W/E

It would be easy to have married him or so she believes

Mijn Hart byErik Suidman

A wasteland of her own making

She would only divulge the bit that she was certain would cause her utter humiliation for at least then there would be a sort of penance. The entire thing had all but killed her, had left her broken and desolate, clinging to her isolation as a sort of sentence though she had long abandoned religion in hope of finding salvation.

She had been rich in sin right from the very beginning and had, by her tenth birthday, known self-pleasure enough to offer tutorial. It had been both comfort and shame but at least in that she was no different from anyone else who masturbated in a God-fearing land.

Then there were the boys who at first seemed to be co-conspirators for their parts in it but that was soon proven a lie. She had never needed them as much as they had come to want her and in that lay her tragedy. She valued the orgasm more than the device that got her there and since she was able to find fulfillment long before the boys arrived they would soon prove themselves no more than fallacy.

He had been the one that she wanted to matter, the one, in whom she had pinned all hopes for a normality of which she believed herself capable. She had given him what all the other girls wouldn’t but none of what was expected and in the beginning it had been perfection. She had no demand of his time nor had she required monogamy of him and in return he received all she had to offer.

She had not flinched at sodomy or gagged at fellatio but she would not allow him to penetrate her in the usual way. That he could get from any other girl. And they went on in their way until he wanted more, demanding of her truth, time and commitment.

She had panicked about how much she had lied to him. Not about other men for there was no one else at that time but him not really. There had been little flirtations but for the most part she had made herself so she had been just for him and even that had all been a lie. It was more intimacy than she wanted to own up to so she made it about something else. She made it about him.

It had been easy to make it about him possessing her in the one way she had insisted was sacred and it had taken no more than her confiding in the one man he believed capable of what he wasn’t. Her confidant was one his dearest friends but there had been a sort of rivalry between the two and she was a point of pride for her man. She knew this from the very beginning and there were times when he took pleasure from seeing his friend look at her with lust and at he with jealous. So, it had been easy for her to make it his torment.

A few smiles and a carefully placed hand was all it took for him to be consumed by it. Then he was left impotent, unable to find release, made insane to the point of meticulous action. In this she was a willing party and of course it would ultimately mean their end but what else could she do.

By November she was twenty-six and willingly lost, thus waited for him to act. When the time came he had kissed her in the manner of lustful teenager for nearly an hour on his sofa without hurry stilling her every attempt to put an aggressive end to their building desires. Then he was selfless, his face buried between her thighs. He had planned everything to perfection. He didn’t have to pause or rush forth with purpose for that matter. Once he had lifted his head to look her in the eyes they both knew.

He was not looking for her consent nor would he have proceeded if she had said no but he knew she wouldn’t have and not because she was swept away, for that she was not capable of. He knew only that she would rather sacrifice body rather than tell him a single truth and he no longer cared.

She braced for pain that never came and then it was nearly nice because for whatever reason it still mattered to him that she knew he had tenderness and capacity but it was for naught. She was in familiar ruins.

My love my care,

Simone

Don't pick at it

You will only bleed and it'll leave an ugly scar



the intercepted love letter by Carl Spitzweg

Funny

Say it was good

No, say it could not have been better

And love me

No suffer for having loved me

And be turned inside out at the thought of not having loved me

Say perfect is knowing I’m part of you and you can’t bear me being torn away

No, say aguish is your leaving and having me be a compliant accomplice

And insist on my blood, tears and regrets so our end is as our passionate beginning

My love my care,

Simone

Suddenly the impossible...

Someone who knows me completely

If I were to marry it would be to someone to whom I was able to show all the awful bits of me. All the deep dark secrets pieces that I keep hidden in order to save face and protect heart. The tender vulnerable little girl parts of me that won’t let anyone see her cry and who leaves before she can get hurt or never bothers getting too involved because she is too afraid. I don’t know I’m capable of it and understand that it is an ideal that could easily be lost to want for children or fear of being alone. I’m at least self-aware enough to know it would take me trusting enough to let go my control and being honest.

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Triosson's Hortense de Beauharnais

This would not be easy for me and not because I’m unwilling but because it is fundamentally who I am and fundamental to the person I’ve grown into. In my family keeping secrets is a mitzvah and as romantic as I am I'm able to see with clarity the woman I’ve become. She is no less than a perversion of the ideal girl I wish I was but never was capable of being. I will more than likely marry without having shared more than the necessary bits and sadly it will be enough.

I hope against all that I’m wrong

My love my care,

Simone

Nine Years

Nelson Shanks' Bluebird

I haven’t seen the man of my life in 197 days. I think of him no less than twice in every breath which is half has much the amount of times I glance at the door expecting him to enter. I’m well aware of how pathetic it makes me and still I take solace in it for missing him is all that remains. Well that and my increasing understanding that we will never be.

