Arts and Flowers

Yesterday I declared an official day of recuperation. No going out, no doin' nuthin,' just taking it easy at home. Sometimes you can just feel the storm tide wearing your foundations away, like a piece of beach. So I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and enjoyed it a lot. It's quite a book: The story flows along, and the protagonist interprets everything one way, because he's autistic, and the rest of us are interpreting everything in a very different way. It was very cleverly and effectively done, and it's a page-turner.

Then I watched City Lights, one of Chaplin's most famous films. I have the DVD player downstairs, but the cat has to stay off the stairs for two weeks because of his operation (even though he's running around like nothing happened) so I sat in bed with the laptop and we watched it together. If you haven't seen it, and you like wonderful stuff, check it out. Every moment he's on screen is just delightful. Basically the story is that Chaplin's trademark Little Tramp character one day encounters a blind flower girl. He befriends her, letting her believe he's rich, and eventually through his friendship with a drunken millionaire he gets her the money for an operation to restore her sight. But he winds up in jail, and many months later he's released. He goes in search, but can't find her where she used to sit by the sidewalk selling flowers, then wanders about and discovers that she's flourishing, her eyesight restored. She's never seen him, of course, and believe he's rich, and the end is famous. James Agee said of the moment the truth about her benefactor shows on her face, "It has never seriously occurred to him that he is inadequate. ... It is enough to shrivel the heart to see, and it is the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies." Personally, I think it's like some heartbreakingly beautiful operatic aria, translated into pure images: