dormitories and had to walk about a mile to get to town. On our second or third evening there, we were walking to see Richard II in the outdoor (Elizabethan) theater, when the skies opened and it started pouring down rain. So, naturally, as the high-school theater geeks we were, we started quoting.

The Seminar had made us memorize a choral speech from a Greek tragedy, and it felt appropriate to shout that out as the winds and rain raged: "Come, Furies, dance! Link arms for the dancing hand-to-hand." Then we switched to King Lear: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!"

But it only rained harder, and perhaps spurred on by our Greek, Zeus even started hurling his thunderbolts. We decided we needed to appease the gods. That's when I got my brilliant idea. My voice loaded with irony, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "Shall I compare thee to a SUMMER'S day? Thou art more LOVELY and more TEMPERATE!"

The rain stopped eventually, though I don't know if my plea for temperance did much good: the show didn't get canceled and we spent a damp and chilly evening watching it.

Now, today, April 1, in Poughkeepsie, was a warm, muggy day--very unpleasant. But thunderstorms were predicted for tonight, and I was grateful--they're the only compensation for East Coast humidity, in my opinion. I love how the temperature will suddenly plummet and the skies release torrents of rain. You understand where that phrase, "the weather broke," came from. And tonight, during rehearsal, we had a real humdinger of a storm. The drumming rain and whistling wind echoed through the theater. When we took five, some of the guys took their shirts off and frolicked in the rain. One of them began singing an art song by Tosti, called "Aprile."



"Aprile," I thought, "that's like Aprill..." and the words I had to memorize in a high-school Chaucer class flooded back. I stood under the awning of the theater and shouted as loud as I could:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour!

The shouting made me feel strong and defiant, as if the rain were running fast through my veins too; or perhaps it was Chaucer's language, still powerful after 400 years. Ah yes, rain on, you shoures soote, you.