red rose, white rose

 Red rose, white rose… a beautiful tale… a traditional male and a flirtatious married female. A tale that seems written for me, and one that was found by pure luck. I’d ordered a book by Eileen Chang simply because I remembered enjoying the one that was on my shelf, Love in a fallen city, one that I had read as a part of my studies. Whilst waiting for the new book to arrive, I picked up the older one and discovered there was one short story at the end that I had not read. My bookmark, a ticket from Sorolla House museum in Madrid, was in the book at the beginning of the story. I started to read it and fell in love with every poetic, rebellious, unconventional word and line. I have also fallen in love with the character, Jiaorui. It has really whet my appetite for the new book that has arrived, Half a lifelong romance. I did feel sad at the end for Wangli and her daughter. People deserve better from their relationships than neglect.

                  The moon punctuates the deep blue sky at 7:30am and hovers over the pool like a special effect. It’s beautiful. It brings about a sense of awe. Life lingers a little less chaotically this week as many European colleagues are on vacation. Of course, the ones who are working are grumpy and firing out requests for status and looking for excuses to escalate people. The real world is unreal. Some form of sickness remains and as I rise to look in the mirror, I hardly recognize the face I see. 

                    Finishing Red rose, white rose, I read the brief summary of Eileen Chang’s life. As she got older, she became increasingly reclusive and was eventually found dead in her apartment in Los Angeles at the age of 74… on my 22nd birthday. Interestingly, Charles Bukowski, another of my literary idols, died the year before that, also in Los Angeles, at the age of 73. I am not sure if I will make it to that age, but they will eventually find me alone in my apartment, too, only no one will ever know or care.


Writing in a hotel room in Virginia Beach, Virginia. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

big foot beats Jesus

  It’s difficult to stop laughing these days. Well, we alternate between crying and laughing. First, I see that Elon Musk’s Grok has proved that Big Foot exists, then I see a video about ‘six proofs that Jesus never existed.’ My main thought is… why do people even care? My Theory is that there was probably a radical progressive gay guy who was preaching love and forgiveness, then the Republicans of the time put him to death in the streets for challenging their wealth and stone age beliefs. Of course, it is obvious to any scholar of the twenty first century that the bible is a metaphorical work of fiction… but it is certain that, like any work of modern fiction, the characters and events are based on real events. Someone who preaches freedom of love, freedom of religion, forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance… maybe they even supported the idea of windmills… is certain to be killed by the guys who think they are the toughest and the strongest, and the only ones worthy of having choices....
Read more

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