Falkor

Today is a great day for luck dragon riding. Falkor the luck dragon is one of my favourite characters in fiction. Or reality. Whichever. I'm still a bit peeved that I haven't found the book that will take me to Fantastica, or the wardrobe that will take me to Narnia, or the wings that mean I can take the second star to the right and straight on til morning to Neverland. But I think there's hope yet. 

"Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under earth. There are forgotten dreams stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams."

The Neverending Story is a wonderful book, much better than the movie, and Michael Ende is also well known for his other children's book, Momo. As with most good children's books, it is one that most adults would do well to read. It is the story of a little homeless girl who begins to realise that everyone around her is becoming the victim of a complex plot to steal their lives, a second at a time. 

"People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them anymore. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had. " 

"Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it." 

Sunset Limited

I’d like to talk about books on this blog. This is probably the beginning of ambitious goals that never eventuate. I also plan to do some outfits posts and blog on my attempt to sew a gown for a themed party.

Anyway, I’ll work through some of my favourite books, and rest assured that you are getting the cream of a very varied crop. Which begs the question – why do crops have creams?

James Lee Burke has always featured on my family bookshelf. I will read almost anything if it’s left within reach, and so I had a go at a few of his novels when I was younger. None ever gripped me, and I had trouble getting past the first page. I’m not sure if this was because Burke can be quite a dense writer, or perhaps the vocabulary was too hard for me, or perhaps the topics simply didn’t interest me. It also had an aura of airport fiction about it, which to my mind was not a good thing.

One night I saw a movie based on one of Burke’s novels, and this inspired me to keep on past page one of ‘Sunset Limited’. I was hooked. What I had taken at first for boring and fatuous landscape descriptions transformed into prose of incredibly beauty, and characters with previously silly-sounding names enticed me into their world.

“The eastern horizon was strung with rain clouds and the sun should have risen out of the water like a mist-shrouded egg yolk, but it didn’t. Its red light mushroomed along the horizon, then rose into the sky in a cross, burning in the center, as though fire were trying to take the shape of a man, and the water turned the heavy dark colour of blood.”

Almost every author has a go at the sunrise, now almost a clichéd convention of literature, but Burke’s is saturated with symbolism of religion and war, an indicator of the forces that are about to steamroll through the lives of the novel’s characters.

Tommy Lee Jones also starred in an adaptation of Burke’s novel ‘In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead’, which is my favourite Burke novel. It hasn’t yet been released in Australia and when it is it will probably go straight to DVD.

If you enjoy mysteries or thrillers, Burke is a great way to get your fix without resorting to soggy paperbacks from the 2-for-$5 bin that overuse italics and dead bodies.

 

A pile ou face

Just a quick post on my favourite French actress, Emmanuelle Beart.

In true French actress style, if you type her name into Google Image, a multiplicity of naked images will come up. French cinema is less inhibited than Hollywood. If a French actress gets her kit off no one will think twice about it, but in Hollywood it is a major media event and the actress is considered to have cheapened herself somehow. Inhibition also leads to incessant on-screen smoking. 

I have loved Emmanuelle since I saw her in 2002's 8 Femmes, a kitch little musical film. I was a bit shocked to discover that Emmanuelle is actually 45. Another thing about French cinema - though age is still a barrier for actresses, it is much less of one. 

This post is really just an excuse to put up some pictures of Emmanuelle. These days actresses seem to get credit for style and fashion, and it is only the men's magazines who will harp on about their physical assets. I believe natural beauty is something pretty special though, and becoming a rarer commodity (I'm thinking of fake tan and surgeon's knives).

Nathalie (2003)

Looking like a softer Angelina Jolie

Love the red and aqua in this photo

And here are the lyrics to the song she sang in 8 Femmes, 'Pile ou Face' (Heads or Tails). I translated this ages ago but I don't trust my French anymore. It's pretty self evident though - it's a song about a woman who lives her life entirely by heads or tails.

Pas la peine de se retourner
Sur le tableau décroché
La craie s'efface
Y a plus de traces

Et moi je vis ma vie
A pile ou face
Tous mes sentiments
A pile ou face
Indifféremment
A pile ou face
Et de temps en temps
Un coup je passe
Un coup je passe

Je veux vivre ma vie
A pile ou face
Mes amours se jouent
A pile ou face
Dans un léger flou
A pile ou face
Je risquerai tout
Un coup je m'égare
Un coup je me gare

Chaque jour devant ma glace
Je vois des rêves qui passent
Et qui s'effacent
C'est le temps qui se cache

Mais moi je vis ma vie
A pile ou face
toutes mes émotions
A pile ou face
Chaque sensation
A pile ou face
Sans hésitation
Un coup je passe
Un coup je casse