MARTIN'S BLOG

15: I HATE SOUP

2006-10-12T09:29:00.000-06:00

SOUP is the WORST.

It makes me so angry. I just can't hide it anymore

Is it a food or is it a liquid?

Stop trying to be all things to all people you slushy piece of uncertainty.

Imagine some weak kneed crap-person who doesn't dare offend and so claims to support labour, green, conservative AND BNP and in the process ends up MUSHY, SOGGY and topped with SOGGY FLOPPY ONION PIECES. Would you be their friend?

NO!

If I want my meat hot and wet I'll pour beer over my steak. If I want my drink with bits in, I'll tip carrot cubes in my tea. But I don't. Why would I? Its a filthy state of affairs. Stop trying to fuck up the natural order of things, soup. The reason people dunk bread in you is because they want somethign to bite on.

And DON'T try and sell me yourself in a restaurant on the basis of being 'heartwarming'. That's a crime.

I say to this to you:

'YOU VAGUE PIECE OF GOO, ARE YOU FOOD OR ARE YOU LIQUID? MAKE UP YOUR MIND!'

'But please sir, I thought I'd be a little bit of that and a little bit of this. Does this not please you?'

'No!'

'But don't you want some MORE? Oliver did!'

'Oliver was very poor and desperate and rubbish. We have moved on.'

'But I can be made from yesterday's leftovers.'

'My point precisely!'

'And chicken carcasses make me taste rich and creamy'

'I rest my case!'

'And you can fry stale bits of bread and float them in me'

'Judge!!'

'And even turnips and cabbage can be put....'

------- COURT ADJOURNS

14. POEM

2006-10-12T09:14:00.000-06:00

Stumbled across this poem among the rubble of the Internet.
Some people know how to fit words together.

------------------------------------------

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days:

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection.

- Ted Hughes.

13. NINJA ATTACK

2006-10-12T05:29:00.000-06:00

As per usual I was attacked this morning by Clifford, my ninja doll, silently emerging from the toilet bowl.

Why is my life so DIFFICULT?

13: CHESS IN NYC WITH MAD PEOPLE

2006-03-05T17:56:00.001-06:00

I have been reliably informed by someone close to me that my last few blogs look as though I am completely losing the plot. I am sorry for this and I am writing to ensure that I am fine. I wrote the last one at 3am a little drunk and feeling, actually, altogether on top of things so please take it with a pinch of aspirin. I was probably being experimental and self indulgent. It happens. Anyway losing the plot is a good thing. So many plots are predictable and dull these days.
Having said this I AM feeling stressed and culture shocked to return to the UK. I have not only come back to a burgled flat (they took most of my photographic work) but also without much clue as to what is happening career-wise. The large open desk in my bedroom, now I have cleared it of theft debris, feels a little like a blank page might to a (proper) writer. In other words I am not quite sure what happens next in the story. If I was reading a self help book this would no doubt be a moment of great opportunity, a sign that the road ahead is offering many exciting alternatives, but right now it feels like I’ve pulled over into a lay-by and I can’t reach the map which is stuck behind the passenger’s seat. I also returned to the news that Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble over his claims that some cars are ‘gay’. That of course was the hardest thing to return to. Poor Jeremy, poor gays. Its just bad news all round.
I stopped off in New York on my return from Costa Rica. I spent a week with my sister and her boyfriend and their kid and I did some big apple freelance work. I love NY. What the t-shirts say is true! I LOVE NY!!! They pile their bagels as high as they build their skyscrapers. And the taxis are so yellow! And it really does never sleep. Fresh mango slices at 4am, now that is what cities are for. If you are going to go urban, go really urban. Destroy all nature, have a token bit of greenery for the ducks and tourists maybe, but cover the ground with buildings and roads and cars and taxis EVERYWHERE, then import the world’s cuisine and stick it in a 24hr Uber-Delhi where customers can buy it at 3am with extra cream cheese on the side and go back onto the night streets, sleep deprived, slightly wired and ready to carry on writing their unsuccessful movie script/first novel. Cwoofee on the side, Mister!

I arrived to 22 inches of fresh snow fall as well. Blizzards on the runways. Quite a contrast to the 40 degree jungle I had been in only days before. The city from across the Hudson river at night looked like a stack of kryptonite: all crystallised and jagged and enshrouded in cold mystery beneath the moon. At the airport I shared the cost of a night taxi (so yellow!) with a girl who had also come from Costa Rica and we rode off into the dark with shock in our eyes and steam pouring from between our sun-cracked lips. Poor girl, she wore central American sandals, an ethnic woollen hat with multicoloured bobbly bits and an expression of travellers’ naivety, that well known soft/numb look often the result of weeks of drugs, sun, no responsibility and slightly pointless conversation. Worse still she had come direct from a two week intensive yoga retreat and clearly wasn’t ready to contort her body into the nooks of this tight and rigid city. In attempt to soften the cultural transition she leant forward from the rear seat of the taxi and with a worried expression handed a blank CD to the driver.
‘Perhaps you could play this,’ she said.
He looked at it and tutted.
‘Please,’ she added, ‘it’s a yoga meditation track,’ as if that would persuade anyone. He didn't take her CD but instead leant forward, turned up a dial on his soundsystem and let the speakers reply for him: ‘Yo bitch nigger/ I long dicked your motha/ I fucked your father / I'm speakin to YOU bitch’ etc etc (or however the generic aggressive east coast rap goes) with the bass underneath pile driving into our heads as if the words hadn’t already done the job. She sat back with a sigh. The bobbles on her hat swung a little across her ears but they could not protect her from the impressive sound of urban degradation. Personally I loved it. I had arrived! I bounced up and down to the beat. I looked at her again. Poor thing, she had probably been doing intensive ear stretches to soften the lobes, and now…this. I expected she might throw her legs behind her neck and entirely invert her body in some strange yogic move – the power hedgehog - but she just stared out the window in a resigned way. Two weeks of relaxation evaporated from her before my very eyes.
‘Where you from?’ I asked.
‘New York’ she said with a sigh. That’s why she was resigned then. She knew there was no escape.
‘Oh I see. You live here. Isn’t it great!’ I was still bumping up and down.
‘Not really. Its home.’ She didn't even turn round any more. Probably because her neck had become too stiff. Her entire bendy body had gone rigid, like an elastic band dropped into liquid nitrogen at any moment she would shatter. But thats what happens when you know somewhere. It becomes home. Reality hits. However fab it is.

What I do when I go to New York is to walk up and down the city. I walk around at night by myself and I look at things and I slip into a movie-dream.

I dive into delis and I buy big hot toasted bagels with fresh salmon and then I walk some more and I let myself stare at the steam from the subway grills and then when it’s snowy (and now there were mountains of snow on the sidewalk) I jump into the wet snow so that my feet get chilly and the sharpness around my toes makes it all the more real, and then I let a little of the wind from broadway blow down my neck. The walk is a play fight between you and the city, as if its saying ‘you don’t belong here’ and so what you do is tip your head down and take another bagel bite and say ‘yes I do!’ and the wind picks up and the steam billows from the subway ‘No you don’t!’ and you walk some more and you say ‘yes I do! I even drink cwooffeee!’ and the wind blows more and you shout: ‘I drink double latte! With muffin on the SIDE!’ And then the city says ‘alwight, alwight, enough already!’ and the wind dies down and you say ‘I am here’ and the words rise up with the subway smoke into the sky filled with yellow blinking office lights and its true, you ARE here. You are in NY. And it’s the best city in the world.

The next day, full of romantic idealism, I headed off to Washington square park to take photos of the snow and ice. My romance was about to be shattered. I met a man there throwing packs of ice into puddles. He was kind of down and out and expletives found their way easily through the big gaps in his teeth but I I photographed the puddle as the big blocks of ice crashed into them, enjoying the way the reflections broke up and came back together.

