In the past few days, I've watched The End of the Affair and The Quiet American - two films that are both based on books by Graham Greene. I've always liked Graham's work. He wrote about colonialism, war and the pain of loving someone you cannot have. He built a literary career out of it. He returned time and time again to doomed love and its allegorical relationship to death and the end of an era. As much as the moth loves the flame, they can never be together, for one will extinguish the other.

In the End of the Affair, Graham Greene's character employs a private detective to steal his lover's diary. Reading those pages, he discovers the real reason for the end of their affair. But today, our diaries are readily available on the net. There is no need for such subterfuge.

I struggle to keep my diary truthful. I don't lie, but I find myself censoring all the time. I will delete in the morning that which I wrote the previous night. Dewy lines of thought that condense in the coolness of dusk, evaporate in the clarity of daylight.

You could be reading one of those mysterious disappearing passages now. Like illicit lovers between sheets, these ideas are here only for a quickie or a one night stand.

Some truths disappear because they have been unfaithful. When you're not looking, they have all sorts of promiscuous meanings and say things you never dreamt they would say. Fucking words! You can't even trust the ones you love.

But sometimes, truths are replaced simply because a few lines of jazz says it all.

You wanted to break up before we grew to hate each other. It seems ridiculous now. How could you think I would not hate you? But who would've guessed? Not a day goes by that I don't still think of you, and miss all that we had.

We may never meet again, on the bumpy road to love.
Though I'll always keep the memory of,
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced til three
The way you changed my life...
No, they can't take that away from me.

And that's the last of it. No more Gershwin for you. You're with George Michael now.