~*Revue_Blanche*~

*a small dark themed essay, found on the Net, that asks some questions:
“Vampire. A living oxymoron. An immortal. Or a corpse? A bringer of death or a savior of life? A curse or a blessing? On the brink of death and saved by a vampire’s bite, becoming free of disease and natural death at the prime of your life, and having it taken by a vampire, dropped into the abnormal darkness to be a living human, blind to the beauty of the world and ignorant to the problems--or a vampire, able to see our faults, able to understand the true meaning of things. So which is it better to be? Human or vampire? Always aging to a final death or living forever without worry? Surviving in ignorance or existing in understanding? A heavy price, but the reward’s great. You have to ask: is the cost of life worth it? Most people say that vampires don’t exist, but if you look closely around, you see them. Maybe not devilish creatures like you expect, those hell-destined beings that find their pleasure from our veins, but dark souls, sad and desperate--desperate for a feeling. These people you will see. And being someone like this means losing your life, losing your soul, losing the will to actually live, but gaining the ability to see--the ability to understand the darkness in this world. So what will it be? Life or death?”

*idiom*
I never could understand the ancient idiom: “to spread oneself with one’s thought over a tree” (e. g. “Stop spreading yourself with your thought over a tree!”), and recently, after I translated these words in English, I’ve understood their sense eventually. It’s when speaking or writing one can’t concentrate, collecting one’s thoughts, and one’s thoughts are like branches of a tree, branching out without stopping. One can do it unwittingly as well as purposely.

*plea for help*
Can anybody tell me the name of the author of the following popular quotation:
“Patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel.”
Wilde?.. Chekhov?..
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a joke which I heard on TV:
Q: “I wonder when old men stop thinking about young women?”
A: “Half a year after death.”

*erotic*
One of the most exciting erotic web-pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Herculaneum
Another spicy page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China
“Homophobia was imported to China along with Western science and philosophy.”

*wind and flowers; moon and snow*
In ancient China the words “erotic literature” were written as several hieroglyphs: “books about wind and moon”. Some more hieroglyphs:
Feng-Lu -- “wind and stream” -- love and depravity
Nan-Feng or Hanlin-Feng -- “male wind” -- male love
Min-Ue – “full moon” -- sexually attractive rear
Hou-Tin-Hua -- “flower from backyard” -- anus, sodomy
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essays:
Homosexual Culture and Nabokov
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/homoerotic_nab.doc
The Darling of Fortune, love story
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/26/love_story~2520121
I saw the Night…--my view of the story of Hadrian and Antinous. The essay was first published on the Net in 2006
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/night2.doc
Mystery of Antinous--my view of the death of Antinous, first published on the Net in 2005
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/mystofA.html
The Obituary of my first kitty who died in 2006
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/mykitty_eng2.doc
humor
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/27/sundries~2173391
translation
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/16/a_little_bit_of_gay_literature~2466104
The Needs of the Navy by Aleister Crowley, one of the stories which I love and which I would like to be published on the Net
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/navy.doc
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read more:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/07/27/anthony_blanche_fan_blog~2709191
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/08/20/vamp_up~2837823
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/11/05/the_italics_are_mine~3246835
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*beguilement*
from The Unbearable Bassington, by Saki:
“...Who is that who bowed to you?" she continued, as a dark young man with an inclination to stoutness passed by them on foot; "I've seen him about a good deal lately. He's been to one or two of my dances."
"Andrei Drakoloff," said Youghal, "he's just produced a play that has had a big success in Moscow and is certain to be extremely popular all over Russia. In the first three acts the heroine is supposed to be dying of consumption; in the last act they find she is really dying of cancer."
"Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?"
"Gloom-loving but not in the least gloomy. They merely take their sadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasures sadly…”
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*The View from the Left Bank*
(reminiscence)
In one of the previous posts I told about my relationship with cats. Now, another true story.
It was in summer fifteen years ago. That summer I returned to the town after years of absence, and one fine morning I went to the river to take the sun and to bathe. I won’t tell what’s the river called. Danube? Niemen? Volga? It doesn’t matter. The bridge over the river was 998 meters long, and believe it or not, I preferred to cover this distance going on foot. What a wide spread of the land, water and sky you could see standing in the middle of the bridge… My way lay to the Right Bank. There was a wild plage--nothing special--the grayish sand and various pebbles which is nothing other but fragments of a million-year-old rock--the water of the river was dark yet it was said that bathing was harmless in the place. The gulls flew low over the water. What did it mean? It meant that some fishes were alive in the river. Hoping for a fisher as well as for a bather. Now I was at the plage. Being waist-deep in water I splashed a little and stood still to spend some time lending myself to the coolness and adjusting my eye to the glitter. It was good in the water. The endemic tranquility of the wilderness filled my mind and body. And now, suddenly--a rapid swift motion over my shoulder upwards over my head, and a whiff of air or some wings touched my hair. I looked up--it was a gull, of course, but what a big feathered thing he was--for it was evidently a mature male--he seemed to be big as albatross--what a big beak, what a big head, what a spread of wings! None of the rest bathers or people at the plage noticed this flight. It was frightening but I felt agitated rather than frightened; in my inner I felt his rapid motion was intended for me alone. It looked like a welcome. Indeed, I was a stranger, a new comer, and he was a chief of the local gulls. Recognizing a stranger he approached to me from behind lurking for some reason--I could not hear the approach, and the water glitter was blinding, therefore his sudden appearance and flight upwards over my heard looked so swift and impressive. I felt certain that the feathered amber-eyed thing enjoyed the impression, which he produced.
Perhaps this small incident doesn’t seem worth so intensive attention and explicit description--but not for me. For me as a town inhabitant, it is one of the rarest unforgettable moments of communing with nature itself, a moment of communion to its mysteries if not initiation, and the occasion to become related with nature on my genetic code level, to feel its endless love and to express my own love in return.

