“A life is no small matter.”
– Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Exactly one day before the 21st of November, 1989, Leonard Bernstein, at a dinner party, said that the word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek entheos:
“‘Having the god within,’ with its attendant sense of ‘living without aging,’ as did the gods on Mount Olympus.”
Living with, “intense and eager enjoyment,” “divine inspiration, ecstasy,” as if every moment in every day were cake at a birthday party.
The ancient Greeks were also the first to make wishes by blowing out candles on cakes they offered Artemis, goddess of the moon. Like moons, the cakes glowed by candlelight. The Greeks believed that by blowing out the candles, their wishes would be carried, floating on the smoke, up, up, toward the starry heavens—
Starry starry night…
The astronomer Ptolemy believed the gods sent stars shooting down, and would, therefore, surely grant any human wish made upon one—
Star Light, Star Bright, first star I see—
tonight,
candles and a blazingly starry sky over a city, starred and quiet…
I wish I may, I wish I might—
as many wishes, tonight, as my heart can conjure and my eyes can see lights:
Je voudrais du soleil vert, and teapots, lace curtains, picture frames of seaside views, in a glass garden. New England light, but not just; Paris light, silvery, lilac-tinted. The air tinted, once again, with gardenia. Gardenias. Open air. Air. I would like air. A summery dress with a floral print — or lemons, white and pastel yellows and greens. Or red. No, red lipstick. Just lipstick. And some Fred Astaire.
And to watch an old French postal plane traverse the sky, like a shooting star, but slower, more romantic. Romance. I would like plane tickets, or just paper planes made of air mail envelopes, an indoor picnic, lying in my glass garden, while November rains outside, and to kiss, on the checkered red-and-white,
eyes open, with “boundless enthusiasm…”
there are ways to live that have
nothing to do with righteousness, only with the urge to—
persist. To feel to love to dream; variations on a theme. There are candles, with magnesium, that reignite. Infinitely.
There really was once a Count who ordered a cake for his birthday, “large as any Oven could be found to bake it,” large enough to hold forty-six candles—for his age—thick and tall and sturdy, eighteenth-century candles made to burn and burn on and on and,
I hope he made a wish for each and every one.