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Dolphins were Monkeys

Alex Garland’s The Tesseract (which I’ve borrowed from the library) is too good. I prefer it to The Beach, even. And no, I’m not biased just because the story is set in Manila.

Reading it is like watching a movie. So forgive me, but I’m going to quote.

This is the way it is. Galaxies drift away from each other like painted dots on an expanding balloon, and hydrogen atoms have a single proton. There are hundreds of millions of hydrogen atoms in a single drop of water. Galaxies contain hundreds of millions of stars.

Nine planets orbit our star. We are not at the centre of our solar system, and our solar system is not at the centre of our galaxy, and our galaxy is not at the centre of the expanding balloon.

Totoy’s mother isn’t going to hell, she’s in it. Your father isn’t in hell, because nobody is. And he isn’t in paradise, because nobody’s there either. When a street gang chases you down unfamiliar streets, when you hit the pavement outside Lagaspi Towers at two hundred miles an hour, nothing happens.

Nothing happens.

* * *

Tribute to blue skies, swimming pools, and grass (with scorpions)

2004 06 09 Life in France Comments (4)

Because she had a waterlily in her left lung

“THE MANAGEMENT gave Colin plenty of money – but it was too late. Everyday he had to go and see people. THey gave him a list and he had to bring bad tidings a day before they were going to happen.

Everyday he went out into the crowded streets or into society. He went up and down thousands of stairs. Nobody was pleased to see him. They threw pots and pans at his head, drove fierce harsh words through his ears, and then kicked him out of their doors. He got well paid for this and pleased the management. For once he kept his job. It was the only thing he could do well – get himself kicked out.

He was harrowed by fatigue which stiffened his knees and hollowed his cheeks. His eyes saw only the ugliness of people. He went on telling them terrible things that were going to happen. He went on being chased away by sticks, stones, blood, tears and curses.

He went up the steps, along the corridor and knocked, taking another step back almost immediately. People knew as soon as they saw his big black helmet so they treated him badly, but Colin couldn’t complain as he was being paid to do it. The door opened. He said his piece and went away. A heavy block of wood hit him in the back of the neck.

He looked at the next name on the list and saw that it was his own. Then he threw down his helmet and he walked home slowly with his heart as heavy as lead, for he knew that by tomorrow Chloe would be dead.”

- Boris Vian, Froth on a Daydream

2002 05 16 Comments (0)

Prealable de l’action foudroyante

“This is what accounts for the strange and characteristic mythology of the zombi. Everything is zombi. Be watchful, be suspicious of everything. Their charming or reassuring forms? A snare! A trap! Beware the crab limping down the street, the rabbit making off in the night, the over-friendly and over-seductive woman: zombi, zombi, I tell you! Recognize that humanity and animality and the whole of nature is conspiring against you.

Don’t confuse it with the vulgar ghost that has become a zombi through abuse of language. Equally, don’t confuse it with the Haitian zombi, that docile and conscientious robot, that compliant living dead. The Martiniquan phenomenon is brutal in another way. You are afraid. You are suspicious. Of what? Of everything. Of evil affirming itself, like the evil that disguises itself. Beware of being; but at the same time beware of appearance…”

— Rene Menil and Aime cesaire

La di doo

If I had a Destination:Anywhere ticket in my hand RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE, then it’ll be bound for Haiti, because this obsession of mine over zombies has reached a boiling point. Martiniquan folklore is a melancholic alcoholic! Three more pages of Carribean culture and poetry, please, and no salt on mine, thanks very much !

Listening to: Duke Ellington, imported especially from my unassuming friend’s studio. Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah!

2002 02 06 Comments (0)

At the Window | A la Fenetre

“I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was a time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference. I have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because i had nothing to say. The necessity of speaking and the desire not to be heard. My life hanging only by a thread.

There was time when I seemed to understand nothing. My chains floated on the water.

All my desires are born of my dreams. And i have proven my love with words. To what fantastic creatures have I entrusted myself, in what dolorous and ravishing world has my imagination enclosed me? I am sure of having been loved in the most mysterious of domains, my own. The language of my love does not belong to human language, my human body does not youch the flesh of my love. My amorous imagination has always been constant and high enough so that that nothing could attempt to convince me of error.”

-Paul Eluard

I amthinking of Paul Eluard. The nonsense of Dadaism, the strength of Surrealism, Art and my relations to it, and what it means go on without a label.

2001 11 30 Arty Stuff Comments (0)

Stolichnaya Vodka on my desk on a Monday morning

A tiny bottle of Russian vodka. I like little bottles, they look so nice and dignified. Especially coloured ones. It’s beside my PC. It looks satisfied there.

Saturday night halfway through a game of Pictionary at Gari’s annual CAM party, I heard a sophomore say, “Print is dead.”

If print is dead, then why did she have a “How to Build Effective Websites” book in her hand?

Exactly my point.

People I don’t personally know have been asking me questions. I’ll answer some. What is :

Weezer (Green Album)The last record I’ve purchased? Been singing Island in the Sun nonstop.
Shanghai BabyThe last book I’ve read? I finished it last night, or rather, this morning.
The first thing I see in the morning? It’s such a nice picture, and it’s stuck on my computer monitor.
What do I loathe? You dare ask me.
The latest gift I’ve received? Just yesterday night at Kilimanjaro, over the Ethiopian coffee I was thoughtfully brooding over, my friend Honey wrote something down on a tissue for me. I like it very much. I like these sort of things.

Well, I don’t know if the vodka counts as my latest gift… and anyway, I can’t scan it.

2001 08 20 Music
Musings Comments (0)

Helpful Elevators

Excerpt from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe“Yeah, yeah,” said Zaphod as the elevator doors opened.

“Hello,” said the elevator sweetly, “I am to be your elevator for this trip to the floor of your choice. I have been designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you, the visitor, into these offices. If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have recently been installed in the offices of the Galactic tax department, the Boobiloo Baby Foods and the Sirian State Mental Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives will be delighted to welcome your visits, sympathy and happy tales of the outside world.”

“Yeah,” said Zaphod, stepping into it, “what else do you do besides talk?”

“I go up,” said the elevator, “or down.”

“Good,” said Zaphod, “we’re going up.”

“Or down,” the elevator reminded him.

“Yeah, okay, up please.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Down’s very nice,” suggested the elevator hopefully.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Super.”

“Good,” said Zaphod, “now will you take us up?”

“May I ask you,” inquired the elevator in its sweetest, most reasonable voice, “if you’ve considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?”

Zaphod knocked his head against the inside of a wall. He didn’t need this, he thought to himself, this of all things he had no need of. Most of all he didn’t want to be standing in an office block arguing with an elevator.

“Like what other possibilities?” he said wearily.

“Well,” the voice trickled on like honey on biscuits. “there’s the basement, the microfiles, the hearing system… er…” It paused.

“Nothing particularly exciting,” it admitted, “but they are alternatives.”

“Holy Zarquon,” muttered Zaphod, “did I ask for an existential elevator?”

2001 08 19 Comments (0)