O, the smells of the summer's nights... . The bewildered side of hearts only finds repose at sunset, before dusk, and the content one is at peace at night _Mild, tender breeze, and all these smells around. It's like being caressed.
Those are the inexpensive fragrances of these last days of the summer. I could not ask for more. A couple of days ago, an old veteran struck kingly his guitar in the hub of noisy and dinning Covent Garden. Old songs from the good old times, and the old lucky sun setting down above, unnoticeable. A woman past her age was singing quietly along, with a voice pitch close to that of a boiling kettle. Her eye was taken by the nostalgia and the sour warmth of wine. But it was all just so gentle and nice... . It was that time when all poor devils rambling their lives get their truce.
**
Talking about boiling kettles, I happened to watch -again- the 40-year-old Virgin sometime this week. That was an expression in it. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about the life of the main character _whatever his name was, don't remember. It was a sad life of order, dull and tasteless, totally unappealing and with no excitement whatsoever. Lonesome too. But it was a life of order. The house was also cleaned. He sits at a neat table and eats his breakfast. Everything is in order.
It is this well-underlined, pointed-out order and discipline what caught my eye and, probably, kept me watching: it is somehow my own life... I once saw in a magazine a story about the rooms of inmates, with pictures and all. I think I commented about it here. My God! All rooms were tidy and in order, even with taste, undoubtedly. That marks, clearly, a qualitative distinction: discipline, order, cleanliness, tidiness are not strange to the wretched spirits. Montaigne name these behaviors results of habit which "not only can mould us into whatever shape it pleases", and put it in straight words: "I remember having taken children from beggary to serve me, who have almost immediately left my kitchen and abandoned their livery, simply to return to their old lives. And I found one of them afterwards picking up mussels from a garbage pile for his dinner, yet neither by entreaties nor threats could could I make him abandon the relish and charm that he found in indigence. Beggars have their delights and sensual pleasures as well as the rich and, so they say, their dignities and civil precedence as well".
This is so true, so true. I have -I think, everyone has- my own stories about it. In fact, Montaigne is turning out to be quite a pleasant and insightful reading: "In the experience that I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar. Anyone who recalls the violence of his past anger, and to what a pitch his excitement carried him, will see its ugliness better than in Aristotle (...); anyone who remembers the ills he has undergone and those that have brought him from one state to another, thereby prepares himself for future changes and for the understanding of his condition".
It is just so. Naturally, not all is this kind of "transcendental" stuff. He gives full details of the smallest things. For example, in order to show the tremendous variety of human behaviors and tendencies, he gives account of the preference of the French for the fireplace, but the disliking for stoves which, by the way, were preferred by the Germans; he then praises the old idea of the Romans, who use to make the fire outside houses and warm them up by conveying the hot gases through pipes buried within the walls. Nice!... And so, so many other examples about almost everything, anyway.
PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT.
Those are the inexpensive fragrances of these last days of the summer. I could not ask for more. A couple of days ago, an old veteran struck kingly his guitar in the hub of noisy and dinning Covent Garden. Old songs from the good old times, and the old lucky sun setting down above, unnoticeable. A woman past her age was singing quietly along, with a voice pitch close to that of a boiling kettle. Her eye was taken by the nostalgia and the sour warmth of wine. But it was all just so gentle and nice... . It was that time when all poor devils rambling their lives get their truce.
**
Talking about boiling kettles, I happened to watch -again- the 40-year-old Virgin sometime this week. That was an expression in it. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about the life of the main character _whatever his name was, don't remember. It was a sad life of order, dull and tasteless, totally unappealing and with no excitement whatsoever. Lonesome too. But it was a life of order. The house was also cleaned. He sits at a neat table and eats his breakfast. Everything is in order.
It is this well-underlined, pointed-out order and discipline what caught my eye and, probably, kept me watching: it is somehow my own life... I once saw in a magazine a story about the rooms of inmates, with pictures and all. I think I commented about it here. My God! All rooms were tidy and in order, even with taste, undoubtedly. That marks, clearly, a qualitative distinction: discipline, order, cleanliness, tidiness are not strange to the wretched spirits. Montaigne name these behaviors results of habit which "not only can mould us into whatever shape it pleases", and put it in straight words: "I remember having taken children from beggary to serve me, who have almost immediately left my kitchen and abandoned their livery, simply to return to their old lives. And I found one of them afterwards picking up mussels from a garbage pile for his dinner, yet neither by entreaties nor threats could could I make him abandon the relish and charm that he found in indigence. Beggars have their delights and sensual pleasures as well as the rich and, so they say, their dignities and civil precedence as well".
This is so true, so true. I have -I think, everyone has- my own stories about it. In fact, Montaigne is turning out to be quite a pleasant and insightful reading: "In the experience that I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar. Anyone who recalls the violence of his past anger, and to what a pitch his excitement carried him, will see its ugliness better than in Aristotle (...); anyone who remembers the ills he has undergone and those that have brought him from one state to another, thereby prepares himself for future changes and for the understanding of his condition".
It is just so. Naturally, not all is this kind of "transcendental" stuff. He gives full details of the smallest things. For example, in order to show the tremendous variety of human behaviors and tendencies, he gives account of the preference of the French for the fireplace, but the disliking for stoves which, by the way, were preferred by the Germans; he then praises the old idea of the Romans, who use to make the fire outside houses and warm them up by conveying the hot gases through pipes buried within the walls. Nice!... And so, so many other examples about almost everything, anyway.
PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT.
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