The Girl with Green Eyes

 

I enjoy watching movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Given my photography years exclusively in B&W, the technical aspects of these movies attract my curiosity because telling a story in B&W takes much more ingenuity than in colour – it affects our brain and not our eyes.

But these old movies most often also tackle psychological, human and philosophical topics that stay with us long after the screen shows “FIN” or “END” – the cheap thrills of fast car chases and violent behaviors never allured me.

So, a few days ago I discovered a 1964 British movie titled “The girl with green eyes”, based on a novel by Irish writer Edna O’Brien “The lonely girl”. My first reaction was “how does a B&W movie racont the behavior of green eyes?”

Therefore I decided to watch it.

Immediately I was attracted by the visual softness of the cinematography. Whatever British-made pellicule they used, it was noticeably different from American products used decades before the 1960s which are high in contrast and definition.  The Girl with Green Eyes had that comforting, fluid feeling even when capturing moments of love and deception.

A few minutes into the movie, and the genius of the cinematographer gave me yet another feeling – I was actually able to see green eyes in B&W! What a delight.

As for the story and plot, they tackle an age-old topic, that of a young woman falling in love with a man twice her age. She is also innocent and self-described as “unsophisticated”; he is a well known writer with a life baggage.  She finds ways for inviting him to have tea with her, and he eventually gets fascinated by her simplicity and inexperience. They even get married (informally of sorts) but the story ends as many such stories end – the initial attraction fades away for him, and she finds her own way (by going to night school) to meet other men.

… While I started watching the movie for the softness of the cinematography, I ended up with a comfort due to how the story was told. Both characters are candid about their feelings, their expectations and the void they tried to fill. There is no intrigue, no malice or dominance. It is a very fresh (and British!) display of the need for discovery – she about herself, and for him about re-discovering who he had been. It is a moment in time when two people “happen together” and discover that they did not belong to that moment as hoped. As such, it is a moment of selfishness, but without causing harm to each other. They just continue alone, knowing more about themselves.

 

It was a couple days later, when I was making my morning coffee that I knew how best to formulate why I liked that movie. It was not because I “saw” the green of her eyes in a B&W movie; it was not because there was no violence through the loss of passion; and it was not because the story ended with an expected twist.

No. It was because there was a soothing message to the viewer – that self-discovery, no matter how selfishly pursued at times, can be gentle and celebrated.

And, when the first sip of coffee cleared my mind, I recalled a line from Khalil Gibran:

The feelings we live through in love and in loneliness are simply, for us, what high tide and low tide are to the sea

And so it flows.

 

November 24, 2023

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

Chanting a Daina

An owl flew low

Forgetting the quiet 

Her wings promised 

To the rabbit

And the first rain

Washed the dreamy eyes

Of the high desert

In the dark

Sunshine late today

Juniper tree berries

Now scented the air

As a woman does

Walking barefoot 

After a steam bath

And the owl flew passed

And the rabbit chanted a daina

For living through another sunrise

In the high desert

Wearing wet fur

November 19, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

Love is So Short, Forgetting is So Long (Pablo Neruda)

 

And I walked

With my shoes taken

Away

In the day

Through the nights

And made

A path

 

Where secretly

Shadows found time

To rest alone

As I walked passed

By

 

A scarecrow

Hung the sun

Hung the moon

Upon its hat

For memories to fear

Remembering

What I should

Had

Forgotten

 

And I walked

Without my shoes

Secretly

So not to scare

The sun

The moon

Hanging upon

The shadow

Of the scarecrow

 

November 7, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

When Buildings Swirl Before Sunrise

 

It was a cold morning, a few hours ago. As usual the internal clock of my dog dictated that we go downtown before sunrise.

And in the dark, I saw a man struggling to walk. My dog recognized him and walked to greet him.

Over the years we have met this gentleman and his dog around the Court House. We have had a few conversations and our dogs socialized happily. This time he hardly looked at Ziggy but starred at me with an empty look when we got close.

“Good morning” I said, “I have not seen you for a long while. How are you?”

With that empty look, he replied “Do you really want to know?”

He looked unkept and his gait had changed.

“Let me sit down, everything is shifting around me.”

He slowly lowed himself and sat on the street curb.

“Everything is moving, shifting around me. This is the second time this happens to me. The tree trunks are moving, the buildings are not the same as I remember.”

So I sat next to him.

“I have Alzheimer’s and my balance is bad. It is a strange feeling when nothing is the same as it once was. You have noticed how difficult it is for me to walk now, yes?”

I nodded.

“Do you know if the Solid Rock is open? I need to eat something.”

He was asking about the kitchen where food is offered to homeless folks of the city.

“It is too early” I said. “Why don’t you sit down a little longer till they open.”

Ziggy was trying to get his attention, but he never looked at him.

“Time is shifting too. It now has an oval shape.”

… He looked like he had been on the street for a while. And he seemed lost yet his speech was fine and I could follow his rational and almost cohesive reasoning. I recalled that he was a professor once, and that we had shared discussion about poetry during our previous meetings.

“Should I call for assistance?” I asked.

“No, no need. I will figure things out. I am sure somewhere; someone knows what is happening to me. But I have no idea.”

Then he looked at me and drew a slight smile on his unshaved face.

“We will meet again on a better day,” he promised.

Photo taken with a Yashica Lynx 14e in Zagreb, Croatia

 

October 27, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

 

PS/ I have written about this gentleman here  https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2023/05/love-is-rider-who-breaks-us-all.html

Love is Stumbled on Through Loving

 

I did not feel like reading poetry this weekend. The world was not a loving place this week.

