Archives for August 2005

My dearest Girl,

I wrote a Letter for you yesterday expecting to have seen your mother. I shall be selfish enough to send it though I know it may give you a little pain, because I wish you to see how unhappy I am for love of you, and endeavour as much as I can to entice you to give up your whole heart to me whose whole existence hangs upon you. You could not step or move an eyelid but it would shoot to my heart–I am greedy of you–Do not think of any thing but me. Do not live as if I was not existing–Do not forget me–But have I any right to say you forget me? Perhaps you think of me all day. Have I any right to wish you to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it, if you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me–and for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I have been haunted with a sweet vision–I have seen you the whole time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been full of Tears at it! Indeed I think a real Love is enough to occupy the wildest heart–Your going to town alone, when I heard of it was a shock to me–yet I expected it–promise me you will not for some time, till I get better. Promise me this and fill the paper full of the most endearing names. If you cannot do so with good will, do my Love tell me–say what you think–confess if your heart is too much fasten’d on the world. Perhaps then I may see you at a greater distance, I may not be able to appropriate you so closely to myself. Were you to loose a favorite bird from the cage, how would your eyes ache after it as long as it was in sight; when out of sight you would recover a little. Perhaps if you would, if it is so, confess to me how many things are necessary to you besides me, I might be happier, by being less tantaliz’d. Well may you exclaim, how selfish, how cruel, not to let me enjoy my youth! to wish me to be unhappy! You must be so if you love me–upon my Soul I can be contented with nothing else. If you could really what is call’d enjoy yourself at a Party–if you can smile in peoples faces, and wish them to admire you now, you never have nor ever will love me–I see life in nothing but the certainty of your Love–convince me of it my sweetest. If I am not somehow convinc’d I shall die of agony. If we love we must not live as other men and women do–I cannot brook the wolfsbane of fashion and foppery and tattle. You must be mine to die upon the rack if I want you. I do not pretend to say I have more feeling than my fellows–but I wish you seriously to look over my letters kind and unkind and consider whether the Person who wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create–My recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you are not all mine when I am well. For god’s sake save me–or tell me my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again God bless you.

No–my sweet Fanny–I am wrong. I do not want you to be unhappy–and yet I do, I must while there is so sweet a Beauty–my loveliest my darling! Good bye! I kiss you–O the torments!

John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne, May 1820

Mitchissmo has such a good and evocative post on break-ups (via Manhattan Transfer, thanks kindly), it almost makes you long for one. Sure, they make you feel flayed alive and stabbed through the heart, but at least they make you unmistakably feel…still, emphasis on the almost.

Break ups fascinate me. Break ups are like one of those hallways from a 1980s music video: a black and white tunnel in slanted perspective, full of misshapen closed doors, a red ball bouncing away into the distance. Despite the obvious clich

Fireworks fit roughly into the same category as famous tourist attractions for me. I never think they will be interesting, and even go out of my way to avoid them. Occasionally I do get roped into seeing them, however, and then I wonder what the hell I was thinking, because they tend to be wonderful. When, as a twelfth-grader in Paris who thought she knew everything and was too cool for most of it, I was dragged reluctantly to the Eiffel Tower–which I knew would be touristy and lame, and besides, I had seen a million pictures–I couldn’t believe how dwarfingly gorgeous it was. Way beyond what a picture could convey. (I preferred being on the ground, gazing up, to being on top looking down, though).

This recurring subplot of my life recurred again last night, when I went with a gaggle of friends to see the league-leading Chicago White Sox play Seattle (on what had to be the nicest evening of this year or any other to attend a ball game). Win or lose, the Sox show fireworks after the game on Saturday nights. Sometimes I can hear them from my South Side apartment.

Last night’s game chugged along at a brisk pace. Around the seventh inning, I remembered about the obligatory fireworks and groaned silently to myself. So mundane. So tiresome. Hopefully my friends wouldn’t want to stick around. Seen one fireworks display, seen ’em all.

That’s as may be, but some experiences don’t depend on novelty. Five seconds into it, I was rapt. By the end I was grinning like an idiot. Next time fireworks are in the offing I’ll roll my eyes and groan–and with any luck, someone will tell me to sit down, shut up, and enjoy the spectacle.

