Aphrodite's Corner

Richard’s and my friend, Tristine, was in town last week. In our meandering around Paris, she and I met a warm, intelligent, attractive American woman who had once been married to a Frenchman. We discovered this by asking her why her French was so perfect. One thing led to another and before long we were telling stories. Love stories.

I mentioned my experience with Aphrodite (see the last Paris Play post, “Three Short Stories”) and the list I had made of what I wanted in a mate.

Jo Anne was weighing whether to stay in Paris or to return to the U.S.

What would it take to make you want to stay? we asked her.

Tristine and I had a mutual inspiration: what if I interviewed Jo Anne about her experience living as an American woman in Paris and what she was looking for in a relationship?

And call it Aphrodite’s Corner, Tristine suggested.

And so I did. I asked Jo Anne five questions:

1. How did you come to live in Paris?

2. How has your feeling about living here changed over the years?

3. Anything you want to say about being married to a Frenchman, or being a single American woman in Paris?

4. Have you thought about moving back to the U.S?

5. If you could live anywhere, with anyone, what scenario do you see for yourself? And what would be on your list for Aphrodite?

Here is what Jo Anne said:

In the 9^th grade, back in the early ‘70s, a law passed allowing girls to wear pants to school, so I happily discarded my skirts and chose French as a foreign language. The two are linked in my mind as some kind of stepping stone to becoming what my fourteen-year-old brain imagined was a “free woman.”

It has always been a mystery to me exactly why I dreamed of coming to France. It was as if the plans had already been made and I was merely, and quite enthusiastically I might add, following through. Was it the freedom of being so far away from home? Was it the language, the art, or the desire to walk on cobblestones where centuries upon centuries of men walked before me?  

I was nineteen in my sophomore year in college. My mother thought a year in France would make me more “refined” and thus, I imagine, a better prospect for one of the “good catches” in our Boston suburb. Little did she know I had decided to make my own catches, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer.

I fell in love with a Frenchman, became a woman, a mother, and during all this tried desperately to become French…and succeeded! After fifteen years, I lost my accent (almost) entirely and often stumbled over English when speaking to family. Some things were so much easier to explain in French. It was in that language that I became an adult, learned about history, philosophy, politics, motherhood, relationships. And observed my home country through the eyes of Europeans. I had very few English-speaking friends and would go sometimes for months without saying a word in English. I forced myself to speak English to my children but the words they learned were mostly “brush your teeth,” “nighty-night,” and “turn that television off.” 

When “je t’aime” started sounding more real than “I love you,” I knew I was losing an essential part of myself. Thus began a long climb back to re-possessing my language and re-becoming an American, with pride.

My job, working first for an international agent, then a French publisher, has helped a lot in that respect. Dealing constantly with English books and contacts, I dropped a lot of my French reading, refusing to read translations of English books or to watch American movies dubbed in French and becoming openly critical of a bad translation of anything English into French.

This struggle to repossess the “American in me” has lasted from the end of my marriage through two other significant relationships with Frenchmen, roughly twenty years, and continues today.

When I was a single mother I thought about returning to live in the USA. I missed my family a lot, but the main thing that kept me from making the jump was taking my children so far away from their father. After all, they were born in France. I just couldn’t be that selfish.

The strongest pull on my heart to return to the USA came in September 2001. A Swedish colleague rushed into my office and said, “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center, check out CNN.” I was stunned for days, months even. I felt I needed to be “home” and realized then and there that I hadn’t lost the American in me after all.

But that American is a strange emotional and cultural hybrid.

Everything truly intimate, although it might be experienced in French, is translated by my heart into English. Despite all the sincerity of a “je t’aime,” I know it won’t reach that tiny compartment in my heart where those words were first recorded, and believed, in English.

I reached France at the outer limits of childhood, still young and naïve, full of dreams and time to make them happen. All of these things were transformed in French. Maturity came in French and was translated into English. Trips home highlighted what was lost in that translation as I tried to convincingly reword my experience to friends and family.

Today, I’ve reeled back in much of the American in me that has unraveled over the years.

