Bay of Angels

 

The soothing fire of a shot of scotch. A delicate memory of a beautiful and passionate past encounter. The recognition of time and change, of things rearranged. And then, sadly, awaking to an end to the ceasefire and the depression that sets in as a result of that. But I just finished reading Bread of Angels by Patti Smith and the image at the end of the 'Bay of Angels’ in Nice, France, made me feel nostalgic. It is a place I have been fortunate enough to visit many times, and the view is spectacular. I have visited with great friends and even a lover and, yet, all this time, I never knew that Patti Smith stayed at the Hotel Suisse and that, before her, James Joyce had also spent time there during a crucial phase of writing Finnegans Wake. Literature is beautiful. The world of books and literary history is a world that I am grateful to have discovered a passion for and, honestly, as I grow older, one of the things that terrifies me most is knowing that, one day, this all comes to an end and we can no longer read and write and discover new writers, new books, and new places that they write about or come from. Bukowski wrote ‘find what you love and let it kill you.’ I would say that we should at least try to find what we love and pursue it with every fibre of our being. Enjoy life as much as possible before it is too late.

 



From Bread of Angels


 


My own photo from August 2022

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

their envy

  They drive home from their 16-hour shift in the office and pull into the carpark… then they sit in their cars, engine running, lights on… they sit and sit. What are they doing? It becomes clear, they simply don’t want to go home. They are afraid of the boss all day in the office, and they are afraid all night of the lack of privacy they have in their home. So, that period in the car park after parking their car is the only period of freedom that they have in their day.                     Couples always want single people to date and ‘find a partner’. That is because they want single people to be as miserable as they are. They see the happiness and contentment of a single person and their envy makes them want to destroy it.  
Read more

french night

  03:33am and sleep is merely a vision, a wish, a dream. A day of work lies ahead and yet, here in bed, there is no rest. There was a reconnection, a revival of a love long lost, but it was brief and flickering and, as usual, something popped up suddenly to sever the connection as rapidly as it was regained. The ship sails on, silent and alone in the night. Who would have thought that a fuck in the French night could rekindle so many feelings… from love to despair. And a forgotten one: the feeling of becoming less significant when one’s lover finds someone more interesting via a chance encounter.  
Read more

it's not someone else's fault.

  I see many articles about Britain wanting to rejoin the European Union. I am delighted about this. But people claim they were misled, and that is why they voted to leave. I see people in the US regretting their vote for Donald Trump, and they say they never knew it would be like this. All I can say is that, as a British citizen, I voted to remain in Europe and, later, becoming a US citizen, I voted against Trump. In both cases, it was blatantly obvious to me what the outcome would be. The truth is that Brexit and Trump votes result from the same thing… fear and hatred. It is complex and nuanced, but the main fear and hatred was that of immigrants and immigration, in both cases.                     It is not easy, I understand. In a sense, I was fortunate… when I was eight years old my parents left the UK and moved to South Africa, we were immigrants. Years later I returned to the UK and was ...
Read more