On The Island of Lost Souls
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
“A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. “ I have always been known to friends and foes to be the go-to-guy with respect of having a martini always near me. In all seriousness, “I know I’m drinking myself to a slow death, but then I’m in no hurry.” I have trouble sleeping at night, so I find having a chilled glass of martini at the bedside helps me sleep better. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I just reached the cooler, and take another sip, and I’m off to dreamland, where I try to imagine my life as a memoir. Which also keeps me up at nights, because I’m so damn busy remembering every little incident that went through my world from age 1 to 20. Youth is significant, but the memory of youth is much more important. Luckily there have been major changes in the world of writing, one that “the biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.” With the miracle machine, the laptop, I don’t have to worry about that. Now I can write till my fingers run off to the side, where the martini glass resides.
My life changed when I found out that I’m a distant relative of Gilles de Rais, perhaps the first serial killer on record. The Frenchman was alleged to killing up to 600 children from 1432 to the spring of 1433. I personally don’t believe the number is that high, more likely 200. Nevertheless, being related to such a brute (although a refined one, according to historians) hasn’t helped me much. The dark cloud that follows me I think came from my distant relative. I try to think and behave like François de La Rochefoucauld, who seemed to be a reasonable gentleman of nobility. I bear that in mind while writing my memoirs and sipping my drink. He wrote that “true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.” I had a dream the other night that I was on an island, and I came upon a sophisticated party, full of the beautiful woman - one of them actually looked like Louise Brooks. When I approached her, it was like I wasn’t there. She didn’t acknowledge me, and I had the feeling that either I wasn’t there, or she wasn’t there as well. In fact, the whole party appeared to be projected from someone’s dreams, but clearly, to me, it wasn’t from my dream.
“There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.” So perhaps my dream the other night was my experience of falling in love, but the girl didn’t even exist. Can one love just an idea of being in love? The other part of the dream that I remember quite clearly is when I heard someone from the party saying “Why don’t you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?” At that moment, I woke up and reached for my chilled martini.
Inspired by Robert Benchley, Adolfo Bioy Casares, François de La Rochefoucald, Gilles de Rais, and the martini at The Odeon