CarrollBlog

A small thing that makes me sad: years ago I bought a tattered postcard at the Vienna flea market for the equivalent of five cents. From the moment I saw it in an old shoebox, it was so captivating that it held me in its thrall a long time. Eventually during a move to a new apartment the postcard was lost and I never found it again. The photo on it was of beautiful young woman wearing a 1920's hairdo and clothes, sitting flanked on either side by two handsome men in wrinkled French Foreign Legion uniforms. Real BEAU GESTE or THE ENGLISH PATIENT stuff. The sepia photograph must have been taken in the 20's or 30's in a barren desert camp somewhere, judging from the background. I always wondered what the backstory of the picture could be. Was one of the men her husband or brother that she had journeyed from Paris or London to visit? Or were both men Legionnaires who had met and fallen in love with her out there in the middle of that desolate nowhere? Naturally the eventual resolution of their triangle had to be tragic or triumphant or... Perhaps she was a nurse who volunteered to work in that end of the world spot-- One of those impossibly brave and adventurous women like Beryl Markham, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti or Isak Dinesen. I loved that photograph. Often I played with the idea of writing a book around it.
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interesting concept for a book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V4QrekU1Wk&fmt=22