The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
So, gnawers and writers and wanna be’s. You think bashing out a few lines every couple of days for this group of eyeballers is tough, think again!
Once again, just as I was wallowing nicely in selfpity, the universe chucks me what I like to call a “relativity wakeup”. Generally, that’s when the allpowerful spaghetti monster himself gets off his noodly ass and bitch slaps me...hard.
[in loud, booming, noodly voice]
“Stop being a retard and look at how kak this guy has it, you selfish bint!”
Well that happened yesterday. My mate had a spare ticket to the Elle Pre-Screening of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. Shite, what an utterly gorgeous, awesome film.
A true story nogal. Basically, the editor of French Elle has a massive stroke, wakes up fully cognisant, but only being able to move his left eye. Through incredible courage of spirit, he dictates an entire fucking bestselling book to an assistant using a blinking technique taught to him by his speech therapist.
God, it’s incredible. In one scene, when he’s being fed through a tube into his arm, he imagines a eating a huge meal with a woman, feeding each other, kissing, pulling oysters from their shells and sucking the juices from their fingers. It’s completely erotic.
So now I’m totally over myself. And I’m besotted with a French actor called Mathieu Amalric.
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Comments
Dolce
I just don't get it. How do you manage a to z with punctuation in between and all that. Is it like blinkin' morse code or something.
VISUAL::LIZA
You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
sounds bloody awful
but i'll take your word for it.
sounds like it can wait 'til dvd.
you seen Sweeney Todd yet?
Chasoo
you are such a fukken peasant.
it would not kill you to watch a forrrin language fillem.
but dolce
i watched "straight outta benoni"!!!!
Dolce
You have to read the book. Slim, but one of the most beautifully intelligent pieces of writing. The words. They are breath taking.
I myself had twenty days of deep coma and several weeks of grogginess and somnolence before I truly appreciated the extent of the damage. I did not fully awake until the end of January. When I finally surfaced, I was in Room 119 of the Naval Hospital at Berck-sur-Mer, on the French Channel coast -- the same Room 119, infused now with the first light of day, from which I write.
An ordinary day. At seven the chapel bells begin again to punctuate the passage of time, quarter hour by quarter hour. After their night's respite, my congested bronchial tubes once more begin their noisy rattle. My hands, lying curled on the yellow sheets, are hurting, although I can't tell if they are burning hot or ice cold. To fight off stiffness, I instinctively stretch, my arms and legs moving only a fraction of an inch. It is often enough to bring relief to a painful limb.
My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas's court.
You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still-sleeping face. You can build castles in Spain, steal the Golden Fleece, discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions.
-- JEAN-DOMINIQUE BAUBY
Frinks
each night, as he lay immobile in his hospital bed, he memorised what he wanted to dictate to his assisant each day. Then he slowly, painfully, achingly used a blink to acknowledge what letter was next in each word using an alphabetic system. Can you imagine what patience that must have taken. What perseverance.
Max von Sydow is pretty fukkin' spectacular as his dad too.
What a film.
And ja. Am off to get the book as soon as I find an EB.
Dolla
*blink*....*blink**blink*............*blink*......*blink**blink**blink**blink*.....*blink*......*blink**blink**blink*...
Jesus Dex
you're disgusting.
No WAY!
Aww c'mon Dolce
you giggled. Admit it.
No I did not!
only a little bit
Dolce
I've got it if you want it. (Must just scrounge). Anyway - if I do I could just pop it in the post for you.
Oooh Frinks
tempting as that is, if I like book, I find it hard to give it back. And I've got a feeling I'm gonna want to own this one.
Speaking of which. You've heard of comfort eating? Well, I'm a comfort reader. When life is a little kakuka, I re-read old favs. Easy, familiar. Like soft old slippers.
I'm re-reading the Valley of the Horses. What a laugh. (What I wouldn't give to be Ayla in that cave with Jondolar!)
Sheesh.
Dolce
I meant you can have it. Not borrow it.
And ja I am familiar with both comfort eating and comfort reading. Also comfort sex, drinking, and comfort dope smoking.
Jean M. Auel - have read Clan of the Cave Bear. I believe the horsey book is a whole whack better.
Jondolar - heck. What a name. Sounds like a jocular gondolier.
Jondolar
man, Frinks. Tall, tanned, dirty blonde hair. Deep blue eyes. Rippling bod. Bit of a thinker. Slow to laugh, but when he does, he laughs right from his belly. Get's chosen by the women of his "Cave" to give girls their "first rights pleasures". And by all reports he's gooooooood. And then he finds Ayla (who's only ever been raped by nasty neanderthals - literally) and they fall in love and live in this idylic valley (filled with horses, you see) near the modern day danube river.
I tell you. I first read that book when I was about 12. No man has measured up since. Poor bastards.
*hijack*
Italians have no sense of humour...
Whaddaya mean Eyetaleeans...
