Cwabs!

merlin:

8½ (Production)

When shooting began on 9 May 1962, Eugene Walter recalled Fellini taking “a little piece of brown paper tape” and sticking it near the viewfinder of the camera. Written on it was Ricordati che è un film comico (“Remember, this is a comedy”).

I spent many nights hanging out with Eugene Walter the year after I graduated from college, before I moved away from Mobile. It is always interesting to see where his name pops up—I have to admit I never quite expected it in @hotdogsladies tumblr.

Here’s a poem, by the aforementioned Mr. Walter:

SOUTH

Lady, where I come from green is no color,
But is the fact of summer,
The full obsession and the blazing orb.
The rich estates of the mind mad
To explore the poles of leisure.
“Green” is what the junebugs say
In the fig tree at an early hour, and
“Green, green” is the sadness of the evening bird
Locked in our rich landscape,
Green is my still moment, green my barrier,
Green my gate through barrier to all antipodes.

Lady, where I come from green’s a dimension,
Not a color: it enfolds, lady, it blesses the eye,
Prospers the journey and laughs at time,
Being timeless, blooming in dying,
Blooming against blooming. And time, lady,
Where I come from, is lush as greenness,
Elegantly begs no arbitrations
Falls sweetly moment to moment
Like night-flowers strung on a stem of grass
Or steps leading into a lake.

Lady, I should tell you,
Down there’s the only place
You can have your elegy and dream it too.
Mirrors reflect mirrors there,
And eyes reflect eyes,
Words are fresh there, for talk is not tired.
Though the talkers feast or silence
Inhabiting the golden chambers of the August sun,
They pause to hear of Self, the slothful oracle,
(O is she back again?)

Love’s a free cricket to sing where it will,
Caged in neither paradox nor pun,
Can, in a Celia-fit, smirch its face
With umber and go adventuring.
But oh, you must go see, I cannot tell more;
For the best things there are so indigenous,
And, lady, you are so immovable,
But down where I come from nothing is.