Regarding passions, I've always been interested in too many things and envy those who have just one to concentrate on and perfect.  I love to read of course and write (poetry, short stories, songs) all for my personal pleasure. I'm still waiting for a great idea to inspire me to write a novel.  I enjoy making things with my hands and have dabbled in clay modeling, painting, quilting and all kinds of arts and crafts.

Recently I have taken up archery and find it most enjoyable. I have always been passionate about being a mother, adored pregnancy, and am looking forward to grandchildren (a little further down the line).  

I know that I can never, nor would I wish to, erase either side of the French/American me. My ideal life would be in a loving relationship with an American man, living half the time in Paris and the rest of the time somewhere in the beautiful American countryside. A place where all four seasons can be enjoyed to the fullest.

There is no idolization of American men in that, nor excessive criticism of Frenchmen. It’s that I now know the value of a shared cultural experience, and how different to me the word love is from the word amour.

This American man, ideally in his mid-fifties, will have developed a positive philosophy about life and is open to spirituality.

He is kind, attentive, has a generous heart and is protective of loved ones.

He must have a sense of humor, can be dry, amusingly cynical, but not bawdy unless it’s just the two of us (wink).

Enjoys learning and takes an active interest in our world... culture, politics, ecology, science, history...  and is definitely more Obama than Bush.

Physically in relatively good shape, doesn’t have to be a marathon runner though, just someone who is interested in feeling good and staying healthy but who knows how to indulge from time to time.

Is capable of self-deprecation, but has strong faith and determination to see things through. Clearly speaking, he has high moral standards and is faithful in every sense of the word.

He of course embraces compromise as a means of moving forward.

Is financially independent.

OK, down here on Earth, I have a job, a teenage daughter to support and retirement is still several years in the future. That said, few things are (as they say in French) “engraved in stone,” and I too am open to compromise.

May I end with a word to our dear Aphrodite?

Dearest goddess of love,

You have been here all along and I had shamefully forgotten about you. Thank the heavens your messenger, Kaaren, has come just at the right time and in a way so totally unexpected that I would be crazy not to act upon this chance you have offered. Please use everything in your formidable power, be it arrows, potions, sparks and roses, to help me recreate a loving relationship, as I am, and have always been,

truly yours,

Jo Anne.

                                     *     *     *     *     *     *

A final mot from Kaaren:  On behalf of Aphrodite, I ask you all, does this sound like you? Or like someone you know? Let me know if it does, and I’ll introduce said male to Jo Anne.

Three Short Stories

Story #1: 

Since we’ve been in Paris, we’ve met more than a few American women who’ve lived here longer than we. In response to our question, “What brought you to Paris?” we’ve heard more than a few answer, “I fell in love with a Frenchman. But we’re no longer together.”

Story #2:

We’ve also heard a few people say that they don’t believe in the inner world, the spiritual, the Invisibles, the gods, the stars, magic or myth.

Each of these is a story.

A story that someone has lived.

A story that someone tells him- or herself.

Story #3: 

Both these stories make me think of a third story, a story I lived, which is related to both these prior stories.

In 1994, I was living by myself in an apartment in Venice, California, with a view of the sea from Malibu to Marina del Rey. I had moved there during the Los Angeles riots of 1993. As I moved in around Halloween, I watched the terrible Malibu fires from my windows, an orange snake slithering along the black mountains.

In early 1994, the Northridge earthquake struck my building so forcefully that I leapt out of bed and under my pine dining room table before I was fully awake. I thought the building would collapse and that my life would end there.

And a love relationship ended there as well. I looked back on the two of us and wondered, What was I thinking? He wanted to live in the country; I in town. He wanted more children; I wanted none. He liked constant movement and social life; I liked a balance between going out and staying in. He rarely read; books are as real to me as people and just as important. He was a hearty drinker and smoker; I cared about health. He had no interest in his own inner life; I’d gone as far as I could in exploring my own.

We weren’t suited. Yet we’d stayed together for several years.

