Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco, 1927

Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon in The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1934

Margot Fonteyn as Giselle, photographed by Gordon Anthony in 1937 (her debut in the role) and 1941

wait for me (hey, the big artiste...") [intro] from hadestown / i will follow you into the dark by death cab for cutie / frozen 2 / little weirds by jenny slate / crash & burn by abigail roux from this tumblr post / i will follow him by peggy march / wait for me from hadestown

Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems; “The Sentence”

— Anna Akhmatova, The Guest

1.10 | 4.01

LITTLE WOMEN (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

Stuck in the past

The Only Living Girl in America, Cassandra de Alba//Henry Dumas, from Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas; “Ghosts”//ljeoma umebinyuo//The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Mike Flanagan//Sylvia Plath//Ocean Vuong//Little talks, Of Monsters and Men//In the Mood for Love (2000), Wong Kar-Wai

The air in Wales feels thinner, or so she thinks, especially from this high up. She sits on the cliff’s edge, looking downward, as if she were contemplating how high the fall would be. The cliffs were a gloomy place, particularly in this kind of weather, though Marguerite didn’t seem to mind — there were gloomier places she could be, anyway. Her stockings are stained by mud and grime, the trip up having been a particularly messy one, though it’s easily hid beneath her sable redingote gown. The wind howls as the waves crash against the rocks, sweeping bits and pieces of the cliffs away with the tide, carrying them off to sea.

She turns to him, sitting beside her, his shirt stained with coal dust. She had saved him, in spite of her better judgement. She had sailed back to France, Percy in tow, in the heat of the bloodshed and outcry. Robespierre is dead, his closest confidantes would meet their own end with Madame la Guillotine’s kiss. Still, there was still hope for Chauvelin — the man whom had once been a brother and her closest confidante, whom she had poured so many of her dreams and worries into, all of which he would carry to his grave in silence, without dignity. Even if she could save no one else from their horrible fate, she could still save Chauvelin.

( In truth, she could not fathom the reason as to why. In the eyes of any respectable social figure — perhaps even revolutionary — Armand Chauvelin was not a man worth saving. The man who had sent thousands to their deaths, La Veuve’s paramour, Death, as a man, wielding its sickle. By all means, Marguerite Blakeney should have despised the man, if not for his reputation, then for what he had done to her brother and husband. She had despised St. Cyr for such a thing, and her merciless denunciation was all it took for the man to be sentenced to death.

Yet, when she looked at Armand Chauvelin — Little Chauvelin, who had bore the brunt of her wrath — she could not bring herself to curse him to the same fate. Was it mercy? Guilt? A sudden change of heart? She couldn’t say, for all she knew was that Citoyen Chauvelin would die, and she was determined to never let that happen: I have known you for far too long and far too well to let you die, now. Come, take my hand, let me be your salvation. )

“How are you getting on?” she finally asks, gloomily; devoid of her typical coquettery and charm that all of Paris, and now London, had come to adore.

He gazes at the sea, unmoving. “I’ve been fine,” it’s a response that’s brutal in its honesty, though he doesn’t mean to be cold. “I get by.”

“And the revolution… What has become of it?”

A beat or two of silence passes before he responds.

“Thermidor, I hear, is worse than any of us,” he says, his face faltering a little. “It’s not good, Masha. It's out of control. If I’m the one who has to say that, it must be bad.”

She listens to him, more keenly than she ever had before: he talks of an empire, of expansion. He speaks of Napoleon and France’s inevitable future, that this was never his dream. I never wanted any of this, he says, and she turns to look at him, as if to say: I know.

Chauvelin sighs. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Marguerite nods. Somehow, I always do.

― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

― Great Expectations (2011) dir. Brian Kirk

― Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones

— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

— Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

How do I look away now that I have seen you?

on being seen and known and understood

Lou Andreas-Salomé in a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke, published in Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

i’ll see you again but it won’t be the same

Fleabag, dir. Phoebe Waller Bridge | Laughter Lines, BASTILLE | Yukon Interlude, Joji | Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu, dir. Céline Sciamma | IF I NEVER KNOW YOU LIKE THIS AGAIN, SOAK | The Two Times I Loved You Most in L.A., Margaret Ezra Zhang | Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu, dir. Céline Sciamma | Sunsetz, Cigarettes After Sex | The Very Pulse of the Machine, from Love Death + Robots | The Two Times I Loved You Most in L.A., Margaret Ezra Zhang | 墮落天使 (Fallen Angels), dir. Wong Kar Wai