(photos to come)

He threw ice and I took photos. He threw ice and I took photos. Over and over it happened until I felt we were really ‘jamming’. A beardy junky busker was bashing out some improv jazz a few metres behind us and so the scene was set for creativity and cross cultural exchange of one contemporary form or another. I started to show the ice thrower some images on the digital view finder and he came over and started to make creative suggestions then going back and throwing more ice in the way we had deemed most artistically rewarding. He was tuned in even if his pants were falling off and he smelt of wee and beer. ‘Yeh man you want a bit more movement in the water this time,’ he said usefully, ‘movement is good’. I looked at his stained hands and face. His ideas were subtle and insightful even if his fingernails were not. Damn NY is artistically inspiring I thought. ‘Lets catch that woman’s reflection in the water’ he said to me, leaning towards my ear. His breath was a little rough but I stayed with it. You’ve got to make an effort to collaborate artistically.
‘Yeh, I see what you mean.’ I said. ‘Shes’ got interesting shoes. I like the way her red plays off the colours of the building. OK lets try that shot’.
‘Yeh man, and I tell you what,’ he added leaning right close to me and breathing in my ear ‘what you really want is to get that bitch to lie down naked in the icy water, flash her cunt at you and all, oh yeehhh’. His voice was as gravely and as dirty as the sludge on his shoes. The whole artistic edifice smashed apart like the ice he had thrown to the ground.
‘You want to do what?’
‘Hey, man I’m going to go and ask those women over there,’ and off he went and tried to get a woman to take her clothes off and lie naked in the ice. When she didn’t he kissed her shoes. It was a proper charm offence.
Strangely they resisted so he came back to to work his magic on me.
‘Hey man would you do me a favour. Wanna come to the toilet with me, lend me a hand? Oh yeeeehhh’ more gravel, more sludge. I smiled politely and headed off for the nearest manicure parlour. Such a shame, he could have been so sweet and maybe even an artistic confidant. We could have been friends. There was just that tiny flaw in his character: being a total and utter nutter.

I hung out with my nephew a lot. Danced with him and everything. He’s changed my mind about kids. I think I want to have lots of them because he is pick-and-mix sweet. If you could choose from a shelf of babies you would have to scoop lots of him and gobble him up through the longest film ever and still you wouldn’t have enough. He’s not sickly sweet but he did say ‘Wow’ in a terribly long and drawn out way when I gave him a furry deer from Guatemala. ‘Wooooooww’. That’s one of his first words, WOW, how good is that. He is set for life. WOW!! I didn’t think it would melt me but it did. I want lots of kids but I want to keep my uncle status with them. In other words I want to play with them when they are happy and I am feeling relaxed but otherwise give them back to the shop. I mean mother. If they are rubbish (i.e. cry too much, shit too much, don’t sleep enough, don’t say enough cute things, or don’t laugh at everything I do, or look ugly) then I want the option of complaining to some one in authority and/or getting compensation.

I had a lovely time with my sis and her man but I’m not going to enshroud you with stories of family furriness. Instead I want to tell you about this one thing I did. I want to tell you how I became a frequent visitor to a chess club on 6th street, just below Washington square park. Walking in to that place felt like gate crashing a games night in a psychiatric ward. Naturally I returned four days in a row. What a bunch of loons. If any of these people had been in London they would have been towed away with the chess pieces stuck in their mouths but here in New York they are part of the charm. Just as you can choose in the delis from 432 different fillings for a bagel (as opposed to four at home) so you can meet on the streets and bars that many more variations of fruity people than in the UK. I drawn in at first, not by the promise of insanity, but because the cold snowy wind was particularly angry and I had no coat and from the outside the chess club looked like a gentleman’s club, all yellowy light and relaxed charm. When I got in and stamped my feet dry I realised that all the tables were decked with chess boards and at least forty middle to old aged men sat either side of them poring over their moves. The floor was chipboard like a cheap youth hostel in the eighties. It was not at all quiet as you would expect from a chess club. Everyone was talking and shuffling and chewing and spitting. There was a man with big 1980s style headphones on playing Born to be Wild at a tinny volume that would have been irritating if it wasn’t so appealingly New York. Then there was the man who had a nervous vocal tick. That took me a while to work out.

‘Check, Tony, I got you in check’ he said. Tony moves out of check. The man with the tick moves his piece and says again,
‘Check, Tony, I got you in check.’ I think to myself, this guy must be good, he’s got Tony on the run. Tony moves. The man with the tick moves again. I look at the board. He is not in check at all.
‘Check, Tony, I got you in check.’ He says with persistent monotony. Tony goes to the bathroom.
‘Check, Tony, I got you in check.’ Tony is still in the bathroom. ‘Check, Tony, I got you in check.’ Tony comes back from the bathroom. ‘Check Tony, I got you in check’ I find out that Tony is not called Tony at all but in fact is called Mike and that he has not been in check this game once. Of course no else appeared to even notice this most confusing of ticks. I got the feeling that all the men had all known each other for decades which is probably why they gave each other licence to be so goddam rude all the time.
‘Fucking awful move Tony’
‘Shut your face Mike’
‘Your game is kaput. Your king is dead’
‘His king is dead. You hear that Joseph’
‘I see it! You think I’m a fool. I could see it from the corner of my eye. What a shmuck. His king is dead’.
‘Watch your own game, you loser!’
‘Check, Tony, I got you in check.’
I think they probably never left the premises at all but rather were packed up with the boards at night and folded into the wooden cupboard. If you came along at two in the morning, with a bagel and cwoffee you would hear the muffled words ‘Check, Tony, I got you in check’ coming from the cupboard.
I find myself wanting to say that the air was thick with cigarette smoke. But of course because New York has introduced the smoking ban, it was anything but, however that was the sort of place it was: the sort of place that you expect to be filled with smoke. It had atmosphere. And it was filled with crazys and I loved it.
‘Hey Oscar, how you doing?’ some one said behind me. I turned round to see a black guy with a skull cap and dreads and a devilish look sitting down to a table.

(picture of Joel to come)

His opponent, a small balded business man replied:
‘Not as good as you, not as good as you’. And so the best banter of the night began. These guys, you just knew, had played each other an infinite time and were about to unleash a verbal exchange that was more entertaining than anything you could watch played out on the board.
‘You know what Oscar, you’re right. I am good, real good.’
‘You are Joel, you are Joel’
‘Time to play! Tell the fans they can take their seats.’
‘Tell the fans they can take their seats!’
‘Is there a parrot in here?’
‘Is there a parrot in here?’
‘There is’
And they were off. Bang, bang, bang, bang, each piece slammed emphatically onto its square in a hypnotic beat which was fast enough to be played without apparent thought but not without total concentration. At this point, as if to upset the proceedings, the man with the vocal tick changed his catchphrase: ‘Don’t thank me thank my people’ HE must have made a good move ‘Don’t thank me thank my people’. Christ.
Joel and Oscar continued their game until Joel, the one with the dreadlocks and skull cap, stopped to slowly raise his hand indicating a good move was coming.
‘Hey’ he said, ‘I’m going to make this move and you’re gonna say ‘Joel that was a good move’
He makes his move.
‘Joel that was a good move’
‘See I told you’
‘You did Joel, you did’
-Don’t thank me thank my people
‘Now wait for this!’ Joel says. ‘I’m gonna hit you with a move like a kitchen sink. You’ll tell the DA it was a baseball bat, but it’ll be a kitchen sink, trust me on this Oscar, trust me’
-Don’t thank me thank my people
‘I trust you’
Joel makes his move
‘OW’
‘What did I tell you Oscar.’
‘You said you would hit me with a kitchen sink’
‘And what happened?’
‘I got hit'’
‘Security! Security! We have a man down. Security! Its time to put the women and children to bed! Put the women and children to bed! Rook to H6, what a move!’
Suddenly Oscar regains his composure. ‘Meanwhile back at the ranch…’ he says
-Don’t thank me thank my people. (Even to me this phrase has now become background music, city traffic.)
Oscar pulls off what must be a mistake, for Joel reels back.
‘What did you do that for!’ he cries, ‘That’s the first thing you should not do. You can look it up in my book, page 1, THINGS NOT TO DO WHEN PLAYING CHESS. Oscar, its there on the page, all you have to do is- Oh shit, now I see… Oh, shiiiiiit, I see what you do! Now I’m in a corner. Unacceptable. Unacceptable… This is unacceptable!..…wait a minute. Oh check this out. THIS is a good move’
Joel does his good move.‘I am too good’ he says. ‘Last night I had a nightmare. I woke up sweating. I dreamt my opponent was me! Shit, that was a bad dream.’
‘But did you dream this?’ says Oscar now building up momentum. He plants his rook in the middle of Joels defence.
Don’t thank me thank my people
‘Oh that was a cheap move. You are full of cheap material, you know that? They should call you Mr Polyester. Hey I like that. I am a funny guy. You know that mike, I’m a funny guy.’
‘Oscar?’
‘Yes?’
‘Your’e a funny guy’
‘I know. Its like I told you.’
‘You did Oscar.’
-Check (the man with the verbal tick has now gone back to saying simply ‘Check’)
‘What?’ says Joel
'Check'
‘Oh I see, right now wait-‘
-Check
‘Hold it with your checks!’
‘Shut your mouth Joel’ says a man playing the verbal tick nutter.
- Check says the verbal tick nutter
‘Oscar, here comes the second kitchen sink’
‘You have two in your kitchen?’
‘You know me, I live on the upper east side’
-Don’t thank me thank my people
‘Check!’
‘What?’

