Manny Kagan

As I watched them move throughout the stage, I noticed that one of the young dancers had a dark spot on her shoulder and some more on the side of her arm and on her chest. Since she was the only one who with these markings, my photographer’s eye and attention became fixated on those dark spots instead of her dancing (I suspect that she was a good dancer to be a member of the Batsheva). This was not skin pigmentation or blemishes, but a form of self-expression through adornment of the human body with tattoos.

When we were leaving the center, there was a young man holding the door for the women to get out. He was obviously well mannered and practiced in the art of chivalry (that I wrote about before), and I couldn’t help but notice that his strong arm was covered with tattoos. As I observed him, I saw that other parts of his body were adorned with tattoos as well.

In modern times, it seems that a lot of people in different age groups are willing to adorn their bodies with some pictures, designs, poems, and decorations for different reasons. Perhaps, one day there is going to be a doctoral dissertation on the subject of the reasons why people are using their bodies for their canvas. Tattoos go back in human history since at least the Neolithic times.

I thought about this while visiting the top of the hill in Mount Davidson Park, recently.

I left my house at 8am on a Sunday morning. It was foggy; everything at that time was grey, and I knew that there was not going to be a beautiful sunrise to capture—but did it matter? This time I decided to take another route through the neighborhood to reach the more barren side of the mountain. When I came to the foot of the mountain, I noticed an opened garage door in one of the houses with a little girl calling out—“chirp, chirp, chirp”! I thought perhaps she was calling for her dog, named Chirp who had run out. When I asked her about whom she was calling to, her mom stepped out from the garage and told me that the girl was talking to an owl, and then pointed up to the wooden likeness attached to the balcony of the house across the street.

“No!”, the girl interrupted. “I am talking with the real birds.”

I looked around. There were none in sight, but there was chirping coming from the near-by tree.

While continuing my journey up the hill, I enjoyed the view of the trees barely seen through the fog. Old tree stumps with the wrinkled surfaces, a dead moth with the intricate stripes on the wings laying on the ground. I noticed people walking their dogs, wildflowers blooming, and the rooftops of the houses below. When I reached the bench I always sit on, beneath a dead tree, the bug that I wrote about before was not around. I just sat down and listened. I heard an airplane flying above, noise from the traffic from the busy street below, a motorcycle rumbling somewhere on the other side, then suddenly bells chiming from a nearby church announcing the 9am hour, and then the steps of someone walking on the gravel on the other side of the hill, a hooting sound, that sounded like a real owl, and constant chirping of the invisible birds in the bushes. I was there as a part of nature—present, not interfering. Simply observing what was happening around me. Noticing the drops of fog on my camera, slight movement of the grass in front of me. There was a small plant which grew under the dead branch, a silhouette of a person in the fog, and brown gravel under my feet. Later on, the fog will disappear and everything which exists and pulsates underneath the hill will become visible again. Life never stops, even when we are not around or do not notice it. But can we become like children again and chirp with real birds?

After my encounter with England, I ended up in Spain, in about the same period of time. Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 and died the same year as Shakespeare, in 1616. He finished writing Don Quixote de la Mancha in 1606. I am still listening to the audio book, which describes events and adventures of Hidalgo, a country gentleman, who after reading too many chivalrous romances, loses his mind and imagines himself as a knight-errant. A knight-errant’s job is to fight for justice in the name of the lady of his heart and whom he names “Dulcinea of El Toboso”. I wrote about this book in a previous newsletter. If you missed the synopsis, you can find it here.

My third encounter was to Italy. My wife, Elfa, subscribes to seasonal tickets to the Great Performance series at Davies Symphony Hall. It is a delightful experience every time we go to the concerts. Often it is a surprise, since we are introduced to musicians and performers whom we have not heard before. Our most recent performance was Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo: The Birth of Opera”, performed by English baroque soloists with the Monteverdi Choir, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. Claudio Monteverdi was born in 1567 (three years after Shakespeare) and died in 1643.

The story begins with a description of the gentleman named Don Quixote, who spends a fortune to buy and read books about chivalry. After reading losing his mind, he decides to become a Knight-Errant, the occupation that was practical about 400 years later.

There is a word in Russian, “cavalier”, and though I am not a linguist, I thought that the word “chivalry” may have had some connection with the word “Caveleri”, which in Russian was used to indicate a person of certain standing in a phrase “Dami ee Caveleri”—similar to ‘Ladies and Gentleman’ (also used as an admirer or a dance partner). But it also connected with the word cavalry (soldiers who fought on horseback), which brings us back to our story where Don Quixote wanted to know how to be and behave like a knight.

According to the dictionary, a “cavalier”, or “chevalier”, means a gallant or courtly gentleman; a well-mannered man. It seemed that regarding how the word was used in the past, all definitions essentially lead to what today we call a gentleman. I proceeded to think about, what is a gentleman in today’s standards?  We’ve likely all heard the phrase, “he is a real gentleman”. Online, I found that one of the definitions of a gentleman is that it is “a man who combines gentle birth or rank with chivalrous qualities”. And what if I did not have a privilege of the gentle birth? Can I, like Don Quixote, learn how to be a gentleman without losing a sense of reality the way he did?

WikiHow tells us that there are at least 22 ways of how to be chivalrous. Apparently chivalry is not only about respecting women. It separates the “men from the boys”. I also found an article online by James Michael Sama, “The Art of Being a Gentleman” and of course there are more ways to learn. But first, start by practicing on yourself—before you can be gentle with others, be gentle with yourself. The word “Gentleman” can be used in different connotations, as well as in this story about a man who traveled to the countryside.

This little encounter reminded me about some thoughts I had while driving from Santa Fe to Phoenix via Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon National Park a few weeks ago. I remembered the quote, “The road is always better than the inn”, coined by Miguel de Cervantes in about 1605 in his novel “Don Quixote de la Mancha”.

The book describes the stories of a retired gentleman Alonso Quixano, who changed his name into Don Quixote, and together with his friend Sancho Panza, traveled in Spain and got himself into trouble. I read the book many years ago and the only things I remembered were Don Quixote fighting with the windmills, but the image stuck in my mind.