Friday, August 20, 2010

a taste for nitty-gritty mating


no wonder it doesn't come to me easily. look at my favorite movies on the subject: mifune, the warrior & the princess, and the secret in their eyes. all of them drag their lovers over the coals before the bond can be complete.


in mifune, for example, a rising business guy about to marry the big-city boss's daughter. his father dies and he has to go take care of his crazy brother on a broken-down country property. in parallel, a lively copenhagen prostitute gets into deep trouble. she reads the ad for a nanny and takes a bus to the very same farm. all the problems ensue, including the hero bound on the kitchen table and tortured by the prostitute's friends.


the warrior & the princess a wonderfully brutal and tortuous and telling tale of a girl who gets hit by a truck. a petty thief, running from the law, dives under the truck and gives her a tracheotomy with a pen-knife. she hides him out in the psych ward where she works. a foiled bank-robbery throws them together in the end.


and if you like the agony of postponed love, the secret in their eyes is for you. an older DA assistant loves the new, young, beautiful DA but feels he's too old and of another class. he retires to write a novel about a murder case they had together early on. a young man's beautiful fiance savagely raped and killed. her man can't give up the search for the killer. going to the gorgeous DA years later to get records of the case, the writer revives their early memories. the ending lovely.


if it's easy it's meaningless, that must be my underlying attitude. yet i'm the one who coined the phrase, 'put the drama into your art and not into your life.' as whitman said, 'i contradict myself, therefore i contradict myself', love only gained through multiple misunderstandings and outstanding inner obstacles can last. the heroes and heroines help each other conquer the fear.



EGGS

The games of love
are like baking a cake,
you can't cheat on
the ingredients. Trust,
for example, how can
you leave it out,
and as for humor, you
need to make the dough
rise. Never in a million
years can you reach
the heavenly destination
without cracking a few
eggs. As for the icing,
sweets go to the sweet.
If you wish to win
at the lottery of desire,
you must venture all
you ever hope to have.
What you get is what
you give, and in love
expect nothing less.