Issue #11

Anam Cara*

*(Gaelic for “soul friend”)

Headline: “The story behind this striking photo of the supermodel and the ‘nobody from Ohio.’”

First reaction: Since when did the Washington Post become Us magazine?

Second reaction: This “nobody from Ohio” is being used for a publicity stunt by a desperate-for-attention celebrity.

Third: . . . But if it’s real . . . and maybe it is . . . how strange and sweet is life!

The photograph shows Paulina Porizkova, tall and slender, embracing her much-shorter friend Mistie Savage-McGuire. They look comfortable in each other’s arms. Paulina’s long beachy hair falls atop Mistie’s bald head as they nuzzle together. Their facial expressions compliment but don’t match each other—Paulina’s is relaxed, peaceful; Mistie’s joyful, excited.

The two women met online in the summer of 2021. Paulina was getting trolled for posting too many crying selfies. (Her husband, Ric Ocasek of the Cars, had just died and left her out of his will.) Mistie, battling colorectal cancer, reached out to express sympathy. That was the beginning of what seems to be a genuine friendship.

Reading the story of the supermodel and the Ohioan unlocked a memory of a poem I’ve loved for a long time, “The Same Inside” by Polish poet Anna Swir. (I posted “The Same Inside” on my blog Poem Elf ten years ago, along with a personal story that I will resurrect here.)

The Same Inside
by Anna Swir
translated by Czeslaw Miloscz


Walking to your place for a love feast
I saw at a street corner
an old beggar woman.

I took her hand,
kissed her delicate cheek,
we talked, she was
the same inside as I am,
from the same kind,
I sensed this instantly
as a dog knows by scent
another dog.

I gave her money,
I could not part from her.
After all, one needs
someone who is close.

And then I no longer knew
why I was walking to your place.

I love the breezy way Swir is able to speak from her heart without sounding overly sentimental. She connects with readers the same as she connects with the beggar woman in the poem—with a marked absence of irony and guardedness. As far as I’m concerned, it’s no coincidence that Porizkova, like Swir, is eastern European—the particular brand of open-hearted soulfulness that would lead a famous woman like Porizkova to pursue friendship with a sympathetic stranger seems to belong to those peoples.

Per The Post’s reporting,

“She hugs likes she means it. I hug like I mean it,” McGuire said of that moment [in the photograph]. “I didn’t want to let go. I don’t want to let her go.”

Sounds very like—

I could not part from her.
After all, one needs
someone who is close.

I have a similar story, albeit less dramatic and less out-in-the-open. I am, after all, Irish, not eastern European.

One summer I met a woman at a party and very quickly something strange happened. We formed a connection so immediate and palpable that I look back on it all these years later with wonder.

We didn’t have anything in common as far as I could tell. She was a gentle person, ladylike, very different than me. Her posture would have earned accolades from a Swiss finishing school, and she was well-dressed and perfectly groomed, two phrases that will only apply to me when I’m laid out in my coffin. Her easy laugh and kindly smile were natural even as her demeanor was somewhat formal.

We fielded questions, indirectly and silently trying to figure out why we felt this remarkable connection. Sometimes you meet people and your brains connect, or your experiences connect; or maybe your senses of humor, your interests, the way you look at things are the same. This was none of those. We just understood each other. Or as Swir puts it—

we talked, she was
the same inside as I am,
from the same kind

We stayed together much of the evening. We toured the house of our host. We ate hors d'oeuvres, we re-filled our drinks. We didn’t talk about anything important or intimate, and yet our bond felt important and intimate. And tender. And unexpected. This attraction was like a “Some Enchanted Evening” moment—

Some enchanted evening,
You may meet a stranger
You may meet a stranger
Across a crowded room

—minus the romance. Nor was it friendship. I liked her but we traveled in different circles and I didn’t expect to see her much afterwards. I can’t describe it to you. It sounds made-up or silly. But I tell you, our connection was as real as the chair I’m sitting in.

We saw each other once or twice a year after that, each time briefly. There was always anticipation that there would be more, more conversation, deeper conversation. There never was. Maybe I’m projecting my feelings on to her, but I sensed we both wished we had taken advantage of our acquaintance and pursued a real friendship. I admire Mistie and Paulina for that, for seizing the opportunity for deep connection.

I wish them well. Mistie has stopped treatment for her metastatic cancer, so their time together will probably be limited. May it be sweet.

*

Interlude with Rossano Brazzi

Speaking of “Some Enchanted Evening” (from Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific)—one of my brothers-in-law has made it his signature song. He can’t carry a tune, but what he lacks in accuracy he makes up in volume and intensity. His version is all comedy, but the real thing is truly gorgeous. If you are in need of some beauty today, give it a listen, or better yet, sing along.

*

Go hop yourself

On an episode of The Rest is History about the voyages of Captain Cook to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia, the podcast hosts relay an anecdote about 18^th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson that’s worth sharing.

Upon his return to England, one Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied Cook on his voyage, had dinner with Samuel Johnson and his biographer Daniel Webster. Banks entertained his dining companions with descriptions of the flora and fauna he encountered in lands no European had been to before. I’ll turn the story over to the Captain Cook Society:

On the 29th August 1773, Johnson and Boswell were visiting Scotland and while dining with the Rev. Alexander Grant at Inverness, Johnson mentioned the first sighting of the kangaroo in the Endeavour River area in July 1770.

He is reported to have "... volunteered an imitation of the animal. The company stared ... nothing could be more ludicrous than the appearance of a tall, heavy, grave-looking man, like Dr Johnson, standing up to mimic the shape and motions of a kangaroo. He stood erect, put out his hands like feelers, and, gathering up the tails of his huge brown coat so as to resemble the pouch of the animal, made two or three vigorous bounds across the room."

This story delights me for two reasons. First, it’s amazing to consider that only 250 years ago the western world had not seen or heard of a kangaroo; and second, the esteemed Samuel Johnson hopped across a dining room like a kangaroo.

There are many people, famous and otherwise, people self-important, overly-serious, excessively literal or just plain ill-tempered, who would be well-served by hopping across the room like a kangaroo. Hereafter I will picture these people, before they annoy or enrage me, hopping across the room like a kangaroo, their hands set as feelers, their coattails gathered in like a pouch.

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