Art

Mar 26 2021

“They call me Mimi but my name is Lucia….”

I have been having a busy week. I had my six month checkup for my lung cancer surgery last September, with a CAT-Scan with contrast media, and follow up with the surgeon. I am very aware that breathing is a different experience for me, and not for the better, but I am adjusting. I even gained five pounds, which is a significant for me.

My chronic anorexia, and the experience of being inexplicably abandoned by someone who swore his love and commitment to me, only to be followed up by ghosting me, made the recovery almost impossible. Without love, it took away my strength to recover, and my will to live. But I am made of tougher stuff and survived in spite of it.

Today is very early spring, and I have reason for optimism and looking ahead. I am attaching a photo of my son and my grand-daughter, Piper Starling Connolly, who visited me a week ago, making me very happy. Kensie is standing by my side, where she can always be found.

I am reminded of Mimi’s aria in Act. 1 of the opera, La Boheme, set in Paris, my favorite city in the world. I would like to share it as an ode to spring for all of us, and to my own victory over death and despair. Mimi is forced to face her own mortality by the end of Act 3, as shall we all. But in Act I, there is flirting, laughter, and the hope that only comes in spring. Find it on YouTube to listen to the beautiful melody. The words follow:

“They call me Mimi, but my name is Lucy.

I embroider flowers, roses and lilies on silk.

I am peaceful and happy; it is my pass time.

I like these things. They have so sweet a smell,

They speak of love, of spring, of chimera, these things

That have poetic names….. do you understand me?

Yes, they call me Mimi, why, I do not know….

Alone, I make my lunch for myself,

I do not always go to mass.

But I pray a lot to the Lord.

I live alone and cook for myself. Alone….

But when the thaw comes, the first sun is mine!

The first kiss of April is mine!

Rose buds in a vase, leaf and buds

I watch them. The flowers I make,

They do not have an odor

Rose buds in a vase,

Leaf by leaf, I watch it

The gentle perfume of a flower!

But the flowers I make

Ah me, they do not have any odor!

About me, I would not know how to tell.

I am only your neighbor come to bother you!”

From Act I of the Italian opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini

Libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa

Feb 29 2020

Another Interruption caused by TCM when I had things to do…..

I have been very busy these days after months of lethargy and depression catching up with work that had been put aside. When the weather become warm, I want to start gardening and taking care of the lawn outdoors. I need to be very disciplined however I can be most tempted to stray when a film I truly love comes on the schedule for Turner Classic Movies. Last night, when I should have been sleeping, the movie scheduled was among my top 5, Splendor in the Grass, directed by Elia Kazan, starring a very young Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, made in 1961. Another lifetime ago, I may add. I know I can write volumes about this movie and why Iike it so much, but now is not the time. I will say, even having seen it a dozen times, each viewing is as new and raw and shocking as was the first time. It is difficult to watch the growing pains of two young people who love each other trying to do the right thing while everyone around them is acting badly and the world as they know it is undergoing profound social changes, even in the Nebraska heartland. And yes, it is excruciatingly painful to watch them as they come undone and become unrecognizable people from whom they were at the beginning of the story. Together, once so close, they launch their adult lives in such different places, determined not to think much about happiness anymore, and say a simple good by before setting off apart.

As actors, the careers of Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty exploded with stardom and success, including Oscars. It is always a joy to watch their films, each one so different yet rewarding. They talents are boundless. Natalie was taken far too prematurely with a tragedy that defied all logic, as if it were part of the plot of the movie she was making. It never added up to me…… But the death of a great movie star usually does not. They never really die. The movies and the stars I love so much share my heart with the dogs and the horse I have loved so much. I am so grateful for the technology that enables us to watch, rent or stream virtually any movie we want to watch almost anytime for a very small amount of money. They are my companions in loneliness.

Apr 12 2016

Comments regarding other borzoi that can be found on Facebook

I guess I took the time and looked at most of if not all of the photos of Falca and Gala in the Facebook album of my good friend, N29. She has a collection of photographs of her dogs in both color and black and white. I have to say how moved I was by the beautiful photographs displayed there. For me, there are three parts to the album. First, the beauty of her borzoi, so special in their own way; second her stunning talent as a photographer; and third the surreal landscape, that being Idaho, where she lives. It is radically different from the NE United States she knows well because it is where she grew up, in fact, only a few short miles from my house. Sadly, although we are the same age and shared the same passions, we never met as children but only later through borzoi.

I enjoyed looking at her photos on all three levels, and felt for a while as if I was swept away to that far away place. I was consumed by wishes for what could have been in my life, such as wide open spaces where dogs can run free, compared to what is, urban scrawl and gridlock. I wondered as I often do how it ever turned out this way when I tried so hard for it to be otherwise. Although I suffocate with loneliness in the crushing crowds, I know I should be grateful for my home and environs, meager though they are, and my two ageing borzoi, like me, walking on the trails and roads available to us, spending what is left of our days. I so not feel at liberty to display her photographs here, but they can be found easily on Facebook by typing in their names.