2 weeks have passed....

I went on a trip to England. It was fun but also emotional. The day of my flight, the library called and said they had one of the books I asked for through an inter library loan. It was the George Ullman's book I've been wanting to read for years. I read a lot of it on the plane to London but started having some drink to calm my nerves. I didn't mention this earlier but I experience some anxiety before a flight. I have not yet reconnect to my feelings for Rudy or the material I have or want to create for/about him. I am posting only to flag that I am making my way back to these things but it's taking awhile. The trip was an emotional one because someone in my family (in England) passed away at a young age and with unfortunate circumstances. The family is also very fun and interesting to be around. It was a good time that has made a strong impression on me and I am again trying to get back to who I am since I've been back. Hopefully, this will happen soon.I adore Rudy and perhaps watching his movies will help me along.

* From Rudy's: My Private Diary: We left London by motor and made head for Croyden, the aviation field. I had done considerable aviating before the war, and so it was, in a sense, no new experience for me. Excepting that I had never used the closed machine, as it were. I mean, like sitting out with the pilot, the winds of all the heavens blowing on you, free, disembodied, as near a flighted bird as man can be. Sitting as we did on this trip, in the stuffy enclosure of a tonneau effect with some eight or ten other people (not to mention the four dogs) took the very essence of the sport out of the flight for me. Now and then some of the passengers would be affected with a degree, mild or otherwise, of air-sickness, and that took a great part of the romance out of the trip as well.
Natacha and I had wondered how the little Pekes would take the strange and unusual excursion, but they took it with the very sublimity of fatalism, stronger in animals than it is in Man. they didn't even seem to know that they were flying, and if they did know it, their composure and sleep proclivities were absolute.
On the whole, we had a pleasant enough trip, and Natcha, for one, enjoyed it better, I think, than she would have done in an open plane. this one was kinder to her hat and hair.
We landed, gracefully and without accident, at Le Bourget. To be frank, no one of us was sorry.

When I first saw this photo from the book, Rudolph Valentino The Man Behind the Myth, I thought, Rudy didn't like that flight but Natacha seemed to enjoy it. Above he writes how he enjoyed flying earlier in his life with the air on your face and being right behind the pilot. But in an enclosed plane without the pilot near, he didn't enjoy it as much.

Also, I am glad Rudy was able to fly in his life time. I would think way back then that wasn't the norm and even remember at one point feeling sorry he never had the pleasure because I thought he'd like the experience. Rudy, outside of the Internet, I think was able to enjoy a great many things that are still with us today. So if he happened to come back from beyond for a visit he wouldn't be hit with a lot of culture shock and would probably get up to date very quickly...

Rudy's diary: when he received his beloved dog, Kabar.

I love Rudy's diary. His voice, his words, what could possible be better. I'm going to try to post some of my most favorite excerpts from this book before I have to give it back (it's on loan).

This is recorded in his diary, when he met his faithful dog Kabar who died in 1929. Who howled uncontrollably at the time of Rudy's death making a woman driving close by to Falcon Lair lose control of her car:

One very charming thing happened to me this morning. One of the very many things Hebertot has done for me since I have been in Paris. I admired tremendously a marvelous Dauberman-Pincher dog of his and this morning he sent his chauffeur to me with another dog of the same species, and equally beautiful specimen. He came in person a little later and asked me how I liked him. I told him that I was quite mad about the animal and would like to buy him. Hebertot told me that I must accept him "as a present, a souvenir" and now I am the proud processor of Kabar. Natacha and I named him after considerable eager discussion. You might have thought that it was the christening of a child, so particular we were about the suitability of the name to the beast. Another member of our family to travel with us.

Like Rudy (and (grumbling) Natasha) I love animals too and have two westies and one cat which all take over my bed when I crawl in it at night. Thank goodness it's a big enough bed (some times it doesn't seem to be though and they sleep like logs).

I'm going to try to write some fiction tonight. I feel bad about taking so long but work has been very hectic and it's time to change major gears in the story and get to the fantasy stuff, which may be hard for me to write but I'm going to do my best, this is just a lark of my own fancy.

The Magic of Rudolph Valentino

I have had a chance to read most of it. It's not a big book but it is packed with detail. He uses years as chapters. He seems to have also approached Rudy's life like a reporter and just states the facts in neat, little, packed paragraphs. I will tell you now, I'm not crazy about the book. It strives to hard to be as objective as possible. Hardly fitting for a moving, tender, passionate, whip-lash of emotions kind of man, like Rudolph Valentino. So, just where is the magic, Norman?

I was surprised to see George Ullman, add a foreward to it, and smirked at the very short acknowledgement he gave. I want to read his book most of all because I really think the man had the most experience with Rudy to refer too and it will come through every word he writes about him, weather he aimed to do this or not. People always write between the lines you just need to know where to look.

The one thing I did appreicate from this book, is the recorded incident with Rudy running after Natasha's train. But it was George who wrote it first but it was presented here in this book as well. And I liked that George noted that Rudy was the greatest lover in the movies because he was really the greatest lover there ever was. (or something to that effect).