My love my care,

Simone

Jews for Mel Gibson...

And other out of the way rubbish said when in company with my provoking sister. It started with me telling her about some lecture I saw on youtube by some Harvard don on justice. The question presented by the academic was this – ‘if placed in circumstance where one is to choose between the lives of many verses than of one what would you choose?’ My first thought had not been one of logic but of heart and it was what could I live with plain and simple. I would choose one but I would do all I could including jumping in front of the cart to save that individuals life.

Erik Suidman's De Bezoekers

For this answer I was rewarded with a little tale of a town called happy or some such nonsense where all the residence of this ideal godforsaken fictional town rest on the misery of one child locked in a dark pit. Just you imagine it a place where your child is safe to play outdoors unattended without fear of harm and nothing bad ever appends all thanks to the sacrifice of one wretched child that is not permit kindness or the humane.

I love my sister but there are times when I wish she would simple be quiet and let me enjoy my blissful ignorance. Like this time I was reading this article on Mel Gibson’s comeback when she said, ‘I should stop reading fairy tales.’ This got me so mad I said, ‘It’s possible you know, all it would take is for some powerful Jew like say Harvey Weinstein or Steven Spielberg to wear a Jew for Mel t-shirt.’ I’m pretty sure that was blasphemous and a thousand other awful things still there is no one I would rather spend an afternoon with.

My love my care,

Simone

Louis Ritman



Louis Ritman's Early Morning Sunshine (At the Window, Giverny)

For to me his painting of the female form reads as sacred. Most often bath in light always treated with respect. When it comes to art I know what I like on sight and I truly adore Mr. Ritman’s work. I always come back to the ones who leave an impression and he my dears have left light on canvas but more than that is the hearts delight.

His 'Lady by a Window' is one my absolute favorites

My love my care,

Simone

Until then...

I look forward to putting you behind me.



Portrait of Achille de Gas in Uniform by Edgar Degas

Today is precisely as yesterday and still I’m content to live in our misery for now I’m but marking time. I’ve already decided to leave you but why it should be for this thing that is no different from the other awful things we have been party to when we were so long heading here. I know you won’t struggle against my going when the time comes or shed tear nor will you visit or so I hope for I wouldn’t want to be the heavy who had to hold you accountable, yet again. I’m praying you will have grace enough to allow me a clean break without thought for yourself. Be concerned for me this once, wear it as duty for it was after all meant to have been just so. But then ours was never as it should have been, so starting now I will steel myself against your need with the hope you will let me be. No more will I offer you care in my hour of need. Going forth you are to be stranger allowed the kind indifference and genial consideration without row or contentious attempt to understand your hurting me time and again.

My love my care,

Simone

Professional opinion

Believe me it works!



Rolf Armstrong's Golden Girl

Don’t just drag something on; now and then get dress with purpose. Trust your mirror and think I’m attractive. If I feel good I’m more likely to smile and the chain reaction from that simple gesture can be life changing or at the very least it will make you feel better. This works for your home too. Dress your bedroom for purpose or your kitchen for that matter. This is good advice.

My love my care,

Simone

The Perfect Man Is:



Quick to laugh with a killer smile
Tall
Independent
Eloquent
Kind
He is fit with a six pack
Well read and of proper books too, none of this Malcolm Gladwell popular fiction nonsense
A Professional
Good with his hands
A Yogi
And Masseuse
A baby whisperer
Tantric sex master
Chef
Plays the piano
Volunteers
Parallel parks with one hand
Love foreign films
Is a world traveler and is multilingual.
The Perfect man is more than a renaissance man he is pure fiction.

John Frederick Kensett's Sunset on the Sea

My care my love,

Simone 

Mid-July

Louis Aston Knight's Flower by the Edge of the River

I can’t bear it and not because the change I’ve so long anticipated is nowhere in sight but I’m bothered by the near comfort I take from the mundanity of todays that too often resembles yesterdays. I’m afraid of my pass, terrified my ills will manifest themselves as some awful change and so I’m glad to wallow here in the relative misery of Tuesdays that favours Saturdays. I’ve been wicked and ungrateful but it does not weight so heavy I fear as the worry of the consequence that karma promises. Though, why I a non-religious descendant of nonpracticing Catholics and Jews turned Rasta and half-assed Buddhist should worry so about sin is beyond me.

Bad people get away with murder all the time while innocent babies die from hunger. Let’s face it, good things happen to bad people all the time without rhyme or reason and still I can’t help but fret over the grand judgement. I wonder if that is a universal human worry.

