Cri de cœur

Shakespeare, Ophelia, Macbeth, Maya Angelou, and my best friend Lisbeth

As a young person, voluminous reading on my part, far from serving as a great escape — a ‘running away from’ - was a ‘running towards’. Reading was my existential physic. On occasion, when my closed and locked bedroom door was not sufficient to block out other family members’ explosive arguments, I’d put some of The Bard’s works in zip-lock plastic bags, along with my fishing gear, in our 12-foot green fiber glass boat, pull the chord on its 7-horsepower engine until it sputtered to life, and steer it along the winding tributary behind our home. Then I’d make my way out to the vast sea-like Warwick River, where I would fish, and read, often out loud, while the boat rocked me in cradle-like fashion. Most of all, I read Shakespeare.