work in progress working process

We travel to places where broken, grassy sidewalks run alongside poorly paved streets and no one is home. I walk the streets knowing that I'll visit them again and again in future dreams. I always do. These are the places that fill the space between the bigger cities and the cracks between yesterday and tomorrow.

I tried to befriend my neighbor several times before accepting that she was either terribly shy or did not like me. She would hustle her children away from wherever August and I would be and I didn't know why. Maybe she didn't want us speaking to them or thought they were bothering us. They were always wanting to tell us about their new discoveries or show us cartwheels or skate board tricks.  They were open, friendly and sparkled. I would tell their mother that they were fine, no need to rush off. I liked her and I liked hearing her children's voices when they played outside all day. I thought she was a great mother, her children, ages nine through eleven, were beautiful, healthy, had lots of energy and imagination. What left the biggest impression was that they enjoyed being with their mom, always begging her to join in anything they did.

August and I would sit outside, watching all the insects the clover would attract, existing beside the neighbors with occasional words, glances and smiles. One afternoon when my neighbor was close enough to speak too, I told her what I thought of her. I couldn't contain my admiration. She looked down and cracked a smile and said thank you.

A few days before we left, I told her we'd be moving on. She said she enjoyed having us next door. She looked at me and told me how long she had been married, how each of her children came into the world and other things about herself and her family. Seminole, it's streets, my neighbor they are all coming into focus the further away I get. I don't know where we will be living next or for how long. There is little adventure in the familiar, the comfortable, the easy. What I do know is I am undergoing something quite profound.

We're after the same rainbow's end...

Recently I have started to ponder the ending of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  I consider Audrey Hepburn a good actress so when she is an, ever so polite, ham in this film, I have to blame the director, Blake Edwards.  I also feel Audrey Hepburn's genuine beauty and sweet demeanor just eclipses the hard core facts that are Holly Golightly. The character should have been played by someone like Joan Van Fleet, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck or Ava Gardner, all  just too old for a character Capote wrote to be only 19 years old. As it was, Hepburn's real age met the screenplay's Golightly halfway. While Audrey had experienced a rough life, she wore it gracefully. I have yet to see a photo that even suggests a jaded Audrey Hepburn.

Holly is opportunistic, she  gets the "mean reds" because she isn't a nice person and she knows it. She's a mean drunk who abandoned her brother and step-children when she ran away from her husband. She is a con and a fake, who mistreats her cat. She doesn't feel deserving of anything truly good. When Holly meets Paul Varjak, who is a complex character himself,  she becomes pure and free for all of one day. Her fears get the best of her and she retracts.

My problem with the ending is that it implies happily ever after with that last kiss,"moon river and me". She still has her fears to overcome, she needs to forgive herself and stop getting those "mean reds", she needs to learn to love herself. Poor Paul Varjak, he is going to have to be a very patient man. I wonder if he has all he needs in his love for Holly to pull him through the bumpy road he has ahead with someone so damaged. I feel the scene should have ended with her make-up running in the rain, distraught, hand on face, the mess she really is, looking at Paul Varjak with Cat still missing. That image is the real Holly Golightly, the one that is up all night and sleeps in during the day. I feel that would have been a fitting ending for emotionally complex characters that want a life together.