Entries, Featured, Wingnuts: Contest Entries
The Prufrock is in the (Yorkshire) Pudding
Jun
Literati! Contestant to our Wingman contest Parisianne Modert introduces us to a litany of lamenting literary libidos. (I like alliteration a lot). Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot. Vita Sackville-West, and the influential poem J. Alfred Prufrock, published in 1917 by TS Eliot. I suggest you wick your pedia for all these fascinating characters, but first enjoy a brew at the still going wrong–oops!–going STRONG London pub on Rathbone Street.
Here we can also find
Delusions of Granby
by Parisianne Modert
Leaving Sylvia, my boots wobbled to the I’ll Just Have to Wing It Time Machine. Time like women writers is unpredictable. Pushing down the travel handle, my sleeve got caught in the date entry gear. Whoosh, spinning, pieces everywhere. I read, “The Marquis of Granby at 2 Rathbone Street”. Great, this TS was about to meet T.S. Eliot or couldn’t I go gentle into that good night, because my ride was now wreckage? What a evening I was having! Date please? At my feet a rain soaked newspaper revealed October smudge 1927. All’s ale, that ends ale. Why not?”
Inside, Vita Sackville-West nudged Virginia Woolf. “There’s your aged Orlando.”
Weary looking, Mrs. Woolf motioned me over to her lesbian lover’s table. “Drink with us?”
My low voice alerted the lovers.
Vita scowled, looking me up and down. “Have you a penis?”
“Um…not for over 50 years.”
“The Goat and I never had.”
“Manners Vita. You’re from…”
“2038.”
“Hah!”
“I’ve read Orlando.”
“Where does Virginia end it?”
“Under a big tree looking up at the sky.”
“Name, profession?”
“Madame Parisianne, novelist.”
“French lesbian?”
“I wish.”
“Why now? Why this pub?”
“My sleeve disturbed J. Alfred Prufrock.”
“Or the universe Michelangelo?”
“I come and go.”
“Enough Vita.”
“I hear, T.S. is off drowning a litter of cats from their troubles down stream with rocks at Lewes which is a trench coat hamlet Ophelia would have found suitable.”
“Speaking of streams, rocks and Lewes …”
Vita and company going to the pub in 1913
You still have until June tenth to enter our contest:
http://www.awordwithyoupress.com/2013/05/04/wing-nuts-our-new-contest/
That’s it…now I’m really wrapped in envy green. You pull this off so well that my mind was spinning between the dimensions of time. Fantabulous to say the least and beyond measure like a blue feather drifting across a landscape containing shades of gray, browns and beige. You stand out in the field of wonder and lure us in with the gum snapping rhythm of your story. Yup – green with envy. I bow…my dear, I bow.
A) You – “a hack writer”? Never! B) Vita was into feathers in her hat ( actual feathers in her hats and having her women and well being able to…TMI Marie Antoinette Parisianne) which again is a double entendre (yum – which is a double entendre of taste good and fast food corp) and a triple one if you take the last double entendre into consideration. C) “Fantabulous” is a word which I would try to work into the ongoing saga of the Suicide Prevention Tour. D) Love your term “Playologist” which I think is also a double entendre E) Thank you Diane for your lyrical, image expressive and humbiling praise. F) For all of you wondering where the terms “a hack writer” and “Playologist” are just put the cursor over the blue feather picture and watch the magic happen.
I just love the way you have with words and where your mind wanders…Playologist actually came from Ms. Katz’s mother-in-law who certified people in play. Kyle spotted that in me right away and I’m now a certified Playologist…still green with envy…
Perfectly exempt from reason, but hey, I with bliss go with the flow careful to thwart the bag of cats. I am already laughing at Granny’s comment. Underneath it all there is a talent bucket of paint washed on a canvass of littered garments blown in a wind to allow the occasional coherent epiphany. I shriek with delight.
Put the cat bag down. We know you have plans…
Aye, Lassie, tis what you think but the experiments have proven to no ale.
Merde.
And for the record, I wonder why, if I “speak an oath” in another language, I feel not only unguilty, but colorful… Perhaps it is the Bohemian character I’ve yet to put on paper sneaking out to hang out at the aforementioned club. Hm….
May be waltz us around via Musetta from La Boheme and Maureen Johnson from Rent? They meet Giacomo Puccini and Johnathan Larson (creator of Rent) and dance on the table tops may be while Marcello paints a mural on the wall as Mark Cohen films the going ons. It could work!
