T.S. Eliot, "The Cocktail Party"
I watched the film "The Yellow Handkerchief" last night and in that way that only an honest film, a truly good book, a conversation at my friend Jim's old table with the knife marks and wine stains and the pleasing soft somnolence of elbows leaning forward and another bottle of that good wine, can do for me, I have been thinking and thinking on it, and carried away. I think now is a time when we need to know each other in whatever way possible, to discard the "useful and convenient social convention(s)" that help us to sort us and them, those over there, the ones here. You see someone as they are, as William Hurt's character says in the film and "are not afraid to love them for what they are" which is of course the dark, the light, the 2 am feedings, the vomit on the floor in the middle of the night, the scowl, the tendency to haul a lifetime of bad choices, mistakes, and fears into the room with the two of you. All that, or nothing.