And so the whole scene tumbled onwards and upwards and billowed out of that small dingy club like the wintry smoke from those cliched subway grills, filling the cold NY air with character and madness and making the buildings taller and the cwoffee blacker and the cabs yellower and injecting more wide eyed life into a city that already never sleeps. Of course I came back for more. I even played a game. I lost needless to say. I lost both on the board and in the conversation. I don’t have the banter, but I’ll learn.

12: THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (1000 words)

2006-03-01T20:25:00.000-06:00

Right, no point messing about any more.

Life: I’m going to try and sum up how absolutely everything works, everywhere, anytime, what it all means from beginning to end, and what to do when it goes wrong …in a thousand words or less. This is a dangerous stunt. I am completely untrained and the outcome may be fatal. But someone needs to try.

You see, people write about billions of things, don’t they. But none of them really seem to get at the very core. Some write about their day to day lives, some write about others’ lives, and some write about wars in dusty countries that are through and beyond the TV screen. Some write about science and some write about fiction and then some try and combine the two and have to wear long black coats and goatees as punishment. Some write so many words they have to make them into books; these are heavy things that open like flowers and which must be pollinated by at least a thousand eyes for their ideas to live on.

Despite all of these words, no one seems to tell me what its really all about. Life. Words, words everywhere, but not a drop to drink. They are so often beautiful and mesmerising and make ripples in the most stagnant waters and yet they never hit the mark. And I’m not going to consider the really big books, the bible and the Koran etc because they don’t seem to say much that’s clearing things up for anyone. Those are dead flowers with wilting leaves.

Sometimes I’m tempted to read lots of books as if to pick up enough of the jigsaw pieces might make up a whole. But I know they never will. Books are great but they’re like travelling: they take you to places which are magnificent but in the end they don’t change you.

And music doesn’t tell you what its about either. When the music is on you say, ahh that’s what its about, the notes are with me now, its all so clear, but then the music finishes and just as quickly you switch back to where you were before. There’s a word for this. Plasticity. Our minds and souls are plastic, not elastic. They bend and stretch but then bounce back to how they were before and if they bend too far the bounce back is painful. K-snap! You go back to the music again and again, and then again, and then again, and each time it is good but not quite as good as before until the law of diminishing returns corners you like a rabid dog and finally you shout:
‘Enough of that Britney song, enough!
The magic’s gone, now my ears are rough!’

My dad, who has travelled to infinite countries and reads two books a week and loves people of all types and asks more questions than he answers and laughs only at good or reasonable jokes and is as interested in plumbing as he is in politics, said to me recently that if he had to write down all the things he was sure about in life the words would only fill the very top of a single side of A4.
If I had to write down all the things I know in life, son, they would only fill the very top of a single side of A4
Really dad?
Really, son.

I was so shocked I went ‘NO!?!’

But why?

I suppose I was shocked in part, becasue I still have a trace of that childhood hope that my dad should have it all worked out. And especially now that he is 68 and happy. We all have a hope that someone somewhere knows the answers. Or that there are answers.

But I think I was mostly shocked because I realised that what he said made perfect sense.

When you think about it what do we know? I’m not talking about knowing the time, or your name, or the latest fashion in leg warmers, I am talking about knowing things with your deepest instinct. If you sit yourself down on a bench, without a conversation or a cup or coffee or a copy of Heat or some nice couple to look at snogging opposite you, if you just sit with out any particular goal, what, in that instance, DO YOU KNOW?

The answer is pretty much bugger all.

You know how to breathe, you know if you are cold or hot, but there is nothing innate in that moment which you can point to and say I KNOW THAT IN MY HEART. Try it. Sit for 20 seconds not moving. What do you know? That your’e bored shitless maybe. But go deeper. What’s there? Its not true that you know that the earth is spinning and that love is the answer and that all that matters are friends and family and peace. You know not much. Your’e just there and your’e sitting pretty and that’s it. This is not a bad, depressing thing at all, and it doesn’t mean you are alone, it can be a peaceful thing, but it does mean that you are as empty of knowledge as a piece of ham in a wrapper.

It’s a scary baseline when you think about it. My urge is always to challenge it, reach out and flail at the empty air to see if something is there to hold on to.

So I here I am, sitting down at 3am, a little drunk and with a deep breath will try, without stopping for commas or stops or spaces to write the ANSWER.

Are you sitting uncomfortably? Drum role please. Time starts… NOW!

WelivethroughwavesSometimesthingscometogethersometimestheydon’tthere’snotmuchwecandoaboutiteverythingchangesthemoreyoufightittheworseitfightsbacklikeacatthatyoucan’tpushoverbutcatsprobablydon’tknowwhatitsaboutilikecatsbutpreferdogstomorrowenglandareplayingasihoahogbijb`k;bnkj;a`bf`gkdajsb`hgo`shdgsi`ndgsgs`ngs`ndgnkjnlkopihoHOIHASFAIHHHi`asdfpi`efohg`wefohigsweohfgo`wugwegeopih`we9ogbuweetih0-92hyt-9yhh`svd`8u03ght230gtoctopuseseverywhereohbuggerit!

…

Fucking disaster.

I have no idea what its all about, I really don’t. You just can’t work it out.

I asked my dad what the little bit at the top of his paper said. He told me. It said: be happy.

Lots of love to whoever reads this. Really. mx

(and if you know the answer, tell me below)

11. LEAVING CENTRAL AMERICA

2006-02-26T20:52:00.000-06:00

I am getting tired fingers from this blogging. So this will be my last from Central America. Tum tum te tum. How to summarise?

Guatemala was fab.
Central American food is rubbish. The day to day food that is. Bloody plantains and beans. Arghh.
People here are lovely but on the whole short and ugly. This is true. Shoot me if you must.
Volcanoes are everywhere. The whole isthmus will eventually erupt and sink. This is fact.
Will come back here for sure. I thought it wonderful.
Never saw the Quetzal Bird. This is a good thing.

Back in Costa Rica now to stay with my friend Marie who I love dearly.

I stayed with her and her man Mauricio, who is also lovely, and they showed me far too much hospitality and kindness. This is fact. They also have a dog called Karenina whose eyebrows and moustache are too long

I campaigned very hard to get her eyebrows cut down on the basis that one cannot enjoy life if one cannot see it. Finally they trimmed her eyebrows and now her life has improved in many ways: she has more energy and gets on better with other dogs and I feel has an improved concentration too. I take considerable credit for this. Denis Healy take note (is he still alive?)

Did you know that nails grow after you die? Do eyebrows do the same. If this is true and if DH is no longer alive his whole coffin might be eyebrows.

OK, quicker now. Went to jungle again in very south of Costa determined to get some better photos.
Failed miserably. Again. Got lots of photos of lizards but really in the jungle you would expect more.
Jungle was impressive nevertheless. Green forest tumbling into blue ocean sending parrots and monkeys into the air. 40 degrees, 100 percent humidity, how these wild animals survive I don’t know. Oh so remote! Yes Dorothy indeed! Took a ten hour bus journey and then a 2 hour dust track. Two cars waited to take us on the dust track. One new one old. Would I take the comfortable leather clad 4x4 or the open backed local truck? Both cost the same and took the same time.

What would you do? Are you a romantic or a realist?

Its dawn, the birds are coming out, the clouds look a little ominous but oh so NATURAL and what an experience you would have driving in the wild under those clouds in an open backed truck. But then again you are tired and the leather is smooth and after all you are from London, home of the duvet.

Comfort or challenge? Nuture or nature?

I took the leather and then immediately felt comfortable but ashamed. We were passed by the open truck full to the brim with other travellers, healthy looking and smiling as if in ad for GAP. One had his top off and wore rippling muscles and a brilliant smile. ‘Shit, that could have been me!’ I thought. Oh, why do I always take the safe option!? Lament, lament. Look they are sharing jokes and the wind is in their hair and mosquitoes may be attacking them but they are ALIVE. Meanwhile my driver closed the window turned on the AC, put a Bon Jovi CD on and the jungle around us disappeared behind a veil of sound proof glass. What has this comfort bought me?! Disocciation. Lament, lament. Oh Dorothy!

But just as I was about to make a life long resolution to always take the bumpy but interesting path in life the good looking boy was slapped over the head by a low lying palm branch and then soon after the truck broke down. We stopped to check on them and from inside our climate controlled box I watched a man kneel in the dust, climb under the engine and fix the loose part with a LONG PIECE OF STRING. It started to drizzle too. I sank back into my chair and watched a mosquito fly into the glass. Ahhhhh, how comfortable the chairs felt. Ah, how happy I was. Choose comfort. Never take the dusty bumpy route through life!

