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| George Waterhouse Hayward |
Often in this blog I have quoted Jorge Luís Borges that in order to remember one must first forget. It seems that while some people might think that Borges wrote about the obvious there is more here that meets memory banks and my fading ability to reason.
Borges also wrote often about visiting his old home (I am not even sure he actually visited it and if he did he might have been blind by then to see anything) and sensing his father amongst the smell of the ferns and the geraniums. I have included the poem The Rain many times.
Because I am 81, when I turn off the lights in my bedroom, memories come rushing without stop. Sometimes I have to take a sleeping pill.
Last night I noticed something that hit home. In the last century I saw all those great movies that lacked special effects and explosions and had actors that had taken voice lessons. Those memories competed with other "real" memoris. These memories were from before we were able to find out that Sharon Tate was not wearing underwear.
My mother and my father often took me to the movies. I even remember fondly, that sometime in 1958, when I was feeling homesick in my first year at the Austin, Texas boarding school, St. Edward’s High School, that my mother paid me a visit. We saw Raintree County together at the Varsity on Congress Avenue. It was in that film that I fell for Eva Marie Saint and had no eyes for Elizabeth Taylor. That film set my fate in motion to one day meeting my very own beautiful blonde, Rosemary.
What hit me suddenly last night is that my memories of my family, wife, children, childhood competed (share might be a better word) with my memories of scenes in films of my past. In some cases those scenes were and are as much real as my own memories not related to movies.
I remember that in 1950 my father took me to the Cine Cabildo (an Art Deco design on Avenida Cabildo) to see Beau Geste. I remember it was a sunny day.
There is a scene in this film where our hero protagonists face Fort Zinderneuf (Snoopy could easily spell that word). It is silent even though there are soldiers on the crenellated parapets. They enter and find out that all those soldiers are dead. This scene embedded in my memory.
In the beginning of the film, our protagonists, as children, play with model boats on a little lake. When I got home I went into a placard (Argentine Spanish for closet) and took out my grandmother’s mandolina. I cut off the arm and with a little pole I made it look like a boat and floated it on our bathtub. That evening my mother gave me a spanking.
And in many more recent films I can smell the chlorine as
Burt Lancaster swims from one neighbourhood pool to another in the 1968 film The
Swimmer. It feels like I was there with him.
Watching or thinking about 200: A Space Odyssey I find it impossible to differentiate any of the scenes from the fact I was sitting with my Rosemary at the Cine Latino in Mexico City. It was the first film we saw together.
But Beau Geste is more than ever in my mind every time I see my copy of my 1927 edition that somehow a previous owner shot with a .22 pistol or rifle. The illustration here is from that book. There is also a striking photogravure of author Percival Christopher Wren with a bullet hole through his heart. I wrote about it here. But only recently when I looked up the author on Wikipedia the photograph illustrating it is the one in my book. Somebody lifted it from my blog? Or did the previous owner send it to Wikipedia?
Wikipedia - Percival Christopher Wren
Perhaps as I get older, when confusion sets in, I might not be able to differentiate between my life memories and scenes in films. Riding a motor scooter with Audrey Hepburn does not sound all that terrible.
