Summer's Left the Building

Summer Seat
Originally uploaded by evita2005.

Dearest Lady Ursula! I shudder to announce that with the departure of my last house guest and the settling of the clouds overhead, summer has left the building. Soon I will be called to duty as covert operator in the corridors of institutional power, hiding behind the monotone plainess of the everyday to learn the ways of youth and assess their pursuit of proper punctuation.

This summer was the summer of my (plastic :) surgery. The summer of book reading and movie watching and the thump-thump of my thump-thump at the winning grinning of M. Depp. The summer of dwelling on other people's obsessions, such as yours at your escritoire, and scheming a way out of the dreary of the daily with the help of my able cocktail coach, Ethan. The summer of being thankful at the vigor of my cell tissue and of contemplating the shape of my new organ I should cultivate in its stead-- perhaps it should be the organ of a new balance?

Yes, the summer saunters and slinks away like Kate Moss up the catwalk, to return next year, chic, heels clicking and decked in dashingness, yes, like the wit of a Wilde.


To sum up, I have squandered this summer on hospitable idleness. And yourself?

Daiquiri Vision

When you last left me, or is it that I left me, my sweet Ethan was drawing near with a trayful of mango daiquiris, which I rush to assure you, I consumed with relish and abandon. And as I neared the end of my fourth one, I was suddenly seized by a powerful headache and when I rested my weary head against the cushions of my couch, I saw--in a strobe vision I saw, clearly and reliably--

I saw you, o Lady Ursula, contorted over keyboard amidst a swirl, an explosive swirl of a) words b) semi-sentences c)characters spinning and rattling around you like toy tops, sprouting arms that juggled words d) a husband, mouth set into silence e)towels, trousers and shirts pouring out of laundry baskets f) mac separated from cheese g) cheese separated from mac h)marmite jars i) more words j)strawberries jumping up and down to get out of a jam jar k)onion sandwiches i) a rain of cherries and cherry pits j) more sentences snapping into two like dry pasta k) a dog barking, kaos! kaos! l) the union jack, flapping around like a crow m) the mouths of children,begging to be fed and you tossing words at them as if they were mac and cheese.

It was only when dear dear Ethan handed me a seriously chilled shot of vodka to ease my mind that I realized, it was only a vision.

For me. But--

It would not be that this is a reality for you! Say it is not so!

Synching the Watches

Or as they say in our polite circles, great pots pour alike!

Let's Synchronise our Pocket Watches

I just came back, calm and lovely after spending a few days in a country cottage by the sea. It was tranquil and quaint and the air was clean and fresh. The scones were the best I've ever had and the cream, oh Lady Crumpet, I swoon from the remberance of that clotted cream that wasn't too sweet, but just rich enough and perfect to partner with the tarty jam and doesn't that yin-yang combination, along with some hot, strong tea, just make your knees quiver?

So today I come back to junk mail and flight adverts a plenty - it just depress me really as they've managed to take the romance out of flight, especially now, when everything is an Airplane! gag.

I read your post about the Bill & Melinda Gates and I thought - why, we are on the same track! For before reading your post dear Lady C, I wrote a long piece of my own - a 'looking up in adoring fashion' type of post in the male/female genre that has been such a curse to me as of lately.

See my lady? That even far away from the world, recharging my batteries and disconnecting by the sea, we are still as two peas in a ladylike salad as ever!

Dotingly, dotingly

Dear Lady U, I know you are buried beneath a heap of wordage of your own precious making and I am beginning to style in preparation for my return to the world of the working dead, but I must share this reflection with you.

As you might (not) know, currently this town here is hosting the Worlds Aids Conference, with much to do and famous people to do it: shake hands, give speeches, lend presence and persuasion to a worthy cause.

At the opening ceremonies, Bill and Melinda Gates made their entrance and speeches. Bill spoke first. Warned to speak only for four minutes, he spoke for twenty, about the need for vaccines and such. Having just donated half a billion to AIDS research, I feel he had paid amply for each minute that he spoke above and beyond the call of duty and dictates of agenda.

