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arrive at that place in time—swifts at the end of March and him in June—and the catalog of near misses and lucky escapes that had accompanied his journey across Africa, Sicily and up the Adriatic would have astonished priests and astrologers alike. Something had been watching over him. Why not a swift?
simple beauty
Ulysses turned the ignition and the old jeep caught the first time. He drove into the hills, leaving behind the silhouettes of tanks and men. He passed different Allied divisions, young men like him worn old. The soft light moved with him across the groves and meadows, until the sky held only ripples of pink and the night chasing in
softening the ghastly spectre of war in a very gentle way
You’re putting me in a bit of a bind, miss. Oh, I’m sure you’re no stranger to that. Do you believe in fate, Miss Skinner? Fate? It is a gift. According to Dante, anyhow. A gift? I like that.
optimistic lightness
The rogue shelling that had accompanied the afternoon had ceased and a soft, almost believable, peace lay across the wooded hills and hilltop refuges, across the dark symmetry of vines that terraced the slopes.
life and nature continues despite human attempts to the opposite
We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn. And do you know what it’s capable of? I do. Grace and fury.
2 ends of the human spectrum
wise counsel of “Life’s what you make it, son,” had been firmly entrenched in him from a young age.
it explains nothing and yet everything
Art historians have made gods of men.
all history is written by the victor
The cathedral. Brunelleschi’s dome. Ushering in the great period of Renaissance humanism. Built in majesty so those seated below it could receive God. And yet, first and foremost it’s a testament to the order and beauty of the universe. A universe that is responsive and nonjudgmental, Temps, and in which mankind has a place: man as the measure of all things. And the poets and artists ran with that conviction. Perspective composition arranged around the human figure. The square and the circle became the bedrock of fifteenth-century architecture and in Vitruvian spirit Leonardo placed man inside
...more
the light at the end of the tunnel
The explosion of energy from that time destroyed myths and superstitions and revealed the heavens just as they were. Subject to decay and mutability. Just like us.
and yet the stories and myths of each religion endures...because the human mind needs to draw finite edges to life
No one back home could understand what occupation did to a people. The deprivation of body and soul. The daily choice to survive, but at what cost and sometimes at what cost to others. He stood back and saluted as Allied tanks passed.
and still occupation and oppression continues today...it's the never ending legacy of humanity
Night then, Temps. And Darnley—without thinking—took his leave Italian style. There was a pause, however, before the second kiss, and in that intimate space was a 1937 Brunello di Montalcino. Decanted. And in that intimate space was something unvoiced. No more, sir. And war is over. You look very handsome, said Darnley before disappearing through the trees back up to the villa.
beautiful words and expressions that befit the beautiful brunello di montalcino wine...one of my favourites
Peg hated winter. She hated the smells of damp wool and coal smoke. She hated nights that began at three and days that barely raised their heads from the pillow. She hated the same old same old that winter brought.
ooops...many people are afflicted with those feelings
she sang for her life, and for yours too, because the world never turned out the way you wanted it to. It simply turned. And you hung on.
reality vs dreams vs nightmares
He thought about the question, the two roads that led away from it, the yes or no that would attract pity or scorn.
so binary, yet we are not binary beings
A whirling dynamo of tension she was, and always had been, propelling bloods and lipids along a never-ending godforsaken circuit.
a fun way to describe the mechanism of animal bodies
Col loved the silence that followed; he could have fucked it twice and cooked it breakfast.
too funny
Dismissing pain with a whiplash flick of her wrist and casting it into the gutter to join a thousand other heart-raw tales.
some people have that knack...
That “even those whose usual avocations are of the most prosaic nature unconsciously become admirers of poetry and art in Italy.” Would that be so bad? To become an admirer of poetry and art? Until we figure it all out.
we prefer to live in dreams than reality
August came and still no word from Peg. The heat ratcheted up as Pete said it would and brought out the unwashed tang of people. Hot nights made sleep impossible and a perpetual feeling of somnolence took hold. The sounds of lovemaking ceased because no one wanted to get that close. Ice cream melted before it got near mouths
great description of summer heat
Cress knew he’d gone in on himself, as if he’d taken up residence in the far end of a telescope.
such a beautiful image of depression
She looked at her watch. Curtailed, once again, by the scythe of time.
