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Been busy today, although at the same time don't feel I've accomplished much. It's sunny but cold - windchills in the teens and 20s. Didn't stop me from wandering about though. Went to church - where the sermon was basically just various love poems - from Pabulo Neruda to Adrienne Rich. She said that we need not figure out the meaning and if we don't like poetry, to just relax and listen to it. I rather like poetry - no problem at all understanding its meaning since I sort of think that way anyhow, but I proceeded to doze all the same. My eyes falling shut. My mind drifting away, the words ships carrying it out to sea. Not really in the mood for love poems, since lately been feeling oddly bereft of love, my mind protects my body and pulls us both out upon the air to the sea sleepy musings until the voice soft as a lullaby ends and the music begins.
Here's Pabul's
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Translated by Stephen Tapscott
And here's selections from Adrienne Rich's Twenty One Love Poems:
Wherever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk… if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseparable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior high school playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.
You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone ...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down
the upbreathing air.
The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones
of the great round rippled by stone implements
the midsummer night light rising form beneath
the horizon—when I said “a cleft of light”
I meant this. And this is not Stonehenge
simply nor any place but the mind
casting back to where her solitude,
shared, could be chosen without loneliness,
not easily nor without pains to stake out
the circle, the heavy shadows, the great light.
I choose to be a figure in that light,
half-blotted by darkness, something moving
across that space, the color of stone
greeting the moon, yet more than stone:
a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle.
After church went apartment hunting again. Location not bad - quite doable. Steep three - four flight walk up with narrow steps and railing? Not doable at all. If I was still 25 maybe, which most of the people viewing it appear to be. So it's out.
Dang. Came back and stood in front of Fitness Collective for fifteen minutes contemplating if I can afford the Cross Training program. I can't. It's $1,235 for 90 days. I kid you not. $500 a month. You get nutritional aid, and personal trainer support. But no...this is so out of my price range. I'm going to try the Y, even if it is a 30 minute walk away. Then bought groceries and treated myself to nice homemade chocolates. Home now. Laundry pick up in about an hour and a half.
Quickly jumped on Facebook and rapidly jumped off again. I really despise Facebook.
Too much information on that thing. I now got to see, finally, the stupid redneck cowboy Dad with the 45 - who shot his daughter's lap-top. Sigh. I feel very lucky to have grown up in a time period in which the internet did not exist. Adolescence was humilating and crappy enough without the internet. Can imagine how horrific it would be with it? Now you get to have people humiliate you and/or your family and friends in front of millions of people worldwide instead of just the handful in your small town. Poor kid - when she's in her 20s or 30s, applying for a job or to college, some joker is going to send that youtube video to either her employer or dean of admissions and she won't get in. Folks? Don't post stuff like this on the internet.
Bad idea. You keep stuff like that private. The rest of us do not need to know.
Anybody else miss the good old days when we didn't? Which were...oh I don't know maybe 10 years ago?
Discussed romantic films with the Momster. She thinks the most romantic film of all time was The Way We Were...tragic but poignant. I never made it through it. Barbara Striesand grates on my nerves. She does in all her films. I don't know why exactly.
Have similar issues with Liza Minelli.
Anyhow...here's a brief list of good ones off the top of my head:
An Officer and a Gentleman
LadyHawk
The Philadelphia Story
Pride and Prejudice (pick your favorite version)
How to Steal a Million
Marnie
The African Queen
Woman of the Year or The Desk Set (pick your favorite Spencer/Hepburn)
Romancing the Stone
Splash
Dirty Dancing
Last of the Mohicans
Beauty and The Beast (pick your version - there's the French film and the Disney Cartoon)
Here's Pabul's
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Translated by Stephen Tapscott
And here's selections from Adrienne Rich's Twenty One Love Poems:
Wherever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk… if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseparable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior high school playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.
You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone ...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down
the upbreathing air.
The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones
of the great round rippled by stone implements
the midsummer night light rising form beneath
the horizon—when I said “a cleft of light”
I meant this. And this is not Stonehenge
simply nor any place but the mind
casting back to where her solitude,
shared, could be chosen without loneliness,
not easily nor without pains to stake out
the circle, the heavy shadows, the great light.
I choose to be a figure in that light,
half-blotted by darkness, something moving
across that space, the color of stone
greeting the moon, yet more than stone:
a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle.
After church went apartment hunting again. Location not bad - quite doable. Steep three - four flight walk up with narrow steps and railing? Not doable at all. If I was still 25 maybe, which most of the people viewing it appear to be. So it's out.
Dang. Came back and stood in front of Fitness Collective for fifteen minutes contemplating if I can afford the Cross Training program. I can't. It's $1,235 for 90 days. I kid you not. $500 a month. You get nutritional aid, and personal trainer support. But no...this is so out of my price range. I'm going to try the Y, even if it is a 30 minute walk away. Then bought groceries and treated myself to nice homemade chocolates. Home now. Laundry pick up in about an hour and a half.
