The Lovers’ Chronicle 27 September – aspire – birth of Grazia Deledda & Cléo de Mérode – photography by Marcey Jacobson

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle. I asked Mac Tag if I could take one more day at the rein’s of TLC. He graciously agreed. You can follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Does someone watch over you? Do you watch over someone? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

dream

-They find themselves on a dark misty night,
standing in front of a castle with a large door-
should we knock
No, says the lovely but unnerved redhead,
that is just what stupid people do
in horror movies, we should leave
-He knocks anyway-
Oh way to go, now we’re going to die
-The door opens slowly, creaking loudly,
inside it is dark but then a figure
emerges from the shadows,
a tall old man approaches the door
and in a voice with an odd accent says,
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"
wait what, cut, hey Dream Goddess, what the hell
You said the theme word was vampire
no, i said aspire
Oh, never mind

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

simply a word from a 2017 poem
with no special meanin’
“But one with many possibilities”
yes, i have written about
aspirations over the years
and how they have changed
“Oh I’m sure mine have”
these days mine
are wrapped up here,
to write every day,
and with you
“And where we’re going”
right, lets go

took awhile, pretty much had to be beatin’ over the head, to accept and understand limitations; from there it was a short ride to purpose, how best to navigate the way forward, this urge to create, honored by writin’ daily, havin’ someone to share it with, catch as many sunrises as possible, what else to aspire to

somethin’ else
that has changed over time

earliest one worth rememberin’
was to leave my hometown
for college

most fortuitous one
was to create this
and write every day

saddest one
was just to survive

and my favorite aspiration
was to find someone
to share the verse with
thanks Anna
for makin’ that happen

Pale Love, Pale Rider

we seek and feel beyond
where we have been

runnin’ my hands
across your hips
as i say your name

i remember everything
that night, i repeated
the sweet words
over and over

then, my lips stop, half-open,
as if to pull the air from the room
tremblin’, where we have never been

walkin’ through the square
nobody watchin’, invisible
which is fine and preferred
been that way for about
fifteen years now

observin’ then imaginin’
a much better way
of movin’ through the days

have made peace
with not to be limitations
known aspirations down to this
to write for you

walkin’ past the palazzo,
an old woman watchin’
from her window
made herself
the sign of the cross
as her lips moved
……

kept the past locked up
had every intention
of throwin’ away the key
till you came along
……

i remember everything
from that evenin’
mostly, the words
you repeated
over and over

for Sara

somewhere i go often
one of my favorite places,
that ol’ dance hall
waltzed and two-stepped
myself into a sweat
and drank a lot
of Shiner Bock

fell in love there,
or as near
as i ever came

i remember everything
about our first night there

the way you looked,
the way it felt
to waltz across
the floor with you,
the words you whispered
in my ear

then later…
the way you moved your hips
your pale lips, quiverin’
half-open,
aspirin’ to somethin’
neither of us
had ever known

I git, that you cain’t
Have a fence
With only one post
But what if one post
Is all I will ever have

Nuthin’ but a hard fast ride
That ends in the dust

Then a want unlike
anything ever known
To spend a life
givin’ what she wanted,
knowin’ what she wanted,
bein’ what she wanted

Steep canyon ledge
We sit, watchin
the sun go down
Our feet dangle
towards the dark
below. Our thoughts
grapple with this
timeless moment

Down the cattle trail
to the spring fed tank
Strip down to our skin
Cool water pulls us
in. Arms, legs graspin’
this timeless moment

Nothin’ have I to give,
So I keep givin’ these
Just as the night keeps fetchin’ stars
For these forlorn eyes

Else I lose myself,
I must keep findin’ them
Fore if they do not come
Then will all be lost

Matters not what this way comes
I will find them and give them to you

© copyright 2012 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

I asked Mac Tag if I could have another turn at TLC to address a note that Zazie left here. The note says that men are dogs. Well, we certainly can be and sadly, we can be much worse. But consider this. A man wrote today’s Lyrics of the Day, his brother wrote the music and a man sang the song and a man is sendin’ this edition of TLC out especially for you Zazie. So maybe we are not all bad. The Lyrics of the Day by George Gershwin:

Someone To Watch Over Me

There’s a saying old says that love is blind
Still we’re often told, seek and ye shall find
So I’m going to seek a certain girl I’ve had in mind
Looking everywhere, haven’t found her yet

She’s the big affair I cannot forget
Only one I ever think of with regret
I’d like to add her initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?

