Comments of note

"If you could go back in time and painlessly cull somebody with a high velocity rifle bullet, it would be Lord Alfred Douglas."  Will Self

I couldn't possibly agree more, except about the painless part.  He's more gracious than I am.

Although Oscar Wilde's life seems as though it cannot have been true, and is rather a fanciful and tragic history translated from a series of found paintings, it is still one of the saddest things I know.

The Wilde

I cried at the gym last week. It surprised me so much that I laughed immediately after, adding an essential tinge of "crazy" to the spectacle (not to worry, no one saw), and why all the fuss?
Because Oscar Wilde died!

I listen to stories, interviews and programs at the gym because it's the only way I can distract my brain long enough to allow me to stay there longer than 20 minutes. This time I was listening to the excellent Omnibus Wilde biography, but suddenly lost my shit at the end when the lonely and bitter hotel death is being discussed, and it's pointed out that Michael Bracewell is sitting on the bed in which Wilde died. That was too much for my Tuesday elliptical session and I found myself sniffling and blinking furiously. It's too pure proof of sadness and brutal loss in the world that the bed that he died in still exists! Can be touched and seen and slept in like any other bed even though it's some sort of horrible portal. Also raw to see old toothless and wavering Shane McGowan quote him and comment on his life like an old friend.

WAUGH!

I'm like this all the time now, brimming over about any pet interest. I think it's a byproduct of getting rid of my horrible prior occupations and being surrounded only by that which I want to be near. Like emerging from a dark room into noonday sun, it's almost too much, and I find myself feeling intensely sympathetic, sentimental and moved by the things that I love. I remain cooly ambivalent about everything else.

Like I said, really excellent biography. And yes, Stephen Fry is in it.

Dia de los Muertos

Poor sweet brilliant OFOFWW. Crushed utterly by life but resurrected just like someone else we know. Except Oscar's story is real. ZOW!

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And if you're so clever, then why are you on your own tonight?

Oscar Wilde as paraphrased by Stephen Fry

Oscar Wilde composed this parable at a dinner party in response to a catty and back-biting conversation that had arisen.

"The devil was walking one day in the Libyan desert when he saw a couple of young demons who were tormenting a monk. He went up and asked, 'What goes on here?' They turned and bowed to their master, and they said, 'Well, thirty nine days and thirty nine nights we have tried to bring this man away from his God and his Church.'
'We've tried to make him turn towards you, Lord.'
'We've offered him powers and principalities.'
'We've given him delights of the flesh.'
'We have offered him wisdom and knowledge.'
'In all these he has steadfastly refused, staying firm to his God and his Christ.'
And Satan said, 'Out of the way.' He lent forward and whispered in the ear of the monk, who immediately filled the air with the most terrible curses, snapped his wooden cross in twain, and shrieked implications against his God and his Church and Christ and his Heavenly Father.
And the demons bowed down before Satan and said, 'Truly, you are the Lord. How can you have done this so quickly when we took thirty nine days and thirty nine nights and made no impression? What did you say to him?'

The Devil said, 'But it was very simple; I told him his brother had been made Bishop of Alexandria.'"
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*** if i wrote this, this is the part where i'd add "ZING!" all caps, small font.