An Origin Story

It seems like HBO is intent on playing In Her Shoes like every night this week. So I’ve been watching this. I remember the first time I saw it, I had never heard this poem (which Cameron Diaz’s character reads haltingly (because she’s dyslexic) for this old dying English professor(and as you’d imagine it’s horrible, such a bad actress)before:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

As a result I never realized this was where Tanouye’s blog came from. So it always strikes me now as I watch this on HBO. It makes you wonder is Tanouye trying to focus on writing and that’s why he choses this blog name. Or is focused on losing something? Or is he similarly focused on being snobby and quoting some poem? Prolly all three. Still. I like the poem.