things move around

I am whizzing round hairpins in a truck driven by my host, Fernando.  Fernando’s son has put together a mix CD of his favourite gravel-voiced crooners, which mingles cacophonously with the pained squealing of the tires.  ¡Manejes rápido, Fernando!, I say.  You drive fast!

You think I drive fast?  I see trees of green, red roses too  You must see me five years ago. I was crazy man!  I see them bloom for me and you  I drived - drive-ed? - faster than everyone!  And I think to myself, what a wonderful world  But after I kill the burro I say “enough”.  I see skies of blue and clouds of white  I kill a horse, too, and goats - many goats.   The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night  But after the burro - how you say? - I change my ways.  And I think to myself, what a wonderful world  I was going one hundred fifty kilometers per hour.   The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky  My friend shout “burro!” It was 20 metres away!  Are also on the faces of people going by  You know burros - they don’t move! I turn the wheel fast!  I see friends shakin’ hands, sayin’ “How do you do?”  I hit the burro on the side - it spin round and round!  They’re really saying “I love you” I thought I was dead man!  I hear babies cryin’, I watch them grow  When I get out of the truck - my legs they were wet, you know?  They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know  I had piss-ed my pants!  And I think to myself, what a wonderful world  (singing) and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

I am in Chile for a couple of weeks, surrounded by cacti and stray dogs.

The other night I went for a stroll just after sundown and noticed two stray dogs frolicking amorously on the otherwise deserted beach, as the moon, just past full, hung low over the hills to the east.

No se puede vivir sin amar - I’ve been reading Under the Volcano.

Behooded thug on bus, talking into cellphone: What’s your location? [Pause] What is your location? [Pause] What’s y- Where are you?

In the basement of the building where I work is a food court with a wide array of appaling eateries offering thrice-debased versions of various cuisines. A couple of weeks ago I was walking through this food court on my way to somewhere else when I noticed that a portion of the seating had been cleared and a series of booths set up; it was to do with an “International Food Fair”, according to the signs. I took a large cardboard plate and walked past each booth collecting samples of the outlandish delicacies on offer. When I sat down I had some amazing things on my plate - fried jellyfish with tapioca, gazelle’s heart (that was delicious, pure and dark and soft), a kind of latke with water chestnuts in it - and I set to animatedly. But at length I came to an enormous beetle, fully three inches long and two wide, which although apparently dead didn’t seem to have been cooked at all. It was warm. I looked questioningly at a woman sitting near me and she said “it’s OK. It’s microwaved.” Then she took a big bite of her own beetle, crunching through the abdomen with hyperreal Canadian teeth. I copied her and to my surprise found that the texture was smooth and creamy, like fondant, not at all crunchy, and the taste was bitter and invigorating. Lustily, I bit again, but this time a liquid gushed out in my mouth and a sweet, putrid sensation spread through my tongue and gums, followed by a stinging rush which made me clutch my jaw in agony. The woman said disinterestedly: “did you eat the thorax? You must have hit a venom sac.” I stood up and reeled through the food court, eyes watering with pain. It felt as though the left side of my face, my cheek and the corner of my mouth, were being seared with hot pins. Gradually the pain ebbed and subsided from the excruciating to the merely intense; by this time I had found my way to the washroom and was trying to fit my face under the tap. After some time in this pose I looked in the mirror and noticed three blemishes on my left cheek: two close together, near the corner of my mouth, and one about an inch further out. They were small, red indentations with minuscule white barbs stuck at the centre.

At the medical clinic the doctor asked me if I had a match. Eventually we found someone in the waiting room who had a lighter, and the doc managed to burn away the three blemishes. I still have a numbness where the marks were but they tell me that ought to go away in a couple of weeks.

Consider “his” recent decisive pronouncements on biofuels:

While I am very much conscious and aware of these problems, at the same time you need to constantly look at having creative sources of energy, including biofuels. Therefore, at this time, just criticising biofuel may not be a good solution. I would urge we need to address these issues in a comprehensive manner.

At this time I wouldn’t make any definitive judgment or definitive plans, in particular vis-à-vis these biofuels…

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, you knew where you were. I mean he was obviously made up, there was no fucking around. Kofi Annan was Morgan Freeman’s best role. But this Ban character - or should that be moon character? - mooncalf? - he’s plausible. I’m wondering whether he might be harbouring that dirty secret called existence.

Tidal waves, according to Google:

A wind so slow as to be a stillness
deposits us in a mist of must,
settles us deftly in the dullness

of the house’s husk; we come to rest
and in diurnal dusk begin our work:
ekeing toeholds, making anchors fast

in the vertex of lath and joist, the crook
of crumbled dado, in every crack inhuming
ourselves in the soft absorbent dark.

Epicene, we set about terraforming:
transmute dust into mould, mould
murk into form in the gloaming,

until in a nook a huddled fold
crowds putative and innocuous
and we have colonised a world

without photosynthetic fuss,
stirring sterility into fullness
inexorably. There’s no quelling us.