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A small, but devoted and thoroughly learned assembly gathered at Back Pages on Thursday night - and it was bitter cold outside, which made the warmth inside all the more appealing. The excellent arrangements made by Daniel and Abby were all to the good, very much appreciated, and even the literary dragons seemed to be appeased by it all.

Back Pages has recently reorganized its space and has made it even more light, airy and welcoming than before. Bookstores have, I think, a duty to create a calm environment so that readers can be stimulated by the books rather than by the bustle of an integral Starbucks and salad bar.

Don’t get me wrong - I like coffee and salad, but I rarely feel relaxed in Barnes and Noble, and even more rarely do I find it possible to be tempted by their books. It just reminds me too much of an airport when I’m in those places. And so I go to the magazine racks, or leaf through the large picture books. Back Pages, on the other hand, gets things just right. Where else would you expect to find yourself considering the paintings of Edward Lear or the metrical complexities of the opening paragraph of Karen Blixen’s ‘Out of Africa’? I can see that the books have been chosen, selected with care, rather than just heaped up according to some publishers’ dictates. It makes a difference.

At the end of the day it’s not about the number of people who arrive, or how many copies are sold. It’s about a sense of connection with others who think in similar ways, others who can bring new perspectives, and more wonder to it all. Quality, not quantity.

Back Pages is doing something rare and admirable. It’s providing a place to nurture ideas and grow civilization. To Alex, Daniel, and Abby a huge thank you for a really delightful evening. To the man and woman who were trying to get a last minute baby-sitter so they could come to the talk, thank you; I appreciated the effort taken. And to the photographer and painter from the upstairs studios, whose names I do not know because I have a dreadful memory for names, but who I think were called Dave and Siss (apologies if I got that wrong) likewise thanks for your most enlivening comments.

So take my advice. Check out Back Pages at 289 Moody Street, Waltham. See the dragons first hand. You’ll love the place.

Just to remind those who are near Waltham that at 7:30 pm this Thursday (tomorrow, in fact) I’ll be presenting “Stories We Need to Know” at Alex Green’s splendid bookstore at 289 Moody Street, Waltham. It really is a delightful bookstore if you don’t already know it, and Alex is probably one of the best-read bookstore owners you will ever meet - particularly in terms of the Classics. You can understand why I’m excited to be there, I’m sure.

So come along and enjoy. Come early. Call if you wish: 718-788-9988 to make sure of a seat - fighting for places is always a bit frowned upon in such circles, especially when we can have enough seats ready to avoid confrontations. That may seem like a jokey way to put things, yet I’m aware that at each of the previous events people have actually been unable to find seats. Gratifying for me, of course, but not much fun for them - and since having fun is what it’s all about that seems to be a real pity….

Now that I’ve written that the gods and goddesses of hubris will probably call down a snowstorm and I’ll find myself addressing two people who’ve come in to avoid freezing to death, and a stray dog…

The title here is a quote from Billy Bragg, actually, who uses it slightly differently, but it was too good to miss and so it embedded itself in my imagination some ten or twelve years ago.

These are the three vital things we need in life, and they may be the only three things we need. As we live and grow we’re invited to nurture a sense of the mystery and endlessly fascinating aspects of life; to recognize an awareness of the real beauty that is all around us; and to feel a sense of Passionate engagement with the wonder of being alive.

Like a three-legged stool, though, we have to have all three or it doesn’t work. One can be Passionate about mystery and ugliness, in which case one descends fairly rapidly into the dark regions of the soul. One can be Passionate about the obvious and beauty, in which case one never finds anything more than surface beauty, glamor, and glitz. One can also appreciate beauty and mystery in a half hearted fashion, in which case one fails to be fully alive.

If one has all three, if one chooses to nurture all three over one’s lifetime, then one sees more beauty - for even in places that are not picturesque there can be beautiful actions. One will see that the mysteries of life are endless and create reverence and wonder in us, and a passionate wish to be part of that exploration. That in turn grows our sense of what love can be in the highest sense, and that we’re all linked by it, part of it, like leaves carried along a river.

Without these three aspects, I suspect that the world will appear as just an assemblage of odd pieces and disjointed artifacts. Mystery, Beauty, Passion. They help us stay human and move us towards the divine.

I skipped the Oscars on TV, although quite a few people I spoke with over the weekend were keen to mention movies to each other. These days of newspaper over-hype mean that when friends gather in my neck of the woods, we tend to exchange movie recommendations of our own, which we can then act on or not depending upon what we hear. Movies come and go so fast, and so many are so utterly vapid, that it often seems hardly worth giving up a perfectly good evening unless the promise is going to be fulfilled.

I think I fell into a movie slump some years back when it occurred to me that, if I were a fishing enthusiast, I’d long ago have given up on such a pitiful puddle of offerings as I was expected to fish in.

Then on Saturday I was speaking with an eminent crime-novelist who urged me to see more Quentin Tarantino films like ‘Kill Bill’ because of their ’stylized violence’. I could not gain from her any sense of why it would be necessary for me to do so. As it happens I’m still haunted by the brutal, although ’stylized’, violence of ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Reservoir Dogs, ‘The Usual Suspects’ and so on. Why would I want to add more, horrible, unforgettable imagery? Sam Peckinpah’s movies still jar my memory twenty years on.