Fireworks fit roughly into the same category as famous tourist attractions for me. I never think they will be interesting, and even go out of my way to avoid them. Occasionally I do get roped into seeing them, however, and then I wonder what the hell I was thinking, because they tend to be wonderful. When, as a twelfth-grader in Paris who thought she knew everything and was too cool for most of it, I was dragged reluctantly to the Eiffel Tower–which I knew would be touristy and lame, and besides, I had seen a million pictures–I couldn’t believe how dwarfingly gorgeous it was. Way beyond what a picture could convey. (I preferred being on the ground, gazing up, to being on top looking down, though).

This recurring subplot of my life recurred again last night, when I went with a gaggle of friends to see the league-leading Chicago White Sox play Seattle (on what had to be the nicest evening of this year or any other to attend a ball game). Win or lose, the Sox show fireworks after the game on Saturday nights. Sometimes I can hear them from my South Side apartment.

Last night’s game chugged along at a brisk pace. Around the seventh inning, I remembered about the obligatory fireworks and groaned silently to myself. So mundane. So tiresome. Hopefully my friends wouldn’t want to stick around. Seen one fireworks display, seen ’em all.

That’s as may be, but some experiences don’t depend on novelty. Five seconds into it, I was rapt. By the end I was grinning like an idiot. Next time fireworks are in the offing I’ll roll my eyes and groan–and with any luck, someone will tell me to sit down, shut up, and enjoy the spectacle.

Friday again, and time for my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser (posted by remote control from Chicago with the help of OGIC–I’m still on the road). I devoted most of this week’s column to a rave review of the Irish Repertory Theatre’s superlative production of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!:

Mr. Friel’s play is, of course, a modern classic, one of the outstanding English-language plays of the postwar era. Written in 1964, it’s a textbook example of how to take an over-familiar situation–the inability of a bright young man to communicate with his stolid, emotionally closed-off father–and make it blazingly fresh and immediate. In a stroke of ingenuity that only seems obvious in retrospect, Mr. Friel has split Gar, who is leaving “the land of the curlew and the snipe” to seek his fortune in far-off Philadelphia, into two people, one public (Michael FitzGerald), the other private (James Kennedy) and invisible save to his flesh-and-blood companion. It is the private Gar who gives voice to the public Gar’s interior monologue, a “Lucky Jim”-like stream of frustrated, coruscating mockery directed at the hapless residents of the village in which he lives, and above all at his father, S.B. “Screwballs” O’Donnell (Edwin C. Owens), a gloomy widower who cannot bring himself to express his love and pride for the son he is about to lose….

I could go on and on about the cast, each member of which deserves a separate paragraph of lavish praise (though I mustn’t fail to make particular mention of Mr. Owens, who triumphs in the daunting task of illuminating the soul of an all-but-inarticulate man). David Raphel’s shabby d

Friday again, and time for my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser (posted by remote control from Chicago with the help of OGIC–I’m still on the road). I devoted most of this week’s column to a rave review of the Irish Repertory Theatre’s superlative production of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!:

Mr. Friel’s play is, of course, a modern classic, one of the outstanding English-language plays of the postwar era. Written in 1964, it’s a textbook example of how to take an over-familiar situation–the inability of a bright young man to communicate with his stolid, emotionally closed-off father–and make it blazingly fresh and immediate. In a stroke of ingenuity that only seems obvious in retrospect, Mr. Friel has split Gar, who is leaving “the land of the curlew and the snipe” to seek his fortune in far-off Philadelphia, into two people, one public (Michael FitzGerald), the other private (James Kennedy) and invisible save to his flesh-and-blood companion. It is the private Gar who gives voice to the public Gar’s interior monologue, a “Lucky Jim”-like stream of frustrated, coruscating mockery directed at the hapless residents of the village in which he lives, and above all at his father, S.B. “Screwballs” O’Donnell (Edwin C. Owens), a gloomy widower who cannot bring himself to express his love and pride for the son he is about to lose….

I could go on and on about the cast, each member of which deserves a separate paragraph of lavish praise (though I mustn’t fail to make particular mention of Mr. Owens, who triumphs in the daunting task of illuminating the soul of an all-but-inarticulate man). David Raphel’s shabby d

“A while to work, and after, holiday.”

William Shakespeare, Richard II

“A while to work, and after, holiday.”

William Shakespeare, Richard II