My love my care,

Simone

Why I never wait by the phone

Because at sixteen I wrote this in between breaks of frantically pacing the floor of my room while waiting for the boy I liked to call

Odilon Redon's Ophelia

Me at 16

For him I’m flames on the ocean and any thought of him sweeps me up as frenzied northern wind on wild fire
I burn and boil the water scalding the fish
I’m mayhem near cataclysmic

Violent, no?

My love my care,

Simone

The civility cocktails allow

It’s just good manners really

Jean Francois Raffaelli's Blacksmiths Taking a Drink

True to tell I was raised to believe that cocktails before an awful true told were not only good decorum it was necessary. So, of course when the gentleman sitting next to me said he thought drinks being served before the ceremony were most civilized I knew I had made a friend for life. The wedding would more than likely have been as bile – the bride’s first and the groom’s third – if it weren’t for the mimosas that made drinking before noon acceptable I would not have made it twenty minutes let alone seven hours. There had champagne after the awful ceremony for which they had written their own vows, I still can’t believe she quote lyric from a Celine Dion song and I’m sure if we check the video from his previous weddings he recycled some of those sentiments. This had been the third such wedding of the season and I’m not going to anymore of these arrangements this year for fear I’ll become alcohol dependant.

My love my care,

Simone

Three of the One Hundred Women that has inspired me

More than beautiful they are Striking, each of these stunners is a master of nuance capable of brilliant silence with an enviable talent earned and honed through her relentless hard work.

Please allow me to present the actors Viola Davis, Tilda Swinton and Maggie Cheung, for they read to me as echoes of the same note heard at different points in the cannon. Each in her own way the personification of craft to artist.

Viola Davis

Ms. Davis has the gravity of a complex protagonist and is accomplished at conveying heartbreak with dignified smile. She is also able to do small and vulnerable but sadly it is not a part given to her enough. I would love to see her in something tender and layered as ‘Same Time Next Year’ or in the same vein as a Neil Simon perhaps reminiscent of say ‘The Goodbye Girl’ or one of those female positive films from the seventies.

 

Viola's Tiny Bio: Juilliard graduate, two times Tony Award winner along with Academy Award, Golden Globes and Screen Actor Guild nominations. Her opus magnum thus far is ‘Doubt’ but there is genius ahead of her yet and I for one can’t wait to see what she does next. She was nothing short of mesmerizing in ‘Solaris’ watch it or ‘Trust’ and let her blow your mind.

Tilda Swinton

Ms. Swinton has the mutability of an epic antagonist with what seems to be limitless reach; the woman can play anything and if you don’t believe me simply spend an hour with her film ‘Orlando,’ you will not be able to look away, I guarantee. She was phenomenal in Michael Clayton but as far as I’m concerned her opus magnum thus far is ‘The Deep End’ for in it she was no less than a divine vessel for the determined Margaret.

Tilda's Tiny Bio: Cambridge graduate, Academy Award and British Academy of Film and Television Arts winner along with Golden Globes and Screen Actor Guild nominations. There has never been one the likes of her on screen and she is truly a joy to behold.

Maggie Cheung

Ms. Cheung has the incandescence of a masterful heavy for it is not only that she is apt at playing human it’s also how seldom you take note she is but play the part. She is in it and we the audience is all the better for having seen what she has set forth. Her face is a mirror and within it all lives experience. In ‘Clean,’ her opus magnum she embodies loss and despair with just enough hope to make her pain tolerable to the onlooker.

Maggie's Tiny Bio: Singer, Composer and she is the first Asian actress to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She plays extraordinary with such ease that I would love to see her play a suburban soccer mom or desperate house wife.

My love my care,

Simone

Three Sixty Five

Health, wealth and a ceremony on Wednesday in blue.

I wish for a few things with every breath

          Fortune without fame

                       Love without dating

                               To be ten years younger and ten years wiser
                                        But then I’m such a practical girl I would gladly accept the fortune and sort out the rest on the morrow.
Still I’m too sensible to believe any of it will ever happen for me and have long since sat down with financial adviser to draft up an alternative life plan. I’ll be a millionaire soon enough but what of the rest?

Quint Buchholz's Morning (I.)

My love my care,

Simone

Ode to Daniel Craig’s bum

I have nine great girl friends and besides a three times a year must get together there is seldom anything we can all agree on... that was until we say the print ad for ‘Cowboys and Aliens.’ Now you must understand they are women from ages twenty-seven to forty in this set. Some married for decades (one to her high school sweetheart), others single (one happily divorced) and a few that won’t admit to monogamy being a real state so believe me when I say for us to have consensus on anything is nothing short of miraculous.



