Tonite over drinks at my old haunt in Greenpoint, The Mark Bar, a friend tells me my living situation should be a screenplay between the alcoholic/speed freak polish carpenter who uses the apartment as a testing ground for his decorative ideas, and refuses to lock the outside door, among other ANNOYING behavior (like getting into fights w/his girlfriend that end up on the fire escape), AND the Indian Guyanese landlord who is in his 80s, missing half his teeth, and speaks barely audible English. A sweet and admirable man, the latter, who grew up in Guyana farming (he has told me many stories, most recently his encounter as a boy with a ghost who walked out of a river and grabbed his leg, trying to drown him), and managed to buy this building after his family scrimped for years in the very same apartment I live, with his four kids and wife. So he’s a very inspiring man YET one who is compelled to fix things with the cheapest means possible in a building that is falling apart, LITERALLY, and has been for years. Also he can be deceitful when it suits him (he is after all a landlord), so its been a whirlwind of ridiculousness.
Anyway, that friend’s comment made me laugh because the “other situation” we also talked about (that professional betrayal I mentioned last week) is for me its own screenplay, power and corruption being the most compelling form of drama, IMHO. Oddly, we discovered as well a mutual love for serial killer-themed TV, and this appetite for the dark and baroque once again rearing its head put me in mind somehow of Baudelaire (I know a weird segue, but I teach him this time every year).
Maybe its Halloween and/or the moon? I wish I was astrologically astute enough to know what’s going on because I do believe celestial activity impacts collective behavior…I just wish some astrophysicist would take time out of her day to interpret the planetary traffic patterns for us laypeople in terms that reflect chaos and string theory, and don’t sound like its still 1975. Can you imagine what those horoscopes would look like? I actually can’t either:)
So here’s a Baudelaire poem I love, The Balcony, one he wrote for his “Venus Noire”, Hatian-born actress and dancer, Jeanne Duval, the love of his life, who has, sadly, been reduced to femme fatale status (and in racist terms), blamed for Baudelaire’s addiction to opium. Following that is a portrait of her by Manet (1862), and one by Baudelaire (undated).
“MOTHER of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,
Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,
The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!
The eves illumined by the burning coal,
The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings–
How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul!
Ah, and we said imperishable things,
Those eves illumined by the burning coal.
Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm,
And space profound, and strong life’s pulsing flood,
In bending o’er you, queen of every charm,
I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood.
The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm.
The film of night flowed round and over us,
And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet;
I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous,
And in my hands fraternal slept your feet–
Night, like a film, flowed round and over us.
I can recall those happy days forgot,
And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past.
Your languid beauties now would move me not
Did not your gentle heart and body cast
The old spell of those happy days forgot.
Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite,
Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound;
As rise to heaven suns once again made bright
After being plunged in deep seas and profound?
Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite!”
And since we’re on dark themes, just heard this live version of one of my favorite Aretha songs!
