“The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write. When it loses its blood, its author stops recognizing it. And first and foremost it must be never be dictated to a secretary, however capable she may be, nor ever given to a publisher to read at that stage.” (from Ecrite, trans. by Mark Polizzotti, 1998)

I would argue Margurite Duras would not have favored the majority of today’s blogs.

When i first saw the movie version of “The Lover” i had, largely, the typical reaction: “holy shit, Jane March is hotter than hot.” But even back then, as the movie drew toward its  close and we make the transition from the view aft from the Alexandre Dumas departing what we now call Vietnam to the writer’s studio in Paris, in winter, i had an inkling it was all just a bit more lasting than “hot young girl has sex in Saigon.”

There was also the tie-in that the woman who would later become my wife had, years earlier, given me a copy of the book and suggested i give it a read. “You’ll like it, there’s sex.” I dove in, but after a few chapters gave it up as a bad job. “Oh, right, it’s way better in French,” she later pointed out. Yeah, we’re still together despite that exchange.

But what i’m getting at is this: the moments we will never escape, the ones that simply won’t leave no matter where our minds and lives eventually go, can occur when we are completely looking the other way. It’s the lucky ones who, even if they’re were only half aware at the time, remember and connect those moments from the past with the present. It’s the perspective, like the young girl in The Lover, when the realization of the situation engulfs her, that we come closest to true understanding.

Ok, moment over: I wonder what Ms March is up to. Off to IMDB.