We have had knock-down drag-out pissing matches over shoes and cake. Cake is good and shoes is better what is there to fight about I ask you and still... well I digress. Daniel Craig’s bottom is a thing of beauty and so says all of us. Not George Clooney’s easy charm or Chiwetel Ejiofor magnetism or William Fichtner soulful eyes or Gad Elmaleh eloquent silence or sweet Eric Bana for that matter could get the nod of all nine.

My love my care,

Simone

The irrational strangely linear path of an idea in my mind...

The thought: Am I happy here?

Victorian Still Life With Apple Blossoms by Martin Johnson Heade

I’ve always known that I was happier in the summer but it has only just dawned on me that it may also be necessary for my happiness. I was watching a film of oranges growing in someone’s backyard in some tropical paradise and it made me feel homesick. I kept thinking I don’t have enough money for that and I would miss my sister too much but she lives in another city and I hardly see her. We talk on the phone all the time so all I would really need is a good long distance plan. My mother would hate this! Money stops me doing everything. I don’t have a baby because I don’t have enough money and it would be irresponsible besides I’m not married. I don’t know if I fully believe one ought to be married to have children but I do believe children do better with two parents but what is to stop me packing-up my belongings for sunnier shores. I’ll more than likely make a list of pros and cons that will end with me popping down to the research library to find out how to create an orangery in my tiny back yard. I wish I had the courage to simply take my life savings and just go. Sadly, I won’t for I’m too sensible besides I have an obligation to my future self to take care of our retirement.

My love, my care,

Simone

The man I will love tomorrow will be so much more...

Jaroslaw Kukowski's Untitled

The man I love today is:

Beautiful as youth and promise fulfilled.

He is paradise and live flesh.

Strength and victorious warrior.

He is my ideal

An erotic, charming, virile soul.

Accomplished and the reason for my blissful smiles.

He is Sundays and sentiment.

Kind, arrogant and competitive athletic.

He is bright, solid and a bit exotic.

For him I’m vulnerable and for me he is unavailable.

My love my care,

Simone

The feminist male...

Puts me in mind of Hillary Rodham Clinton at the unset of Bill’s campaign for presidency, you know more detriment than aid.

Pietro Rotari's Penitent Girl

The effects of the feminist movement on men came up in conversation the last time I had lunch with a few of my girlfriends and besides being a point of contention very little was resolved. My argument was and will continue to be that its effect is negligible. Now, before you demand my head on a pike, hear me out. The movement was not intended to effect men and there was no agenda at its root or in thought thereafter to change one man’s mind let alone the entire perception of their genders view of ours. The entire point was to empower women and provide laws that enable us the same rights as men.

There was no initiative to encourage men to see women as equal only laws and shaming tactics that stopped them opening doors while we fight the immoveable glass ceilings. I’m certain that you like me have heard the arguments from reasonable to absurd: My personal favourite is that bit of madness where the feminist movement was dreamt up by some horny man looking to liberate women from their brassieres and there is that bit of insanity about the sex positive feminist caused the down fall of the entire movement.

The truth is nobody really knows any more.

I personally believe the truth is that womankind lost sight of the goal long before the war was won. We went along to get along and yes it may seem unsophisticated but it is no less true. It is our fight not theirs and no man no matter how lovely or well-intended can be our champion for then what would have been the point?

My love my care,

Simone

Metro Story

I was telling my sister how I always seem to be on the train cart with the eccentrics when she told me this little gem.

Erik Suidman's De Stofzuigerkoning

She said it had been just before dinner time last summer. She was en route from the shops downtown to our mother’s place in the east end when at Sherbourne or maybe it was Broadview Subway she was no longer sure which when an older gentleman rose and got off. Now, she swears she would not have remembered him beyond the next stop had a mid-aged fellow not called all their attention to him.

‘Take a good look at him,’ he said pointing to the man by then walking on the platform towards the stairs. ‘For it will be me that’s like him in a few years, going home to an empty flat and working well into my seventies for fear of the alternative which will be staying in my lonely apartment all day.’

To this little outburst someone said something like, ‘Don’t project your short comings onto a stranger cause for all you know he could well be married to his high-school sweetheart who has a hot meal waiting for him as we speak.’

To which the upset fellow said only, ‘Did he look to you like he was going home to someone?’

There was nothing else said, the upset fellow sat staring off and everyone else prayed for their stops or his to come soon.

My love my care,

Simone

A sort of grand spectacle

The lot was already seated when I got on the late train heading east at Young and Bloor and they had been in no way spectacular these children of East Indian immigrants. The girls in colours from their mothers’ countries – pretty jewel tone scarves, yellow gold bangles and light delicate sent – paired well with super tight blue jeans enviable boots and designer handbags. Though, the young men with them seemed less exotic in their beer commercial attire all of them in crisp white sneakers Lacoste, K.Swiss and the like with pop-star jeans and goose down jackets they had been no less foreign.