Have no sense of humour:
An old Italian Mafia Don is dying and calls his grandson to his bed, saying: Grandson I wanta you to listen to me. I wanta you to take mya 45 automatic pistol, so you will always remember me.
But grandpa I really don't like guns, how about you leaving me your Rolex instead?
You lisina to me. Some-a-day you goin a be runna da bussiness, you goina have a beautiful wife, lotsa money, a biga home and maybe a couple od bambino. Some day you goina come home and maybe finda you wife in bed with another man. Whatcha you gonna do then? Pointa to you watch and say, "TIMES UP"?
A bad one...
Luigi and Paulo were fishing in the Mediterranean sea one sunny day when a World War II mine came floating along... On seeing this round, spikey object coming nearer and nearer, Luigi shouts at his friend "Hey Paulo, it's a mine, it's a mine!" Paulo replies "OK Luigi, you can-a have it!"
Take 2
It takes an Italian man to make a woman feel like a woman:
On a transatlantic flight a plane passes through a severe storm. The turbulence is awful, and things go from bad to worse when one wing is struck by lightning.
One woman starts to lose it. Hysterical, she stands up in the front of the plane screaming: I'm too young to die.. Then she yells: If I'm going to die, I want my last minutes on earth to be memorable! Is there ANYONE on this plane who can make me feel like a WOMAN?
For a moment there is silence. Everyone has forgotten their own peril. They're all riveted. Staring at the desperate woman in the front of the plane.
Then an Italian man stands up in the rear of the plane. He is gorgeous. Tall, well built, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. He walks slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt...
...one button at a time.
...No one moves.
...He removes his shirt.
...Muscles ripple across his chest.
...She gasps...
...And he whispers: Iron this, and then get me something to eat.
comfort reading
me too.
and comfort smoking.
but mostly reading long forgotten loves. read Jane Eyre again for the idunnohowmanyth time. lovely.
yet i have a new King and a new Connolly - i just can't get to them. Probably read Galilee next again.
hmm.
i have the blues.
Blue Chasoo
pull yourself together woman - you just got hitched. And you're stickin' it to the Evil Empire. And you've become a hero to a child.
You should be standing on a tall building with your cape billowing behind you.
um, cape billowing
oh dear.
that made me laugh.
that and PD having tugged out two loose teeth, clasping them in her sweet encrusted hands.
PD: Mom. The tooth fairy has to give me at LEAST R20 for two teeth.
She knows I am the tooth fairy. I had to tell her. She was afraid of the tooth fairy robbing her of teeth in the night.
P-L-E-A-S-E
K Chas is too damn short for a cape! She could use a hood as a fekkin cape....hehehehe!
But, yeah, she should be mighty proud of herself round about now!
Tea-towel Arbs
tea fuckin towel.
*sob*
now you've made me cry you horrid boy!
I miss my black one wiff the glitter on it. I use to wear it for special occasions, you know...like when I was plunging my toilet, or cleaning up fur ball vomit, or...*sob*....BUI'ing....
WAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Why did you have to go there Dextra........WHYYYYYYYY!!! WHYYYYYYYY!!!
*GRIN* - I can to like to experience rapid mood changes!
F-U-C-K Y-O-U
Both of you.
Biatches both.
KChas - question
How do you reach the caps button on your keyboard? It's all the way up theeeeere...
hehehehe!
Not sure, Arbie
...but I know how she flips the light switch...
Hahaha! That's just...hahahaha!...funny!
Ooooh! Stop! Stop!!
Wahahahaahhahaahaha
Dex, you are naaaaaaaaaaaasty. And blooody funny!
et tu brutus!!!
traitors all.
fuckin' hell.
hmm - i am about to be served with high court papers stating that i cannot trade. erm. what trade? james and i are still employed...
fuck - these meropa people are idjits of the first order.
Trade Shmade, KC.
Jesus.
Write a story or something. This whole 'the company and I - suspension' crap is doing my head in.
just have another gin
or something.
pop a pill.
Kc,
I thought you gave up drinking ages ago.
Is it stressful; all this corporate business shite?
You know what works? A session on the tramp-O-line (no, not the artist, you dirty minded woman!)
rezzie
listen you old slag, i don't drink, you do.
clearly your head was struggling to grasp things.
so i suggested you cease being sober.
KC
here's where you shoot her the fuck down for trying to make you feel better. Like she did me yesterday (I'm a sensitive soul).
Go on. Do it. Do it.
geez dex
get over it.
yesterday?
sheesh - that's history young man.
ja fine Chasoo
like, what-e-vurrr.
Similar stuff
... in Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat Woman has crippling disease where she can only move her eyes. And the scenes where she's struggling to communicate with Agaat are some of the best bits of writing I've read ever. Rest of the novel is a bit long but the first 100 or so pages are awesome.
Bloody hell,
Thanks for that Dolce and Bluepete.
Will definitey look into that.