Ultimately the jungle was not so comfortable and, you will be glad to hear, bought out the man in me. I saw crocs, a whale, a shark, a large snake and all the while I had at least 4 buttons of my shirt undone. What I will not tell you is that the creatures were very very far away which is why I have no great photos and only pics of lizards. No Quetzal bird. Better that way of course..

I do have a FEW photos. I watched Pelicans diving into the ocean for fish.

One bust his shoulder as he went in. I came across him with his wing flopped to one side. He couldn’t fly, he couldn’t swim, he stared out at the ocean.

I tried to get close. What could I do? Throw him fish? I ask you. He hobbled away. I walked back and he continued to fix on the horizon. That night a vicious storm closed in. I heard the rain playing drums on my cabin roof and thought of the bird with the broken wing. What could I have done. Throw him fish? The camp I was staying in had some bread. Do pelican’s eat bread? The next day I came back to find him dead. I was stung by that. How many adverts for NATURAL ORGANIC HAIR PRODUCTS will we need to see before we know that its all a lie: nature’s fucking rubbish. I sat with him for a while.

I thought to myself then, ‘I’m going into this jungle for three days and I’m going to survive, I am not a wimp. I have two good legs a will of steel and an ipod. I will FIGHT NATURE’ I took impressively little in my rucsac and intended to stay in camps with no change of clothes. I set off with the same sort of focus and determination with which one starts to build Ikea shelves. I was enthusiastic and practical. Within two hours I was suffering from extreme chafing on my inner thigh and had eaten all my sandwiches and was fading fast in a pool of pathetic whiteman’s sweat. I walked into the camp in the inner park not able to open my legs more than 30 degrees and covered in grime and hopelessness. I was truly beaten. I too would have died in a storm. I had the indignity of having to ask an American medical couple if they had any cream for my awkward CHAFING. ‘For what?’ they asked over our dinner of rice and beans. ‘For my bottom’ I said quietly. ‘Oh you want lube! Yeh we got lube alright’ They said it loud and clear in only the way that doctors with no bodily shame can and in only the way that American’s can. The rest of the table tuned in. Twenty minutes later I had ten different creams and a face even reader than my arse. I felt a bit of a failure if I am to be honest. God the jungle is tough. When I got back to electricity and a mirror I saw that my hair was covered in slime and was sticking up and out as though I had been staring at a jaguar for three days. Of course I hadn’t. If I had seen a jaguar I would have been out of there and on the next over priced helicopter ride. ‘Take me to a supermarket’. That’s what they should do for white people who don’t make it through the jungle. Take them not to a hospital but to the nearest Marks and Spencer. I need civilisation. I need duvets, I need hot food, I need people. I’m coming back.

I’m still reading Howards End. I read terrifically slowly. One of the characters asks if civilisation is all that it’s cracked up to be. ‘Has it paid to give up the glory of the animal for the tailcoat and a couple of ideas?’ he asks. The answer, in my book, is an emphatic ‘yes’. It HAS paid. And for these very ideas:
BEDS
BEER
FILM
FRESH SHEETS

I’m leaving the jungle just as it is, wild and free. As it should be. I’m not going to capture its animals. I’ll see you all very soon. I’m going to NY for some work and then I’m back end of feb. I’ll finish with another bit from Howard’s End which I find moving and which fits with the ambling theme that’s emerged in these blogs. Not quite sure how it fits but maybe you’ll see. I hope you are well. I miss you. Lots of love. Be good, and remember: floss. M xx

‘Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. Them most successful career must show a waste off strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is duly good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.’

And here is a photo I took in San Jose, capital of Costa Rica. It is of three people watching pigeons. I of course was watching them.

10. THE AMAZING TRUTH ABOUT EVERYDAY OBJECTS

2006-02-26T20:21:00.002-06:00

Here is an aside that is nothing to do with my travels or anything else whatsoever but which is interesting enough, (is it? Yes I think) to warrant its own posting. Yes it is!

Consider this key.

What is it?

- It’s a key! (you scream)

- Yes, but what exactly IS A KEY?

- WHAT??? It’s for opening doors of course. SILLY!

- So the nature of key is, to an extent, determined by the nature of doors?

- Yes! (you all scream this, concurrently, and you are all VERY interested in where this is going. Naturally enough.)

ME: So a key that doesn’t open doors is not really a key at all!

YOU: NO!!

ME: So if doors, or maybe to be more precise locks, didn’t exist then keys wouldn’t exist?

YOU: I SUPPOSE NOT!!!

ME: But why do doors and locks exist?

YOU: Because we don’t want people to come into the toilet when we are busy with ourselves?

ME: Good! And what else?

YOU: Because we don’t want to have our washing machines stolen! Because we want to lock up our daughters! Because we don’t trust strangers who wear stockings over their heads and stripy tops! Because we want to hide things in closets like our jewellery and our sexuality!

ME: Yes! So doors and therefore keys exist, in part, because of things like distrust, ownership, possesiveness and METAPHORICALLY at least, BEING GAY (* see end of post)

YOU: Well…

ME: Now, ( I am standing up now, in a Billy Graham sort of scary preacher way) let me ask this: what is a key made of?

YOU: er.. metal.

ME: and who discovered metal?

YOU: We don’t know. Some bloke probably. (this is a half hearted answer that betrays your mounting suspicion at my behaviour)

ME: Right! And did that bloke find metal in the shape of a key?

YOU: What? (A few sighs are emerging, a few of you are getting up to leave)

ME: Come on, play along…

YOU: (one of you that is still excited responds) No, he FASHIONED it! Or he got some other bloke with TOOLS to make it into a key!

ME: Right, so a key is dependent on BLOKES and TOOLS!

YOU: And GIRLS too…chauvinist sod.

ME: Yes, girls too. That’s the key. (I laugh at my own joke)

YOU: Oh for goodness sake!

ME: But who made the tools?

YOU: Oh God!

ME: No, not Him. ( I laugh at myself again)

YOU: Groan.

ME: OK, let’s ask this-

YOU: Yes let’s!

ME: - what are the tools made of?

YOU: Is this a shaggy dog story? Well its going to the dogs that’s for sure…. I’m off, see you next Tuesday Gary.

ME: Wait this is fascinating… bear with me. Please! Please? OK. The tools them selves are made from things that had to be discovered and those things, unless they were taken straight from the ground – were also dependent on other objects being invented or found or even on human emotions like envy and desire (as in the case of the key) or perhaps even LUST!!

YOU: He’s lost it. He’s going for the lowest common denominator. Yeh, this started off like channel four, now its gone all channel five (many of get up to leave, others check your mobiles for messages)

ME: Right so the existence of a key is dependent on the discovery of metal, the bloke or girl that discovered metal, all the other crap that went along with that (not to mention the trading of metals and the wars and the lives that were lost in the story of METAL’s history) the nature of human ownership, doors, locks, distrust, jealousy - the list is endless.

YOU: (now only a few of you remain. The door at the back of the room is open and the light is flickering. Many of you are smoking in the corridor) So what’s your point?

ME: Well it means that a key is dependent on a multitude of other creations and states and histories and beliefs and ….well THE EXISTENCE OF A KEY IS DEPENDENT ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE. ITS NEVER JUST A KEY! A KEY CONTAINS A MAP OF ALL THE UNIVERSE IN IT!

YOU: we are all interconnected man! Pass the joint!

ME: Watch your sarcasm, LOSERS! Don’t you see how interesting that is? IGNORAMUSES, THIS IS IMPORTANT!

YOU: I’m not standing for this abuse.

ME: Look, sorry, sorry. Please listen! Don’t you see how profound this is??! If just one of those ‘key’ factors wasn’t there i.e. if we all trusted each other, or if locks hadn’t been invented or metal discovered, this BLOODY KEY COULDN’T EXIST!

YOU: And maybe you would never have started this drivel.

ME: YEH RIGHT, AND MAYBE you wouldn’t bloody exist either! Alright, sorry, sorry. What I mean is EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON EVERYTHING. This key isn’t a key for a front door in Earl street, Chingford, it’s actually the key to the nature of things. Take ANY object and see how its shape or weight or function or core existence is dependent on an infinite web of other factors. Take a fork! Where would forks be if it wasn’t for mouths?! And where would mouths be if it wasn’t for eating?! Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera until you get from forks down to molluscs and all the way back again and way past up to super novas. So don’t ‘PASS-THE-JOINT’ me! This key is caught up in an invisible spiders web of causes and effects that span time and space from now back to the primal ooze and from here to Pluto. And here’s the rub: we too are interwoven with everything else. You and me, we too are mere flies caught in that web. Don’t try and extricate yourself. Nothing can escape the web.