Mademoiselle Lange as Venus by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Triosson

They were happy with something like youth and sprawled over a dozen seats even though there I’m certain there was no more than eight. At their centre was a voluptuous goddess with eyes ideal and hundred watt smiles. It is for her the grand spectacle was set forth. Her escort for the evening by then mad in love with her peeled of his jacket to straddle the handle bars in an impressive show of strength for one his size. She granting him restraint smiles even as the other girls teased and the young men whistled and cheered him on.

Then a lone clapper, our protagonist entered from the front of the cart his tone openly mocking as he offer insincere near provoking encouragement that is utterly misinterpreted by the other commuters who now clapping in earnest for the lovesick fool now doing push-ups at his lady’s feet. Though his display had backfired it had produced for our protagonist the desired effect for now he had the goddess’ eye.

It had been posturing to garner her attention and it had worked. He knew he showed well compared to the overgrown adolescent now seated at the goddess’ side talking workout regime with other young men in their group for he was a good five years older than the lot. He was a sort of urban professional, dressed in grey with the trendy cross-bag and the Brooks Brother shoes compete with arrogant self-confident smile.

Only he didn’t take into account familiarity and comfort. The silly boy at her side was already a member of her set and mad in love with her. She knows he will grow into a man in time and she could guide him to dress the part of the urbane professional if she so desired. He won the battle, her attention but lost the war for she was sensible and rooted perhaps a more romantic girl would have...

My love my care,

Simone 

Sugar euphoria

Or what results from a sweet induce coma

I had slept as one content and spent but not from orgasm and still there had been a fulfillment that made even the sleeping itself sweet. Then I woke and it had all been somehow different, I could not have said for certain how for it was not as tangible as say the ugliness of hairs erect on the back of one’s neck nor was it the haunting displacement  in the near anticipation of du déjà vu but it too was a misalignment of one’s psyche. I was uneasy and got more so with every shallow breath taken and still I pressed on washing then readying myself for the day ahead.

Woman Clothed with the Sun by Alice Pike Barney

At half-seven I stepped out the front door, into the sunlight and knew right away with certainty that the sun had been flipped upside down. As alarming as it had been it did no more than set my mind at ease for no longer did I have to fret at what it was that had so set me on hedge. I went back inside to check the news but it had been business as usual on all the morning shows and news outlets. I was late getting to the shop and noticed nothing out the ordinary for most the day. Well... there had been an unusual number of women celebrating being ten pounds lighter. It kept popping up the entire day, women treating themselves to an extra peace of sweet in praise of their good fortunes. I was positive it had something to do with the sun but did not understand how until moon rose and it was closer.

My love my care,

Simone

The Stunner

I sometimes see a woman so beautiful I want no more than to write her a happy ending and it is not always just a charming face either. Sometimes it is no more than a small gesture or kindness done that makes her in that moment worthy of notice. I’ll give you an example; there is an elderly oriental woman who panhandles at Young and College in front the Starbucks on the corner. She sits there silently with a baseball cap in her hand looking slightly embarrassed and apologetic. I’d often give her the change from my coffee rather than tip the barista and feel pretty okay about it until a few days ago when I saw this pretty black girl sitting beside her with Tupperware in hand. I’ve seen this young woman before and thought her lovely enough and even spoke with her once something about notebooks and her being French, Caribbean from Martinique but it was not until I saw her sharing her lunch and listening with open interest as the little beggar whisper some secret to her did I want to write her story. In that moment she was perfect heroine and goddess deserving of brilliant happy end. Oh, and beautiful, she truly was. Her smile held such tender understanding for the little woman sitting next to her it filled my heart and broke it all at once.

first female astronaut candidates

I imagine that in order for something like that to work well – me writing her happy ending, that is - I would have to interview her and find out what that constitutes for her because it simple would not do. Now, would it? For me to write for her some happiness I dreamt up but which she finds hellish.

My love my care,

Simone

My ideal, the wrong me

I’m often cruel without having been sentential and can even be sentential about my cruelty but then the focus of my malevolence is almost exclusively self so I image there is no help for it. 

  

Tamara de Lempicka's Dormeuse

I loved this man once for whom I wanted to be a hundred impossible things. I would see him and instantly take catalogue of my flaws. He made me desperate for with him I was nothing but want. Want for his love, for longer legs and smaller waist and firmer tits. It drove me mad wanting to be younger, faster, stronger for someone who was no more than sweet for who I already was and so I left him. It took time for me to love again and when I did it was to a man who right from the beginning kissed me as if anticipating a long parting.

