Girl of the Day #2: Thisbe

[I don't plan to go with the separated lovers theme forever, but it's very apt for now. Girl of the Day is also a good way to make fun of myself by showing that what I wrote for Modern Love has been written a million times before. Oldest in the book.]

If you've read A Midsummer Night's Dream, you may remember the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. When we read that play in 7th grade, my English teacher pointed out the forbidden love and double suicide (prompted by one thinking the other is dead) and then spelled it out for us: "Hey kids, sound familiar? Romeo and Juliet ain't the first!"

Pyramus and Thisbe (like R&J, and Tony and Maria, and the rest) were kept apart by their parents. They were neighbors, and there was a convenient crack in the wall between their houses. So Pyramus and Thisbe would talk. Eventurally bad stuff ensued. This we all know.

In Metamorphoses Ovid told the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as follows:

They conversed by signs and glances, and the fire burned more intensely for being covered up. In the wall that parted the two houses there was a crack, caused by some fault in the structure. No one had remarked it before, but the lovers discovered it. What will not love discover! It afforded a passage to the voice; and tender messages used to pass backward and forward through the gap. As they stood, Pyramus on this side, Thisbe on that, their breaths would mingle. “Cruel wall,” they said, “why do you keep two lovers apart? But we will not be ungrateful. We owe you, we confess, the privilege of transmitting loving words to willing ears.” Such words they uttered on different sides of the wall; and when night came and they must say farewell, they pressed their lips upon the wall, she on her side, he on his, as they could come no nearer.

What can I say. The mingling breath makes me a little jealous.

This might be another nail in the coffin of this blog's annoying wannabe-intellectualness, but now I've got to mention the Decameron (by Boccaccio). I went to Columbia; they make us read these things. The Decameron itself is a story of disease and seclusion. The frame for the stories told within the Decameron is that the Black Death is on a rampage, and a handful of unaffected people quarantine themselves out in the country, where they tell stories to pass the time. One of the stories takes off from Pyramus and Thisbe: a woman whose husband has confined her to their house wants to make said husband jealous, so she starts flirting with her young male neighbor via the crack in her wall that looks into his bedroom.

Another story told in the Decameron is that of Friar Cipolla. Cipolla is the Italian word for onion. There is more than one reason this name is fitting: he's a man with many layers and not much core, and he's also from the town of Certaldo, which at the time was known for its onions. Why is this relevant? The word "cipolla" gives up the word "cepacia." Cepacia means "of or like an onion." Rotting onions are the number one home of this f*cking mean bacteria.

My friend has a theory that for this reason, cystics do not like onions. I'm the exception to her "rule." I like onions as much as the Aussie guy in Outback commericals. And when there's one in my fridge (a fresh one, thank you), it makes me think of a certain someone. Bittersweet.