Comedy

Back in town (only for the evening... as the house needs some care) the wife of the journalist has honoured us with her presence, the wife still with no journalist is visiting. From what I've heard she's been a while away in the companion of Elliot, or Mary-Ann rather let's say. The wife and Ari aren't in a very chatty mood and things have turned somehow cold; for she was expecting a clean house, hot food and endless sequences of smiles, musty books on the table and the translation of a few lines from the Latin reader, and even from Meridor's book. Ari in the other hand is playing indifferent, as if it wasn't with him. He didn't tell her to run away anyway but she did, and we can understand her. We all need our space sometimes, our loneliness even outside our own loneliness.

A bit of desolation at home, a stinky kitchen, unfolded clothes all over, bills, preoccupations, lawyers, and other side dishes. Ari doesn't really seem to care, and he never does. He's too busy with personal issues, with universal questions, sorrows, books, towers of paper and even with memories. The wife is something else, she's always something else, she rather keeps herself busy with less problematic matters.

She prefers the light and sweet talks about mortgages and new houses, furniture and appliances, names of streets, neighborhoods, hot spots in town and even weddings small talk. Well, I can sincerely understand her, for her life is far from being at ease even in her glory, even in her sublime glory. Her life is never at ease because she has to deal with Ari, every single minute and in every single instance... Ari and the wife don't really like each other, they probably detest each other instead.

Ari accuses her of being superficial and full of grandeus, always putting on smiles and avoiding any kind of weariness, and he's probably right. But I think she's more justified in her complaints about Ari... for he's too dark of a person.... a ship that sinks into the night, into the irreversability of things, into the unavoidability. They're at odds with each other and whenever they have the chance to meet someone's got to interfere, sometimes Elliot, sometimes Ofer, sometimes even the bible intereferes.

The wife of the journalist is somehow a religious person, but lacking the delicate touch of Ari's religious feelings, the chore of things... such heavy thoughts. Still Ari is also justified in some kind of way, if the life of the wife is far from being easy Ari himself isn't doing much better and for the good or for the bad both of them seem to rely one on the other. They manage to live in some strange kind of pathos, Ari by never talking and she by talking only about herself... and one bears the sorrows of the other, in a different way but still beared.

They share common feelings but interpret them very differently... Ari curdling up into his shell and keeping it hidden deep inside, despite the eyes, despite the smiles, despite the sad faces. She deals with life in a very different way, she's a deceiving optimist by nature. Someone with an accute and repulsive sense of trascendence, one of those persons who get some kind of pleasure even out of the most dreadful miseries. It's an admirable kind of thing, but difficult to understand when you're 20 years old. Very difficult to understand, and even so those things aren't meant to be clear for you at that age, even if you've skipped a decade in your life, even if you've been through the lowest depths of the soul, and even if you're Ari.

The wife is an understanding self and hence she doesn't complain about this state of affairs, and even blames herself for not spending enough time home. That's what happens when you have a romance with a writer, you lose the dimension of time, you loosen. That's what happens when you neglect history, when you neglect present, when you neglect facts. Still she's not called for perfection, for a wife is known socially not for her virtues but for her highest defects, those are the kind of things that make someone a person.

In contract to Ari her beauty is very different but also very unique, her beauty is the beauty or Marla, a highly intellectual unpurified self... the night bird, frozen smiles, walls of nicotine, silk and black coats, cognac, Elliot... everlasting Elliot. Her beauty is like the charm of music, like the charm of a glaciar... unfinished; the beauty of the aged who understands the symphonies and the operas of life, the beauty of someone who laughs at the bitter with bitterness and who claims a strange type of passive justice, the justice you are granted when you stop fighting for justice. The beauty of someone who doesn't pretend to change the world.

Ari brings another panorama, the innocent beauty of the Phoebus, certain type of beauty only age can grant you, only youth can grant you. It's actually finished beauty, complete.... in small doses, with small proportions. The beauty of the boy that has reached some kind of adulthood without being carried away with it, keeping his own features. Beauty without grandeur, without glamour..... beauty in raw, elaborate shapes product of nature and silk-weary skin. A beauty that comes with confusion, questions and immaturity, doubts, hesitations and even unfounded sorrows.. but still the most exquisite and delicate beauty a human being can aspire for, an unknowingly beauty. With this beauty, his... the wife of the journalist can't compete. For age has granted him the benefit of doubt, unlike her... in her age (that we still don't know) hesitations seem like a thing of the past, unallowed... and awareness is not only her wisdom, but her deepest sorrow. Awareness of her impossibility to compete with Ari, to compete with time and to compete with a life that isn't hers.

But they still suffer together their way and their paths in life as they're bonded one to the other, unavoidably for they constitute one same being, not one same person however. They stare at each other in despair, every morning, every evening, in every hue. The wife of the journalist actually loves her journalist even when there's no journalist, she loves herself when she's with him, she loves him with the proportions that adult love grants you despite your own self, with the proportions of reality and the proportions of the modern world. A world where -still in the paths of the 21st century, journalists and humanists make companion. Ari is headed somewhere else, he doesn't really love anyone but he's needy and he's cranky, and he lets himself probably not really being loved but more like being caressed and being touched, being softened from the rawness of youth and from the aggresivity of childhood, softened by his hands, softened in silence, without coming out of the shell... softening for himself and just smiley. In the drunkenness of youth, in the drunkenness of romance, in the drunknenness of trascendence.

The journalist in the other hand seems to like Ari very much, and much less his wife. But he still doesn't notice the difference, who could notice it anyway? Talking about unavoidability? it's probably Ari the one he likes and the one he enthralls, even when the wife and the journalist do seem to get along. It's a long and thin wire to be walked carefully, for you never when your attempt to please one will hurt the other. Ari is like an impossible, a shapeless piece of time with which is impossible to go further than romance, still he's got his charm, no doubt about that. The wife is much more of a real person, but far less attractive and far less interesting, despite her intellect, despite her awareness. It's the rawness and the finished beauty what calls for, what springs.

Ari and the wife have spent some time together by themselves and also one without the other, they don't really seem to miss each other but their necessity to return just like the river returns to the sea is more than evident. Ari has been with the journalist, and also has the wife. Probably in the wrong moments for one has taken the place of the other wherever wasn't expected to be that way, but no one really wrote this plot. It just started out and broke ground (not sure about that yet) from one little story, from one of those little stories we read in little magazines.

The little story became a song and later an opera, with organ and recital. The little story became an understatement. The undeniable bond between Ari and the wife of the journalist. This is probably a triada, but just let him return to his wife and to his boy. I think, as an Hellenist.. the journalist might find it pleasurable; and if not Ari will grow up and the wife will grow younger.

Ari