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I used to read a lot of it. I read it all the time. I would carry one novel and one book of poetry with me at all times, because I wanted to cover all the bases for potential reading moods. Incidentally, my teenage self used to like French poems, especially when they involved oranges.
Jacques Prevert's "Alicante": "une orange sur la table/ta robe sur le tapis/et toi dans mon lit./Doux present du present/fraicheur de la nuit/chaleur de ma vie."
blew my mind at 18. I even went to Alicante while in Spain to see the fabled setting with my friend Christy, who also loved the poem. I think someone dubbed the town the "armpit of Spain" unfortunatley. To make matters worse, we had been trailed by this desperate-seeming chapped-lipped Australian down the Costa Del Sol. We spotted him our second day on the beach.
But before we left, we made sure to place an orange on our table and throw our clothes on the floor.
The Paul Eluard poem (see last entry) was introduced to me by a lothario from Cannes who tried his best to work his way through all the girls at the International Students School in Jerusalem. Before I knew he was gross, however, I was smitten for about two days after he read Paul Eluard to me in French, with that great surrealist line: "La terre est bleu comme une orange"
The earth is blue like an orange. How cool was that. I was later to find out that the poem is about as rare to the Frenchies as Frosts's "miles to go before I sleep" is to the American high school student, but nonetheless.
The next day, my sauve ami brought me a lump of clay, an orange, and a veiled invitation and placed them on my desk in the dormitory and disappeared.
The ones worth keeping never have it down to such an art, word.
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12.3.2003
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