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“…in a sunless parlour where an old clock ticked in the shadows and a cat slept by the empty grate.” (Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited)

*tidings*
Recently, Jocelyn Lindenridge-Blanche began to write his first prose, fantasy fiction about Prince Carpathian. As I’ve said more than once, I hate fantasy fiction. But I love Jocelyn and cannot have anything against his latest undertaking. This is his poem on the theme:

What there is beyond the infinite?
What does remain above the clouds?
What does melt in the bottom of your eyes
or in the cry of useless words?
You play your fate so lightly.
Your laughter is so clear. Is it possible
that your starry eyes knows so little evil?
Is it impossible to return you?
Your hand clenches white roseleaves.
Don’t bite your lips so desperately!
Where your blood dropped,
one will be always singing on farewell.
Where your laughter rang,
yet better gardens will bloom.
Don’t cry, Prince Carpathian,
you depart but we’ll be together…
What does remain above the clouds?
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*virtual life*
I asked my friend: “Do you believe in cyber sex relationship? Do you like the virtual life?”
And he replied: “Cyber sex has maybe something erotic, but for sure nothing romantic. A screen is not eyes, a keyboard is not skin. For my part, as you asked me, I prefer real life, real contacts, real sex. Nothing is better than to feel someone's skin under my hands, under my lips. Life, like sex, is the best in real.”
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*prose poem*
Rhyme is a good mask, if it’s well-adjusted.
Myths are an oral caress upon hot entrails.
The roots spread wide stretching deep.
Your thirst is a cyclic fairy tale.
Your kiss grows sad in the corner of my lips.
My love shows red on the tips of your fangs.
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*reading detective stories*
About mafia I know only two things:
mafia is Family first of all,
and
mafia kills only its own people.
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Отрывок из нового романа:
«Ты опоздал, фээсбэшное быдо. Всю секретную информацию я уже успел передать за границу».

(a few warm words to my possible Russian watcher.)
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*historical fiction*

“A desert labyrinth, a timeless forest,
a wide abyss across the gothic soul,
old oak and calf-bound books to decorate the hall;
Egyptian gods and Latin mighty shyness.” (Anthony Blanche)

