From: lawrence-NotThisBit-logic@amd-p.com
"The Wise One" wrote in message
news:gv4iju$erq$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> ...A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no
> intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is
> mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a
> freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy
> at the influence it might be having. The bad penny first dropped in San
> Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had
> seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with
> approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little
> star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they
> would explode.
>
> 'I would love you to do something for me,' I said.
>
> 'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously.
>
> 'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said.
>
> 'Anything, sir, anything!'
>
> 'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars
> again?'
>
> He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height.
> 'What a *dreadful* thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the
> poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his
> thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish
> banalities.
>
> A couple of weeks ago, in a Chinese restaurant, the dapper little
> Chinese maitre D bowed low as I left and, full of Chinese smiles, said,
> 'Sir Guin, now that Star Wars is being shown again you will be famous once
> more.' Oh, to be Ernest Thesiger.
>
> The mornings, during the past few weeks, have started quite sharply
> and yet gently blurred in hazy sunshine. There is a very rounded cherry
> tree in the middle of the paddock, now in flower, but the haze softly
> obliterates the trunk of the tree, leaving the blossom looking as if it
> might be a small pinkish-white cloud that has settled with us. It spreads
> a feeling of calm like a blessing. I stand out of doors in my
> dressing-gown, gazing at it with gratitude, but know that all too soon
> there will be a thud of letters falling through the letter-box, including
> glossy photographs which no ordinary pen can sign. As often as not they
> have already been signed in a sprawling gilded signature by 'Darth Vader'
> from Star Wars - 'so-and-so IS Darth Vader'. Maybe but it wasn't
> so-and-so's voice or face (when it was finally revealed) to the best of my
> remembrance. The 'IS', I suppose, is for reassurance, like clutching at
> something when waking from a bad dream.
>
> Last Sunday, as Mass was finishing, a young man leaned over my
> shoulder and said, 'My pop is a great fan of Star Wars. Will you say
> hello to him as you leave the church?'
>
> I asked where his father was.
>
> 'At the back in a wheelchair,' he said.
>
> The priest gave his blessing and the ritual words, 'The Mass is over,
> go in peace.'
>
> 'Thanks be to God,' we chorused back, the young man adding, 'And can I
> have your autograph?'
>
> 'Not here,' I replied rather crossly.
>
> At the back of the church, sitting in a wheelchair, was a large,
> middle-aged, genial-looking man. I went up to him all smiles, like a
> baby-kissing politician, and exuding the sweet benevolence of a
> hospital-visiting princess. I took him warmly by the hand and made one or
> two fatuous inquiries. He suddenly said the dreaded words - 'Star Wars!'
>
> 'Ugh - hugh -uh -ha -hm,' I said, but I kept up my smile.
>
> 'Obi-Wan Kenobi,' he nodded at me and, for good measure, 'May the
> Force be with you.'
>
> 'And also with you,' I replied, to ecclesiastical merriment.
>
> 'The Man in the White Suit; that was you, wasn't it?'
>
> 'Yes, about forty-five years ago,' I replied, with a sense of relief
> that we might have reached saner ground; anyway terra firma. Then his face
> became grave and he said, 'Darth Vader.'
>
> I backed away as quickly as possible, sketched him a valedictory wave
> of the hand and stumbled down the church steps into fresh air and morning
> sunlight. The young man pursued me. 'The autograph,' he said, quite
> politely. But that was suddenly too much for me. 'Not in front of the
> parishioners,' I said. Then I disappeared.
>
> A second later I was deeply ashamed but the damage had been done. No
> excuse, just sudden bloody-mindedness and panic. It's no good saying to
> myself, 'Watch out in these declining years, things could turn nasty.'
> Donkey's years ago I remember seeing an elderly man in Harrods screaming
> and screaming at a shop assistant because she was buffing her nails. I
> felt sad contempt for him and it never occurred to me to mutter, 'There,
> but for the Grace of God, go I some day in the future.'
>
> The evening news announced that dust bowls have formed on the dry
> farmlands of Cornwall. Cornwall, of all places, where there used to be so
> many hedges.
>
> We all need hedges, I thought. They don't have to be prickly though,
> like mine.
>
>
> from:
> "A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-98"
> by Alec Guinness
> ISBN 0-140-27006-X
> Penguin Books, 2000
> Chapter 2: "A Dry Month"
> pages 11-13
It sounds like a fine book. Thanks for posting the quotes.
--
Lawrence
"Butters, we're done talking about girls' balls right now. Pay
attention!" - Eric Cartman - 14 November 2007
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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