YOU: I can. Just watch me. Walking away daddy long legs.

ME: Please listen to me, I’m being interesting. Aren’t I?

YOU: OK, OK. I read some Zen story about a monk who saw clouds in a piece of paper. The paper was made from trees and the trees from rain and the rain from the clouds blah di blah. So paper contains clouds.

ME: Thank you!

YOU: THAT was a much more poetic explanation than yours. Like, 20 words.

ME: I am not a monk

YOU: No you are not. And so we are off. (Only two of you remain now: one of you has your iPod on. The other one of you is called Keith and feels desperately sorry for me.)

ME: ALRIGHT TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE. (I am shouting to those of you who have just left the room but to no avail. I feel like Ricky Gervais at an office seminar and yet am still unable to tone down my arm movements) How different do you think this room would look if John Lennon’s mother had died at a young age!!!!??? Now think about THAT! How about that for a question!?!!!

KEITH: That is a very, very interesting question Martin for which I don’t know the answer.

ME: (taking a deep breath) Thank you Keith, I think you are clever and interesting too.

[The other one of you with the iPod leaves. It is now just Keith and myself.]

KEITH: Please, carry on, Martin.

ME: Well if John Lennon had not been born, the Beatles would not have formed, right, or at least not like they did, which in turn would have meant all the people that met at their 1965 London concert and who consequently fell in love or learnt to hate each other or were indifferent to each other or who got terrible anxiety from the cheap LSD, DIDN’T do those things, which led to different children being born, different people falling out, different states of mind, different conversations unfolding etc. etc. etc. in short the ripples of change would have filtered to everyone’s lives SOMEHOW and so INEVITABLY also changed the life of Mrs Maureen Johnson who is the mother of the man whose best friend bought this building and who decided that the walls here should be painted this nasty shade of lime on the basis of his memory of Mrs Johnson’s front room which had it not been for the Beatles’ concert and the strange- Keith?.... Keith?

KEITH: (standing by the door, caught in the middle of putting his coat on. He stops and drops his eyes to the ground) Er…

ME: Where are you going Keith?

[SILENCE – Keith doesn’t move, the free arm of his coat swings]

ME: Keith? Am I boring you?

KEITH: No, no…erm… I’m not a fan of the Beatles. Not really, so….. so…

ME: I see.

[EXIT KEITH]

ME: I thought we were all interconnected. I really did. (Turning to audience) Oh that this too, too solid flesh, would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew.
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me
All the uses of this world , oh… whatever.

[EXIT MARTIN]

(sound of a door locking)

------------------------------------------------

*
From Google news:

A German zoo has imported four female penguins from Sweden in an effort to tempt its gay penguins to go straight.

The four Swedish females were dispatched to the Bremerhaven Zoo in Bremen after it was found that three of the zoo's five penguin pairs were homosexual.

9. VEGANS

2006-02-26T20:16:00.000-06:00

This entire post is dedicated to an extraordinary blog I have come across:

http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/

It is meticulous, well thought out, clear and instructive. It is the illustrated daily diary a vegan's diet .

Happy reading!
x

8. A TOUCH OF THE BARD

2006-02-23T18:57:00.000-06:00

I arrived back in Costa Rica by plane. I flew in one of those two bit machines that jump and bump through the sky like a toy plane in the wind. It's fun until you realise that crashing into long grass is not an option and your dad won't fix it for you. We flew over volcanoes and strange water systems that looked from above like little rivulets made on the beach after the tide has gone. After we had touched down I sat for a bit until my mind had landed too. But before I came round I was approached by a man who was loading bags of luggage. He parked the trolley a metre from me, looked from side to side as if to check he was not being watched and then crouched down and started to whisper.
‘Hello, you speaka Eenglish?’ he said.
‘Yes I do.’
‘OK, please you do me a favour mister.’
Oh no. I wasn’t thinking straight and wasn’t ready to fend for myself.
‘I would like to come to know you.’ he said
‘Oh’
He looked around again and then knelt closer. He produced a book from his overcoat.
‘Please you teach me Shakespeare.'
'Shakespeare?'
'I learn it very good.’ I took the book from his hands.
‘You need to learn THIS?! Hamlet?’
‘ ‘Ere I learn it, else twas a tragedy. Yes indeed’
‘Oh dear, I see.’
‘Am finding it most difficult and unprofitable. Maybe your kind sir could help me.’
‘Well…look…’
Before I could find an excuse he ran off to attend to a large item of luggage leaving me with the book like some unexploded bomb. He walked back past me with a plastic box containing a labrador called MICHAELANGELO that was going to Bern, Switzerland. He returned a minute later.
‘Yes, I would like your Englishman’s help, good sir’
'Look I am not really-'
'Please hold your peace, it is thees here that is hard'

He showed me the passage he was having trouble with. Poor bastards, why do they teach old English before the new English. They should read Nick Hornby surely.
‘Please can you read this for me.’ He must have picked up a look from the Labrador because I suddenly felt sorry for him as though he needed letting out from a cage.
‘Well…. Ok… let me see ‘Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew..’ Well this is Hamlet talking to the audience about how awful the world is’ I found myself starting to translate it for him into more obvious words. ‘You see he is really very depressed, you know sad, and he hopes that he might disappear…’

My arms starting gesturing, I grappled with the poetry to make it more accessible, explaining bit by bit the conflicting motivations and tangled emotions of the young prince. Now, I should add, I studied Hamlet for A-Level so I had some vague recollection of the passage. It’s where Hamlet is pretty down (he’s always down of course) but he’s found out his mother’s started shagging his dead father’s brother and that’s really not helped his state of mind a great deal. I never got into Shakespeare at all. It was all too stilted and getting meaning from it was like wringing water from an old frilly white shirt. But here I was with a Costa Rican luggage handler finding a new appreciation for the bard. There was not a word out of place, Shakespeare the clever fucker. Not one word that did not push things forward. Why the change in my understanding? Maybe its because I’ve been doing some writing and have come to appreciate language better, or maybe its just time passing. Its time passing I think. You learn things when you are young but feel they disappear. In fact they trickle down into the recesses of your mind and one day, when you stumble across that cave with a luggage handler from San Jose you see the trickle has become a stalactite, glistening and something solid to touch. How nice.

I became theatrical. He had to stand back to stop being hit by my extended arm movement.
‘’With dexterous speed to these incestuous sheets’……yes, yes, that means… well ‘dexterous’ refers to hands or fingers, being too skilful, like a thief you see, someone that could open all these bags, but it’s a metaphor of course, emphasising how cunning the mother’s sexual desire is… ‘How weary, stale flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of the world….tis an unweeded garden’…well all these words are about his depression and how useless everything seems, tired and dead and flat…you know, a garden that is overgrown’
‘A garden that is overgrown. It very beautiful no sir?’
‘Well not really. Its gone off you see. Like bad cheese. Really not a nice garden at all.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand. Hamlet has gone off in his head. Like bad cheese! Oh how you could be my English teacher! Like bad cheese!’
‘Steady on old chap.’
‘Steady on old chap?’
‘It mean’s to calm down.’
‘Oh very good, calm down. You are a most excellent teacher!'
'Am I?'
'Yes, yes, most dextrous!'
'Why thank you.'

7. FUNNY CAKES AND SAD TEACHERS

2006-02-23T18:47:00.001-06:00

I went to a fancy gallery in Antigua. It was full of brown wax models of overweight women in various states of distress. I couldn’t understand it. It looked as though one had bad armpits

whilst the others were lamenting the situation.

Perhaps the figures were a symbolic representation of the political turmoil during the civil war. I walked around the figures very slowly for about ten minutes (as if that might hone my artistic sympathies) but it didn’t come to anything. I decided to leave the artistic stench for others to savour.

I decided to get out of Antigua. I had intended to check out a coffee plantation nearby but realised I had no interest whatsoever in seeing little black beans and that my motivation was prompted only by a weird sense of touristic duty mixed with western guilt – ‘is it fair trade?’ etc etc. So I didn’t. Instead I headed for Lake Atitlan, a big lake 60 miles west of Antigua. By this time I had picked up a Christian chap called Alan (not in the biblical sense of ‘picked up’) who wore pressed shirts and sensible sandals and walking trousers but who would turn out to be a great friend nevertheless. Really good heart and kind. He came from a diametrically opposed religious/political/sports background to me. He was a Christian North American jock who excelled at all physical activity. I was not. We got on a bus together and formed a friendship as if slowly sculpting a vase from clay. Conversation was intermittent and tentative but something solid was being created between us. We were not, before the mental image intrudes, like Demi Moore and that ugly dancer freak Patrick Sway-zeee - what a creature that man is!