Didn’t I know who I was by now? Didn’t I know what I needed in a partner? I felt such weariness, despair, in imagining ever going through this entanglement and breakup again with another man, when anyone looking on from above could have told us: Impossible! Out of the question!

I needed some invisible being who knew all about such things, an expert in love, someone like… Aphrodite! Yes, I needed to have a serious talk with the goddess of beauty and love.

That night I wrote in my journal 100 things I wanted in a mate.

I awakened the next morning with the thought, “Too greedy. Narrow it down to ten.”

It was surprisingly easy. I wrote the following ten things I wanted in a mate in one steady flow:

* Mutual chemistry.

* Mutual adoration.

* Fidelity.

* Communication.

* Has done some serious inner work in healing childhood wounds.

* A reader.

* Preferably a creative type who is capable of being as much of a muse to me as I to him.

* Counter-cultural roots.

* Does not want children, or at least any more than he already has.

* Wants to travel the world.

I said to Aphrodite: “Please bring me a man with all ten of these attributes, or else, if it’s not meant to be, I’ll have the richest life a single woman can have.”

“In the meantime, I’ll work on overcoming my stage fright, and find a place to read my poems in public in Los Angeles.”

I then forgot about the prayer, and began focusing on poetry.

Three Fridays later, I went with an acquaintance to a reading in a Santa Monica bookstore called Midnight Special. (Like so many independent bookstores, it no longer exists.)

I saw a man in a white shirt and Levi’s in the far right of the front row. He looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure from where.

He, who was hosting, stood up halfway through the lineup and read three poems. One about horses, one about a former love, one about taking his dying father to Paris.

I fell back in my chair, barely stopping myself from falling over completely.

“What just happened?!” said my companion.

“I don’t know,” I said. But I did. An arrow had hit me right through the heart.

This is not a metaphor. I felt an arrow pierce my heart with such force it knocked me backwards.

After he read, this poet mentioned that every Saturday afternoon, there was a poetry workshop at Midnight Special that three poets took turns leading. It was free, he said, and all were welcome; he’d worked on his own poems there.

That night I wrote in my journal that I would marry this man.

The next day I awakened early and canceled several appointments. I opened my journal to a poem I’d written about driving through Navajo country in northern Arizona on one of my journeys to pick up paintings as an art dealer between New Mexico, Arizona and California.

I shaped and edited this poem for hours, then drove to the Promenade for the poetry workshop. It was led that week by the very poet whose work had knocked me out the night before.

I had had a better track record as a muse for male artists than I had received from them. So I was nervous when it came time to read my poem.

Richard—for that was his name—began talking about my poem as if he were an x-ray technician of poetry. He said that in the poem’s central metaphor, the unraveling of love being like the unraveling of your own DNA, I'd woven a braid between the three strands of the natural, human and spirit worlds. He then said something so humble that I found it hard to believe: “You’ve done something here that I don’t know how to do, that I’d like to learn how to do.”

Darling one, I said, silently, we have many things to learn from each other, and I for one, will be your glad and willing student and teacher.

There were other poems discussed that day, but I don’t remember them.

After the workshop, our ritual was to all walk down the Third Street Promenade to the Congo Square coffee house. When a group of poets get together, the stories fly.

He and I were startled to learn how many of the same places we’d lived, the same events we’d attended— demonstrations, rock concerts, art events—in the late ‘60s and early '70s in the Bay Area, and later, film and writing conferences in the '80s and '90s in L.A. How was it possible that in more than twenty years we’d never met? Yet this explained why he’d first looked so familiar to me.

Just as it took three weeks from the time I’d sent my wish to Aphrodite to meeting Richard, so it took another three weeks for the romance to burst into bloom.

One Friday night at a Midnight Special poetry reading, I showed him two poems and asked him which I should bring for editing to the Saturday workshop.

“Either,” he said, “Yours are always wonderful. Let’s go get some dinner.” He took my arm and we strolled two blocks to the Broadway Deli, and that was it for him.

Love came aurally for me. For him it came through touch.

In another three weeks we were talking marriage.

What does this story have to do with stories #1 and #2?

