Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Roger Angell, Edie and Thea

Getting better, thank you for asking. I'm up, even if I'm not dressed. Two days in my pyjamas, reading and trying to sleep - could be worse, especially because my nursemaid was handsome, six foot eight and highly decorated. Very grateful he interrupted his schedule to take care of his sick mama. When I wanted something, instead of croaking, I'd text him downstairs. Once I sent him out to buy bananas, all I could stomach, and when they did not appear in my bedroom, I texted "Nana!" Up they came.

But he had to go and I had to get up. Tonight I ate a bit of real food and poured, yes, a very small glass of wine, because that is what I do. But I DID NOT WANT IT. That's how strange my insides are. No wine? The girl must be near death.

Just wrote a piece, in fact, on having to kill my cat. Not quite ready yet, though, either of us. And I did turn on the Olympics this afternoon, for six minutes. Two men going very very very fast down a long icy tube. It looked cold and scary. I turned it off.

Tonight, the movie "Tom Jones" that my dad took me to see in Paris when I was just 14 and had to explain all the sex bits that I did not understand - probably still don't - and then a documentary about two famous and ground-breaking lesbian lovers, "Edie And Thea." I just had the great pleasure of reading a stunning piece by Roger Angell in the new New Yorker. He's 93, like Auntie Do - I'll send it to her. A gorgeous, hauntingly honest piece on mortality, aging, loneliness.

Which has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with me. I'm getting ready to blow this pop stand.

10 p.m. Just watched the most beautiful documentary about two women whose fierce love for each other glowed right out of the screen. One of the heroes of the film is … Canada, where they went in their late seventies, after 42 years together when Thea was dying of M.S., to be married. There is a moving scene of them hearing the vows, exchanging rings, being told, as they sign the register, that the words 'husband' and 'wife' do not exist in Canada any more, have been replaced by 'spouse,' because, the openly gay judge says, 'here, everyone is equal.'

How is it possible, in a country run by the thuggish Harper and his thugs, that such civilized things can and do happen? If anyone out there still, for some archaic reason, feels the slightest prejudice about the validity of gay marriage, please see this heart-warming film about love, devotion and faithfulness, until death did them part.

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