Bits and Pieces and Panthers

[smokingboot]

Thursday was pleasantly hot. I went into town, bumped into a friend, and she came back for tea in the garden. The cats were contented, we nattered, everything was just fine. That night I dreamt of Orb Lord, who walked into the room and told me at length all my faults, the ways in which I had let him down. He even had a whiteboard to help illustrate his umbrage.

Friday morning the world had rolled away under thick mist like a spell. Then the sun burned it all away, and left us with this blue sky. I just heaped up a whole load of junk that we need to get rid of, and it tired me. I did some really easy editing and it tired me too. But still, it got done.

Today the morning mist is back and I woke from more strange dreams in which I was looking after a tiny kitten, a valiant little creature. It messed itself and I was cleaning it up, when a couple of fecal drops landed on a shadow under a seat, and as I reached in to clean those too, I was answered by a low answering growl. There lay a large panther, and poo or no poo, it was warning me not to touch it. So I didn't. Sometimes my dream lexicon connects friendly panthers with my maternal grandfather, but this was nothing like that.

I will put my leopard poems up on substack. Feels like the right time.

I wrote a whole piece here on Mary Bennet in the TV adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister, and deleted it, because it felt as ponderous as points in the show. TOBS improves from tiresome trope-laden beginnings and sad distortions of the original text of Pride and Prejudice. The love interest is worthy of canon, the nods to earlier adaptations and even moments of Jane Austen's own life are cute. It gets better, which is more than I can say for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Yup, I tried again. And failed again. Saw it in the cinema when it first came out, and since then every time I try to watch it, I never make it all the way through. God alone knows how Francis Ford Coppola could quell such talents as Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder into this stiff cartoon Englishness, a thorough waste of the pair. Only Gary Oldman could shine in this, with his strange luminosity that has nothing to do with classic good looks. I don't know what his charisma is based on. He has it even when playing someone like Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses, a series with real quality. He's not beautiful to my eyes, but he has extraordinary presence. That in itself is a puzzle. What is presence, anyway?

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

Charisma is a real mystery. The oddest people have it! In my experience, it doesn't correlate with beauty, intelligence, or any of the other qualities one might think necessary to command attention. It just is.