Story #3 happened because I do not believe story #2, that the Invisibles do not exist, and because I asked an Invisible, the goddess, Aphrodite, for a story that was not story #1, a story of infidelity and heartbreak.

Richard, it turned out, lived four blocks away from me, on Paloma Avenue in Venice.

Aphrodite is associated with the sea, scallop shells, dolphins, bees, honey, apples, pomegranates, myrtle, rose trees, lime trees, clams, pearls, sparrows and swans. And doves.

And you probably know that paloma means dove.

Happy Birthday

 

In the United States, members of the Teamster's Union take their birthdays off. That's a great idea, so Kaaren took the day off from writing Paris Play. Instead, she and our visiting friend Tristine, for two days made the rounds of Paris publishers, then had two celebratory dinners, one with Tristine, her friend Barbara, and me at our friend Richard's marvelous Lebanese fusion restaurant, Savannah, the second with a group of friends from my French school, L'Alliance Française.

In place of her prose, here's a tribute to the god Hermes, the god of liminal spaces, of entrances and exits, of passages, of doorsills and of windows. Paris has so many doors and windows, in styles from gothic, to baroque, to rococo, to plain, they are an endless fascination: Where do they lead? What do they hide? What do they reveal? How long have they been in service? Do they squeak, or are they smooth operators?

Today, Paris Play is wordless, a silent door or window into our Paris.

--Richard 

 

Writing in Cafés

Most of the time, I write at home, but the other day, mulling over a journal piece I intended to write, I thought, why not try writing in a café today? Especially since the journal post included the mention of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, who used to escape the chill of their apartments by writing in Café de Flore or Les Deux Magots at Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

I would have to try out a few cafés to discover which has the best ambiance, the best conditions for writing.

It’s the hottest April and May on record in Paris, so open windows were one requirement. A good table for writing was another. And not too noisy.

After a brisk 25-minute walk, I arrived at my chosen café. Already, one advantage of writing in cafés was apparent—a good walk stimulates the mind.

What was it Friedrich Nietzsche said? “A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.”

The café was crowded and noisy, but perhaps it would be quieter upstairs. I asked the woman at the cash register, “Are you serving upstairs?”

“Oui, Madame,” said a blonde woman whose hair was unusually short for a French woman.

The upstairs floor was L-shaped. A woman sat at the head of the “L,” a man in a corner at the foot. Both were focused, writing and reading. I picked a table halfway between the two and arranged my notebooks, colored pencils and pen on the table before me.

Behind me there was greenery in the open window that muffled the sounds from the street. In spite of the heat, a slight breeze brushed my shoulders.

A waiter appeared shortly. He was warm and twinkly, if a bit nervous, and took my order for a Badoit and green tea from Japan.

What luck! I’d found my perfect writer’s café on the first try!

I caught up on my soul-map, the daily mandala I draw of twelve colors, a daily check-in that keeps me on track in the twelve realms of my life.

The waiter returned. He seemed nervous, and sure enough, he spilled the sparkling water. But he swiftly recovered, grabbing the bottle, apologizing, drying the table, and wheeling off to bring me a replacement. Nothing on the table had gotten wet.

By the time he returned, I’d finished my mandala, and opened my notebook, ready to begin writing.

A kite string of fluttering women were heading up the stairs. I couldn’t see them yet, but I could certainly hear them, shouting in Italian. They must be on the way to the bathroom, I thought. Such noisy revelers would find no one up here to observe them and little to observe.

But no! Like a gaggle of chattering mockingbirds, they twittered past me, one male among them, and crowded around a table two tables away. Another straggled past in a red shirt, red jeans, a voice like a fire alarm.

How far away could I move and manage to outdistance their voices? I carried my Badoit, tea and notebooks to the opposite end of the room, and slid into the farthest booth. No, still too loud. I moved to the table opposite, directly in front of the two open wings of the window, poured my tea, took a sip and lifted my pen.

A man in a gray suit came up the stairs, looked around the spacious room, and slid into the booth I’d just vacated, directly across from me. He arranged a notebook and book on the table, then stood up and closed the two leaves of the window.

