Manna wrote:you are forgiven for this too, G.
mostly because you said it more eloquently than I did.
No, not more "eloquently".
Just a little more tactfully.
You said:
The Beatles song is about a long-lasting relationship,
and the way it plays against the poem for me here is that you want this to be a play
between you and your long-time-lover.
To pretend with her that you're having an affair.
For instance, sometimes I'll flirt with my husband...
Which was like "trying to put out fire with gasoline".
(Which makes no sense at all at today's prices.)
(Or like trying to force someone to suck the rim of a salted margarita glass
when you know perfectly well they have an ulcerated lip sore.
Or like adding salt on somebody's salt-cured anchovies (either seriously,
or just in jest.) Or like trying to put out fire with salt.
Or like trying to put out salt with fire.
Or like anything, really, that doesn't work very well,
or that doesn't make much sense. Or that isn't very nice to do.
In other words.)
Because Andrew had said he that has a wife, and kid,
and that he has even read this poem in front of them!
And let us be honest, and serious, about this!
"long-time-lover" --
does not mean "wife"!
Oh, to be sure, it could have included that possibility,
- if you had left it at that. And would that you had!
But there was no way it could, after you went on
to contrasted it with your own personal higher morality!
Your "husband"!
What you were doing there was rubbing it in, plain and simple.
Just like Gandhi rubbed salt in the British authorities' faces.
You were, in effect, supporting Geoffrey's contention!
Which, in the context of this thread, amounts to war-mongering.
I, on the other hand, was trying to pull everybody back from the
precipice at which it seemed to me they were hurling themselves
as if there was no salt left in their diets.
I was trying to give Andrew the benefit of what little doubt there was left.
That he really did mean
his wife. And that she, only she, is his
long-time-lover.
I was trying to give this thread a little separate peace around here!
~~~~~~~~~
Incidentally, the poem reminded me of a not-too-bad movie,
--"Same Time, Next Year" (1979),
with Ellen Burstyne and Alan Alda.
The picture opens in 1951 at a resort in northern California.
Burstyn, a 24-year-old Oakland housewife, and Alda, a 27-year-old accountant
from New Jersey, meet over dinner, get along and have a fling.
The next morning they wake up in the same bed, talk about what's happened,
realize that while they're both happily married with six children between them,
they're in love.
They make a pact to meet at the same resort every year,
which is just what they do and is just what the film is about.
We see the two every five or six years as they adjust to the changes time brings.
What always remains through the years is the deep affection the two share.
It's nice to see a film about two people who like each other this deeply.
) had barred me from your company.
