The readership of this blog has fallen off 20 percent in recent days, with the lack of boytummy. This daunting statistic calls to mind his trust officer's warning to Charles Foster Kane, that his newspaper was losing money. Well. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
I have always anticipated discussing the great masterpiece in film on what I regard as the most unremunerated rôle in life, Vittorio de Sica's awesomely beautiful Ladri di biciclette. I probably will do that, but (like everyone, I hope) I believe I was raised with the best of amateurs in the part in question, fatherhood. In his first boy, David, and in oneself, I remark more and more on the evenness of his hand, on his genius for not inflating a natural sibling rivalry. He was getting even with his past, and he won. We loved him and, vastly worse, we admired him. He was our winner of games.
In this portrait, my favourite among the few that survive of him, his cigarette is in one hand, his lighter in the other; and he would love to bring them together. His second boy has lately been born, and his mother has come to investigate this circumstance. She has not been an intimate of his since his 16th year, yet she commands great respect from him, and even love if she would like it. But now he is invulnerably happy, a flicker of play crosses his face, which she has begun to assimilate as the shutter is snapped. In the open shade of his own garden, he is a man in full.
Young father with his mother
Mid 20th C
San Marino
I read every single post.
ReplyDeletethe photographs are beautiful truly. I for one am overwhelmingly pleased with the absence of tmbt -however you may twinge at a skirt or two to many on mine-so neither is the worst for it or really complaining. I think the readership drop is due more to the holiday than anything-take heart-I read every post and sometimes overt my eyes in blush- while today I drank in the real secret of rmbl.pgt
ReplyDeletea hug
ReplyDeleteto remind you that the little child in the mid 20th C photos you've posted was smiling!
So many embraces to finish the calendar - from, good grief, such masters - put me in mind of having to warn an earliest reader against complimenting boys, embarking on an improvisation. One is of course directly touched with these messages.
ReplyDelete"..no language but the shallows," Bruce; "the discipline I preached made me a hypocrite," Madame; "then found my deepest wish in the swaying words of the sea, and the skeletal fish of that boy is ribbed in me," T. (Strands from Derek Walcott's 'A Latin Primer').
I admire you all and what I would like to say is, I like to admire.
a great father always is a legacy
ReplyDelete