August 10, 2004
a novel idea
I have, thank heaven, been brought to my senses that pulp fiction about sex is what it's all about. Thus, it's time for more of that fabulous book, The Dreamers.
Here is a description of the charming foolishness of the quaint, uncivilized behavior that characterizes the sweet, slightly dumb chief of police. Do note that he is Italian.
The professor wanted to laugh again, but he did not because the chief was playing policeman and if you didn't take him seriously he might get angry.
"Where were you yesterday at four in the afternoon?" the chief asked.
"I was sitting on the edge of the cliff reading some historical essays."
"That is right. Do you remember a clump of bushes near you?"
"Yes."
The chief again stuck his chest out proudly.
"I was the bushes," he said.
So we know the Italians are laughable. But how about the Germans?
He was a very handsome man, six feet, two inches tall and had an enormous chest and wide shoulders...His physical health and strength were like a mountaineer's. You could not look at his giant symmetry without thinking that here was a man whose physical endurance must be stupendous. He was the kind of man you visualized as a polar explorer or a deep-sea diver...During the first World War, being in England, he was imprisoned there. Yeears later he contributed to the Nazi party, regretted it, and moved to Italy.
How about the Americans?
...the Americans do not want the peace that is just around the corner...and they have arrogantly and brutishly decided to prolong the war. In fact, this war is all but over, and the Americans, true to type, have started a fresh war.
The English
"How did you know I was an Englishman?"
"You looked uncomfortable."
Oh, and one more thing. When the Germans are angry they shout, "Desiccated swine!" in English.
I suppose the only sexy thing is the description of the young, beautiful Italians sitting at the table with the professor who had been watched by the shrub.
[The girl and the man] were telling each other the most intimate things with their eyes, and the professor was mortified by their emotional eloquence to such an extent that he drank another glassful and refilled it. Now the thing was becoming unendurable.
Hang onto your hats, you British darlings.
As an Englishman he didn't know whether they were being supremely natural or devastatingly abnormal, and this quandary called for another drink. Then there was the question of whether they were sublime or disgusting, and this, too, was a cause for another drink.
You poor British. You must hold hands in the dark and wonder when the stork will come. Poor professor. You'd think even historians would know that love comes in varieties. It's not just book-learning, my dears, that can inspire love.
There are magazines, too.
What's that? Where's the gratuitous sex?
"When I am caressing her I am for always singing all over me from the head thoroughly to the feets."
The professor slammed his glass onto the table, raised his eyes to heaven and whispered, "Bless my soul, it's impossible."
She turned quickly to him.
"You are meaning," she said furiously, "I am not makiing for singing in his feets?"
"The professor closed his eyes. "My dear," he said patiently, "You mistunderstood me. I haven't any doubt in the world about any of it..."
"Ah," said the man, "we have long being in the sun with our bodies naked beneath the sky so much of blue. Here in Campagna is some way no long time and no short time. We are always in happiness for each other so as you are seeing and we are telling. Darkness time and light daytime is always with us the breath of passion and the swimming delighted paradise. You know?"
"Do I know what?"
"You understanding?"
"Of course I understand."
The girl did not take her eyes off the man, but she was speaking to both him and the professor. "He is gentling with his touching like a dream. I am living in him like then as if so it was being a dream of the flesh. Yes, no like a dream of the head. A dream of the flesh. It is the world going around I feel, or a wave waving in the ocean, so we are one thing."
...
"When she is lying in the moonlight I am not knowing if a man is to be fainting like a night going away into a light coming day or if he is being right to playing an orchestra in his stomach."
Yes, indeed. Such fantastic writing. And the range of vocabulary for these two perfect creatures. Why does it improve as they speak more? "Darkness time and light daytime" feel so charming and English as a second language-y. And then he says, "orchestra" and "thoroughly" and "breath of passion".
I made a claim that this was boring. I suppose it isn't. It's inane and foolish. It's poorly written by an author high upon a horse.
It is, however, entertaining. If I were not on my high horse, it might even be chortle worthy.
There are so many levels of being annoyed and superior. There's having a stiff back (otherwise known as having some object in one's ass). There's looking down one's nose. There's looking askance. There's being on a soapbox. I'm sure that there's an intermediate that I don't know which would then cause us to graduate to the high horse.
I am feeling touch of sunbeam yellow in my up soul now time. A day of the pretty day in this not Spring time. Time for plant and animals for growing and being the ready for people day to choose picking of harvest.
Touch of sun on grass so green calls my Dotty to going away to new location thinking of insect homes and roses.
Oh man.
(I really do love the British. Most of them. If you're reading this, you know I love you most.)
(Furthermore, SirDougg told me that you drink cream tea with tea. I love that so very much. Some places offer coffee instead.)
Posted by dotty at August 10, 2004 12:36 PM