Holes in les chausseurs

Pierrot was perhaps made for wistfulness, as his is so elegant, it would be a shame to see him walking around at his full height with broad shoulders once one has seen him hiding in the corner of a lowly bar, uninterested in the women, the drink, hiding in the darkness behind sunglasses impenetrable. You would not understand that the loneliness fires the warmth of recognition, when it comes, though rarely, and in such times might mistake him for a saint in the magnanimity of his heart, as though at other times he were a hermit in the city desert, unnourished, swatting away buzzards feebly, and at his one friend, the arrival of Christ, he is revived!

John Grady Cole

You died too young but were immortalized for all our sakes by Cormac McCarthy, that sage of the desert. I read your words in my Paris bathtub, bathed variously in filtered blue, red and green light, I read you driving down the highway, and walking along the beach, a fugitive, my life immersed in your art. When you felt, crossing the border, that your father had died, I was pierced, my eyes watered. Such a feeling could not but be true, though it has no basis in fact. In John Grady I understood myself as a lover. My love is hopeless, fatal, that is it's essence, the source of its sweetness is it's impossibility - and how sweet it the realization of the impossible! The moments of its realization must be immortal, they could fill my short life, as they filled yours, with thousands of lives of unrealized, undaring love. For myself, I imagine her coming to me, many years from now, needing my help with matrimonial problems, how could I refuse those eyes, of course I would take it on, there would be no question of billing, though you insist, rebuke it could be no other way. I will think of what is, what could have been, it will leave me, when she has gone, in unblinking silence. We could have been saved all this, those children could be mine. Alas. Thinking over time, when the dream felt so close to being real, and would have been real too, it was not that it could never be true, but that I could never see a reason why it shouldn't! The years would have haunted us, we would have been aged. But such feelings never die. They cannot starve and cannot be burnt. They live on even when the lovers fall, as John Grady Cole did, into eternity. My soulmate John Grady, the tatters in these paperbacks do not age your memory in my heart. Through you I begin to understand myself, and the death that will come, in her. What am I to do? There is no handbook, no law but the heart and I must rely on myself. She won't come to me but I am doomed to never leave and will be there, as I have before. Now I find myself standing against the darkness of existence, with no recognizable god to hear the prayers I pray earnestly, and only suffering to beat me down till death. Just the one hope makes it all worthwhile, even if I can attach to it no reason. We are together in our loneliness, riding alongside Comanche ghosts by moonlit trails, our laws shaped by the winds, John Grady.

So close, yet so far... l'histoire de Pierrot

Mes amis, the saga of Pierrot and the only woman for him continues. It is incredible, n'est pas, that Pierrot should emerge from the darkest jungles of the human heart, gaunt with the heat, malnutrition and diptheria, and there she would stand, unchanged from his memory. Other men may have come and gone, he did not want to know about them, nor did he have the right. She was she and he was he. Somehow, she was back in the life of Pierrot. He was sullen with the knowledge, and came to the slaughter with reluctance, knowing that he had to go he just had to. It did not help that her handmaiden was standing by, with nothing but a smug smirk, to watch Pierrot descend. Pierrot's effected coldness melted instantly with her smile, her embrace. Why did they still have such moments of lucidity, when Pierrot knew he was falling for her, falling hard, that he would be crushed, and that she was too, such short moments, wine-clouded though they may have been, tantalized Pierrot with the Paradise they promised, broader than the abysmal Congo and deeper than the unknowable jungles of the interior. He felt so close to a breakthrough and did not know how to get there. 'And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you.' The only greater prophet than Sinatra was Bogart, says Pierrot. And then the silence. Was she afraid? Didn't she feel it too? Pierrot thought of the woods of Siberia, placer gold in unclaimed streams, the purifying winter night. He could not leave. Come what may, even the destruction of Pierrot. He was afraid not, and never thought of death as entailing his heart stopping, but that's what it would be, the silence of the brain. He cherished those seconds when he felt her love and didn't want to think that they would be his last. He couldn't.

La retour de Pierrot

It has been many long years since Pierrot has written to you, mes amis. He could not stand to look in your face. He travelled around the world on foot for your love, you spat in his face and he smashed an entire chateau to pieces in his rage, before leaving for Brazzaville and trading arms up the River Congo for many years. There the people were dark and savage, and while they raped and murdered without a whim the fundamental honesty of their animal brutality was consolation to Pierrot after how he had been treated by you. But Pierrot, sitting on the edge of that eternal river, his back to the unknowable jungle, knew that he needed to return. Exhaust him, spit in his face. But let him at least troll up to a van Saenredam, and feel awe.

l'Update

Mes amis I do apologize for being so tardy with my posts, you see I am housebound as all my suits are receiving sartorial attention, having been aged by the grasp of countless women, all demanding my love... well Pierrot bows to no-one not even love or her minions! You may have guessed I am still chasing her, and shrugging off all my other female suitors as water off a ducks back (that my suits should have been so lucky...) I saw her recently and it was not a dream - another absinthe monsieur - but she was with another! Pierrot looked down on him with scorn and spoke behind his back accordingly: he lacked my Gallic good looks; observe this so kissable jawline and rugged cheekbones, or the sculpted musculature, the air of defiant criminality; he did not have much of a chin, and seemed to gaze off dully most of the time, while Pierrot charmed the women out from under the measly grasp of l'enfant, with his humour and sexiness. Naturally Pierrot was civil - make it a double - but still so empty, at least, at last he knew he was in control... of nothing, oh those pale blue eyes... sous les ponts de Paris... un homme et une femme... but I could not take this fellow seriously, and knew it wouldn't last, he didn't leave with us, unsuited to the snowy night and the embrace of lovers, the way she looked at me smiling how she held me; a sort of patience I found there in what was once a long slow pain, now I grit my teeth and spit in the face of my interrogators these long weeks, laughing I don't know why - this is a cheap form of what Kierkegaard called faith, not all of me even believes it yet it is there as I am torn down and rebuilt over the months, the seasons...

la reve d'un faun

Last night mes amis Pierrot dreamt of soft wet kisses and pale blue eyes.

Pierrot et les ciseaux

Is Pierrot cut? A certain woman Pierrot has been chasing - yes chasing in opposition to the women, either the lovelorn, the scorned lovers or the carless, whom typically chase Pierrot - there is a woman out there, mes amis, who commands the fullest of his respect, and possesses all of his irrational qualities, to the extent that Pierrot has already moved on to his next birdie when she calls and says she'd love to talk. How did she find Pierrot, having disgraced his employer, spouse and circle of acquaintances, just to dash all his chances of forgetting her wonderful shape and easy laughter? And then, when willing Pierrot arrives heroically on the scene, she has some excuse and is always beyond his loving arms, beyond his soft, sweet kisses! With some excuse, some useless excuse that Pierrot, knowing man of the streets can see right through and cries 'Ecrasez l'infame!' as that fool Voltaire once did, but for a purpose far greater than for reason, the purpose of love! Perhaps Pierrot ought to painth is face blue and strap a strip of dynamite around his head, would that make his love happy? Pierrot was born without fear, and whatever fear he may have acquired, he conquered with a treatment of Rimbaud and some excellent shiraz, taken together sur La Rhone. Soon, soon Pierrot will be forced to say: 'excusez-moi, mademoiselle, you will be with me or forced to face the eternal darkness that is life without my geourgeous Gallic visage!'