“Oh non, monsieur, s'il vous plaît, il fait trop chaud pour avoir les fenêtres fermées[1].”

He nodded pleasantly and opened one of them, leaving the other closed. “Voilà!” he said.

It was still too hot at my table. I looked around the room. There were at least three other windows, but all were too close to the noisy Italians.

I finished my tea, packed up my bag, and headed downstairs. The man in the gray tailored suit leapt up and reached the stairs just ahead of me. What was he doing?

While I paid at the register, he stood beside me and chatted with the cashier.

I walked a ways to the next appealing café. This one had no upstairs floor. But look! There in the corner, out of the main flow of people and traffic were two empty tables.

Just as I settled in at one, a man signaled me from halfway across the room, accompanied by a younger woman.

He gestured, Was the table next to mine available?

Yes, I nodded. He maneuvered his way through tables and chairs and took a seat against the wall next to me. He turned to me and grinned, as if happy to have company. But where was his female companion…?

I glanced outside and saw that she was the hostess of the restaurant.

A handsome humorless waiter came to take my order: a Perrier and a fresh fruit salad.

“Are you together?” he asked the man to my left.

“Oui,” he said, and pushing his table up against mine, said to me, “Vous permettez?” 

Was I going to humiliate him in front of the waiter and other diners? No.

As soon as the waiter took his order for a beer, he introduced himself.

I told him I was here to write, as soon as I’d finished “supper.”

“Oh,” he said. “You’re a writer. I’m a painter.” And he pulled out photos of his paintings for me to admire.  He looked Spanish, like Javier Bardem, stocky and dark-haired, but his accent was pure Parisian.

Did I have children? he asked.

“No,” I said.

Was I married? 

(If my wedding ring were any thicker it could be refashioned into a bracelet.) “Yes,” I said, “very happily married.”

 

“Ahhh,” he said, with heightened interest.

“Not just married,” I said. “He’s my soul mate.”

“Ah ha!” he said, with even greater relish. (Nothing like a challenge for a hunter.)

My fruit salad and sparkling water had arrived. I would talk to him while I ate, then excuse myself to write.

“And you,” I asked, “have you found your soul mate?”

“Yes,” he said. “She’s older than me. A writer. No children. We’ve been together for a year.”

And then came the key piece of information: “And she’s out of town till Monday.”

“I see,” I said. (And I did.)

“She would like us to live together but I prefer to keep my own place.”

I bet you do, I thought. Lucky woman, I thought, with such a devoted mate.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We were now in tedious territory.

Did he ask for my number? Of course he did.

Did I give it? Just guess.

How much more interesting a conversation would be if a woman said what she was really thinking: An older writer, is she? I must be your type.

Well, yes, as a matter of fact you are.

Just think, if I hadn’t met Richard, and you had met me before your girlfriend—let’s call her Diane—I could be the one begging you to move in with me, and you could try to seduce Diane the instant I left town!

I don’t follow you.

Oh, you know, women are pretty interchangeable, don’t you think?

Well, I don’t know that I’d go that far…

Monsieur, I have an idea. Let me guess ten things about you.

Who would turn down an invitation like that?

All right, he said.

But you cannot speak while I guess. All you can do is tell me how many of my guesses were correct, after all ten. I don’t even want to know which.

All right! he said. You’re on!

1)      You’re alcoholic. (The smell of addictive drinking is different from a beer or two on the breath.)

2)      You have never been faithful to a woman in your life.

3)      Your greatest gift is your lovemaking. You’re not even interested much in painting.

4)      It’s easy for you to pick up women because you’re very handsome.

5)      You feel sad about your life, but you’re not sure why.

6)      You hate solitude.

7)      You think psychotherapy, introspection of any kind is stupid, a waste of time.

8)      There is an emptiness in you that nothing fills.

9)      You have herpes (I can see it on your lip).

10)    You hope that you’ll stumble upon some woman who is not only smart, but wise, to help you make sense of your baffling life.

Nine, he said. But this, he said, touching his lip, is not herpes. I cut myself shaving.

