From: msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Books in the time of love
Summary: paranomasia, groan
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 20:53:02 GMT

                                Monday, the 5th of October, 1992

  Vidi, vici, venit, all through the day
    Upstairs, downstairs, in a slinky negligee.
  Vidit, vicit, veni all through the night
    All around the world, never turning off the light.
  
But, Mark, as Susan tried to say, I'm not the world's most passionate guy.
Long before anything had come so far, I'd have gone out for a drink.
Just a pint with my old friend, John W., down at the Opium Den. Still
the best brew-cum-bookstore in town. Down on Burma Street, just south
of Denay's new financial district. It was before the days when everybody
with a Ph.D. had gotten into filmmaking, and we had been shooting that
docufeely at the time, the one about the courageous English teacher,
who, despite having been confined to a wheelchair with Carpal/Meta-Carpal/
Tarsal/Meta-Tarsal-Tunnel syndrome, had fought shortsighted
administrators and buffoons to replace the tired old method
of having her students read Shakespeare with having them watch
all of Peter Greenaway's film adaptations on video instead. And, anyway,
the week had not been going well. For one thing, both of the stars (Dustin
had come out of retirement to play the protagonist's old feminist firebrand
of a mother) wanted more money.  Can't really blame them, you know. Daniel
was on the way out. Sure, he could still act, but that old Merchant--Ivory
was all done for, all the suitable novels had been done. There were still
action movies, but Daniel couldn't run like that any more, and he knew that
it was the beginning of the end. He was just trying to store up a little
retirement insurance. And Dustin, probably, had just taken a liking to the
guy, you know these actors, had taken him under his wing, and was just
making a demand of his own to strengthen Daniel's
Daniel's case. Leastways I didn't think that Dustin needed the money.
But, there was no way we could pay either of them any more, and that's
all there was to it. I didn't want to be cruel, but it wasn't like
they were the only ones capable of playing the parts. Then at home there was
Martha---it seemed like she had been ticked off at me for some inexplicable
reason for months. Probably it was when I'd spent the kids'
college money on buying that library at auction. And my other
wives, Anna and Livia, were taking her side. Well, as I said, I didn't
exactly want to go home, but then again I wasn't too sure I wanted to go
argue some more about Thomas Mann with John either. That's why I was pleasantly
surprised when he didn't show up alone, but with that new gal he'd
met. Maeve had come up from Buffalo just the month before. I was
even more pleasantly surprised to learn that Maeve's sister would
be joining us presently, just as soon as she got off teaching her last
class. Apparently, she had gotten a teaching appointment with the start
of the term in the Department of Language, Literature, and Film. Maeve
had come with her, hearing about all the jobs. The whole world was
coming to Nunavit. John and I had been in the Department of Physics,
Video, and Applied Mathematics since there was little more here than
some igloos and an airstrip. Oh, and the OD, of course. Anyway, we
three were already on our second round of drinks, and Maeve
was even getting a little tipsy hinting about always wearing red
underwear or something. Must've been some private joke.
I was glad when they went out on the dance floor and then Maeve's
sister arrived. A woman after my own heart, she'd apparently been
browsing in the bookstore first, because she'd bought a copy of Green's
Gesammelte Werke (the new Library of America edition), and she walked
right up to me without waiting to be introduced and said to me (in a
rather husky voice, Lauren Bahcall-like),

``Professor Morris, I've wanted to meet you so much. I've really admired
your work. _Stephen and Me_, yes, of course, but I think your
later films are so dark, and, yet, on the other side of it, they
are so deeply...voluptuous, wouldn't you agree?''

And, yes, she was stunningly beautiful, but almost before I'd
had a chance to register that fact, we were simply hitting it off.
I mean, most everybody else I knew, including my soi-disant
wives, liked _Stephen and Me_ the best. But I thought it
rather derivative. I mean, sure, it made a tribute to Hawking,
a kind of sequel to _A Brief History of Time_, updating that earlier
film with the story of Hawking's establishment of his
Correct Theory of Everything There Is, or CETI, as it was called
for short. Plus there was the note of pathos I threw in at the end,
about all the theoretical physicists he put out of work.

``Professor ... Plurabelle?'', I guessed her name to be the same
as Maeve's.

``Yes, but you can call me Lola.''

``Allah be praised. Please call me Mike. And please tell me some more about
what you think about my films.''

Well, I was head over heels even then. Don't get me wrong. I'm
not one of those cynical guys who converted to Islam just for keeping
a harem. My conversion had been real, deeply real, and I had tried to show
it even through my films. There'd been all that youthful irresponsibility
I had to atone for, especially my misguided defence of Salman Rushdie.
And then, when Rushdie died, in that horrible way in combat, it was
as if my faith in Western civ itself had collapsed. I began to read
all of his books, over and over again, especially his darker and brooding
late novels, and I began to see that he had been searching for some sort
of spirit, emotion, or heart that had been missing from Western liberal
culture. And, though I think he never saw the answer for himself, it was
right there in front of him all the time---submission and total submersion
of the individual will to that of Almighty God, in short, Islam.

But, this is a sad story, perhaps the saddest that there is. For
how was I to guess then, or even later, when she had seemingly given
herself wholly over to me, that she was really calculating and cold, ambitious
to make a name for herself in film, even at my expense? It was foolish
of me to say yes, when she asked me if she could make her own docufeely,
documenting the making of _Sit and Deliver_, and it was foolish of me to
introduce her to Dustin and then to Daniel. They seemed so superannuated,
harmless, tame even. It didn't even cross my mind they might hold me a grudge
about the money.  And yet, come to think of it now, every time I couldn't
find her, I'd look and I'd look and then she'd be coming out of one
of their dressing rooms. Sometimes with the two of them together, laughing.
How was I to know the fourth and final love of my life had fled
and was hiding among the stars?

                     Mike Morris
              (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)