Arthur Less is a gay. He is not a successful writer but well known in the literature world by having been a lover of a famous poet Robert for almost twenty years. Then Less was in love with his good friend Carlos’ son Freddy. The relationship had lasted for nine years. However Freddy eventually found his true love and was going to get married with Tom. A confused and miserable middle-aged Less chose to take an around-the-globe trip, flying through Mexico, France, Morocco, Italy, India, and Japan, aiming implicitly to avoid attending Freddy’s marriage ceremony and trying to divert the sorrows deep in his heart.
Sahara desert is a magnificent place to easily trigger our mind to reflect our life.
“It is, after all, almost miracle they are here. Not because they’ve survived the booze, hashish, migraines. Not that at all. It’s that they’re survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life, to have make it to fifty and to have make it here: to this frosted-cake landscape, there mountains of gold, the little table they can now see sitting on the dune, set with olives and pita and glasses and wine chilling on ice, with the sun waiting more patiently than any camel for their arrival…”*
Sleeping beside camels under “the most excellent canopy, this majestical roof, this amazing mirrored coverlet, the stars…there are enough stars for everyone tonight, and among them shine the satellites, those counterfeit coins…”*
There are enough stars for everyone on earth. The question is which one(s) would be your choice and the one(s) so remote is/are really the love of your life.
What is the love of your life？
“You read poems about it, you hear story about it, you hear Sicilians talk about being struck by lightning. We know there’s no love of your life. Love isn’t terrifying like that. It’s walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it’s doing taxes, it’s cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It’s having a ally in life. It’s not fire, it’s not lightning…”*
What is the love of your life？That is the question.
*：“LESS,” by Andrew Sean Greer
2021/7/17 LESS Damakey