Did you read the novel THE EMPEROR by Georg Ebers? Personally I never read it; I only looked the book through, and found three passages there, which I liked. I won’t advert the link of the book here, on the blog, because the author’s interpretation of the story of Hadrian and Antinous is contrary to my own view.
Three excerpts from the book:
I.
“Look, he is speaking now to his favorite--Antonius I think they call the pretty boy."
"Antinous, not Antonius. He picked him up in Bithynia, they say."
"He is a beautiful youth."
"Incomparably beautiful! What a figure and what a face! Still, I cannot wish that he were my son."
"The Emperor's favorite!"
"For that very reason. Why, he looks already as if he had tried every pleasure, and could never know any farther enjoyment."
II.
[…] From time to time he raised his eyelids--long, finely wrinkled, and blue-veined--turning his eyes up to heaven or rolling them to one side and then downwards towards the middle of the tent. There, on the skin of a huge bear trimmed with blue cloth, lay Hadrian's favorite Antinous. His beautiful head rested on that of the beast, which had been slain by his sovereign, and its skull and skin skillfully preserved, his right leg, supported on his left knee, he flourished freely in the air, and his hands were caressing the Emperor's bloodhound, which had laid its sage-looking head on the boy's broad, bare breast, and now and then tried to lick his soft lips to show its affection. But this the youth would not allow; he playfully held the beast's muzzle close with his hands or wrapped its head in the end of his mantle, which had slipped back from his shoulders.
The dog seemed to enjoy the game, but once when Antinous had drawn the cloak more tightly round its head and it strove in vain to be free from the cloth that impeded its breathing, it set up a loud howl, and this doleful cry made the Emperor change his attitude and cast a glance of displeasure at the boy lying on the bear-skin, but only a glance, not a word of blame. And soon the expression, even of his eyes, changed, and he fixed them on the lad’s figure with a gaze of loving contemplation, as though it were some noble work of art that he could never tire of admiring. And truly the Immortals had moulded this child of man to such a type; every muscle of that throat, that chest, those arms and legs was a marvel of softness and of power; no human countenance could be more regularly chiselled. Antinous observing that his master's attention had been attracted to his play with the dog, let the animal go and turned his large, but not very brilliant, eyes on the Emperor […]
III.
"Is that your son?" asked Doris.
"No, dame, he is only my pupil; but I feel as if he were my son."
"He is a beautiful lad!"
"Why, the old lady still looks after the young men!"
"We do not give that up till we are a hundred or till the Parcae cut the thread of life."
"What a confession!"

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NB:
It rots the senses in the head!
It kills imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind
He can no longer understand
A fantasy, a fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking ruts and freeze!
He cannot think--he only sees!
(by Roald Dahl)

Q: What is “it”?
A: Tee Vee

However that may be, here are the TV series that I was able to watch and liked:

Magnum P.I.
http://www.tv.com/magnum-p.i./show/267/summary.html
Hill Street Blues
http://www.tv.com/hill-street-blues/show/269/summary.html
Brideshead Revisited
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083390/
Robin of Sherwood
http://www.tv.com/robin-of-sherwood/show/3176/summary.html?q=Robin%20of%20Sherwood&tag=search_results;more;1
Supernatural
http://www.tv.com/supernatural/show/30144/summary.html
Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future (a syndicated 1987-88 television series, 22 episodes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Power_and_the_Soldiers_of_the_Future
Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes (Scenes from a Courtesan's Life), France
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277529/
I Spy
http://www.tv.com/i-spy/show/571/summary.html?q=I%20Spy&tag=search_results;more;1
Jack the Ripper (1988), the British TV police series
http://www.hollywoodripper.com/
Inspector Morse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Morse_%28TV_series%29
Target
http://www.mediagems.de/01filmtv/target_engl.html
The Sweeney
http://www.tv.com/show/5242/summary.html
Agatha Christie: Poirot
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094525/
Jeeves and Wooster
http://www.tv.com/jeeves-and-wooster/show/5131/summary.html?q=Jeeves%20and%20Wooster&tag=search_results;more;1
Moonlighting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlighting_%28TV_series%29
Kommissar Rex (Inspector Rex)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108829/
Our Mutual Friend
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075555/
David Copperfield
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210636/
Twin Peaks
http://www.tv.com/twin-peaks/show/1030/summary.html?q=Twin%20Peaks&tag=search_results;more;1