My love my care,

Simone

April’s fool

I really do believe in love you know and that despite never having seeing any true manifestation that could not be explained away as something else. It is a matter made worse I believe due to these long conversations I have with my sister about the plausibility of romantic love where the end result is always dread of dying alone. Following that line of reasoning, lately the idea of tribe or rather our society’s lack of connect to an extended tribe where one feels ownership and connect has been running parallel with the notion of love lost. There is this idea that we love our pets, best friends, children and all else is a matter of necessity or chance. Fool that I am I want to explore more this idea.



James Childs's Bow Bridge

Then again our only duty is beauty to put forth what is true and good, which would make love the entire thing, right?

My love my care,

Simone

My silly friends

Quint Buchholz's My Penguin and Me

I’m forever being surprised by my friends’ capacity for self delusion but then I’m no better for I’ve written a ten item list of to-dos that include less work and more play. Now, I ask you what sort of person sets herself a task she is sure to fail at? And I’ll tell you at least I’m not a weak armed tech-head convinced he’s going to climb Everest before he is forty. It is madness, pure madness I tell ya. He gets winded climbing three flights of stairs but who knows he is only thirty-seven. I suppose between now and forty he could get super motivated.

My love my care,

Simone

An Awful Blind Date

Summer 2009

FYI: I still don’t trust the judgement of the friend who arranged our meeting


NGC 3132 The Eight Burst Nebula

He was the sort of fellow that attracted scientific curiosity with his close-set eyes and sallow skin, the result I’m certain of inbreeding conjoined twins created on The Island of Dr. Moreau. Sitting there with his smug sneer in his Brooks Brothers suit spouting rhetoric acquired from too many viewing of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. To say the man had the intellectual curiosity of a dust mite is a gross offence to the mite for it at least served a purpose. He was rude to the serving staff and for the thirty-minutes I was able to tolerate his company I became certain he would die alone. Proving once more my complete inability to accurately assess the finer points of a desirable mate for I not so long ago ran into the little toad and he is now engaged to married.

My love my care,

Simone

Perception without judgement

An elegant mid-aged woman tends the humidor at an exclusive gentlemen’s club and drinks brilliant espressos made awful with a spoon of condensed milk added. She tell with regularity an appalling semi-autobiographical tale which I`ve heard a dozen times and will now tell you.

She assures all it`s cautionary, I`m certain it`s no more than dreadful. Still, she swears it would not have been so had she been a man.

Frederick Childe Hassam's Tanagra

He knows how much she feels for she was never any good at coy or aloof and though he bears it as burden, she is nonetheless hopeless against his charm. She wants to be strong, fine her legs and free him from the yoke. He sees it in her eye and he flinches with something like pity. This she could not abide. Yes, she had been pitiable but what could she do? He was her ideal. Her misfortune perhaps but then the fates had been cruel for it was there she at sixty and he no more than twenty-seven had come to meet. He wanted none of what she had to offer but he had been kind and in charity offered her tendre as token but never so much that it would be interpreted as hope. In return for his compassion he was granted all she valued in a sort of rancorous projectile that seemed to haemorrhaged from her every pore. It had been her plan to ruin him with creature comforts but there was futility in it for he never grew to love her and so their end.

My love my care

Simone

Lunch with an heartbroken friend

Steely Dan's Peg and Ambrosia's How Much I Feel has the strange distinction of being the only songs I can listen to twenty times in a row without wanting to take an hammer to the player. This I learnt after two hours with the bereaved.

Black and Red by John White Alexander

I long to see you but I am bearing well your absence. Why, I’ve only looked at your photo a hundred times today and that’s near ten times less than yesterday. Beside the image in the frame stop resembling you long ago. The young man in the photo is handsome with your face and smile only he isn’t you. He is everlasting youth, strong, beautiful and somehow less.

My love my care,

Simone

A topic I’ll be sure to revisit

At ends and made utterly inarticulate due to a little silence.

Sunday by Paul Signac

Silence

There is a sort of eloquence to a shared silence that’s not easily explained comparatively, I suppose one could liken it to another shared intimacy. Let’s say the sweet rumble of words whispered in the dark, but then it is so much more, for the communication in silence is no less than telepathic and thus by nature felt deeper when recounted so a kiss. Surely there is no greater icon for that bit of magic that lays between two and still one could argue that even there in that most hallowed of moments over bated breathes there is a sort of require accord made in silence. Now this line of reasoning does lead one to ask, is sheared silence a greater mark of intimacy than a kiss? This I don’t know and now I can’t help but feel I’ve somehow gone off topic but my mind she echoes now as a pond with ripples from a tiny pebble. The answer is in there I feel, somewhere between the delight of finding another of your kind in a strange land and conspirators bonded by an awful crime.

