1) The last two days I have had paralyzing moments of doubt and remorse about things from the past, both near and far, that can kind of be summed up with three quotations from my Bag of Old Sayings Mostly (But Not Always) from Golden Age Hollywood:
Queen Gertrude: “O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grainéd spots
As will not leave their tinct.”From Camille, Robert Taylor as Armand: “I thought you didn’t like sad thoughts.”
Greta Garbo as Marguerite (smiling): “I don’t, but they come sometimes.”
From Soapdish, Sally Field as Celeste: “I had my reasons. Maybe they were dumb reasons, but they were reasons. Hellllllllllllllllllllll, I’m not a genius. I’m just a working actress!”
2) Finalmente, I am close to finishing Field of Blood after months and months of false starts. Glad it was the only book I brought to the Cape last week. Then George IV: Inspiration of the Regency, which covers the “painted bag of maraschino’s” influence on fashion, military life, architecture, art, politics, ostentation, and of course fornication and adultery. And then I can really turn my attention to the new biography from Hugo Vickers, The Sphinx: The Life of Gladys Deacon — Duchess of Marlborough. Gladys (pronounced GLAY-dis) was one of those great beauties who would stop at nothing to retain her own beauty, including injecting paraffin into her forehead or something to retain her classic profile. Oops, didn’t work.
3) Sweeping open the parlor curtains this morning, I discovered that the big white hydrangea right outside the window is bursting into bloom. In that moment of surprise it looked like an arrested wave. The only other thing blooming the garden right now is a few random tiger lilies.