I know ours in a violent and brutal world and so filmmakers are just trying to reflect aspects of what is, I suppose. But the more we dwell on the negative the more we’re going to become negative. The way to remove darkness is not to meditate upon darkness, but to turn on a light.

To remove violence from the world we have to start by removing it from our own minds. I reserve the right to protect myself from movies that pull me in the opposite direction.

A dear friend and colleague wrote to me in response to ‘Stories’ and said it reminded her of the theory of seven stages as reflected in Judaic tradition. These seven stages are, it seems, Creational Male; Phallic Male; Warrior; Wounded Male; Leader; Mature Male; and Sage. I’m interested to know more, yet she was pressed for time and this is all I have so far.

One thing that jumps out at me, which I’m not sure I find acceptable, is that these ’stages’ are all placed in a sequence that is male, and no mention seems to occur of linking with the feminine part of the self (and of the Universe) - so the whole leaves me more than a little puzzled.

Does anyone have any wisdom to shed on this?

Yesterday (the self-same Thursday) was indeed busy. The Cambridge Center for Adult Education beckoned, as did some very dear friends from the Blue Hills Writing groups who swelled the audience in the most supportive way imaginable, and we spent some time talking about the Six Archetypes before I had to canter away and be interviewed by Pat Baccilli on her splendid radio program.

As I emerged from the Center one woman in her thirties said, “These archetypes are just great. I don’t feel so alone anymore..” And that’s exactly what I hoped people would feel.

But back to radio: Pat’s a fascinating person and I was delighted that she seized upon the six archetypes and saw how they could work in people’s lives. I do encourage you to listen in to her program - she streams over the web - and if you google her on KKNW Alternative Talk Radio, or go to her website, you’ll see just what an impressive thinker and doer she is. One of her ideas is that we all have ‘crusts’ of living that we have to break through before we can become more fully ourselves - and crust-busting is a task one may have to undertake several times in one’s life….

Pat and I chatted happily for an all-too-brief half hour and at the end of it I couldn’t help feeling deeply contented that there are people like Pat doing good work and getting the word out into the world. That, you see, is what Magicians do. They get the word out, and they inspire. Hats off to you, Pat.

A total lunar eclipse isn’t that uncommon, but it’s still an event worthy of notice and this one was especially pleasing in the night sky. Even if you’re not an astrologist it’s a time when one can’t help thinking about change, movement around us in the larger sense, and that sense of relief when the moon pops out again and all returns to normal.

Thirty odd years ago I arrived in Madagascar and that same night the moon went through an eclipse. Since local papers were all in Malgasche - if you could find one - this took me by surprise, and the huge orb glowed red, unspeakably large in the tropical night, making the occasional naked light bulb swinging over heaps of fruits at roadside stalls seem even more puny as a defense against Nature (with a capital N) all around me.

Whatever it is eclipses do they appeal to something primal within us and reconnect us (if we are willing to turn away from the TV set for a moment) to the vastness of what is. The ego has to take a back seat, perforce, and that is salutary. It would take an insensitive soul indeed to ignore it….

I’ll be giving a workshop at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Thursday, Feb. 21st, starting at 10:30 am - and with questions and discussions it will last about an hour. The topic is the Six Archetypes in our lives and in literature, and it should be a lot of fun for all concerned.

Personally I just love the Cambridge Center. I’ve been teaching there for about ten years, on and off, and I regard many of the folks who work there as family. Several have become friends, also, which is one of the blessings of working in a good place with excellent folks.

So if you want to get the inside track on the six archetypes, hear me speak about them, buy a book, and meet some of the finest people this side of the Mason-Dixon line, then you’d better put this one in your day planner - and make sure you get there early because there’s always a fight for seats….

It’s been a number of years since I was in NYC and in the interim it seems to have improved enormously. I was staying in Noho and what had once been an area of dark streets, bums and thugs, heaps of trash and the occasional carcass of a car was now transformed into something rather more pleasing and far less threatening.

I used to walk through this area with two wallets - the ‘mugging wallet’ with $20 and no credit cards, and the real wallet in an entirely different pocket. I never was mugged (or at least ‘not yet’, as a NYC long-timer put it), but a series of people gave me this tip, which I took seriously after I saw two street beggars in an argument and one pulled out a handgun with a barrel that seemed about a foot long. But that’s another story.

The noise level, alas, was no better. New Yorkers seem to barely stir before 10 am but to make up for it they are frenetically active until about 2 am, and that was a bit of a strain for those of us who retire before midnight and arise at 7.

In this new, calmer, New York I gave a reading at EastWest books on 5th Avenue. They call it a bookstore but it’s far far more than that. It has books in profusion, ornaments, yoga equipment (a yoga studio is upstairs)…. They serve splendid teas and coffees and delicious healthy snacks and sandwiches. They have esoteric books, tapes, CDs, crystals and Tibetan items, and the most astonishing sense of peace in any place I visited over the weekend. After I’d been there a while I said hello to the security guy (a big man, heavy set, blue uniform, very reassuring) and said what a great place it was. “Yeah, ” he said, “This place has a great vibe. It’s something special. It’s got peace.”

