Saki

At 10:00am, I convinced my partner to go to Hard-To-Find Books in Onehunga because I didn’t have anything new to read. The day was bright and clear. As we were driving he was talking but I didn’t listen to him much. “I do not know why I bother talking to you,” he said, changing down gear on Mt Albert Rd, “because you never listen.” There was a strange bearded man in the bookshop listening to Bob Dylan on the shop sound-system. Usually there are only women who look after the shop. Having a bearded man there was odd. I purchased Susan Sontag: The Making of An Icon which was about America’s premier woman intellectual who was lesbian and in a relationship with Annie Leibovitz, the celebrity photographer. I got David Wojnarowicz’s Memories That Smell Like Gasoline about gay sex-encounters. I got Saki’s The Unbearable Bassington in a 1947 Penguin edition. My partner got Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana in a Reader’s Union edition with a dustwrapper that only cost $5. When I got home I began reading Saki. Saki was the penname for H.H. Munro. He was an Edwardian writer and he was killed in 1916 in World War 1. Saki was also gay. I have really enjoyed his short-stories in the past because they are so subversive. I have never read any of his novels. The Unbearable Bassington was a revelation. If I hadn’t already thought he was a genius, this novel would have confirmed it. Each of the chapters completely and climactically ends with a reversal that takes the traditional order and breaks it. His writing is witty and under-stated.  If I didn’t know I already liked him, his lines on page 28 would have convinced me: “One canot effectively scold a moist nineteen year old boy clad only in a bath-towel and a cloud of steam.”

Perfumes

I have been doing a Chanel Exclusive for the last two weeks. It is is Cuir De Russie, Chanel’s 1927 perfume, composed by Ernest Beaux, as a tribute to Chanel’s lover Grand Duke Dimitri. It is one of my favoured leathers, with smoky notes. I have been experiencing it solidly for a fortnight. I like its intimacy. I like the way it is a perfume you, the wearer, can smell. I like its deep, deep notes towards its end. I like its hint of tobacco. Today, as Cuir De Ruissie ended its end, I reached for the bottle which has been beside me on my desk this time to renew things, and then I thought ‘no’ and went to the bathroom and chose Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleu and, oh my goodnesss, there is the diference between a great perfume and an amazing perfume. L’Heure Bleue, a favourite of Catherine Deneuvre, was launched in 1912 and, oh my god, from its first sparkling blast which settles so quickly to the depths of that beautiful Guerlainade base, it is unbelievable. Perfume reviewers are quick to call it powdery but me, nuh, it isn’t powdery. That sensual spicy amber and the glide and lick of it on your skin is profound. It hasn’t a dryness that I can perceive. The only thing I missed, at 7:05pm was a lover to smell it and me together. But then my own nose gliding along my wrist so frequently since I applied it?  Well a lover doesn’t matter….

Explosions In The Sky

In the quiet day I have wanted music but the thousands of tracks on my hard drive and the CD’s didn’t offer any hope. I was bored with them, I grumpily thought. Then, almost at random, I chose Explosions In The Sky, a Austin, Texas, based post-rock band. I have always enjoyed their cinematic sprawl. I love their fuzzed guitars and in the middle of a fractious afternoon suddenly everything was OK. I worked my way through all their four albums, stretched, extended, roaming, in some Texas dream of long roads and eternity. I was happy.

She is Dying

She has had a stroke and they’ve taken her off her medication. I cannot imagine her dying because she is so young and beautiful. ‘What am I going to say to her?’ he asked when he called me in distress. I do not know. What do you say to the dying that has any meaning to them? You can only be there, I think, dumb and alive, and keep them company for a moment. I have held the hands of men as they’ve died. I have touched their empty bodies afterwards. She is dying. I cannot say or think anything. I would bring her scents, of tuberoses and violets, because they say that the sense of smell is last to go. I would bring her love.

“Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkels will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us.”