There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that she turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me
I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
Someone who’ll watch over me

Although she may not be the one some
Guys think of as pretty
To my heart she carries the key
Won’t you tell her please to put on some speed
Follow my lead, oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me

The Song of the Day is Willie Nelson‘s version of “Someone to Watch over Me” by George and Ira Gershwin. We do no own the rights to this song

Today is the birthday of Grazia Deledda (Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda; Nuoro, Italy; 28 September 1871 – 15 August 1936 Rome); writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 “for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general”. She was the first Italian woman to receive this honor.

In October 1899, Deledda met Palmiro Madesani, a functionary of the Ministry of Finance, in Cagliari. Madesani and Deledda were married in 1900 and the couple moved to Rome right after the publication of Deledda’s Il vecchio della montagna (The Old Man from the Mountain, 1900). Despite the birth of her two sons, Sardus (1901) and Francesco “Franz” (1904), Deledda managed to continue to write prolifically, publishing about a novel a year.

L’ospite

Suonò l’Ave.
Margherita si fece rapidamente il segno della croce e mosse le labbra.
– Angelus… Angelus…
Non ricordava altro quella sera, perché ella ripeté la dolce parola almeno dieci volte. Poi le sue labbra pallide si fermarono del tutto, semiaperte, quasi ad aspirare il vento che recava, vibrando, i rintocchi dell’Ave.

Today is the birthday Cléo de Mérode (Cléopâtre-Diane de Mérode; Paris 27 September 1875 – 17 October 1966 Paris); dancer of the Belle Époque. She has been referred to as the “first real celebrity icon” and the “first modern celebrity”. She was also the first woman whose photographic image, due in particular to photographers Nadar and Léopold-Émile Reutlinger, was distributed worldwide.

by Nadar, 1895

At the age of eight, she was sent to study dance with the Sisters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, and she made her professional debut at the Paris Opéra at age eleven.

De Mérode became renowned for her glamour even more than for her dancing skills, and her image began appearing on such things as postcards and playing cards. At 16, she debuted her signature hairstyle, a chignon, which became the talk of Parisian women and was quickly adopted as a popular style for all.

her chignon hairstyle, 1903

In the fall of 1895, a rumor began that de Mérode was King Leopold II’s latest mistress, and the two were dubbed “Cléopold” by the media. Because the King had had two children with a woman reputed to be a prostitute, de Mérode’s reputation suffered, and she was labeled a “courtesan” or “demimondaine”, both of which she is still referred to as today.

In the spring of 1896, a second scandal erupted due to the exhibition of the sculpture La Danseuse by Alexandre Falguière at the Salon des Artistes Française. The sculpture was a life-size nude in white marble that was carved from a plaster cast of de Mérode’s body.

La Danseuse

the Falguière sculpture depicted in a painting by Carlos Vázquez Úbeda

In the summer of 1896, de Mérode appeared in a simulated nude scene in the title role of Phryné, a three act ballet-pantomime staged at the Casino Municipal in the seaside resort of Royan. Despite, or due to the scandals, de Mérode became an international star, performing across Europe and in the United States.

In 1898, de Mérode was awarded first prize at an exhibit of the New York Camera Club as being the most beautiful woman in Paris. In 1900, she caused a sensation at the Exposition Universelle when she performed traditional Javanese and Khmer dances. She also appeared in two films, one of which was hand-tinted in color; both showed her dancing. In 1901, Édouard Marchand organized for her to dance at the Folies Bergère in a three-act pantomime titled Lorenza, taking the risk to do something other elites of the ballet had never done before.

dancing in a traditional Khmer costume

Throughout the early 1920s, de Mérode performed at galas and benefit concerts, the earliest being a fundraiser for Benoît-Constant Coquelin old actors’ home in Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames. de Mérode retired in 1924 to the seaside resort of Biarritz in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France.

de Mérode never married or had children.

Suffering from dementia, de Mérode died in her apartment at 15 Rue de Téhéran, and was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Division 90. A statue of her by Luis de Périnat, mourning her mother, who is interred in the same plot, decorates the gravestone.

Today is the birthday of Marcey Jacobson (Marcella Jacobson; September 27, 1911 – July 26, 2009 San Cristóbal, Chiapas, Mexico); photographer who moved to Chiapas, Mexico in the 1950s, and was best known for her photographs of the indigenous peoples of Southern Mexico.

She died of heart failure at age 97. She left no immediate survivors. Janet Marren, her partner, had died in 1998. In 1955, she published her autobiography, Le Ballet de ma vie (The Dance of My Life). In 1964, de Mérode was photographed by Cecil Beaton and featured in the 15 February 1964 issue of Vogue.

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