Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
James Baldwin
Category: Staying Alive
Movie inspiration of the week – A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Costume Designer: Lucinda Ballard, Nominated Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (24th Academy Awards)
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, it’s voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
“The Broken Tower” by Hart Crane
Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. She is about five years older than Stella. Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.
He is of medium height, about five feet eight or nine, and strongly, compactly built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.
Look at these feathers and furs that she come here to preen herself in! What’s this here? A solid-gold dress, I believe! And this one! What is these here? Fox-pieces! Genuine fox fur-pieces, a half a mile long! Where· are your fox-pieces, Stella? Bushy snow-white ones, no less!
Pearls! Ropes of them! What is this sister of yours, a deep-sea diver? Bracelets of solid gold, too! Where are your pearls and gold bracelets?
Compliments to women about their looks. I’ve never met a woman that didn’t know if she was good-looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they’ve got.
The poker players–Stanley, Steve, Mitch and Pablo-wear colored shirts, solid blues, a purple, a red-and-white check, a light green, and they are men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors.
“And if God choose,
I shall but love thee better-after-death!”
Why, that’s from my favorite sonnet by Mrs. Browning!
I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft-soft people have got to shimmer and g1ow-they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly’ wings, and put a paper lantern over the light …it isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I-I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.
We danced the Varsouviana! Suddenly in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke away from me and ranout of the casino. A few moments later-a shot!
What do you two think you are? A pair of queens?
I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!
The opposite is desire. So do you wonder? How could you possibly wonder!
She has dragged her wardrobe trunk into the center of the bedroom. It hangs open with flowery dresses thrown across it. As the drinking and packing went on, a mood of hysterical exhilaration came into her and -she has decked herself out in a somewhat soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set in their heels. Now she is placing the rhinestone tiara on her head before the mirror of the dressing-table and murmuring excitedly as if to a ‘group of spectral admirers.
Well, it’s a red letter night for us both. You having an oil millionaire and me having a baby.
A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding, can enrich a man’s life – immeasurably! I have those things to offer, and this doesn’t take them away. Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession. But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart-and I have all of those things-aren’t taken away, but grow! Increase with the years! How strange that I should be called a destitute woman! When I have all of these treasures locked in my heart. I think of myself as a very, very rich woman! But I have been foolish-casting my pearls before swine!
The hot trumpet and drums from the Four Deuces sound loudly
He takes off his hat and now he becomes personalized. The unhuman quality goes. His voice is gentle and reassuring as he crosses to Blanche and crouches in front of her. As he speaks her name, her terror subsides a little. The lurid reflections fade from the walls, the inhuman cries and noises die out and her own hoarse crying is calmed.
Whoever you are-I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
’In this dark march toward whatever it is we’re approaching,’ Blanche raises the flag of magic against the crushing disappointment of reality in her “worn-out Mardi Gras outfit” and the costumes are absolutely brilliant in creating this fantasy world, showing us someone trying to survive the decay and decadence of her own life and not being able to cope with what the world has thrown at her. And that’s how a trunk full of flowery dresses and rhinestone tiaras can help you survive as long as you keep away from the brutes, maybe you’ll be able to not only tell, but also live what ought to be truth. ( And this in no way an endorsement of post truths or a glorification of mental illness)
References and Photos
Elia Kazan, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Norman N. Holland
Best Shot: “A Streetcar Named Desire”
The Furniture: Decorating Madness in A Streetcar Named Desire
http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/film/2060/a-streetcar-named-desire
when time from time shall set us free
in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me
e. e. cummings
Photo: Warsaw, 2012
one-less-days
“The Verb to Be,“ a Poem by André Breton
I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no wings, it doesn’t necessarily sit at a cleared table in the evening on a terrace by the sea. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of insignificant facts like seeds that leave one furrow for another at nightfall. It’s not the moss that forms on a rock or the foam that rocks in a glass. It’s a boat riddled with snow, if you will, like birds that fall and their blood doesn’t have the slightest thickness. I know the general outline of despair. A very small shape, defined by jewels worn in the hair. That’s despair. A pearl necklace for which no clasp can be found and whose existence can’t even hang by a thread. That’s despair for you. Let’s not go into the rest. Once we begin to despair we don’t stop. I myself despair of the lampshade around four o’clock, I despair of the fan towards midnight, I despair of the cigarette smoked by men on death row. I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no heart, my hand always touches breathless despair, the despair whose mirrors never tell us if it’s dead. I live on that despair which enchants me. I love that blue fly which hovers in the sky at the hour when the stars hum. I know the general outline of the despair with long slender surprises, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I get up every day like everyone else and I stretch my arms against a floral wallpaper. I don’t remember anything and it’s always in despair that I discover the beautiful uprooted trees of night. The air in the room is as beautiful as drumsticks. What weathery weather. I know the general outline of despair. It’s like the curtain’s wind that holds out a helping hand. Can you imagine such a despair? Fire! Ah they’re on their way … Help! Here they come falling down the stairs … And the ads in the newspaper, and the illuminated signs along the canal. Sandpile, beat it, you dirty sandpile! In its general outline despair has no importance. It’s a squad of trees that will eventually make a forest, it’s a squad of stars that will eventually make one less day, it’s a squad of one-less-days that will eventually make up my life.
