The Write Thing

There is a book by Patricia Cornwell called Southern Cross, but I don’t think the name has any direct reference to what I consider my Southern Cross. I see it from my balcony in summer, here in Buenos Aires. I sometimes lift my glass of wine to it, and the Three Marys that accompany the crux. I have someone who wanted to see them on a visit (of many) to Buenos Aires. It turned out that this person did not need to see them at the local Planetarium, as my balcony did just fine. Tonight it’s cloudy out there, but it doesn’t make much of a difference, really. I carry the crux on me.

A few hours ago, at the ice cream parlor, I saw a couple. These girls were so connected in the way they were dressed, in the way they talked to each other. One of them had no difficulties in going onto PDA mode, which I found bold and wonderfully avant-garde for someone in her twenties. I looked at them out of the corner of my eye, enthralled by their nonchalance, and the self-assertiveness that accompanied that defiance of the world. After all, we are in Buenos Aires, who is only gay-friendly in name, but in practice is really closeted.

I thought of this, and had a sudden flash of emotion and relative epiphany. I saw myself in that connection, so many years ago. Alas, no longer. We are now entering what someone very sage called The Silent Phase. It hurts like hell. I simply have to let go, not of her, but of me in the us we built once, so long ago. There are so many ways of loving. My way now is that of a sister, not a lover. So it must end… until, hopefully, one day, something will be constructed out of the sparkle of beauty that we generated, unknowingly and beautifully, of our own accord.

Yesterday night, perhaps in anticipation of the never so globalized Saint Valentine’s celebration, I watched a movie that, apparently, was quite successful in the US a while ago. It is called The Jane Austen Book Club, and it is based on a book by the same name written by Karen Joy Fowler. The action basically takes place in book club meetings between six people who gather around the task of analyzing six of Jane Austen’s novels. Unlike many of the reviews I read after seeing the film, I simply loved it. There’s nothing to do about it: we all like or dislike things according to our mood. My mood yesterday was exactly the mood that could go with this movie. It is a comedy, romantic, full of unbelievable and poignant characters…what else can you ask for in Saint Valentine’s eve?

I think that, once more, the reason why I particularly liked a movie that many people might find slightly basic or superficial was because of Dame Jane. It brought back memories of the good old days when I made literary discoveries as I prepared for my university graduation. One of those discoveries was, precisely, Pride and Prejudice. No matter what you think of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, I certainly found out in my teen years that Ms. Austen and I had lots of opinions in common. In literary terms, perhaps the major value of this movie to me was that it put me in touch with Jane Austen again, and made me plan a strategy to get hold of a new novel of hers to read.

This morning, I got myself a copy of Austen’s Emma. They say that we do not choose books, but that books choose us. Let’s see if Emma made a good choice. Probably she did.