But I wanted to read. So I went to a French translation of Dante’s “La Divine Comédie” and started at the beginning with “L’enfer”.

But could not continue for long.

Then I recalled that the once forgotten English poet, William Blake, was also an engraver who was working on illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy as his last work before his death in 1827. So, I opted to read pages from Blake remembering a statement of him that had stayed with me during any creative process I spent my past 50 years in pursuit.

He said:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

Perception, consciousness and apprehension. Over the years, I have considered these dimensions as the three legs of the stool upon which an artist rest, and where a scientist aspires to distill all complex questions faced.

Yet, the doors of perception are often closed, locked tight, or turned opaque. But when cleansed or open, thinking that through these doors the infiniteness of everything can be experienced is perhaps what Béatrice showed to Dante after his descent to Inferno and passage through the terraces of Purgatorio.

So, I leafed through some of Blake’s poem. To my delight, given my initial inclination to read Dante, I found a poem I had not read before entitled “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. At first lecture, it seems an abstract poem or series of thoughts. Until one gets to the line

“Roses are planted where thorns grow”

I stopped for a while thinking about that line. Was Blake looking though the cleansed doors of perception? Or was he lamenting upon human nature?

Perhaps the answer is in the following stanzas:

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

These almost sound like what Virgil could have said to Dante during his descent to hell. And secretively, I found the short poem by Blake more to the point, faster. How delightful was his choice of the poem’s title!

 ... I did not feel like reading poetry this weekend, but I did. Perhaps in hope of that infinite Blake was urging us to discover.

October 15, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

Arizona High Desert Morning

 

Bent and broken

The morning driped its dew

Upon dirt and over the rays

Ready for another cactus to flower

 

And creosote filled the air

With the smell of rain

While sage brush painted the sound

Of a damp desert silent in morning dew

 

Bent and now bright

The high desert will soon offer shade

To rabbit, hare and rattle snake

Under the wings of owls and hawks

 

And I sit alone

Next to thornless honey mesquite 

Searching for my soul

Grateful and in peace

 

Bent and dreamfull

 

October 5, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

Roses, the Circle of Life, and the Circle of Love

 

It is gently raining this morning and while my dog was walking me, I enjoyed the sight of rain droplets on the roses. At first sight I recalled Khalil Gebran’s lines about friendship from “The Prophet”:

 

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed

 

Then, as we walked are daily mile in the streets of the town, out of nowhere, a poem by Pierre de Ronsard took over my memories. This poem, written in the 1500^th, was among my favorites in French literature class in high school days. I knew this poem by heart, like many others but I had not thought about it for more than half a century! Slowly, some of the lines came back, and to the bewilderment of my dog, I started reciting them aloud.

 

Back home, I shook the dampness off my hat and searched for the poem. Here are the opening lines, in old French, of  “Mignonne, allons voir si la rose” and a good English translation:

 

Mignonne, allons voir si la rose
Qui ce matin avoit desclose
Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil,
A point perdu ceste vesprée
Les plis de sa robe pourprée,
Et son teint au vostre pareil.

Las ! voyez comme en peu d’espace,
Mignonne, elle a dessus la place
Las ! las ses beautez laissé cheoir !
Ô vrayment marastre Nature,
Puis qu’une telle fleur ne dure
Que du matin jusques au soir !

 

Sweetheart, let’s see if the rose
Who this morning unfurled
Her dress of crimson to the sun,
Has lost at evening
The folds of her crimson dress,
And her color at the same rate.

Alas! See how in a little bit of space,
Sweetheart, she has the place.
Alas! Weary of its beauties she let fall!
Oh, truly cruel Mother Nature,
That such a flower doesn’t last
From morning to evening!

 

It is about beauty and the passage of time. It is about our willingness to appreciate the circle of love, the circle of life, while finding beauty along the way.

And as I sipped on my morning coffee, lines from the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca found their way in this unexpected expedition in memory. Indeed, it was in his writings that I first learned how often poets have talked about their refuge, and perhaps liberation, in self love when love, like roses, has transcended others and experiences.

 

He wrote:

 

After a while

you learn the subtle difference

between holding a hand

and chaining a soul.

 

Every time I think of those lines, at various stages of my life, I interpret the last line differently. Is it the soul of the one we love? Or the soul of those we loved? Or is it our own soul?

 

No matter. Lorca has experienced all three of those interpretations, and here are lovely lines from one of my favorite poems of his “Serenata”

  

Por las orillas del río

se está la noche mojando

y en los pechos de Lolita

se mueren de amor los ramos.

 

Se mueren de amor los ramos.

 

La noche canta desnuda

sobre los puentes de marzo.

Lolita lava su cuerpo

con agua salobre y nardos.

 

Se mueren de amor los ramos.

 

La noche de anís y plata

relumbra por los tejados.

Plata de arroyos y espejos.

Anís de tus muslos blancos.

 

Se mueren de amor los ramos.

 

And the translation :

The night soaks itself
along the shore of the river
and in Lolita's breasts
the branches die of love.

The branches die of love.

Naked the night sings
above the bridges of March.
Lolita bathes her body
with salt water and roses.

The branches die of love.

The night of anise and silver
shines over the rooftops.
Silver of streams and mirrors
Anise of your white thighs.

The branches die of love.

 

… Roses again. And I looked for a photo I had taken where roses, the circle of love and youth found their way through my camera’s lens.

 

September 23, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023