Oh, I have to make this aside: I have been reading E.M. Forster (Howard’s End) and I can’t get his tone out of my head. Its funny. This is the sort of thing one of his characters would say ‘That Patrick Swayze, what a creature that man is!’ and then… ‘Quite the most vulgar specimen imaginable, yet undoubtedly a mover! Don’t you think Margaret? One could be forgiven, if one were from the lesser classes, for being attracted to those ill fitting trousers and quick step, yet not even the most plain of us could ever suppose he was good looking. Oh, heaven forbid. What a primitive beast he is!’ But Margaret flushed. She was filled with an emotion she barely recognised but which she could only assume by the building pressure in her cheeks to be shame. Yes shame! She dropped her eyes into her night cap as if to dissolve her embarrassment in the alcohol therein. For images of Mr Swayze were spinning uncontrollably through her mind and it was all she could do to not cry out with a fevered lust. She gripped the velvet arms of her chaise long and let a single bead of sweat roll from her forehead. If Mr Bruce, or one of the other men of eminence knew the extent of these feelings she would be rejected from their social circle at once. Margaret decided that the best course of action was to get up, turn off the light and walk out of the room, leaving Patrick Swayze, his tight trousers and Dorothy to dissolve into the darkness of their own moral depravity…’
Sometimes our life-specs become coloured by what we read or see or hear. You come out of a film or exhibition and the world looks, for about 30 minutes, like you are still in it. It’s a little high that fades back into normality. Oh Margaret, its true!

But we must return to Alan, yes we must! The thing is he was my age, (terribly old by traveller standards, past 30 oh dear, time for bed) but I enjoyed having proper conversations and more importantly being able to disagree without causing great offence (i.e. ‘no, no’ as opposed to ‘yeh, man, totally’).

He was also, I later found a truly kind bloke. There are few people that are. I knew he was kind, not because of any overt gestures, although he did always buy pineapple in the mornings, but because he was generous with my occasional tetchiness and always open to suggestions. Actually that’s not it, I am not sure WHAT made him kind exactly. He was certainly not kind in a Christian do-gooder self-conscious sort of way, like smiling too widely and saying ‘ahhhhh’, but rather in an uncontrived and hard to spot kind of way. That sort of kindness is like a background hummm. A dishwasher hum or a hairdryer humm. Few people have it. Don’t you think?

I once knew someone who had it and they told me they had never given any money to charity or to any good cause or to any homeless person or to ANYONE in need WHATSOEVER.... EVER. But they had it. I was struck by the discrepancy and it made me realise that kindness is not really in gestures but somewhere else, somehow more core than that. His kindness made you feel at ease, but you wouldn’t notice it at first. It was like a room heated by an Aga rather than a burning fire, although that’s the wrong metaphor because kindness isn’t twee and its not limited to the middle-classes who move to the Cotswolds.

But kindness ISNT very cool, is it? And Pete Doherty was not voted KIND icon of 2005 and rock stars don’t get screaming girls after them for their GENTLE WARMTH. And that’s why it took me till at least I was 30 to appreciate it. And next time you meet someone kind (properly kind, not christian kind) you should go after them screaming and pull your hair out and then ask for their autograph. I mean it.

I am not sure if Aldous Huxley was kind but I know he remarked of lake Atitlan that it was ‘too much of a good thing’. I worried that he might have been on drugs when he said that (you know our Aldous) but as the bus descended a hill and we saw the lake beneath us, massive and glistening, I had nothing to fear because the lake really is too much of a good thing

Endless volcanoes surround a terrifically placid lake that sits on a plateau at 1500 metres. The expanse of water is huge and towns are dotted around the shoreline under the steep incline of the hills. The water is so silky and blue you want to skim rocks and see how it breaks into rings. Boats leave white streaks like skates on ice which then fade back to blue. Its good for swimming in too.

Have you noticed how swimming is better when you are thirsty? You feel like you can drink the lake.

Then the idyll was shattered. I walked up the hill and I met some travellers. Perhaps Aldous did come for the drugs. It’s a massive dope hangout. More dreads that you can shake a comb at. Poor locals, really, you’ve got to fear for them. I stayed at a little village called San Pedro which was overrun with hangouts such as ‘Buddha bar’ ‘Munchies’ and ‘Sunset Strip’ and in between were the original family homes, where they tried to hang their washing, make their food, do whatever they always did, except now with the drug addled attentions of westerners tripping over their ethno trousers whilst snorting coke, smoking dope or even in some instance cooking up a little crack. Of course I was terribly shocked. Indeed!

You see I was here not for the drugs but to become addicted to Spanish. This town was one of the cheapest and best places in Guatemala to learn the language. Schools here, amazingly, are affiliated with Universities in the States. 5 days of tuition, one on one with a native teacher, 5 hours a day, sitting in lush gardens over looking the lake with a table and a note book costs only 70 dollars. Craziness gone crazy.

Loco!

I booked in with a poorly pronounced ‘muchas gracias’ and a commitment to avoid all drugs and hedonism. Needless to say things did not work out as planned.

For a start I had a teacher who was very pleasant and whose knees bent in all the right places but he was terrifically depressed. He spent most of his time slumped in his chair looking as though his mother had died or something. I wanted to ask him what was wrong but didn’t have the Spanish. He spoke little English too so we stared at each other quite often without saying anything. A big black dictionary sat between us rather ominously. I thought he might lash out at me with it. He spent his whole time tapping his foot against the table so when I tried to write anything my pen went everywhere. I was trying to learn Spanish not Arabic! It was one of those foot ticks that is not quite strong enough for you to say something yet strong enough to be really quite annoying. You know how you sit next to someone on the plane and they press their elbow into you but it isn’t quite hard enough to warrant a remark and yet your entire angry army is ready to march to that point in your arm as if it’s the next pearl harbour. His foot tick was of that order. I didn’t want to criticise him in case he would top himself or something. It was a difficult relationship which was not entirely ideal for learning spanish. Very gradually I did pick up some basic conversation – what is my name, where am I going, what is the point of life etc, but whenever I spoke he looked at the ground as if I was telling him awful news. I began to feel guilty for everything I said. In the end I started feeling down too. It was no good at all. When I had enough vocab to ask him if he was alright he looked at me and said in English (weirdly enough) that he was boring.
‘No, no, not at all’ I replied (‘no no es OK maestro’)
He opened the dictionary. ‘No mr Martin I make the mistake. I mean this. I am BORED’.
‘Oh’
He stared at me and repeated ‘ I am BORED’
‘Yes I heard you.’
‘Que?’
‘Nothing.’
I got really angry on the inside. I am paying you, I thought ANGRILY to myself, admittedly I am paying you bugger all, but I AM PAYING YOU, you can’t get bored WITH ME! But he dropped his head to the ground and I said nothing and then he started to tap the table with his foot again. Tap, tap, tap.

I tried to spice up my conversation to excite him but with a vocab of 200 hundred words there are only so many combinations of interesting things one can say. I am from London, are you from London, my mother is from London is your brother from London, is your brother your mother etc. I managed by the end of the week to tell him that I had taken photos of dead animals and that I liked eating meat but this seemed to depress him further. After the fourth day I gave up and didn’t return for my final class

There is, I should add, another strand to this story runs concurrently to this. I did slip into a little, minor, ever so slight drug binge during the week. I cannot blame his depression for everything. My ever increasing hangovers are what IN COMBINATION really made the bi lingual conversations dry up. I turned up in the mornings to see him slumped in his chair head to the ground while I was dry in mouth, wearing sun glasses and unable to speak much English - let alone Spanish. There was little chemistry between us (or perhaps too much chemistry if you must) Perhaps he was depressed because he had seen so many students go the same way as me. All wide eyes and empty notebooks to start, all bleary eyes and scribbles to end.

I didn’t indulge much, nothing heavy. I am over 30. Just a little weed and some very, very funny cakes. I entirely blame my Christian friend. He was a fair trade coffee importer from Toronto and he searched for weed with the same nose and buying acumen that he used to select fine roasts from Kenya. Thus we spent 4 hours trawling the town sniffing and sampling and nibbling before finally stumbling across a dealer who was up to international organic fair trade standards and who could supply us with fresh 100% home grown. The dealer was called DAVE and he was 60 and a junkie from the USA and he had a long white beard and sunken eyes and looked like Gandalf on. He had left the States after his heroin addiction became too expensive, moved out to become a dealer and so fuck other people up and thus found himself sober for the first time but in the middle of a civil war. ‘Fucking brilliant’ to use his words. I suppose he had replaced the war in his head with the war in Guatemala. Fucking brilliant.