I’ve not listed Colombo series though I saw many episodes and liked Lieutenant Colombo himself, the idea and the movie in general. The personages of the investigations in the episodes, the chief suspects and criminals are people from wealthy families, who are consumed with avidity and hatred. And the more I see the movie, the more I want Lieutenant Colombo to stop prying into the people’s matters and to leave them alone so that they can devour each other like spiders in a glass jar.
Similarly, I have nothing against the X-Files movies, but I can’t call them favorite. What I loved dearly is The Muppet Show, but I’m not sure it could be called a TV series.
News: recently I’ve begun to watch CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
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Part 1 and Part 2 of my novel La Lune Blanche have been recently published at Turner Maxwell Books. Be sure to get your copy here:
http://www.turnermaxwellbooks.com/LLB.htm
http://www.turnermaxwellbooks.com/LLB2.htm
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*The Manuscript Found on the Net*

Not for everyone.

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*Life's rich tapestry. Thanks for that.*

In this role I feel at ease too. . .
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*My shalow heart's the only thing that's beating*
I read the book Brideshead Revisited more than once, but not in English which was my great mistake, because if only I read at least one book by Evelyn Waugh in original, then I could speak and write English much better than I can now--yet, unfortunately, I never did it because after reading Brideshead Revisited, I started my own projects, and never had much free time to read somebody else’s writings.
Nina Berberova (1901-1993), Russian-born writer from St. Petersburg wrote the book "Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg" (1981), non-fiction biography, in Russian translation entitled “Iron Lady”. Countess, later Baroness, Moura (Maria Zakrevskaya Benckendorff) Budberg (c.1891-Nov.1974), was the Ukrainian-born wife of Count Djon (Johann) Benckendorff, a high-ranking Czarist diplomat whom she married in 1911. They owned the mansion called Yendel in Janeda, Estonia where he was shot dead in 1919. Later she was briefly married to Baron Nikolai von Budberg-Bonningshausen, and was at various times the mistress of Sir R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Russian writer Maxim Gorky, and at the end of her dangerous adventures she settled at the household of historian and science fiction writer H.G. Wells, as his secretary. Wells proposed to marry him several times, but she preferred to be his secretary. Being an authoress in a small way, she translated and wrote in English, French and her native Russian--being weak in all the three languages. Knowing of this distinctive peculiarity of her writings, at times I think that I am an authoress like she.
According to Wikipedia, Moura Budberg was the great-great aunt of Nick Clegg, the British Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam and, since 18 December 2007, leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Perhaps, at times I seem to be one of the big women, who care about many things and persons, and I seem to do it in my blog, but in fact my heart is small, it can’t hold much, only the small circle of interests and only one man.
“Iron Lady” is the term that Nina Berberova invented in her book--but in the opinion of her biographers, this term becomes her personally as nobody else.