Quickly jumped on Facebook and rapidly jumped off again. I really despise Facebook.
Too much information on that thing. I now got to see, finally, the stupid redneck cowboy Dad with the 45 - who shot his daughter's lap-top. Sigh. I feel very lucky to have grown up in a time period in which the internet did not exist. Adolescence was humilating and crappy enough without the internet. Can imagine how horrific it would be with it? Now you get to have people humiliate you and/or your family and friends in front of millions of people worldwide instead of just the handful in your small town. Poor kid - when she's in her 20s or 30s, applying for a job or to college, some joker is going to send that youtube video to either her employer or dean of admissions and she won't get in. Folks? Don't post stuff like this on the internet.
Bad idea. You keep stuff like that private. The rest of us do not need to know.
Anybody else miss the good old days when we didn't? Which were...oh I don't know maybe 10 years ago?
Discussed romantic films with the Momster. She thinks the most romantic film of all time was The Way We Were...tragic but poignant. I never made it through it. Barbara Striesand grates on my nerves. She does in all her films. I don't know why exactly.
Have similar issues with Liza Minelli.
Anyhow...here's a brief list of good ones off the top of my head:
An Officer and a Gentleman
LadyHawk
The Philadelphia Story
Pride and Prejudice (pick your favorite version)
How to Steal a Million
Marnie
The African Queen
Woman of the Year or The Desk Set (pick your favorite Spencer/Hepburn)
Romancing the Stone
Splash
Dirty Dancing
Last of the Mohicans
Beauty and The Beast (pick your version - there's the French film and the Disney Cartoon)
Valentine's Day Romance movies
Grant & Kathryn Hepburn - Bringing Up Baby (I see you have Philadelphia Story already!)
Grant & Audrey Hepburn - Charade
Grant & Deborah Kerr - An Affair to Remember
*sigh*
I love that you included African Queen, that was such a powerful romance with an older couple....
Re: Valentine's Day Romance movies
Charade, Houseboat, Father Goose, Operation Petticoat, Arsenic and Old Lace, Notorious, North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief. But an Affair to Remember always annoyed me...as did Bringing Up Baby.
Re: Valentine's Day Romance movies
Re: Valentine's Day Romance movies
But it is true, that there are things that can seem ridiculous (or at least lame) when seen through a
stupidmovie like Sleepless in Seattle!But then I still love The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Shirley Temple was supposed to be past it, but I thought she was hilarious, and I identified w/her big time).
Of course Myrna Loy was permanently matched w/William Powell in my heart....
Re: Valentine's Day Romance movies
Re: Valentine's Day Romance movies
Re: Valentine's Day Romance movies
I love most of his films...but there are a handful that I scratch my head over.
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Gone With the Wind
Emma
Shining Through
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I'd forgotten it. Thank you.
Sabrina is a good one too.
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LadyHawk
The Philadelphia Story
Pride and Prejudice (pick your favorite version)
How to Steal a Million
Marnie
The African Queen
Woman of the Year or The Desk Set (pick your favorite Spencer/Hepburn)
Romancing the Stone
Splash
Dirty Dancing
Last of the Mohicans
Beauty and The Beast (pick your version - there's the French film and the Disney Cartoon)
I'd vote for Pat & Mike of the Spencer/Hepburn films.
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I adore P&P, TWWW, Sleepless in Seattle, and GWTW as well although it is hard for me to watch the last since I really see them as the characters and they are dead, so there could never be a sequel.
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Agreed...Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas did have great chemistry, I love their wall-sex scene.
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I also like Eternal Sunrise of the Spotless Mind, Moulin Rouge and Princess Bride. I find Shakespeare in Love very romantic, mainly because the real romance in the film is theatre/everyone.
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Agree on Eternal Sunrise of the Spotless Mind. (I love that film, it has the distinction of being my favorite film of the writer, director, and both actors - Carry and Winslet. I love how he starts fighting the removal of all his memories containing her, after he chose to do it because she did it to him...only to find themselves back where they started, falling in love again. )
Also love Princess Bride (favorite bit is when she meets him again and he falls down the hill saying as you wish...that movie was hilarious and romantic, the book is good too) and Shakespeare in Love (the combination of Twelth Night and Romeo and Juliet is a work of genius, plus I love the fighting with Chris Marlow) - both highly rewatchable.
Moulin Rouge...however felt like being in stuck in a small elevator with
Queen doing Bohemia Rhapsody. Great music but too busy.
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I love Beauty and the Beast, both Cocteau and Disney.
I actually don't like The Philadelphia story as a romance, though it has a glittering cast - and I love the music of High Society...
But "A matter of life and Death" and "I know where I'm going" are pure British cinema romance for me.
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I don't really think of His Girl Friday as a romance, so much as just a comedy.
Have you seen Blithe Spirit and My Favorite Wife?
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