I thank Michael and Diane for your well thought and colourful expressions. Thorn was very right that there are a lot of references one might have to look up and not be able to look up to appreciate what I wrote. Here are a few…Vita like Virginia lived in marriages that lasted their adult lives with men who for most part looked the other way with an element of acceptance while they had relationships with other women. The 1913 picture is such an example. I believe “the other woman” (the shorter woman) is Violet Trefusis. Vita had an affair with Violet, who also was married. The affair lasted from about 1910-1921 with Vita breaking it. Violet’s love letters to Vita survived whereas Violet’s husband destroyed Vita’s letters to Violet. In both of my entries I pictured myself as 86 years, fiesty and determined to save Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf from their later suicides. Mrs. Leonard Woolf, killed herself at the age of 59 in I believe 1941 with stones in a trenchcoat, drowning in a stream at Lewes, England. The TS Eliot references are from Prufrock and his poem about Cats that got made into the musical version of Cats that people are more familiar with. Granby is best known for TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas; although it is still a pub which literary people meet to discuss their work. It was frequented by both Vita and Virginia. Orlando is mentioned, because it was Vita who suggested the idea to Virginia with the character of Orlando being based on Vita. The “ale” reference is because the Granby is particularly known for its’ unusual ales. The reference to “The Goat” sounds odd to non-Woolf fans. It was Virginia Woolf’s nickname given to her in childhood and kept throughout her life. The “penis” reference is unfortunately not fiction. The math I used was based on counting back from 2038 rather than 2013 giving a lovely doubling of present reality. Let’s just say that on the afternoon of January 31, 1988 I was an outie awaiting surgery and about that time on February 1, 1988 I was being returned to my hospital bed an inie. Orlando went through a far gentler transition than I did, but that is why I threw my personal story into this piece. Prufrock says, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” and “In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.” Virgina wrote, “A Room of One’s Own” which is a novel showing the pangs of feminism and lesbianism. It is in sharp contrast to the women of Prufrock who base their lives on men with no or little appreciation of themselves. In the picture of Vita and Violet that Thorn has furnished nicely, notice the closeness of the women and the distance of the men. Both my entries were meant to show my love for Sylvia and Virginia with this type of closeness in spirit. Both entries are how an old woman’s last days might be spent trying to save these two literary geniuses from themselves. I see myself as an elderly woman agreeing with Dylan Thomas’s words, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”. These are words that Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf sadly never heard, because they both died before they were written.
And here I am, pushing Chris Moore like it’s the last thing to drink at the bar. You hold your intelligence well, both on and off the paper. Well played, my dear. Well played.
Thank you Tiffany. I deeply admire the free spirit of your words and living presence. My brllliant, Jane Austen, scholarly mother, if she were alive rather than off pestering Ms. Austen somewhere in heaven, might tell you that in her opinion my writing leaves much to be desired and my emotional, heart on my sleeve antics would be better left private. I study a lot wishing to still gain her approval for whenever the day arrives that I too meet up with the author of “Sense and Sensibility” and my mother sharing tea in the afternoon. My mother will probably say, “It was not my intention, dear Jane, to have my child intrude so unannounced. She lacks manners, skills. I did not raise her to be so messy with her possessions, her history nor her miserable attempt at writing. Jane might reply, “Please have a seat and join us Madame Parisianne; while you Jo revisit your own manners. Lemon, cream? I’ll pour as you tell us of your impressions of what constitutes a most proper romance.”
And then of course, Mr. Darcy will shaking water and unchecked masculinity all over the grass as he comes out of the pond, which will set both propriety and fans a-waving…
The woman walking with Vita in the picture from 1913 that Thorn provided was Rosamund Grosvenor who was a classmate of both Vita and Violet Tresusis. In time she became jealous of the affair between Vita and Violet. Rosamund went on to marry a military man and killed in WWII by a V1 missile attack. This is a correction to my guess below. The gentleman are Harold Nicholson whom Vita became engaged to and Lionel Edward Sackville-West who was Vita’s father. Talk about the strangest of love knots.
One of my friend’s favorite parts of this entry is the use of the word “hamlet” as a double entendre meaning both village and Shakespeare play. The use of Ophelia is because she committed suicide by drowning much like Virginia did in real life. If I were allowed a third entry it would be with HG Wells repairing the time machine, so I could complete the trip back to London of 2038 realizing that time is a fabric best left alone. Upon this fabric we sew what we intend to reap with our private reasons for doing so remaining unsolved mysteries.