My love my care,

Simone

I adore Nelson Shanks' work

for somethings as artist we are technician, colourist and pure fancy. He seems to get that.

33 Tite Street by Nelson Shanks

I miss you. I keep telling myself it is only because you are not here but then something in me knows I’d miss you no matter what. You are not mine. Our time is fleeting and whatever time you spend with me is borrowed. I wish I could be strong and live in the moment, here where you belong to no one but me. You don’t even know yet that you will not settle here or that my eyes so hungry for you to walk through those doors already see our end.

All my love,

Simone

‘A sexually aggressive woman is a sexually offensive woman’

This bit for madness came to me via my sister’s reading and imparted to me in conversation. I can’t like it. To be honest I can’t bear it but I see the truth in it. Sex was once a woman’s appetite, Lilith grinding Adam into the ground blissfully taking her pleasure then she was made to burn and suffer banishment. Now, I wonder if all is lost with the exception of the dominatrix who is arguable there more for her clienteles pleasure than her own.

Sophia, An Anthology by Nelson Shanks

Sex is a woman’s idea cleverly given to a man Eve, Adam and the apple. What I don’t understand is how it became religious and political when it was meant to propagate the species. How much of it was done at our consent, making us property, whore, Jezebel, Madonna, wife, mistress?
There is sadness in it for me for I had always thought it was meant to be as air, nourishment and education but then even in those the advantage is not allowed to all. Truly grim, yes I see that but I wondered and putting it down is cathartic.

My love my care,

Simone

New Years day at the restaurant just before closing

I hope she is doing well.

Het Afscheid by Erik Suidman

She had been eager, near desperate to make contact and though I knew her tale was sure to be heartbreaking I allowed her my ear. Her words coming at first in little burst of anxious too light chit-chat, ‘I eat here all the time and still I swear this is best the food has ever tasted. It could be that I’m starving but then the food is always good here. I’m so glad to find you open and that it is you with your kind smile instead of one of the other curt girls...’

All the while she eat in quick tidy bites her sad eyes darting around seeking mind as I cleaned the counter and nodded politely.

There was mention of the weather and some talk of Chinese restaurant that were traditionally open over Christmas holidays but could no longer be counted on but the cinema had been open all day. Even if the kids were rude and foreign, texting on iphones while she offered polite smile.

Hers in the end had been a typical enough story, full of her love for a man who eventually disappointed her. He by moving on to a younger woman and starting the family she never believed they had enough money to begin. ‘I found out he adopted her child and brought it from China. I was sick about it. I kept thinking how he could afford it when she was no more than a nail girl at one of those awful salons on the Danforth.’

There was also a bit of madness about her mother, a frail dying imperfect who still held her approval from our poor now lonely dear. Calling her on Boxing Day to rave about her brother’s efforts to make Christmas nice, ‘But Mom, it was me who cooked the too spicy mashed potatoes and it was me who cleaned up while he ran off to his girlfriend’s so if there is any thanks to be handed out it should be for me.’

This she bellowed while I rushed back and forth from kitchen to dining room setting up for the next day. The irritated chef hissing at me his displeasure, ‘You are too nice. We have been closed forty-five minutes already. Tell her she must leave we have our own sad stories.’

By now she had without encouragement moved on to laments of pass talents and ambitions. ‘I use to write these great songs that everybody wanted to sing but I didn’t want to part with them for I wanted to sing them myself but I have arthritis which made playing the guitar near impossible and now I’m desperate to sell them no one wants them.’

I said sometime affirming and cliché like, ‘You have been made stronger for having survived it.’ Total bullshit but it seemed to have done the trick for she smiled though her tears seem to be just beneath the surface she braved it as if to reward me for allowing her to bleed without judgement. It instantly made me feel rotten for not sitting and allowing her my full attention. She left shortly after this and I hugged her wishing her every happiness.

My love my care,

Simone

"Now you're here now I know just where I'm going..."

Listening to Nina Simone and editing my notes. I hope you are all well.

Nude Egyptian Girl by John Singer Sargent

I dreamt again of the man of my life, this time he is kissing me. His face above mine, his lips soft and tender, he raises his head so I'm able to see his eye. I’m so happy, I’m instantly afraid and I look at his lips all pink from my kisses. He smiles, I can’t bear how handsome he is and he kisses me with something like urgency. I can’t tell how he feels or if he desires me and suddenly I’m aware it’s all a dream. I grab on to him like an image reflected in water, one is certain, is just beneath the surface only once you reach for it all is last. I’m pulling him down on top of me, yanking at this belt, desperate to seal the deal before we wake but it’s too fine a thread. Something catches my attention and the scene changes I’m in another dream franticly trying to get back to him.

