Buster Scruggs Coincidence

I've learned over the years that my memorization of poems annoys more than it impresses. As I think I've mentioned here before, because of this realization I tend to recite them only for Joyce--and our grandsons, who sometimes like to hear "Casey at the Bat" or "Jabberwocky." They and I recite "The Night Before Christmas" during our Christmas dinner.

Most other people, however, start looking at their watches or phones--or evince a compelling need to be ... elsewhere.

My "compelling need" (well, one of them) is to memorize poems. I don't know why. I just like to do it. As of today, I've nearly reached 225 of them--some very short ("Red Wheelbarrow"), some very long ("Renascence"), some famous ("The Road Not Taken"), some not ("Penelope's Lament"). Etc.

Anyway, as I noted here the other day, Joyce and I have been streaming, via Netflix, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the latest from the Coen Bros. A Western. The film is actually six stories (the titular one is first), and, as of last night, we have seen three of the six. We've laughed and wept and felt stunned. (We do love the Coen Bros!)

The piece we watched last night was called "Meal Ticket," and it involves an itinerant showman who stops at little communities, converts the back of his wagon into kind of a stage, waits for an audience to assemble, then draws the curtain, and we see ... a young man in a chair. He has no arms or legs. The audiences gasp. Then he launches into Shelley's "Ozymandias" (we hear the whole sonnet); we see snippets of the other pieces in his repertoire in our first viewing of him--and in a montage of subsequent appearance. (He recites, from memory, very, very well, by the way!)

Now here's the thing: Besides "Ozymandias" he delivers five other pieces:

• The story of Cain and Abel
• Shakespeare's sonnet "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought"
• Shakespeare's sonnet "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes"
• The Gettysburg Address
• Prospero's speech from The Tempest, "Our revels now are ended ...."

Save the Bible story, I have memorized all the others--and, in fact, recite "When in disgrace" to Joyce every year on our anniversary.

So ... Joyce and I are lying in bed last night, watching these sequences, and I am mumbling along with each of the literary passages. (Joyce, to her credit, displayed--feigned?--pleasure at my mumblings.)

And the damnedest thing happened: I started to annoy myself. 

So I stopped. And just listened to the young man ...  I could sense Relief lying next to me.

I will not tell you how this segment of the film ends, but if you do see it, I am guessing that you, like us, will be profoundly moved.

It might even convince you that, you know, memorizing is not all that bad a thing?