The Importance of Being oscar

It was during the colorful autumn of 85, to be more precisely, on the fourth Wednesday of a lonely November, when i left Burlington, Michigan, a small city within the U.S., to spend the Thanksgiving holyday in the house of close friend of my grandmother. It was in the middle of the first half of a cultural exchange period in the the land of Uncle Sam. That exchange was more like an emergency uncontrolled leakage of sad days after the suicide of my mother. Leaving behind a father and two brothers all jumbled.
I was still quite angry to accept that quiet lifestyle in the interior of Michigan, living with a advantist family in those simple and freezing farway days of northern lands. This trip of mine to Maryland and Washington DC felt like a gift to alleviate those days even more lonely in that distant town of redneck America. However, my biggest surprise came neither with the host of of my grandma's friends and their home near the embassies, a beautiful set, or from those masple trees displaying its happy colourful changing leaves, as if nothing could surpass that show, besides its ultimate death in colour; the surprise came from another small detail, a chance ... This friend of my grandmother had a son, which host me in a very special way. Presented me with a book and a cassette tape. The book was a Batam Book's collection of some Oscar Wilde's writings. And on the tape, some classics like "Soul Love" by David Bowie, "Johnny Come Home" by Fine Young Cannibals, "This is The Day" by The The, "E = MC2" by Big Audio Dynamite, "Love vigilant" by New Order, among others...
After some conversations, My gramma's friend told me that his son, then in his 21's, was in rehab. Despite having studied the best colleges in washington, her ex-husband's drinking problem had taken almost the whole family towards a slow destruction. What she told me opened closed vortices in a soul like mine, still half bewildered and sad with the not too distant tragedy in my life. Louis, this was his name, even took me into a jazz club to see Dizzy Galaspie plays. This was a small pub in George Town, the clarinet seemed almost touching me, so did his elastic cheeks. It was only three days, but were as balm, coming from others who were willing to see beyond imaginary borders, materialized in sullen spectra we create within ourselves. I still have the book he gave me. I was only 16 when, for the first time, I was reading Oscar Wilde's pearls. Yes, the sound of Big Audio, and Bowie- good pop helps to smooth the classics, made me find another wonderfully troubled soul; an impressive, critical and passionate writer. When I later had a chance, I bought a biography of Wilde by Richard Ellmann, the same who wrote the preface of my old pocket book. In the first chapter, Richard Ellmann quotes Wilde:

"The soul is born old, but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. And that is life's tragedy."

later on I got the chance to buy Punguin's classics collection with some others of Wilde's short stories. Classics like "Lord Arthur seville's Crime", the hilarious "The Canterville Ghost", and the fantastic "The Happy Prince".

Nothing better to put a smile in our soul than music and good literature! Louis knew that, perhaps as therapy itself, and he probably received a lecture from his mother saying: soon I was arriving, a boy who had experienced a tragedy, even before age ... but he knew these vortices, these giant swirls and thus casted me a piece of wood, so I could controll myself during that fall to the deep abysses Maelstrom *.
Last November, in 2008 after 25 years, I've turned myself an amateur photographer. Distracted, I spent 8 hours photographing the cemetery of Père-Lachasie in Paris. I was never those who adolise people, much less of graves, I photograph the most photogenic's ones. But I did not contained my excitement at Oscar Wilde's tumb, all marked with lipstick kisses like human touches, almost a close contact. Beautiful, in the form of an angel, It made me remember those times that do not form a past, but operates a constant transformation within myself, this whirlwind ...

For Louis, I dedicate these pearls of Wilde, in 1987:

"I don't wish to know anythibng about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty."
(Dorian in The Picture of Dorian Gray - Movie: Albert levin (1945))

"I'm tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else."
(Dorian in The Picutre of Dorian Gray)

"Oh, I love London society! Ithink it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beutiful idiots and briliant lunatics. Just what society should be."
(Mabel Chiltern in An ideal Husband)

"A married woman, then! Well, there's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about."
Cecil Graham in Lady Windermere's fan)

"Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of God:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold."

(The Ballad of Reading Goal)

"How well I know it. I swore by my gods. I know that. But I implore you, Salome, ask something else of me. Ask me for half my kingdom, and I will give it to you. But do not ask what you have asked."
(Herod in salome)

"He accordingly laughed his most horrible laugh, till the old vaulted roof rang and rang again, but hardly had the fearful echo died away when a door opened, and Mrs. Otis came out in a light blue dressing-gown. "I'm afraid you are far from well" she said "and have brought you a bottle of dr.Dobell's tincture. If it is indigestion, you will find it most excellent remedy.""
(The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde - Movie: Jules Dassin (1944))