All my love,

Simone

the key to communication

Words

I tell you that you are beautiful.

You blush, you smile, you kiss me.

I tell you that I love you.

You blush, you smile, you kiss me.

And sometimes that is enough.

But deep inside, I feel a gnawing hunger for

Your nourishing words, an end to your silence.

Nikolaos Gyzis's Capuchin Monk

My love my care,

Simone

Awful for all involved

Eavesdropping at lunch lends to my blog.

My Daughter Josephine by Edmund Tarbell

The End

“Happy in love is a cruel place to start,” the woman with her back to me said to the furiously still man sitting across from her.
“The fuck it is, you are a cheat and a coward.”
“There is no need to be ugly, I am sorry.”
“If you think that’s ugly you just wait sweetheart.”
“And if you ever really loved me you would forgive me so I could be happy.”
“Yes, and if you had loved me you never would have cheated and turned my goddamn life into a wasteland so you see we all have our cross to bear.”
“Will you keep your voice down, people are starting to stare.”
“What the fuck do I care. I hope he gives you syphilis and you die a slow painful death,” he said in angry rise, “And I want you out of my apartment before I get home tonight.”
At this he storms off leaving her seated while everyone in the restaurant pretends not to notice his little devastation and her open relief at his departure. She takes a long drink from her glass then took out her phone and dials, her voice in a near hush as she confirms his heartbreak to the person on the other end.
“It’s for the best. I just couldn't continue pretending to love him when I really love you.”

My love my care,

Simone

In Dreams

I wonder what it all means?

The Bathing Place by Paul Ranson

I fell asleep, my body in a sort of tension over something I can no longer recall and quickly had a vision of the man of my life. He is in water clear, on quest for the hand of the woman he desires only she isn’t me. This is instantly evident to me and still I with heart offer him counsel.

“Hold your breath and dive until you hit the warm water that pulls to a current that will rush you along a jet, which will deliver you to the top of the canal from there the swim is negligible.”

He is grateful and takes hold my hand before wishing me a hasty adieu with promises of seeing me at the point of victory. I’m pensive but not concerned watching him swim then dive out of sight before sailing along myself to the line where the winner is to be declared.

When I arrive there is a great deal of fanfare and for a moment I'm certain it is in celebration for the man of my life triumph. That is until I see him emerge from with defeat on his face.

“I’ve been beat even with your brilliant advice and all my certainty,” he laments and I again with heart offer solace.

“You are strong but it was an impossible task, the winner arrived on yacht while you braved the water with no more than body and skill.”

It is here where thing take a turn for the horrid for now the woman he desires with the victor at her side said with accusation to the poor dear still exhausted in the water. “The choice was yours, you could have sailed like all the other participants for my hand but you foolishly chose to swim.”

“But there is honour in my path,” he insisted.

“You could not have won, surely you see that,” she said and her words filled me with a sort of turmoil that made me certain the only thing to do was drown him. It was a kindness really, save him from living with the shame of loss and me with the disappointment of loving a man who would make such a spectacle of himself for another.

I explain to him my decision and he agrees, reaching out of the water to kiss my lips in sweet tender before allowing me to hold him under water without struggle.

My love my care,

Simone

As it occurs to me

This I wrote after eating French macaroons in a pastry shop in Yorkville. I looked on with something like sadness while the friendly young woman behind the counter tie-up a box of sweets for the distracted cutie on his blackberry ignorant to her attempts to engage him.

Govert Grapjurk by Erik Suidman

He had been to her little pastry shop before in a way often but not regular, always without words and ordering with regularity a variation on the same theme; an espresso with some savoury something or the other. She was trying to sort him out in between the rush of orders, never bothering to learn his name, referring to him only as the worn Clint Eastwood with the hard sad eyes. Until the week she had gone off on whimsy to her parents in Montréal and he had turned up at their pastry shop near Saint-Laurent and Mont-Royal to tell her it hadn’t been the same without her there.

“Without you it had been no more than the four seasons and I rest my bags then tipped the man at the door. There was no smile or sweet cinnamon and I had been weary traveller.”

She should have been alarmed at his presence but she was no more than thoughtful rising with arms open and he had been reluctant despite having come so far, for theirs had been no more than her kind smiles behind the counter. It struck him them how unlike warmth her embrace had been to him there coiled around her soft giving frame feeling raw as if peeled and drenched in salt. Her words at his ears, “Have you eaten?” as her hands run over his back playing at comfort and familiarity.

He took breath in a sort of relief then said, “I don’t like sweets.”

My love my care,

Simone