Love, as Always, as a Need, Even if, for a Reed

" his friends had gone away to Egypt 6 weeks before but he had stayed behind for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed."

So, Oscar Wilde's Swallow, chose to love a slender Reed who was attached to her home, in contrast to the Swallow, who loved travelling.
But why the Swallow had loved a Reed and not a Swallow? Was that because no Swallow had loved him before, leading him to search for love elsewhere?
Elsewhere where it was not directed to a Swallow, not directed rightly, diverted, if not perverted, to a Reed, because love was a need, even if Abraham Maslow had classified it as a secondary need, not a basic one.

The Swallow, after the negative response of the Reed to his courtship advances, went flying in the aim of reaching his friends who were heading to Egypt since 6 weeks, an aim as dreamy as his first deed, making love with a Reed!

As a child, the happy prince spent his time in the palace, and around, in the garden, never going out of the high walls of the palace. As he died they made him a statue:

"High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt."

Seeing the city from above he saw the poor and their suffering and wanted to help them. He made friendship with the lost Swallow and asked him to take, at first, the ruby of the sword, to one of the poor, then one of his eyes' sapphires, then the other, then, not being able to see, the Swallow started to tell him about what he sees, and they chose a poor and give him one of the leaves of fine gold which were gilding him all over, till finally the Swallow dies from the cold winter, and "they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince as he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful".

While Edgar Allan Poe's black cat had lost her eyes for inability of love and chronic bitterness and ill-humor of the protagonist, Oscar Wilde's prince's eyes were given for love which was not understandable by others, little late, but still, fruitful.

Virginia's Big Black Eyes

A Trial to Analyze Poe's: "The Black Cat"

Receiving love from the mother in early childhood, and being securely attached is essential to develop the capability of loving, loving the self, and the others. Depression, and other personality development problems, have been linked to disturbed early relationships.

Born in 1809. Father died in 1810. Mother died in 1811. Brother died young. Sister became insane later. That was his first nuclear family, poor Edgar Allan Poe. At 27 years of old he got married to his cousin Virginia Clemm, who was 13. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife in that they might have never consummated their marriage. Virginia died in January 1847 at the age of 24 (they say of tuberculosis). After two years, in 1849, he returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of "acute congestion of the brain" (They suspected suicide especially Poe was an alcohol addict).

Soon the moon will rise

And in this stony night

I have to see your face

See the lines that make you old

Stony silence, touched by gold

Everything's too late

Too late for love, and suddenly

Too late for hate

There's only one thing left to do

I have to face this other you

Lyrics: Half in Love Half in Hate, Harket Morten

Film made by me, collecting photos from the net, adding the music, using Windows Movie Maker.

This is a trial to analyze Edgar Allan Poe's short story: "The Black Cat":

Pluto, the narrator's favorable pet, a black cat, started gradually to be the target of hatred, a hatred that is intense to a degree that it might be convincing to think that it is a "displaced" hatred. Pluto's love toward the narrator was triggering feelings of "loathing" in the narrator's heart.

Pluto was "covering me with its loathsome caresses."
The narrator usually" flee silently from its odious presence as from a breath of a pestilence".
But, "it followed my footsteps with pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend."
(Note: not receiving love at childhood renders the person, theoretically, as unable to receive, nor give, love to others – thinking about Poe's childhood - ).

The narrator describes his living in his house as living in a "felon's cell".
(Note: The narrator admits that he is a felon. He feels guilt for his inability to love. He doen't hate others only, he hates his-own-self).

An "unutterable loathing" that led the narrator once to "cut one of its eyes out of the pocket" because he "fancied that the cat avoided – his – presence".
(Note: Virginia, Poe's wife, was described for her beautiful big black eyes:
"Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look.")

He finally killed Pluto.

Yet, targeting the wrong target will never satisfy the original desire, and it was just a matter of few hours when that "figure of a gigantic cat" appears in the wall to disturb the husband.
(Note: in the short story, the wife never was mentioned to react to the bizarre way behavior of her husband toward Pluto. Was she passive-aggressive? And she was not mentioned at all when that figure of a gigantic cat appeared in the wall, leading to the conclusion, that she was the one whom the husband tried to kill, but she reappeared in the second morning, as passive as a shadow in the wall).

So, Poe, invented another cat, another black cat, to keep targeting.

Another cat is introduced to the short story.

His wife was brave finally, with her innate feminine emotional intelligence, to stop in the process of the continuous "displacement" hence while going all together to the cellar (cellar = Id, unconscious) of their house and while he, with the axe in his hand, tried to hit the cat, his wife, seized his arm, corrected the path of his displaced emotion, to receive the axe herself, directly to her own head. "She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan", says Poe!

Notice the disappearance of the black cat after the wife's death, and the "tranquil sleep" and the "secured future felicity" which appears thereafter.

At the first page, Poe wrote: "My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events."

So, it was all, mere household events, poor Virginia!

A Bit of Sugar by: Mohammed Munir

A bit a sugar in the cup
Uttered the mercy from the merciful
When I melt because of love in his light
My soul satisfies any hungry person
Ya Ya Ya Allah

Wind of Change

In 2010, Scorpions had retired, Dilma had won, and Doggy is still searching for a job

Since few minutes and Doggy seems having something to declare but hesitating. Encouraged intensely and repeatedly he declared timidly that he wrote a poem and wants to say it. We agreed. Doggy jumped over the closet and brought the fan that he ADORES running it on the fast mode and goes AaAaAaAaAa, vocalizing whatever in front of it.

And here he goes with his poem:


"Follow the hotdog,
In a street of fog,
Listening to the wind of change….
Hunger at midnight,
Don't merit a fight,
Listening to the wind, of change…."

"The fridge is closing in,
Did you ever think,
That hotdogs in the frost,
Our brothers,
The smell's in the air,
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing in the wind of change"

Doggy stopped uttering his golden words and headed to the lavatory and blew his nose hard several times in the warm water emitting a lovable gurgling sound and came walking back slow and calm, like a widower king, to the bed room where the effervescent Vitamin C capsule is still bubbling in his cold glass of water while the ex-communist is still wearing red in the CNN, but now, more modern and beautiful than she was in the 1970s:

They say she like the poor, the dogs, and Proust. Doggy had already dealt with poverty but Proust? What for? For the search for the time, that is lost? Anyway. We managed to convince Doggy to get rid of the fan idea and complete his poem without it especially after the running nose incident:

"Walking down the street
Distant memories,
How much I have pissed,
On this tree
Follow me to that park
Where I can ran and bark,
Listening to the wind of change".

While Dilma is promising to manage poverty in Brazil, we managed to find something, in this cold white fridge, for the doggy to eat, temporarily. The gurgling and the bubbling symphony started. He raised his head and said: "complete the original poem from the scorpions" he took another bite from his dish and added: "as they have already retired from biting":