He led us down a path away from the town, across fields, under starry skies, in and out of nights and through days until we got to his home: a small hut on the edge of the lake perched on some rock. He played a scratchy CD of ella Fitzgerald (which jumped continuously) while he made cooked up some Freebase with a pile of coke, some baking soda and a hot spoon. He spoke in long drawls with words that were as sunken as his eyes but which had a haunting eloquence. I felt both appaulled and drawn in. He chased the smoke, held his breath, and then curling up his thin white legs underneath his body came out with some theory or other.
‘This time, yaaah, in the early seventies, I was in a squat..ahhhhhh…. in the seventies.. yahhh… I was in the seventies….yahhhh ‘ – big eyes now,–‘… the seventies were like another world, a place we were all in, but didn’t know where it was…’ Eyes now even more wide open.
You understood him best not by listening to his words but by letting the strange drug induced sing-song of his voice wash over you. What had he told you? There was a revelation trying to get out, but what, where, what had he seen in the seventies? This was a man that had lived his life on the other side and was coming back to tell you of what he had seen - but there was no way for him to explain it and no way for you to know it. He was just a junkie! But no, his words dropped from his mouth collected stray bits of weed from the floor and then came to your ear warped but potent. I am not saying he had lived a good life, he was fantastically depressing in his way, but he had … something. It was like the CD he was playing, the music was skipping and broken and crackled but there was some tune underneath. Broken bird song.
‘Why did you take Heroin Dave?’
‘Yaahhh, cos I knew I could stop at any moment, yaaaah, I’ve been clean for many years, yaahhh – it’s a choice’ Eyes wide open and staring at me. He leans forward and stabs out the word. ‘It’s a choice, a choice. I would do the same all over again, Heroin was perfect for me, perfect!’
And the words did stab. Maybe I am terribly naïve but I would have thought a long term drug addiction was born from desperation and not positive action. He was quite clear on this. He had tried religion, relationships, friendship, painting and analysis. Nothing filled him up like drugs did. Now that he had taken a lifetime of Heroin he said he finally felt full. ‘The holes just about full up, yaaaaahhh, just a little bit more freebase, yaaaaahh’.

Did I believe him? Not really (he was sitting in a dumpy home in a druggy village in Guatemala with no life to speak of) but I believed his sentiment. Heroin was a life saver rather than life destroyer, and in his instance I could believe it. Where other people strive to make money, babies, films, whatever, he strove for the perfect high. I bet he had some good ones too.

We left with the most enormous bag of weed I have ever seen. An entire bush wrapped in plastic. Good old Dave. I didn’t buy it of course, Alan did. He held it to the light, turned a bud in his hand and then, like the man from Delmonte said ‘yes’. Dave would have jumped in the air for joy but he was fucked out of his brain.

I had no intention of smoking the stuff because it would ruin my Spanish lessons. Two hours later I was stoned off my face. ‘I was in London this time, yaaah, this time in the eighties, yaaaaaaaahh…’

That night we ended up going to a traveller’s party in some run down hostel. It was full of Israelis with sculpted hair and hariy legs. They sat sniffing powder and still talking a bit too loudly. A cocaine kibutz! They had fizzy drinks standing unattented on the table. I asked one of them for the coke bottle. A whole theatre of misunderstanding followed.
Coke?
Yes the bottle of Coca-cola.
CocaCola?
Yes. The fizzy drink? Yes.
Was I sure?
Yes I was sure, I was thirsty. I told them that I only took coca cola very rarely but it was an important experience for me. One of the travellers looked at me with genuine respect and held up his hands as if in surrender ‘whatever works.’

I have to briefly tell you about this Canadian chap I met at the party. He came over to talk to us and we said ‘Hi’ to him. He didn’t respond but stood shaking and contorting his body as though he had a stutter. We waited a good ten seconds but when the words didn’t come out we carried on our conversation while he continued his strange efforts. It must be the drugs we thought. But finally the words came: ‘mucho gusto’ (the Spanish for ‘pleased to meet you’) He looked tremendously relieved.
‘Damn!’ he said with perfect fluency straight after ‘Finally! I keep on forgetting those words man. Damn, this Spanish is hard!!’
Not as hard as the drugs you are taking son. I kid you not, he had been learning Spanish for two whole weeks and the only thing he could remember was that phrase. Even with copious drug abuse that is a startling slow uptake. He seemed a bright enough boy, but two words in two weeks, that’s a word a week. I am NOT touching his drugs.
The rest of the week was spent tearing through our weed. We also walked up a volcano, met dave again and ate chocolate cakes. It was a good week.

I think this image is funny.

6: DEAD MAN

2006-02-01T21:49:00.000-06:00

(start at post 1 on the right hand side if this appears first)

It was a hot day. People stood around in hats.

I had just been to the market to buy some flip flops and was pleased to have haggled the price down by half but not so pleased when Iwas then offered only one shoe. I didn’t want just a flip, I said, I wanted a flop too. Eventually the man relented and so I flip-flopped off, happy. Policemen shared cigarettes and talked in a strange language I did not understand: Spanish probably. The town was jolly. Then I saw a body lying under a sheet.

I wasn’t sure why everyone was so relaxed. Then again what is there to do once someone has died? Wait for the ambulance and the dead-person forms to be filled in, I suppose. I thought there might have been a gun fight and the man’s hat blown off into the dust and his soul flown off into the sky. But apparently he had been drinking meths. Like so many others here he had over done it on the supercheap alcohol. They don’t deflavour the meths over here. They keep it clear and let them drink it and turn a blind eye as they go and meet the barman in the sky. It’s a brutal modern day version of natural selection. Adios amigo. But death is not hidden. A body on the street, people walk past. There’s something upsetting but also profound in that nonchalance, I’m not sure what exactly or can’t find it in me to articulate, but death exposed here whereas its tidied away in the west, a little too much I think.

Its fair to say things were getting a little SHAKY in Guatemala. I was having a lovely time, I was eating cake and everything, but things were feeling a little shaky. I wanted to look into the problem. In a rather stupid extension of a metaphor I decide to hike to the top of one of these volcanoes, stare down into its smoking hole and see what was at the BOTTOM OF ALL OF THIS. It was a futile poetic gesture which inevitably brought me no closer to any truth but it did get me some nice views.

I booked a guide and got up at five am the next day, tied the laces on my walking boots double tight, ate some more cornchips (so cheesy!) wrapped up warm (the volcanoes reach above 3000m) and waited for the minibus to take me to the base of the climb in the chilly darkness of dawn. Brrrrr.

The minibus screeched to a halt and when I slid open the door I was greeted by a ten strong group of large bearded American missionaries from Mississippi. They were far too awake for 5am. “GOOD MORNING SIR, WHERE YOU FROM? ENGERLANND, WELL I SAY, HOWDY DO?’. They slung their greetings are me like a cold bucket of water. I shook awake. “hello”.. They were on a mission to build concrete churches around Guatemala, oh yes indeed. ‘OH YES, WE COME IN AND GET A CHURCH UP IN 2 WEEKS FLAT, YES SIR.’ I don’t know what the standard church building time is but I would say that’s pretty fast in anyone’s book. God was pleased with them and they knew it, yes sir. They carried a box of chicken wings which they all dipped into at regular intervals. I crawled into the front seat and tried to make myself small. But the conversation had started on an inevitable course.
-You been to London, Martin?
-Yes I have.
-Goodness. You know Pee-ka-deelly circus?
My entire body clenched with disappointment.
-Yes I do. It’s a wonderful part of town.
-Sure it is. I was there 20 years ago. I was wearing this exact same hat, yes sir.
Another chicken piece was eaten..
-No way. I was there 20 years ago too.
-There you go.
-You were wearing that hat?
-Yes sir, yes indeedy.
Another chicken piece.
- Wait…. No, I don’t think I saw you.
- No I don’t suppose you did. (He laughs) It’s a wonderful town. London. Picadilly circus. Phew-weee!
Another chicken piece. Loud munching.
I could no longer contain myself. From under my breath I let out a n‘Oh Jesus!’. I realised my mistake immediately but it was too late. They must have heard.
Silence followed and then another chicken piece was swallowed. This time I was sure I could hear bones being munched. I put my ipod in my ears. This is the travellers way of blocking out a world that may be a little too alien for comfort. I played a ricky gervais podcast. It was a strangely transporting experience.