I nodded. It appeared to me that he hadn’t shaved in several days.

I ate my fruit salad, then told him politely that I needed to write.

He smiled and scribbled down his website. “Come to my art show!” he said, then waved goodbye.

I smiled, and took out my notebook, but the writing focus had flown. So I packed up my notebooks and pen, and walked home.

But I cannot tell you a few truths I sensed about him without telling you a truth about myself: the encounter pleased me! We women are divided creatures. We want to get our work done without annoying interruptions. When we’ve found our true love, wild horses can’t tempt us away. Yet, what delight to know we’re still considered fair game for handsome hunters.

The next day I stayed in and wrote for four hours straight. And then had a delicious evening with my true love.

The street art photographed in this edition of Paris Play is primarily by Tristan des Limbes, who has recently been blanketing Paris with marvelous, and occasionally grotesque, drawings.

---

[1] Oh no, sir, please, it’s too hot to have the windows closed.

Der Himmel über Paris

Imagine that you are the two angels in Wim Wenders’ film, “Der Himmel über Berlin,” (“Wings of Desire,” in America, though himmel translates as both "sky" and "heaven"), but instead of Berlin, you are in Paris on the evening of May 17, 2011. You can fly anywhere in the city and overhear conversations inside apartments you pass, or linger and watch and listen to the thoughts of the humans.

You might feel compassion for every human in every dwelling place you pass, including the men and women who make their home on the streets.

But surely there would be certain scenes you'd find more compelling than others. Even angels have preferences.

Surely if you’d passed by the windows of a certain apartment on Boulevard Saint-Germain, and saw a queenly woman dressed in black, with a humorous, wry expression on her face, seated on a divan facing a gathering of men and women eager to hear her stories, you would perch on the windowsill to listen. For this was a woman who’d traveled widely, and interviewed many of the leading artists of our time.

She wore big red sunglasses, red lipstick, and a scarf with a design like black and white piano keys. She wore sandals like those Gertrude Stein wore. She wore a black and white turban on her head like the ones Simone de Beauvoir wore.

And her first story was about Simone de Beauvoir.

Edith Sorel was living in Cuba, married to a Haitian, earning a living as a translator for Fidel Castro of his speeches.  Since he paid by the word and discoursed at length, it was a good job.

Jean-Paul Sartre came to speak in Havana, accompanied by Simone de Beauvoir. The state newspaper, Revolución, wrote an article about the noted writer, Sartre, and his companion, de Beauvoir, without a word about de Beauvoir’s accomplishments.

Edith wrote her first-ever article and fired it off to Revolución, detailing Mme. de Beauvoir’s importance as both a writer and philosopher, whose 1954 book, The Second Sex, was a clarion call for a feminist awakening.

The article was published the next day, and voilà, she received a call the following day from Simone de Beauvoir herself, inviting her to visit them at their hotel in Havana.

Edith knocked at their door, and de Beauvoir opened. She was quite beautiful, with dark hair and blue eyes, yet her voice was shrill. Whereas Sartre, who was the ugliest man Edith had ever seen, had the most beautiful voice.

Edith arranged for the French couple to meet Che Guevara, who now had the post of director of the National Bank. The meeting occurred at 4 a.m. in the bank, and Edith said that because she served as translator among the three of them, she doesn’t remember a word of what was said.

So began her career as a journalist—all because Revolución had not understood the importance of de Beauvoir, but Edith had.

She was hired first by Revolución, then was swapped for a French journalist, and sent to work in Paris. Since she wasn’t paid much, the newspaper supplemented her pay with winters in Cuba.  Her first "major assignment" was covering the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial.

For years, Edith had lunch in Paris every six weeks with de Beauvoir. The writer liked to break from her work for lunch later than most, for exactly two hours, then return to her writing. She was very disciplined, Edith said.

And throughout the time she knew de Beauvoir and Sartre, they always looked at one another as if they’d just fallen in love, each alert for every word of the other, each acting as if they were seeing the other for the first time.

From Paris, she was sent to interview Pablo Picasso in Vallauris for his 80^th birthday celebration.

