Two Drifters, Off to see the World

"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing, you'll end up looking at the sky."

"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me.

Breakfast at Tiffany's the movie, is a glitzy affair, high on aesthtics..a lot about Audrey Hepburn in her Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn in general. The movie is touching and poignant in several ways, but its beauty is (at least I think) slightly overshadowed by the Golightly/ Hepburn cult following it created.

Breakfast at Tiffany's the book is however a different experience altogether. The book's jacket describes it as a glamorous portrayal of New York in the 40s. In my opinion, it is anything but that. The book strips bare the glamour and exposes the cracks, the artificial lives and the struggle to survive in a city of the rich and famous. Your heart goes out to young writer 'Fred' (who is unnamed in the book) and his purely platonic affection for Holly (For I was in love with her. Just as I'd once been in love with my mother's elderly coloured cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too. as he puts it). You can almost feel the pain of Holly's husband when he has to leave her for good. And of course, there's Holly herself. Larger than life, confused, trying to be something she thinks she is...'A real phoney' as her agent calls her. Truman Capote (who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers) writes beautifully and lyrically, the prose peppered with metaphors that draw you into the story and make you feel for the characters.

The reason I'm writing this post and reproducing the exchange at its beginning is because I've always fancied myself as something of a Holly Golightly, the essence of whom (and myself in that sense) is captured in those lines (and I don't mean as a fashion icon or anything). When I first heard these lines in the movie, I quite fell in love with them. 'This is me' I thought (or liked to think), 'a wild thing that can't be loved'. While I was no doubt glamorising myself (as we all are prone to doing at some point I'm sure), I have in general been averse to any sort of commitment, fiercely holding on to my 'freedom' and despising myself for growing dependent in anyway. This has proved to be a fairly reasonable (if not prudent) philosophy to have in life. However, I am wondering now if that was in a large degree to do with some kind of emotional immaturity. While there is still a lot of appeal in those lines, it is also someone I want to be, but whom I can't really be anymore (and it is quite hard for me to accept this). Maybe its time to 'settle down' in that sense and really figure out this aspect of my life, because I increasingly find myself longing for that kind of companionship. Or maybe I am too afraid to get attached, I still don't know, and I don't think I've quite struck that balance yet. Whatever it might be, while those lines continue to move me, they don’t do so necessary because they resonate with larger truths about my life. They touch me for the sheer simplicity of the comparison and the beauty with which they are written. They also really make me wish I could express myself that way. And yet, I still don't know....

Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."

Probably.