slaves to time
the final wishes. Cremation. An early-morning boat ride on the Arno with one of the renaioli, the sand diggers. Sunlight, haze, memories. She was poured onto the sleepy reflection of a palazzo. Not a ripple. At one. At peace. Her home.
sounds uplifting rather than sad...beautiful
watched the linen curtains billow and fall and matched her breathing to the pulse of fabric. The sound of trams outside, the birds, a burst of laughter from below, and her thoughts were of people no longer living, and it wasn’t an act of nostalgia but one of love of reminiscence, of the people who had made her her. The privilege and the freedom they had brought her. Beauty and gratitude entwined forever in a closely woven fabric of sympathetic names:
the good and the bad, the red rose and the briar, in a true lovers knot
The predominance of blue-mauve flowers in and around the city astonished her, a compelling stream from February to May. Violets, wisteria, iris . . . not forgetting the summer cornflower, which had often been a noble bed for her and a her, in some secluded meadow, in some secluded decade. The blue against a burned umber or ochre wall, the blue against lush grass, against a white linen shirt unbuttoned and splayed, a blue of such staggering intensity, the memory too easy to find in the
intense beauty
opaque past. Flesh and love always next to blue. Such a precocious display of spring.
sex and spring
Some activities are exalted, others dismissed as lowly or humble or trivial, she thought. So who is it who decides? Privilege and male gaze, ultimately.
life and it's religions were created and modelled by men
she knew what happened when the waves hit—that lurching shift when the ballast slides into empty space and you tilt so far over you think you’re gonna capsize, think you’re gonna drown.
great description
The walk revealed the pain of solitude that had lain central not only in her lifetime but in her mother’s and her mother’s mother’s, too. No education, no money, only men. A cycle of repetition so ridiculous that it needed only organ music and a scattering of plastic horses to be that predictable fairground ride.
sadly true...walking our own path is always based on paths welltrod before us
Her beauty had been her currency. Always had been. No one talked about when the bank ran dry as it inevitably would. All those books she never read. All those museums she’d rubbished as brain-box boring. Cressy said it took effort to turn a page. Takes patience and care, Peg. Takes a leap of grace to say I don’t know.
wow
she realized London in wartime had been the star of that fateful show. Love and sex came fast and danced with the nearness of death and my God did it make life golden. Made it giddy and immediate. They clung to one another because the essence of life itself had been revealed to them,
how else to describe a horrific situation of unknown danger and complete chance
We’re still living in the footprints of the French Revolution, of Hitler and Mussolini. Scratch the surface of the varnish and it raises its head again. Evil was defeated but it never went away. This is something we must live with, Ulysses.
yes, and now we have trump, orban, putin, afd, marine le pen etc etc etc never ending, we go round in circles, we don't travel along a continuum
he was a shining example of a certain type of Englishman abroad who hated everything foreign. He was dragging along his new wife as if she was a wet blanket. Her pale face and large haunted eyes were symptomatic of a lymphatic temperament unsuited to a European diet.
yes...indeed
Time is what it’s all about. The ephemeral seed of time. The heavy thud of the pendulum swing, the noose of time. Mmm, the noose of time.
no escaping it...the only guarantee we have
This room needs the outpouring of emotion. The stiff upper lip is woven into the haberdashery.
the emotion of decor - a great concept
An ordinary young middle-class Englishman, Evelyn thought. Clever, without doubt. But with a head and a body that had yet to meet.
so true
So, time heals. Mostly. Sometimes carelessly. And in unsuspecting moments, the pain catches and reminds one of all that’s been missing. The fulcrum of what might have been. But then it passes. Winter moves into spring and swallows return. The proximity of new skin returns to the sheets. Beauty does what is required. Jobs fulfill and conversations inspire. Loneliness becomes a mere Sunday. Scattered clothes. Empty bowls. Rotting fruit. Passing time. But still life in all its beauty and complexity.
concentric circles - though at firest they are each new, then they become known and sadly expected
Ulysses said that time ran backward for him whenever he came here. That’s how he described it, anyway. From the moment Darnley fell. Rushing him to a field hospital in Ancona, two others injured in the back, driving one-handed, the other hand pressed against the wound. Eddying time, Evelyn. Churches, frescoes. Sicily. That first handshake in the desert. All those moments, those years, were his now. To remember or to forget. That’s what Ulysses said. So I choose to remember. The best man ever. And everything about him is vivid. And he is young. And he is laughing.
such a beautiful ending to the memory of life
