I am in a Graham Greene phase again. Read a collection of letters and liked this:
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.Something I have often wondered myself.
I was agreeably surprised to find that, like myself, he disapproved of the Shirley Temple franchise, so much as to go public about it for which he was vilified. I, too, have never been charmed by her movies or her beauty pageant outfits. I just thought it meant I must be a bad or insensitive person in some way. Now I feel justified!
And then on to Haiti and the Tontons Macoute. Graham was despised by the dictator"Papa Doc" for having written The Comedians; a fact that delighted him.
My favorite passage:
Next day I sat in a deck-chair on the sheltered starboard side and let myself roll languidly in and out of the sun with the motions of the mauve-green sea. I tried to read a novel, but the heavy foreseeable progress of its characters down the uninteresting corridors of power made me drowsy, and when the book fell upon the deck, I did not bother to retrieve it. My eyes opened only when the traveller in pharmaceutical products passed by; he clung to the rail with two hands and seemed to climb along it as though it were a ladder. He was panting heavily and he had an expression of desperate purpose as though he knew to what the climb led and knew that it was worth his effort, but knew too that he would never have the strength to reach the end. Again I drowsed and found myself alone in a blacked-out room and someone touched me with a cold hand. I woke and it was Mr. Fernandez who had, I suppose, been surprised by the steep roll of the boat and had steadied himself against me. I had the impression of a shower of gold dropping from a black sky as his spectacles caught the fitful sun.My brother, who paints abstracts, may perhaps be interested in illustrating this scene, if I ask him. I may give it a try myself.
I have the entire week off from one of my jobs, so I have some extra time.
I work in Salem, MA and I often stop at a park about 10 minutes away, sometimes bringing sketching or painting materials. I worked on this for about an hour and then realized I was beginning to get very chilly and the clouds were moving in. It's almost always windy at this park. One of the reasons that this is one of my favorites spots is that many islands are visible including Great Misery, Little Misery, and Baker's Island. Another incentive is the very good popcorn and ice cream available there. A few years ago I took a ferry to the Misery islands- they are very beautiful.
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