When my friend in his seventies sends me a comment he doesn't want broadcast to the five continents, he heads it 'For your eyes only'.
I received such an e-mail last night.
"Even before I saw your Sunday blog, I must have been thinking of Julie C. too," my self-proclaimed chum wrote, adding:
"Dunno Y[ork], altho I've a vague idea somebody recalled her chicken-eating scene in 'Tom Jones' as an example of real acting. Of course I thought her gorgeous but I didn't fancy her - I don't fancy the unattainable.
Anyway, there she was in my subconscious & she popped up in my dream last night. Erotically. We were making squishy love but stopped when she burst into the very wet women's tears that make anything but TLC impossible."
Smiling at an English gentleman's confession, I replied:
"If I'd been old enough and had had anything at all to do with it, Herr Brock, I wouldn't happily be where I am now.
I'd be happily elsewhere.
I met Ms York in the late 70s soon before coming to France.
She was as beautiful then as she was in the 1960s (and still is today -- I've seen a recent 'photo).
And I'd have made absolutely sure that the unattainable isn't and that instead of her getting embroiled in an unhappy marriage, the courses of our destinies would have been different.
She is not only gorgeous. She is bright and she's a nice woman."
No mere "real actress".
To see her "work" in slow motion, as our minds have always done with others' faces on a subconscious level in their own time frames, is to catch fleeting emotions so swift that you'd scarcely know they'd worked on you.
The moral of this you already know.
He doesn't know that after then raising my gaze to allegedly "unattainable" heights, my sights haven't lowered.
"You boys," a friendly ghost in the garden once told me and his son, "were born to reach for the sky. I do pray that you'll both catch your stars."
His own son achieved this after my uncle died.
Ah! To see the eagle at last, in 2004.
As for very wet tears, it's the cruelties that make women shed them that arouse my wrath.
To see you the far side of the Fence is to leave you with salt welling to a corner of my eye, a silly love song in my ears against the grumble of the Métro, and a smile caught with the breath in the chest.
There's a place for tears in the garden, Lady Hawk, for how else shall we bring full nourishment to the soil?
The desert crossing is done.
Would the "color purple" be one you'd like here (it already has its place on the Mac as the one that comes up as background to the titles when my mouse rolls over pictures)?
You were very astute.
As I wrote these words last night for the morning stroll, I'd no idea what the hours to come would bring and whether you'll meet my visitor.
Still I haven't. She called for two minutes, late, to say she was dining out and would say more in the morning.
I shan't detail the "strangeness".
 Until I've caught you big enough to play the "role" (should I ever go missing you again for long enough for that to help), Maggie Harvey may stand in most prettily as an occasional desktop photo.
While a Wildcat explored a marché de puces which proved to be only too true in name and kicked herself for turning down an invitation from a "delightful Italian", and as the Kid talked to her Boyfriend, I revisited July-September 1940 in both drama, made in 1969, and documentary on Sunday afternoon.
It would be unwise to use the women's auxiliary air force as even an occasional ornament on the Mac while a beautiful woman crazy for a film director but also in strange mood is here, so close to the garden.
When we do get to talk, I'd like to tell you -- I have her permission -- about the Kid's Great Adventure last week. It's more exciting than my news.
On seeing (for the fourth, fifth time?) 'La Leggenda del pianista sull'oceano' (iMDB; please ignore the spoilers should you go here), I realised that it may be my favourite movie.
The magical fable strikes every string in my soul and is richer in poetry and secret meaning with each viewing.
But my friend, who wanted to write fiction instead, only heard it. Indeed, sixth time round I could watch it myself with my eyes closed, so perfect is the soundtrack.
"Is it true?" you asked.
No, it's not.
Yes it is. True in every sound, every breath, every note, every word, every image.
The truest magic of all is that the music is real.
I don't know why my friend didn't close the door or -- even better -- ask me to take it off and put on 'A Bout de souffle' instead (which I did afterwards), since she didn't like 'The Legend of 1900' and isn't one to make polite concessions when she's suffering.
I don't think the film and the "suffocating" smallness of my flat, compared with a bare, big Viennese apartment, and the other given reasons for a mood, after she woke late, had anything to do with the truth.
I think Sam got it in one and you did too.
If you're both right, my love, then you were a little faster to catch on than I was, though I am once more accustomed to the surprises of fate.
Need more be said?
 I look forward to hearing your tidings.
Fly down this way soon.
Since Section Officer Harvey is only allowed in as a juvenile reminder and music for my eyes, rather than yours, I shall show you the latest sprig of almond blossom I found right up by a Tudor window of the house.
One thing I like about this tree is simply looking at it now, from the right side of the window.
Out in the garden.
10:51:55 AM 
|
|
