As free as the elements

The Common is perfect and I can't stop staring at the stage. I manage to pull my eyes away to grab at the picnic spread in front of us, but I keep going back to the monolith on the stage, wondering what it could possibly be. Huge and looking as if it was made from worn stone or steel, I have been to Shakespeare on the Common a few times now, but I don't remember a stage as spartan as this. Well, considering the play is Othello...I'm not too surprised.

Kelly and I had prepared to do the MFA and Indian the night before, when we were a tangle of limbs on his loveseat and watching TV. "The weather's supposed to be nice tomorrow," he says. "You want to go to Othello and picnic instead?" I mull it over as the theme song for the show plays. "Yeah, why not? It could be fun." I had only asked for a lazy Sunday, so spending it in the park sounded just as good. With the cooler weather, it would be perfect.

Kelly's friend "Evie" (who I consider to be a friend of mine as well, "by proxy" as Kel puts it) and her friend "Hannah" have grabbed us a spot far from the stage, but not too far that I can't tell that Desdemona is the woman in white. Evie pours a rose carefully from its hiding place, her eyes looking about for the policeman that passed us not too long ago.

"Dig in," Hannah says to me. In the middle of our blankets, Kelly is cutting up two baguettes on a plastic board. Hannah opens up a second tub of hummus and offers me a pita chip. We also have four different kinds of cheeses (the closest to what would pass for "normal" [read non-foodie] is a sweeter blue cheese that doesn't make my mouth purse), organic blueberries, cherries, diced watermelon, and duck liver pate. I assess the spread again and look at the watermelon. Remembering camping trips and picnics from my childhood, the watermelon is the only thing that looks familiar.

The play starts and I spread one of the cheeses onto a slice of baguette. By the second act, we have taken it on ourselves to be the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of Shakespeare. "Othello is such a pimp!" Hannah snickers. "Beat a ho!" Kelly calls. "He's just like Mel Gibson," Evie says (the only comment to make the two older women sitting next to use to giggle).

By this point, I'm the only person that hasn't tried the pate. Desdemona begs for her life as Othello throws her to the bed. The pillow covers her face and she thrashes, falling to the floor...only to be dragged and drowned in the tub. The play is almost over and Kelly has his head cradled in my lap. I smile to myself and smear a little pate onto a slice of bread. I almost could make it a symbol of the play as a whole: brown on white, decadent and savory with a strange sweetness that would not be expected, and created by a violent act. It's not what I would have pictured for a picnic, but just as good nonetheless.