He got that absolutely right.

Alyssa and Sky set things up for the talk, and a reasonable sized crowd appeared, including several of the staff (which I took as a huge compliment). I gave my slide show and we talked about the archetypal stages. It’s so pleasing to be in a crowd that ‘gets’ the ideas right away and then starts sharing real insights and wisdom.

It’s impossible to praise the folks at EastWest enough, or to thank them enough. And when, at 2:30 the following morning the firetrucks were caught in a traffic jam immediately outside my window, sirens bellowing, for 20 minutes or so, I once again felt how powerful even the memory of peace can be.

Bookstores can be sacred places. This is one. Take my advice and visit it when you get a chance. The only problem you’ll have is leaving, because you just won’t want to.

This post was delayed by two separate pothole incidents that destroyed sections of my car as I was trying to get to see the Parkway Academy’s production of Macbeth last night in West Roxbury, on a night of heavy rain and bitter chill. Just about right for this most bleak of Shakespeare’s plays - and braving the elements was more than rewarded by the play that greeted us.

I’ve seen Shakespeare done in all sorts of ways (several years working alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company in England will do that to you) and rarely have I been as impressed as I was last night. That is no exaggeration. Anna Portnoy directed her class (from PATH’s own class of ‘09) in a production that was imaginative and felt authentic in the most vital way. By this I mean that no single person was hamming it up or grabbing attention, because they seemed to recognize that they were part of a whole, and they were determined to bring before us issues to do with ambition, power, corruption, and the human price of such issues.

The production’s energy and imagination is signaled right from the start when the main themes are conveyed to us in a Prologue. Two actors come on stage (Christian Gonzalez and someone whose name I cannot find in the program, alas) and begin to talk about a play they’ve seen, as if they can’t recall it’s title. They talk about it in terms of themes - and each time they mention one they spray-can it on the wall - so the words Power, Murder, Ambition and others appear, until they seem to recall the title and as graffiti-artists place “Macbeth” in red in the center. They were to return between each scene, telling the audience what’s just happened and what’s about to happen - and I was entirely won over by them. It’s a brilliant way of guiding the audience through the play; it also felt real. These two truly wanted everyone to see what was going on, and they helped to keep us focused.

A side note here: Excellent theatre depends upon actors who do not look as if they are ‘acting’ at all. The director’s job, therefore, is to find actors who can truly ‘be’ a part without having to strain. This production achieved that aim especially well with these two young men, and it was a mark of the production as a whole. It could, if done differently, have killed a production. Instead it became one of the great features.

But perhaps I’m getting too theoretical there. Certainly, there were outstanding performances - performances my memory will treasure: Macbeth (Marques Latimore) was central, and when, towards the end, he sat back in his green leather chair with his extravagant red furred cloak and crown we could feel fully all the tawdry splendor of every tyrant that has ever lived in a state of anxious denial. Lady Macbeth (Jessica Lopez) gave us a strong, sexy presence with the ability to make her voice project to the very furthest regions of the auditorium, without losing subtlety, and showing us anew how a man can be manipulated by an ambition he sees in the eyes of a lover. Eli Seeman’s Banquo was a real presence on the stage, and when he appeared in the ghost scene his smouldering look of accusation added the final touch to a polished performance and allowed that scene, with Macbeth’s distraught reaction, to triumph. Audrey Guerrero’s Lady Macduff also springs to mind as a strong presence on the stage, such that when she is killed we feel her as a loss, as an innocent victim of tyranny.

It’s possible to name everyone for there was no weak link. I’ll just point out some high points for now. The Murderers were, for the first time in any production I’ve ever seen, genuinely frightening. Rocking slightly on their feet as Banquo approaches, their almost balletic rhythm felt utterly threatening, their crowding around Banquo became truly dangerous, and Fleance’s escape did feel as if it was by a hairsbreadth. Particularly impressive were the step-dancers, who stamped their complex and mesmerizing rhythms down the aisles as they became Birnam wood, moving towards Dunsinane, bringing Macbeth’s end. I’ve seen this difficult scene played many different ways over the years. This was the first time I found myself catching my breath, moved more than I can say, by an action that conveyed so much so economically - the whole world rising up to face tyranny.

None of these actors had ever acted in anything before. PATH does not have an established drama club or a tradition of putting on productions. Budgets have precluded that activity. One might say that they were all Innocents at this. But, dear readers, I have to say that what they produced last night was moving; it was Magic.

And that is worth more than I can say.

Congratulations to the whole cast, to the staging and lighting and sound people (really impressive choice of music, by the way) to the costume makers and families who pitched in, to the director, assistant directors, and to the marvelous spirit of cooperation and open friendliness that was generated - which the audience could feel, too. You gave us something marvelous in that performance, and we are indebted to you.