Chapter 4
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Dear Monstera,
A torch is a fire source carried in relay, carried in a procession, carried out of anger, as in to storm a castle. They carry torches when they go to destroy the monster.
Above: Pages inspired by the movie, Bride of Frankenstein & created in My Little Goth Journal
A torch is juggled, a torch is held aloft, a torch is a syndrome, but let’s not go there. A torch can light your way. A tiki torch is for parties. A torch sheds light on a subject. A torch can burn down a house. A candle is a torch grown smaller. A bulb is steady but has no life. The human torch is a comic book character. A torch is carried for what we long for or have lost.
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It rained July 4th & I was glad. It was a quiet night. The dogs & I curled up together on the bed & and watched a movie about love.
The movie was called The Torch.1
My favorite scene happens at night. It’s like something out of Shakespeare when love & death intertwine. It’s like Romeo standing below Juliet’s balcony, but so much richer, so much darker.
The woman appears at the window. Her face tells him no.2 The singers’ voices climb higher & higher. While watching, something inside me was filling, threatening to spill over.
The man’s face says, “I will never be over you. The torch I carry for you will never go out.”
What pretty eyes you have… what pretty eyes you have…they want to look at me, but you won’t let them…you’re beautiful and enchanting, like the innocence of a rose.
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In the Medieval handbook, Tacuinum Sanitatis, which sets forth human needs, such as the balance between wakefulness & sleep, activity & rest, there is a painting of a torch seller that looks something like this sketch:
I don’t know how they lit their torches then, but I know today you can buy a torch lighter for $1.29. Novelty lighters come in all shapes & sizes. Grenades, guns, pigs, you get the idea.
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What I mean is that the shape of things may change, some ways may change, but that is not to say that we are not sometimes the man below the window or the woman behind the window who spurns.
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“Should you ask me if I’m happy, I’ll answer that I’m not” —Fernando Pessoa3
The Spanish title is “Del odio nace el amor,”meaning "love is born from hate.” The movie was made in 1950.
In actuality, he does eventually win her affection.
Author of The Book of Disquiet.
“The translation is at once penetrating and delicately observant of Pessoa's astute melancholy. What is this Livro do Desassossego?Neither 'commonplace book', nor 'sketchbook', nor 'florilegium' will do. Imagine a fusion of Coleridge's notebooks and marginalia, of Valéry's philosophic diary and of Robert Musil's voluminous journal. Yet even such a hybrid does not correspond to the singularity of Pessoa's chronicle. Nor do we know what parts thereof, if any, he ever intended for publication in some revised format." —George Steiner