The fact that I feel so damned lonely must be proof that I married well. During sixty-six years there've been plenty of arguments but also plenty of agreements. Notably when VR - already a mother - agreed to share the adventure of uprooting ourselves from the suburb of Stoke Newington, from London, from England and from Europe and settle - for an unspecified length of time - in the USA. Where I knew nobody, would live unprotected by the NHS (National Health Service) in a sub-continent where more than two-thirds of the population had never owned a passport. A huge but parochial land mass.
Why? The immediate assumption, on both sides of the Atlantic, was that I intended to make my fortune. Not so, and I fear you'll just have to take my word for that. I was influenced, of course, but not so much by movies or by TV. Rather by Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, James Thurber, E. B. White, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Henry James, Anne Tyler, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Gore Vidal, P. J. O'Rourke, Ross McDonald, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Lorenz Hart, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, James Jones... Many more. Many re-read. Yup, folks, it was the writers who wove the web.
Two things kept me there. One I fear will sound like boasting but don't complain; aged ninety, I won't be boasting for much longer. Fact is I'm good at what I do and this was recognised. For which, many thanks.
Second: life as it is lived in the suburbs.This came as a surprise especially when VR gave birth. Suburbanites are, I suppose, in the majority and it's my opinion that this is where the USA's true heart lies. Take it or leave it.
And now we - the USA and I - are suffering; VR is in a nursing home and US suburbanites are being maltreated by a starkly mad salesman. I felt it was time to show that I cared.
Hence the tee-shirt bearing a single word. It's not a word that's as well-known in the UK as it is in the USA. And I haven't done it any favours by mirror-reversing it. But it's the eventuality we should all be hoping for. And, if that's your habit, praying for.
Was the T shirt a commerciasl purchase amd if so did you specify the reversal, or was it the result of DIY ineptitude?
ReplyDeletecommercial.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: Chosen not specified. Couldn't be bothered to rectify the mirror-reversal.
ReplyDeleteImpeachment would be a start, and many here are sporting the sentiment. But the MF (Minister of Fools?) has been impeached twice already. The reverse of the shirt wants to say CONVICT
ReplyDeleteIMPRISON
As for the MAGA sentiment? Take me back to the yesteryear when America had competent assassins.
MikeM: I had wondered - especially after the bullet just nicked his ear - whether assassination might solve all your problems. The answer is a firm No. There is a good chance he would be seen as martyr and, thereby, converted into a form of minor deity. As we know, there are people who worship deities (Major and minor) and one of the side-effects is that reason - a process based on evidential facts - often goes out of the window. I think that assassination begets further assassination and the late Archduke Ferdinand, accessed via a ouija board, supports this belief.
DeleteI'm well aware that the Orange Bonanza survived two attempts at impeachment. If he does depart it must be as a result of the dull but well thought-out processes of the law. Guns rarely provide satisfactory results; that's why the basic plots of most Western movies should be seen as tragedies. One must believe that all lives come with the potential for purpose even if this potential is, more often than not, frittered away.
The bloated one is already established as a diety - possibly a major one - by way of his haranguing that he has sacrificed everything (his life of leisure, his retirement years - even his $400K salary) to save the USA from every boogeyman recognizable by the idiot class. A dizzying number of mantras (mind-tools) are entrenched in the vernacular. I doubt his demise would gain him any new followers, but you’re right - his true believers, who control the vast majority of the weaponry - have always had an itch to escalate the bloodshed. His murder - like his election - would release a thousand genies from their bottles.
DeleteI wonder who the short story comment was from. Elevating for sure. Skillfully wrought compliments are the best.
MikeM. The thing about "wrought" is it's a past participle. Most people stumble when asked to come up with the present indicative, resulting in all sorts of bastardisations. But not, I think, my anonymous complimenter. May he (she?) continue to enjoy the gift of scintillating syntax.
DeleteI assume the mispelling was intentional, and was a sly reference to Jaffaman's excessive love of hamburgers.
Mispelling (sp)?I don’t see it. I let AI work the wrought business. Stumped without it.
DeleteMikeM: Should the Bloated One become a Diety? Or at least go on one?
DeleteNot intentional.
DeleteIt is quite terrifying here in the States, and I live in Florida - which is quickly going to Hell in a handbasket because of the MAGA-loving state government. Honestly, it's appalling how many stupid people have power these days. Stay tuned! The mid-term elections will either help us or seal our doom.
ReplyDeleteColette: You know I love you dearly. My trembling question is: How are you coping?
ReplyDeleteI will devote my next blog post to answering your question. The short version, however, is "I'm fine."
DeleteTo all who have ever read Tone Deaf.
ReplyDeleteThe title of Marcel Proust's long, long masterpiece A la Recherche du Temps Perdu has been variously translated (it's harder than it looks) but I can live with the simplest: Remembrance of Things Past. Whereas it's an act of self-abnegation to dwell only in nostalgia, just occasionally...
I'VE TALKED about the loneliness of my present life; the awful comparison of my existence with that of VR's; the sense of guilt even though - technically - this is not truly substantiated. What follows is a comment on a short story I wrote over a decade ago. Re-reading it today, the dark cloud parted briefly and I was bathed in sunshine. Great while it lasted.
***Not so much persistence needed. i had thought, but forgot to type in (too much time spent reveling in my invention of "Biographantasy") how much like a piece of "listening" music your shorts seem to be. As is so often the case with first listen to an unfamiliar piece by a favorite artist, a few aspects grab right away: The conversation with the priest, the run through of aspects of the relationship, the audition, and the denouement with the receptionist (trust me, none of your regular readers were surprised when her face relaxed and became more attractive). Each of these story portions, especially the priest/ audition ones, I recognized instantly on first read as the sort of little puzzles I needed to solve in order to allow the story to fully bloom. I do not regard this solving as work, but delight in it. As we've discussed before, much of the puzzle involves English vs US language differences and your interjection of French (and now more German musical references). I seldom look them up anymore... they are such rabbit holes for someone as curious as me. Still, I usually pause on first read to try to pronounce them and this can make for a rather halting experience. But enough. Rest assured I fall asleep with your themes in my head and look forward to reinserting the disc come morn.***
David H was also a contemporary of mine at Badford Grammar School albeit he was a year ahead of me, and like you I don't think I ever spoke to him and I have little mmeory of him at that time, except for admiring some of his artwork displayed in the art master's room. I have much more distinct memory of him in my post school days, often seeing him pushing his pram full of easels and art paraphernalia around Bradford city centre.
ReplyDeleteWhilst ticking off the English Marilyns there was a lonely one in a field just off the A166 in the middle of nowhere. I later found that it was just beyond Garrowby Hill, now the subject of one of David H's more well known paintings. I now have a small print in my living room.
There will be many anecdotes I suppose but it was rumoured that when presented with his O Level Maths exam paper David wrote across it "I can't do maths but I can draw" and proceeded to do just that.
Especially with my somewhat tenuous connection I feel as though some vital ingredient has gone from our lives, BUT WHAT A LEGACY!
Go and see the Hockney collection at Salt's Mill in Saltaire at the heart of David's West Riding beginings; certainly for me always a significant experience from several visits during my eighty odd years.