All the time he spoke, however, I kept watching Melinda who, a firm, no nonsense wife as staunch and dependable as a Blackberry, stood at his side, at the necessary angle, beaming, beaming moderately perhaps, but recognizably beaming dotingly at him as an guardian angel would upon a soul freshly delivered into its care. Yes, she beamed so dotingly, though not excessively, but symbolically, I began to worry if she could and would speak apart from the eloquence of her gaze.

She did take her place after Bill, at last, and spoke a full twenty minutes, sensibly and well about stigma (pardon my language) and sex workers (pardon my language again) and secretly, as I sipped on my brandy, I thought unlike governments and the lowly pols, the Gates are bound not by the vote but blessed by the freedom granted by the djin Ka-Ching called forth by generation of code. Indeed, Mrs. Gates herself mentioned that in their experience, politicians become squeamish inordinately when asked to address the issues of sex and sex work in the fight against AIDS.

But all the time Melinda Gates spoke, and we listened, Mr. Gates did not once swivel her way and glance at her adoringly--that the camera caught. Hands clasped behind his back, he was potently beaming, yes, but not at her, but into the audience, a lighthouse lamp locked onto the future road ahead. For it is written, men look, and women look at themselves being looked at. Mrs. Gates was saved from becoming an iconic devotee of Mr. Gates on camera because of the way she handled her dedication to their mutual project in her speech, but she knew that the world might judge her by her look upon her man and less so by her words. Indeed, the next day in the paper she was mentioned, but not to the full extent of her co-weight at all.

And I thought to myself, how do we, as ladies, acquire the rare talent men cannot master, of gazing dotingly and adoringly on the men by our side who see our gaze not, nor do they require it, but who benefit from it anyways, as Ben Affleck did from the devoted upsweep glances of J Lo in the heyday of their spectacular partnership? At which point do we learn to plump up our expression with so much fatuous fondness it smothers all intelligence? Our dotingness also depends on that subtle lemon twist of the body towards him, him who dictates our obedience and commands our love at the moment, that petit-gasp adulation that frames so tenderly direct his moving and often mindless but so prominent mouth. When is it taught and at which academy, I ask myself as I gaze, dotingly and fawningly, up toward the tray dear dear Ethan lowers to me, brimming with mango daiquiris....

Interminitis

You know, my dear Lady Ursula, that each summer I suffer from progressively huger bouts of interminitis, the disease that incapacitates readers when they encounter a particularly fetching stretch of text.

It's simple. You pick up a book. You continue reading the book. You do not drop the book after chapter five. You continuing reading of the book, become engrossed in its subtle progression. You want to dwell there, within it, at least kind of. More so and more so you delight in its plot, character, mood. You read and read and read and read and then.

And then you stop.

Interminitis strikes, the disease of the fear of the end you are rushing toward, the very momentum pushing you toward closure. You are eyeing the view from the middle of a bridge suspended between the first page and last. You dont want to cross over to the other side because the view from the middle of the bridge, novel, plot is just deliciously all encompassing and full of promise. There is more, it promises. At this crucial moment you realize the "more" is an illusion. More and more, and yet, the more you reach for, the less there will be. If you continue, you yourself will continue shrinking the distance between your delight and its imminent consummation, the closure towards which all books tend and where all words end. A disaster of emotion, a clenched heart awaits.

So you halt and if you are struck by a particularly virulent strain of the virus, you never move again until you have forgotten where you came from and you have to retrace your steps and start anew. Of course, that is not truly anew and yet it has to be for darned if you even remember the names of all the characters, as you have dawdled so long indecisively, you remember smatterings but also enough to taint the purity of the experience.

Thus it happened to me last summer as I never finished _Shadow of the Wind__ and remember it in its barest outline. This year, a book on sharks and a blond awaits my pleasure still as I have been stalled by an amazing development within that I almost do not wish solved. And dear dear Earnest, my dearly deceased benefactor and erstwhile husband, often taunts me in my dreams,

Has Mrs Dalloway thrown her party yet?

Indeed, Mrs. Dalloway is still where I left her some time ago, half on her way to her party, never quite holding it, like a silent form trapped in mid plot on account of my affliction. It is a cruel situation, though it can also work for the good--in my world, the treacherous horse never crosses the gates of Illium.

Platform!

I am clutching the platform, Lady U; I hear you, I hear you! I come to the rescue of all blogs left to rust in the clingy heat!