Translated from the French by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow via The Paris Review
Original Poem can be read here
Photo me by F.M.
Aimless
Retrato de uma princesa desconhecida
Para que ela tivesse um pescoço tão fino
Para que os seus pulsos tivessem um quebrar de caule
Para que os seus olhos fossem tão frontais e limpos
Para que a sua espinha fosse tão direita
E ela usasse a cabeça tão erguida
Com uma tão simples claridade sobre a testa
Foram necessárias sucessivas gerações de escravos
De corpo dobrado e grossas mãos pacientes
Servindo sucessivas gerações de príncipes
Ainda um pouco toscos e grosseiros
Ávidos cruéis e fraudulentosFoi um imenso desperdiçar de gente
Para que ela fosse aquela perfeição
Solitária exilada sem destino
Portrait of an Unknown Princess
For her to have such a slender neck
For her wrists to bend like flower stems
For her eyes to be so clear and direct
Her back so straight
Her head so high
With such a natural glow on her forehead
It took successive generations of slaves
With stooping bodies and patient rough hands
Serving successive generations of princes
Still a bit coarse still a bit crude
Cruel greedy and connivingIt took an enormous squandering of life
For her to be
That lonely exiled aimless perfection
© 1991, Sophia de Mello Breyner
From: Obra Poética III
Publisher: Caminho, Lisboa
From: Obra Poética III
Publisher: Caminho, Lisboa
© Translation: 2004, Richard Zenith
And sometimes
“E por vezes”
E por vezes as noites duram meses
E por vezes os meses oceanos
E por vezes os braços que apertamos
nunca mais são os mesmos E por vezesencontramos de nós em poucos meses
o que a noite nos fez em muitos anos
E por vezes fingimos que lembramos
E por vezes lembramos que por vezesao tomarmos o gosto aos oceanos
só o sarro das noites não dos meses
lá no fundo dos copos encontramosE por vezes sorrimos ou choramos
E por vezes por vezes ah por vezes
num segundo se evolam tantos anosDavid Mourão-Ferreira
And an attempt at a literal translation
And sometimes the nights last for months
And sometimes the months last for oceans
And sometimes the arms that we tighten
never again are the same And sometimes
We find in ourselves in a few months what the night did to us in many years
And sometimes we pretend to remember And sometimes we remember that sometimes
when we taste the oceans
Just the lees of nights not months we find in the bottom of our glass
And sometimes we smile or cry
And sometimes sometimes ah ah sometimes in a second, so many years go by
One too many
Eyes blinded by the fog of things
cannot see truth.
Ears deafened by the din of things
cannot hear truth.
Brains bewildered by the whirl of things
cannot think truth.
Hearts deadened by the weight of things
cannot feel truth.
Throats choked by the dust of things
cannot speak truth.
Harold Bell Wright, The Uncrowned King
And yet, there is no amount of self help books, “keep it simple” formulas or declutter instructions that will tame the maximalist in me.
A euphemism for self-indulgence most probably.
This is not solitude, ’tis but to hold
To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, ‘tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.
But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world’s tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
George Gordon Byron
Photo: Flying to Poznan, June 2016
Restarting
Recomeça….
Se puderes
Sem angústia
E sem pressa.
E os passos que deres,
Nesse caminho duro
Do futuro
Dá-os em liberdade.
Enquanto não alcances
Não descanses.
De nenhum fruto queiras só metade.
E, nunca saciado,
Vai colhendo ilusões sucessivas no pomar.
Sempre a sonhar e vendo
O logro da aventura.
És homem, não te esqueças!
Só é tua a loucura
Onde, com lucidez, te reconheças…
Miguel Torga
I can’t, unfortunately, translate poetry without murdering it. This is how I feel I want my year to be after not celebrating anything and going to bed before 12 last night. No anguish, no hurries. Free. Whole and never enough.
Photo via Pinterest
Walking stories
References
Jim Morrison – Poems from.”Wilderness”
Stories from A Closet of Errors 