Cyrano (August)

 

[An Ode to the Rhyming Couplet]

 

You reveal your love through rhyming utterance;

Breath, that expresses both harmony and difference.

The subtle gradation of word sounds together

Clang resolutely, or are light as a feather.

 

Cyrano employs you in French most verbose

That he modulates too through the use of his nose.

Some say his poetry is all compensation,

While others argue it’s the natural extension.

 

Somehow someone august, yet vulgar and brash

Is transformed by you to the soul of panache.

Which only goes to show his ultimate reward,

The truth that the pen is mightier than the sword.

 

10 of 10: 'Cyrano de Bergerac', by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, using the play by Edmond Rostand, translated into English by Anthony Burgess using rhyming couplets (1990)

Unfinished (August)

When it’s all over, you go out walking. Walking, you are free of technology, free of burden, of constraint. You let go of time, let the course of your thinking guide you, unfinished processes. Walking , it’s just you and your ground, you and the air you breathe. Just as when it started out, you walked to get your bearings. What of headlines? Who cared if it was August? Everything was unfinished, anything might be possible in this relationship, timeless. You saw what you saw in them, walked the same path. Walking, the energy came from inside, outside, deep breath…

9 of 10: 'Unfinished Sympathy', by Massive Attack, vocals by Shara Nelson, video by Baillie Walsh (1991)

Wind (August)

 

So, when the wind changed in the willows in August 1914, the stoats and weasels signed up for the hellhole. Mole, ready for anything, leapt at underground tunneling; trenches had their sunny days. Rat was promoted to captain; copied out Palgrave’s Golden Treasury onto postcards home; took shrapnel and was shipped home. Mister Toad ordered everyone to attack, even as he hopped in the opposite direction; commandeered a tank that fell into a shell hole. Badger, too old, stayed home in his bed; when awake hoped his dear friends would see sense; tapped his moral compass fastened to the wall.

 
8 of 10: 'The Wind in the Willows', by Rachel Talalay (2006)

Paradise (August)

They find liberty unadorned in sideshows. They ridicule classical clockwork with emotional realism. Even Othello is realism, his paradise lost. They enact their dreams the way dreams are: wordless motion. The mime plays the role he knows by heart. But when the show’s over, someone must pay the bills. The big end of town indulges in small talk. Owners own, criminals scheme. Paris in August is a stage. Still, the illusions are not self-contained. Curtains open on true love. Longing is fulfilled and roles are reversed. The scene is set wherein the millionaire is murdered, unadorned, in the Turkish Bath.

  

7 of 10: 'Les Enfants du Paradis', by Marcel Carné (1945)

Disorder (August)

He wears daisy crowns. Like his fool, he cannot forget. His ill-gotten kingdoms, evenly divided between the wrong sons, have fallen to his enemies. The youngest son, the Cordelia, he ignored and dismissed, who told him the truth. The only relief is gazing at August clouds. Or, at night, the red embers of all that fire. The daughter of the enemy gets what’s coming to her (they usually do in Shakespeare), but not before exacting revenge. Elsewhere, a blind hermit searches for a manuscript. It probably contains the details of this story. Accidentally, he knocks the manuscript into the abyss.

6 of 10: 'Ran', by Akira Kurasawa (1985). Ran: Japanese for chaos or turmoil, which is probably why they stuck with the title Ran in English. Also means revolt, or revolution, equally appropriate for this story. In the Japanese mind all these things instantly mean the same thing. Disorder is the best compromise word in English.

Leopard (August)

 The book was assembled from scenes in the author’s memory. The film was put together with elegant precision. The book was written by the last of the Sicilian line. The film was made by the genius of the Milanese princes. The book goes inside the Leopard’s passionate logic and changing moods. The film shows the critical gestures and loss of the Leopard.  The book opens in May, the film August. The book cannot change its spots and will end up in a library. The film cannot change its spots and will end up in DVD packages of Great Italian Films.

5 of 10: 'Il Gattopardo', by Luchino Visconti (1963), in English 'The Leopard', though technically the word refers to the North African cat called the serval.

Zerkalo (August)

The silver screen of the mirror stays inert. A woman examines her face. A boy turns his back on the mirror. A girl carries the family mirror down the street of her town, rescued from the bombing. Someone, a man perhaps, polishes the glass as if he could reach perfection. Life goes on. Moisture evaporates on a shiny surface. Our childhood goes on inside. Was it August when that argument happened? Is the date important? What we remember is the feel of the rooms and the view beyond. Where do desires come from? How do we learn to make decisions?

 

4 of 10: 'Zerkalo', by Andrei Tarkovsky (1975), in English 'The Mirror'

Away (August)

The bathhouse is a multi-storeyed fact. You cannot wish it away. The bathhouse exists on services rendered. It’s not the same as changing schools. Still, you have to pass disguised through the gates. Like everything about the past, the bathhouse has its own rules. You cannot brush them away. Two bombs fell on Japan in August. You cannot wish them away. Greasy monsters come to clean away their shit. It’s only ever temporary. You survive by declining their gifts, No-Face and his fool’s gold. You will put away foolish things. You will learn your true name and name Illusion, now.

3 of 10: 'Spirited Away' by Hayao Miyazaki (2001)

Vert (August)

The city is verdant but everyone is leaving. The places fill with tourists, first-time Parisians, August seven day wonders. She’s fed up, the same pick-up lines, the same let down softly. The mountains, the beaches, every escape’s the same old deal. Green is at every window rushing by, but where is she going? Where’s relief from the heat? Wordless, she sees how summer pushes desires into the open. Biarritz is like science fiction, like everywhere, when she wants natural. Sun goes green at the horizon, because it is normal and a miracle. Because she didn’t blink she didn’t miss it.

2 of 10: 'Le Rayon Vert' by Erich Rohmer (1986), in English called variously ‘Summer’, or ‘The Green Ray’

General (August)

He is suitable for general audiences. His hat is flat but his routines fall upward. He stares at each job without a smile. But the war has arrived. A Confederate general looks much like a Union general. Their strategies send everyone in the opposite direction. He has a talent for keeping silent. The major General is a locomotive. He fills it full of firewood. Railway tracks are an unparalleled success. The general audience hurtles towards the disaster he averts. He watches, inexpressively. When generals sign surrenders they look august. He walks backwards with a dignity that puts them to shame. 

1 of 10: 'The General' by Buster Keaton (1926)

Film (March)

A film thinner than skin covers the subject. It’s the train and rain streaming down windows, changing the real into shapes of super-saturated colour. Passengers watch moving images for hours, no two frames the same. It was Dublin, where objects are soaked in films of water more days than not. We went to the Temple Bar Festival. Fillums they say in rain-thick Ireland, some gaelic glottal property. Those tissues of lies reel through the 20^th century with scarcely a flicker of rest, the long march. But that was another country. Now everything’s discs whirling on an axis, dry as dust.