I also enjoyed the recorded incident when Rudy took a break from Son of the Sheik he took a walk around the lot and saw an actress in a sled, with two horses hooked to itand on a whim, Rudy got in next to her and sent them all off into town. I never read about anything like this before and I thought it was so endearing and so much like Rudy --- he was such a kid at heart and so adventerous.

The book describes in long, boring detail the Christmas tree Rudy and Natasha decorated (or as he always refers to them "the Valentinos"; and with that in mind, this book would have been the chosen bio of Natasha, for her and Rudy because it was so flat emotionally and impersonal) and how it was a tree given from someone's yard, after a much exhausted search for one while in France when they shared the holidays with Natasha's family. And how it caught fire and well, there were at least 2 pages of this incident. Also filling at least 2 pages, he goes into the trouble the Hudnuts had trying to view Rudy's movies that he sent them with a projector that came in pieces was very heavy and hard to get together let alone run the movie properly. Yet, he offers only a sentence here or there, to refer to the crumbling marriage between "the Valentinos". Bah!

So, I think when it comes to books so far My Private Diary is the best because it's from Rudy himself. Then, the Madam Valentino book which is wonderful and so well written and the last for me being Rudolph Valentino the Man Behind the Myth because it's one I think Rudy would have liked above all others.

It's been awhile since I've read Dark Lover, I should probably look into that one again.

I got another book I requested. I got "The Magic of Rudolph Valentino". I'm excited to read it. I'm also going to do my best to get some more Valentino fiction done. I have to still edit the last one and would have this week but my work week was a bit off kilter and kept me distracted and a bit off center.

I also am still slowly making a slow but steady jaunt through My Private Diary. I enjoy reading it so much and I don't want it to ever end.

Last night, I was finally able to watch parts of The Eagle and parts of Son of the Sheik. I haven't had a chance to because again work and life have been keeping things unsteady ... but I did and I was again, like everytime I watch him, (especially in Son of the Sheik) wounded -- but wounded in a good way. What is it about this man and actor that provokes such passion. He may not be able to physically kiss where he is now, but in these scenes he spirtually kisses you. I went to bed with a deep feeling of desire in my chest and tried to sleep but had a hard time falling to sleep because I kept thinking so much about him, I was worried -- and I know this may sound a bit odd --- that my thinking of him and all that he was and could be and the time he lived and how he is still so alive to me, that my longing is calling out to things from the great beyond. So, although I am at times, like last night, enthralled with the feelings he provokes in me I'm also a bit scared because I worry that there are places in life we can go and there are places we shouldn't...and I haven't quite decided if this is something that is ok to do or not, lust after a man who's time on earth has passed.


Ok enough crazy talk. :)

quote from Rudy's: My Private Diary

I've been a busy gal these last 2 days but wanted to leave a couple of quotea I just adored from the book:

It has been said that I have touched the underlying, but very real and profound vein of Romance. It is, at least, an explanation. My explanation.

-- Rudolph Valentino (My Private Diary)
(I love this quote above because it's so true!)

I love children. And I would like, some day, to have a large family of them. People speak of romance... well, but the heart of romance lies, a lovely, tremendous bud, in the heart of a child, in the hearts of all the children of the world. Children are romance. they are the beginning and they are the end. They are romance, before the white wings are clipped, before ever they have trailed in the dry dust of disillusion.

-- Rudolph Valentino (My Private Diary)

Raising kids (w/someone like Rudy) would be romantic and beautiful. I understand what he is saying in that with kids there is a heavenly innocence that not only blesses them but those who loves them. I know that Madonna said when she had Lourdes she felt she was healing. There is something very powerful about the innocence of children as well as their own "romantic" curious nature in the life they are discovering around them.

Ok goodnight darlings.

Rudy's: My Private Diary

My son called me at work and told me, "The library called. They say your book is in."

I was excited and hearing my excitement, he asked, "What is it about?"

I told him I would tell him later. I didn't want to say over the phone while I was at work.

"It's that actor isn't it?"

I gushed a yes. I think it's funny that he knows there is a certain "actor" I'm into.

When I got to the library I found out it was My Private Diary that came, one of three I requested and the first. I am reading it now. First I opened it and read just parts of it, not full sections because I'll be reading it through, cover to cover and I don't want to hit on pages and pages of words I've already read when I'm curious about what I haven't read.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that Rudy talks and reminisces a great deal about his past. He puts a lot of detail into these pages and I think it's wonderful that he was so open when he wrote the diary. I know that he may have wanted to write about things he knew his fans would find interesting but that doesn't make what he says, less important or less truthful. I since reconciling my feelings over Natasha's abandonment of him as well as being his one true love, and can enjoy the pages where he brings her in very close. Thankfully. It would be a shame to have issues for this woman who was a large part of Rudy's life, while reading his words, and accounts of their life together.

The other thing that struck me is one part where he talked about his loneliness. To me when he writes about it, it is like his greatest fear. Like a monster from his past he never ever wants to see again, which of course very sad, knowing just a year later he would have to face this monster once again, and in my opinion, he put up a good fight but that monster ultimately took his life.