She was immediately struck by his piercing eyes. Scorpio eyes, she said. Everyone brought him huge, extravagant gifts. Great bottles of champagne and massive quantities of food. Even a large painting painted by the children of the local potters.

Picasso got down on the floor with the children and discussed every detail of the painting: “This bull is very fine, but perhaps his ear could be changed like this…”

He was full of curiosity and excitement, said Edith, just like a child, always curious about everything.

Later, as she was walking in the street with her photographer, a long Lincoln Continental pulled up beside them.

“Hola, chica,” came Picasso’s voice from the back seat. “Get in.”

They climbed in, went with him to a café, where he asked Edith, “Did you like my birthday exposition?”

The photographer kicked her under the table.

“I haven’t seen it,” she said (although she had).

“Then I will take you to see it right now!”

And so, just as the photographer knew would happen, the two of them were led through the show by Picasso, who told them all about each painting while the photographer snapped photos.

Henry Miller… Edith was assigned to interview Henry Miller in Pacific Palisades. He was close to 80 years old at the time, and his wife was nearly 50 years younger than he.

Before Edith could get to her first question, Miller said, "Sex.  Right?  You want me to talk about sex."

She was taken aback, but only for a heartbeat.  "No.  I want you to talk about love." 

Miller looked pleased.

“You married five times. Why did you marry so often?”

“Because you had to marry women then to sleep with them.” (Does this remind you of anyone else, say, Elizabeth Taylor?) “But my great love was a woman I didn’t marry. She was 20 years older. I was 19 at the time.”

(Although Miller may have married for sex each time, his last wife, it is reported, refused to sleep with him because, "You are an old man.")

Everywhere you looked there were paintings, Edith said. Covering all the walls, and even on the ceiling. Henry Miller painted a water color every single day.

Edith made an appointment three months in advance to interview Ingmar Bergman the director of famously angst-ridden films. He was directing a play in Munich, Germany. When she arrived, the Nazi-like guard at the playhouse stopped her. No, she did not have an appointment. No, she could not see Bergman. She asked to speak to his secretary. No, he did not have a secretary.

She raised her voice, in German. The guard made a phone call. Down came Bergman’s secretary, who was appalled; apparently she had forgotten to write the appointment in Bergman’s calendar. However, Bergman’s home was not far from the theater. Perhaps she’d be willing to meet him there? This was even better, Edith said. She always liked to meet people in their own homes; it was more revealing. When she arrived, he was not there, so she poked around, and even read one of his letters.  (Or so she told him, though perhaps she didn’t.)

Bergman was a man with big ears and a big nose, so in photos you couldn’t see how attractive he was.  His height and figure and face all together were quite arresting. He was in an anguish of apology with her. He offered her a drink. She had her usual Scotch, and so did he. Still anguished over the forgotten appointment, he apologized, and then as they talked, they laughed and laughed, and had a wonderful time. The master of Scandinavian angst was a man of tremendous humor and joie de vivre.

The interview with Bergman was in sharp contrast to her interview with the comedian-filmmaker Woody Allen ("He had flaming red hair, you know.") in his apartment in New York City. You would recognize it from “Annie Hall,” "Manhattan," and “Hannah and her Sisters.” All the familiar rooms.

She began by asking him about his prolific output, making a movie once a year.

“Yes,” he said.

She asked him various questions, to which he responded “Yes.” Or “No.”

He offered her a drink. It was only 11 a.m., but she needed a Scotch. It was apparent to her by now that she’d need the skills of both a dentist and a psychiatrist to get Woody to talk.

She asked him about the films of Ingmar Bergman.

“Bergman!” said Woody Allen. “He’s my god!”

“Have you met him?” Edith asked.

“No,” said Allen.

“Well, I have,” said Edith, and then, beginning with her stories of Bergman, the interview flowed.

We who were perched on the windowsill wanted more stories from Edith. But a documentary is being made about the ABCs of her great life, and perhaps we’ll hear more of her stories then.

Even angels have to wait for things to come forth in their own time. And we have all eternity to receive them.