"I had learnt to seek intensity…more of life, a concentrated sense of life.” (Nina Berberova, O Magazine, September 2003)
“A concentrated sense of life is pleasure. Our desires vary our life--desire to love, desire to revenge, desire to possess, desire to bestow. To exist with intensity equal to discovery.” (Anthony Blanche)
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*An Instant*
(lyric)
He is a poet and a poem.
He is a question and reply.
Blindfold, benighted, o I fear…
A glint over the sword.
Insanity. He scores.
And I’m at a loss.
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*Melodious Everything *
(story)
“This coupe was created for each other. She lived for him, and he lived to give light to people. As they were together, people admired the beauty and harmony, which the couple emitted. Their relationship was like music that spread, enfolding all around, both time and space; their touches were like a hypnotic slumber that calmed down and at the same time invigorated with energy of an unearthly magic, which helped the blind men to recover sight, the madmen to get sane, and the desperate ones to find hope--the hope for something like a miracle, the time when everyone would agree with each other: the grief-stricken and the jubilant, the enamored and the unfortunate, the satisfied and the thirsty. It would be the happiest story in the world if it were not for one circumstance: devoting to him, she melted slowly but inevitably, diminishing till she got smallish and then disappeared. And he disappeared along with her, leaving a tiny light as edification to those who did not appreciate life when it was here, and as a reproach to those who appreciated it when it was not more. Sad story? May be. In the story, like in many other matters and incidents, there is no alternative, because… she is a usual wax candle, and he is but a little tongue of flame trembling above his beloved one”--in this way the great composer mused, contemplating the melting candle, three hours before his death.
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*Story of Tomcats*
(reminiscence)
One summer day, at leisure, the handsome tomcat of the name of Innokentius decided to become the king of cats of the courtyard. The point is that the courtyard cats had a king; it was the handsome tomcat of the name of Basil, my good friend who visited my apartment for the purpose of having a snack, milk and having a rest till twilight. I called Basil Super Tomcat because he astonished me showing his wit, doing some amazing tricks with supernatural skillfulness, and being at ease everywhere, at my place as well as outdoors. He enjoyed astonishing me; I enjoyed seeing his wit; so we lived enjoying each other. But one day Basil returned neither to me nor to our courtyard after his outside adventures. Two weeks passed, and it was clear to some of cat lovers that Basil was no more. Personally I felt uncertain or rather I did not want to believe in his death, for it was so painful to me; I hoped that Basil was simply stolen and kept at somebody’s home. But as soon as I saw the black tomcat Innokentius show his intention to become the king, it was clear to me: Basil was no more, for cats felt all the invisible better than we, humans, knowing of it for certain. I missed Basil, but there was no help for it. And so, Innokentius or Kent, as his master called him, decided to become the king of the courtyard.
This is how it came about. Kent approached to every tomcat in turn and began to force his authority upon his victim. However, he did not do it too cruelly, for he was not a wicked cat by his nature; he just bared his teeth, lifted his right forepaw, enforcing his vis-à-vis to notice and remember what the tomcat could see at the moment, that is the bare teeth and the mighty black forepaw, and he as though asked what the tomcat preferred: surrender or duel. Our block of flats was adjacent to the barracks of the high military school, and all the tomcats enjoyed this adjacency, for they loved to watch the life of the young military cadets, being those young men at heart. Kitties never walked in our courtyard--true, there were several kitties in our block of flats, but all of them were kept in apartments without allowing to go outdoors--so, only tomcats walked around and outside the courtyard. And the black tomcat Kent seemed to be toughest of them, and he had a master, the man who was supposedly tougher and mightier than the masters of all the rest tomcats--and some of the tomcats had no a master at all. Therefore very soon, all the tomcats gradually, in turn, submitted to Kent. And there, in the courtyard, walked one more tomcat, whom far in the day I settled at my place, making sure that he was if not stray then homeless at present. I named him Barrwick, which could be translated as a ‘little snow leopard’--lovely name for the loveliest young thing in the world--a little boy tabby, he was beautiful, truly beautiful, looking clean and healthy, calm and comely, and he had a very special temper and frame of mind, which one could say about every cat, in my opinion. That day, looking out of the window I could see the king Kent walking around, other tomcats lying in the sun, and at a distance my future new tomcat, young Barrwick approaching to the territory of the new king. Barrwick was not alone--one more tomcat accompanied him or rather Barrwick led the tomcat to our courtyard. The unknown tomcat looked confused, and one could guess that his master first let him go out for a walk only recently, may be yesterday. Now, my Barrwick led the tomcat who looked young, confused, timid and very nice. Here, all of a sudden, the king Kent turned up before the two, which should be expected, and the unknown tomcat saw the bare teeth and the lifted black forepaw right before his nose. The king’s authority looked impressive. Feeling betrayed, in the whirl of senses, the poor young thing could manage nothing but lifting his head and crying “Help! Help! Mammy! Daddy! Help!” in his native feline language, which sounded like “Miaow! Miaow! Miaow! Miaow!” And the young cunning Barrwick left his friend alone but he did not run away--pretending to be deaf to the desperate cries, he turned away gracefully, his lifted up tail to the two, who were immersed in the dispute, then he got his nose closer to one of the few flowerets and sniffed its aroma as though nothing had happened. As I think, it was his intention: being the youngest of the tomcats, he brought the unknown young tomcat from the neighbouring yard purposely, in order to distract the new king’s attention from his own person, giving the nice-looking and unsophisticated new comer as the next victim to Kent.
I saw all the described with my own eyes, looking out of the window of my kitchen. Delighted with the sudden display of Barrwick’s peculiar wit, I went out to the courtyard and invited him to live with me. The next day, appreciating the good food and the best of care, he had nothing against living with me and settled at my place for ever.
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