about a month ago now i bought "Confieso Que He Vivido" (I Confesss That I Have Lived). they are the memoirs of a man who became a poet against his parents' wishes and who sold everything he had in order to publish his first book of poetry under the pen name we have come to adore: Pablo Neruda. now, i didn't read that in the memoirs, i found it on the internet. maybe it's a myth, but it's the reason i bought the memoirs. i need more inspiration for the bold decisions that revolutionaries need to make. my first inspiration was Cesar Chavez, who left his well-paying job to organize a farmworker's union, something folks said could never work. thanks Angel for introducing Cesar and I!
anyhow, i would like to share with you all the conversations me and Pablo have been having through his memoirs. i hope to have installments as long as we're conversating. here is what he said to me yesterday. i dedicate it to Justyna, who loves flowers:
"...only poppies grew there. The other plants had disappeared from this gloomy corner. Some were huge and white like doves, some scarlet like drops of blood, some purple or black, like widows forgotten there. I had never seen such a wilderness of poppies, and I have never seen another like it. And though I had a deep respect for them, and a superstitious dread only they, of all flowers, inspire in me, that did not stop me from snapping one off, now and again, the broken stem leaving sticky milk on my hands and a whiff of unearthly perfume. Then I would stroke its sumptuous petals lovingly and put them into a book to keep. To me they were the wings of huge butterflies that couldn't fly."
next installment: my reply.
ps: me and Adam watched "Il Postino" (the postman), a great film about Neruda. sad, human, beautiful. watch it!
anyhow, i would like to share with you all the conversations me and Pablo have been having through his memoirs. i hope to have installments as long as we're conversating. here is what he said to me yesterday. i dedicate it to Justyna, who loves flowers:
"...only poppies grew there. The other plants had disappeared from this gloomy corner. Some were huge and white like doves, some scarlet like drops of blood, some purple or black, like widows forgotten there. I had never seen such a wilderness of poppies, and I have never seen another like it. And though I had a deep respect for them, and a superstitious dread only they, of all flowers, inspire in me, that did not stop me from snapping one off, now and again, the broken stem leaving sticky milk on my hands and a whiff of unearthly perfume. Then I would stroke its sumptuous petals lovingly and put them into a book to keep. To me they were the wings of huge butterflies that couldn't fly."
next installment: my reply.
ps: me and Adam watched "Il Postino" (the postman), a great film about Neruda. sad, human, beautiful. watch it!
No comments:
Post a Comment