Monday, February 25, 2008
70's disco glam make-up at the library
I will be spending my entire day in the library. I should have left already. I'm hesitant because I'm not sure my back pack has room for my vodka.
Turgenev wrote that, "First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future—death or a new life—all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome."
Michael Ondaatje wrote in the English Patient on new love (not altogether the same thing as first love but go with me here):
"There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lover enters the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.
"A love story is not about those who lose their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing-not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past".
I've been thinking a lot about these quotes and how they romanticize first love, but also exemplify its power to destroy and create and all of that.
In that vein I've also been thinking a lot about my first love. My first love did not involve such beautiful poetry. For me it was the Kinks (particularly the song Days):
and strangely the movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf-along with of course a convertible and a crazy woman much much much older than I was...
it wasn't revolutionary. Although she did have legs that went all the way to Canada.
It's amazing how it sticks with you though, and how no matter what you do, how old you are, how far away from it you run, and sometimes you do run, and keep running from it, (I mean, I ran all the way to London and it didn't matter because even there) you will always return to it. And somehow it is you. And you find yourself repeating it in strange ways forever. The way a person enunciates their words, or the way their hand gestures in a certain way at certain moments, or the way they laugh or what they laugh at. And it stays. And comes back.
and it wasn't the subject matter of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf (which is after all a very creepy movie-well, not creepy, but creepy in the context of one's first love)... it was watching it when I was fifteen with this woman who's legs never ended propped up on her coffee table... and her telling me how amazing this movie was, and all about the first time she had seen it-which at the time seemed like years before because she was 25 and I was 15- she was SOOOO old!
She talked about everything to me, and she blew my mind. Plus she was the funniest person I had ever met. and she wasn't afraid to laugh at absolutely everything.
not a revolution. But sacred all the same, like the Kinks said!
Michael Ondaatje wrote in the English Patient on new love (not altogether the same thing as first love but go with me here):
"There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lover enters the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.
"A love story is not about those who lose their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing-not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past".
I've been thinking a lot about these quotes and how they romanticize first love, but also exemplify its power to destroy and create and all of that.
In that vein I've also been thinking a lot about my first love. My first love did not involve such beautiful poetry. For me it was the Kinks (particularly the song Days):
and strangely the movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf-along with of course a convertible and a crazy woman much much much older than I was...
it wasn't revolutionary. Although she did have legs that went all the way to Canada.
It's amazing how it sticks with you though, and how no matter what you do, how old you are, how far away from it you run, and sometimes you do run, and keep running from it, (I mean, I ran all the way to London and it didn't matter because even there) you will always return to it. And somehow it is you. And you find yourself repeating it in strange ways forever. The way a person enunciates their words, or the way their hand gestures in a certain way at certain moments, or the way they laugh or what they laugh at. And it stays. And comes back.
and it wasn't the subject matter of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf (which is after all a very creepy movie-well, not creepy, but creepy in the context of one's first love)... it was watching it when I was fifteen with this woman who's legs never ended propped up on her coffee table... and her telling me how amazing this movie was, and all about the first time she had seen it-which at the time seemed like years before because she was 25 and I was 15- she was SOOOO old!
She talked about everything to me, and she blew my mind. Plus she was the funniest person I had ever met. and she wasn't afraid to laugh at absolutely everything.
not a revolution. But sacred all the same, like the Kinks said!
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