Rife With Symbolism
A friend and co-worker of mine recently resigned. I made her this silhouette as a sort of Fare Thee Well and Run! Run Away! HASTEN, YE! parting gift. Rather than delve into the very deep and intricate layers of symbolism involved, I will just say DAMN THE MAN (!) and leave it at that.
Unrelated, I am rereading The Virgin Suicides (I last read it as a junior in high school) and listening to "This is the One" by the Stone Roses. Both are hitting the proverbial spot like it's their job. Also, both remind me of movies, the first for the obvious reason that it is a movie, and the other because... well, I've seen it in the preview of Eagle vs. Shark but mostly because of this total movie moment from Friend E's past that makes my guts, teeth and heart fall out at the same time, it's so good 'n sweet.
Here, read these words: [Regarding Cecilia's suicide attempt]
The most popular theory at the time held Dominic Palazzolo to blame. Dominic was the immigrant kid straying with relatives until his family got settled in New Mexico. He was the first boy in our neighborhood to wear sunglasses, and within a week of arriving, he had fallen in love. The object of his desire wasn't Cecilia but Diana Porter, a girl with chestnut hair and horsey though pretty face who lived in an ivy-covered hourse on the lake. Unfortunately, she didn't notice Dominic peering through the fence as she played fierce tennis on the clay court, nor as she lay, sweating nectar, on the poolside recliner. On our corner, in our group, Dominic Palazzolo didn't join in conversations about baseball or busing, because he could speak only a few words of English, but every now and then he would tilt his head back so that his sunglasses reflected sky, and would say, "I love her." Every time he said it he seemed delivered of a produndity that amazed him, as though he had coughed up a pearl. At the beginning of June, when Diana Porter left on vacation to Switzerland, Dominic was stricken. "Fuck the Holy Mother," he said, despondent. "Fuck God." And to show his desperation and the validity of his love, he climbed onto the roof of his relatives' house and jumped off.
We watched him. We watched Cecilia Lisbon watching from her front yard. Dominic Palazzolo, with his tight pants, his Dingo boots, his pompadour, went into the house, we saw him passing the plate-glass picture windows downstairs; and then he appeared at an upstairs window, with a silk handkerchief around his neck. Climbing onto the ledge, he swung himself up to the flat roof. Aloft, he looked frail, diseased, and tempermental, as we expected a European to look. He toed the roof's edge like a high diver, and whispered, "I love her," to himself as he dropped past the windows and into the yard's calculated shrubbery.
He didn't hurt himself. He stood up after the fall, having proved his love, and down the block, some maintained, Cecilia Lisbon developed her own. ...
-- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
Ah, hahaa. YESss.