I'm just a cock-eyed pessimist

A Little War Tragedy

I must not bewail,
Falter or grow pale.
Say I'm ill or sit wrapped in a shawl;
He was not my brother,
Nor acknowledged lover --
No one knew I cared for him at all.

Just by chance they said,
'Have you heard he's dead?'
As they handed me a cup of tea:
One among so many,
Guess they had not any --
He was just the whole wide world to me.

Life must still go on,
Work is to be done --
These things happen every day I know:
I was nothing to him
Have no right to rue him,
Save the right of having loved him so.

- published anonymously in the May 1917 Gazette of the 3rd London General Hospital in Wandsworth.

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The sword is the soul. Study the sword to know the soul. Evil mind, evil soul.

Well, that was just the best sword-fighting movie I've ever seen. Lots of bare feet moving across wooden floors, incredible cinematography, a top-notch cast and plenty of questions they didn't bother answering. Sword of Doom, Japanese Psycho Samurai, I highly recommend it. And it really blended into last night's theatrical spectacle well. Which I should say something about ...

Faust, as done by Punchdrunk, was the kind of theatrical experience you spend years going to the theater hoping to encounter. We screwed up and manage to miss the clues that would have got us synched up with the story thread that was going on, and spent most of the first hour going from floor to floor absorbing the incredibly atmospheric scenery that was created in the spaces of the warehouse. A forest with real pine trees and a broken woodshed, a cornfield with a windmill, a freaky hall of stone madonnas with candles underneath them, a big empty barn ... it was all just a part of the whole we never got to entirely see. Finally, an actor pulled me into the dance scene and I was swing dancing with the devil ... spun back into the audience until he brushed his hand across the cheek and commanded,"Follow me!" So I did and we saw the rest of Faust (and Gretchen)'s downfall ... only catching up with the rest of our group as Mephistopheles threw his body across a naked Faust as if to mark him as his property. Boo ya. I need to go back in December and catch the scenes I missed.

Let's just say tonight I'm sponsored a bit by the perry and farmhouse cider we polished off at The Harp near Covent Garden (my face! I can't feel my face!), and hit a review of Funeral Parade of Roses. ( Collapse ) I think the lesson was: no more movies after 8 PM on weeknights.

And of course my favorite part of the weekend was hanging out with spikeylady Saturday afternoon, which was unexpectedly free and in dire need of some good girl time. I had some nice squash soup and bread at the vegetarian restaurant near her place, then we poked around in Peacocks, where I picked up a fuzzy sweater and a skirt and dress for 40 pounds (cheap!). Thanks for the invite - I promise next time I'll catch the quick train instead of doing the scenic tour of south London.