Good morning!
Theodore is reading me the warnings off the pages from the pharmacist about the medications he has taken for years. It is difficult to concentrate on writing a blog under these circumstances. If you are taking Warfarin, do not bleed, is the gist of this one. Hmmmm....who'd- a thought it?
I ordered out the old Jane Eyre from eBay, and it arrived yesterday afternoon. I watched it immediately due to having eaten a large lunch out with prospect of a free later afternoon when we'd scratch from the refrigerator.
It is amazing how beautiful this old black and white movie is. Joan Fontaine is incredible. She made Rebecca when she was nineteen, so must have made this shortly after, as she was still very young. And there, dying in the hideous Lowood School, is eight year old Elizabeth Taylor, just as beautiful as ever. And there, dancing ballet and frisking about charmingly at Thornfield, is very tiny Margaret O'Brien. Talk about old friends!!!
Mr Rochester in the novel is a dramatic, brooding personage, full of emotion, rage, longing, and as such he is beautifully portrayed by a gloomily lit Orson Welles who did full justice to the role. The quiet, understated Mr Rochester played by Michael Fassbender(2011) might be preferable company for spending the rest of your life with--but--nah. We'd rather have the ups and downs of living with a real maniac like Orson Welles. Certainly we'd rather have the watching of him. One flaw in the old film (amongst others probably) (I have not watched it critically yet), anyway one flaw is that at the end of the film, blind as a bat, he swoops down and plants a wonderful huge kiss square on the lips of Jane...and you think--good, but...? Or do you think about it or are you just swept away as we ladies can be?
It's funny that Mr Rochester complains about being an innocent lad taken in by a conniving woman--twice. How often do we need to be taken in before we wake up? Often, apparantly. He was taken in by marrying the lady who now resides in the tower...and he was taken in by Adelle's mother, a scheming dancing girl in Paris. He is a person led by his heart, apparently, and it is good that he finally fell in with Jane Eyre. His good luck. Also good luck, as we learn in the last sentences of the novel and the 1945 film, that his eyesight comes back in time for him to see the huge brilliant eyes of his first son. I remember reading that book and feeling so much pleasure and gratification when I read those words. Charlotte Bronte granted him and us that favor.
Now to another tack. If you want to read a good book, read Blue Desert by Charles Bowden. Charles Bowden is an Arizona writer and desert rat sort of person who has written very very well about his beloved southern Arizona deserts and the activities thereon. He also wrote a sequel to this book and it is good too, but what I remember is the enchantment I felt upon first reading his desert sketches. I also liked, in the second book (title forgotten), was his description of a conversation with a Mexican lady during which she slowly slowly consumes a plate of enchiladas in bites so tiny he couldn't perceive that she'd ever finish it. It gave me a heads up, me who is used to thinking of an enchilada as a four-bite item. American women do eat like wolves, often. A hearty appetite which is admired in a young girl can get pretty disgusting later on, especially as the eye follows the progression of those bites downward to generous belly and hips. No, the tiny-bite method is best, and, if you are lucky, you won't have time to finish it.
I got a phone call from Benjamin yesterday, from Minneapolis. I thought he was joking as he was supposed to have arrived in Wichita by then. No, there had been a flaw in the plane (that airline that was Northwest) and they were an hour and a half late in leaving SF. They got to the first stop, Minneapolis, too late to make the connection, so he was hanging around for a ten thirty flight last night for Wichita. I suggested he go out into Minneapolis to get a good dinner somewhere, but he said no way would he leave the secure area and go through entering it again. Gosh, travel is becoming a nightmare. And my scientific son has become a traveling salesman at this time in history and I don't like it. YAZZYBEL
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