The walk up the volcano was steep. Dawn had broken, the sun had come out and the ash strewn ground was slippery under foot. It was going to be a hard day. Wihtin minutes, nay seconds, the missionary zeal was replaced by heavy panting and profound sweating. Fat man sweat. Even regular dips into the chicken box could not control the effort needed to transport their Christian bulk up the slopes. The man next to me began to sweat profusely. I wondered quite what part he had played in the building of a church. He wasn’t the fittest, probably not putting the roof on or anything like that. We were closely followed by a group of opportunist children, who had immediately sensed the arrival of an easy dollar. They walked behind with horses and as soon as we started the incline shouted ‘TAXI! TAXI!’ incessantly.

I had to smile.

Within five minutes the panting man relented.
‘Alright, how much for the donkey?’ ‘What… how much did you say!!!?…OK, OK whatever, I have no shame. Not the first time I’ve been ripped off, and it won’t be the last either. Yes siree. Give me that donkey!’

You had to admire his honesty. I felt sorry for the horse though. Christian panting was replaced by horse panting. Poor beast having to lug that American up a volcano. I briefly wondered what would happen if the horse tipped its passenger into the hole at the top. Would the fat christian block it up? Would the earth rumble and give out a little belch. I banished the thought immediately as IMMORAL, UNKIND AND AMUSING.

We were followed to the top by two stray dogs that apparently walk the route everyday with the first group that comes along. They don’t do it for free food, I am not sure why they do it, but they are very sweet natured and probably very dog-fit. They should bring out a video. ‘My walk to health’

A little aside about photography. Skip this if photography is of no interest.

SERIOUS BIT>>>
Look again at this picture: it’s not particularly unusual, however it illustrates something important about photography. Photography forces you to re-see the world. What we have is two dogs in front of a volcano – big deal. But what we see in the photograph is something quite different from how things appeared on the day. The dogs have become huge and the mountain tiny. In reality when I looked through the viewfinder, that is exactly how they appeared of course, big dogs, small hill, but until the image was produced that is not how I could SEE them. The dogs were just dogs, if imposing and very close, the volcano still huge, if very far away. It is only when the moment is frozen and flattened that you CAN consider the various elements in an image in new ways. Once the image is made the dogs are the force of nature and the volcano just an impotent shape in the distance.

So what? Well it gives the camera supernatural powers.

The more you take pictures the more you become aware, hazily at first and then later with more focus, of the strange mechanics of aesthetics that works inside the camera. The first and most important point is that an image is not a representation of how we see. We get caught out by that one all the time: we see a beautiful sunset and assume that if we photograph it we will have a beautiful image, but so often we are disappointed when the prints return from Boots and the beauty has been lost in the chemicals. Where has it gone? Oh its because I had a shit camera, you say. Equally an image of an ugly scene (people fighting, an old rubbish bag, someone dying, a crack in the wall) can often surprise us with its beauty. That can be equally disturbing : those photos of Sebastian Selgado of kids in Africa, should they really be so beautiful? Where has that beauty come from? From amidst the dirt and poverty? Oh its because I’m a good photographer, you say. No! Beauty in the image is dependent on but not contained in the scene you shoot. The act of taking the photo makes the beauty. And this is weird shit man.

Why don’t beautiful things make beautiful images and ugly things ugly images? There’s a very famous photo taken by William Eggleston of a dirty old ceiling fan. It’s a plain white fan against a plain white ceiling but it’s a stunningly beautiful image. Why? We’ve all seen fans like that and certainly I have never thought they were beautiful and yet here was an image of exacly WHAT I HAD SEEN before and it WAS beautiful. What had changed? The printing of the colours, the framing?? No. Neither was there anything dramatic about the composition or the colours or the lighting. What had changed was that we were looking at a photo of a fan and not a fan. The crucial point is that a photograph is not showing what the object looks like but what a photograph of the object looks like. The picture creates a new point of view. Sometimes when I photograph it feels as though I am taking a young kid around with me and showing them how things can appear. Look at that, now look at that. To photograph is to show a new eye how to see. In the immediate sense that new eye is the glassy lens of the camera, but over the long term that new eye is our own.

The second crucial point is that we do not photograph things, we photograph relationships. This is the route up the volcano. It was pretty hard going.

This is a photograph not of people or of the volcano but of people going up the volcano. Again pretty obvious but its worth thinking about. As a result of that relationship the image captures the effort of the walk. Because the slope is isolated from the background (other hills, sun, clouds) and because the people are framed small and to the very left of the image the focus is entirely on the struggle of going up. Had the photo been pulled out (or zoomed in on the people) although the objects in the photo would have been the same the photo would have been totally different because the relationship between the objects would have shifted.

Sometimes this fact can lead to strange effects. I like this photo of the bloke in front of the wall because there is so much wall and so little of him.

But really the image is entirely about him. Infact, paradoxically, the image is MORE about him than if it was cropped tight on his face. The empty wall says something about his isolation and his confusion. Each square cm of that yellow is telling us something about him and nothing about the wall or the paint or the type of yellow. The relationship between him and the wall is so potent because people are always seen and experienced in relationship to others and the world around them. To photograph a person is to photograph them in relation to their world, even if the world is a blank background. Look for relationships and not things.

>

The top of the volcano was glorious. Great views over Guatemala etc etc And a smoking hole at the top! I tried to look down it to see the mystery that might be lying underneath but billows of sulferous smoke pushed me back. I am afraid I found no poetic or metaphoric answer to what LIES AT THE BOTTOM OF ALL THIS SHAKINESS, but I did jump over the hole (or near it)

And then I jumped again

….. and then he marched them down again!

What a terrifically pointless activity is climbing a volcano. What a totally excellent thing to do! Volcanoes are great! That’s my conclusion and you’ll have to accept it.

The horse with the fat man on it didn’t make it. They had to stop half an hour from the top just before the final slopes. By the time we had come back to join him I feared he might have built a church – you know, just out of frustration, ‘ahhhhhh! I’m fat and I going to take it out on the local people by building them a church…. VERY QUICKLY ahhhhhhhh!’ And then as if by magic… Kazam!

But he hadn’t. Thank God. All’s well that ends well.

5: EVERYTHING IS SHAKING

2006-02-01T07:38:00.000-06:00

I was lying on a hard mattress in a small dark hotel room in Antigua eating some corn chips and thinking of England when the trembling started. I was noting how remarkably flavoursome the chips were, light but exceptionally cheesy, when the bed started to shake. It started rather quickly at first, much like when a lorry passes near your window but then grew more dramatic, much like a nurse might shake your bed if trying to wake you from a coma. ‘MR USBORNE THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!!!’ I thought to myself ‘Whats going on here? These chips are good but not THAT good. Wait a second…it’s an earthquake.’

And it was an earthquake. Or a very bad tremor if you must be unsympathetic to my sense of adventure. It lasted for ten seconds and the picture on the wall shook. The obligatory single light bulb shed a plume of dust. It was all theatrically perfect.

The surprising thing is I was terrifically calm. This is not because I am Bruce Willies but because to be in an earthquake is a very strange sensation which leads to even stranger reactions. I’ll tell you what it feels like to be in an earthquake: it feels as if ALL THE RULES HAVE CHANGED.

You see, even in the best of circumstances life can be an effort: we have to fight gravity from morn till eve and if we strain our knees we have to wear supports to help us through the day; we have to find food and we have to not answer the phone to tele-sales people; we have to programme our video machines and know where to find the matching brackets for the IKEA shelves (aisle g43, name: smorgeskrrp). However, with all of these tasks there is a sense that there are rules at play that may be a pain but which we can rely: gravity will always pull in a roughly downward direction, the sun will rise when it’s meant to, the video machine won’t work and the matching Ikea brackets will be sold out. These are baselines.

But when the ground starts to shake what can you do? Complain to the waiter.‘Hello, this isn’t fair’. Nothing can be done. I can work with gravity but not with this. What is there to rely on? God has moved the goal posts. No! He’s tipped the field and installed a goalie with rectangular hands exactly the size and shape of the goal. The only response is to sit back and give up. There is no game to play. What else can you do? THE GROUND IS MOVING. The nice people in yellow shirts can’t help you now. So get one of those paper tape measures and imagine what the room will look like when everything has fallen down.

So I just watched the little picture that was hanging from the wall above my head and I saw it shake back and forth and then I heard a few kids’ screams and then I carried on eating the nachos. They still tasted of cheese. At least some things in life are certain. Then it all stopped and I praised myself. Is there a ‘I’ve been in an earthquake’ cub-scout badge?

Outside my room there was a beautiful parrot in a cage. I wondered if he felt safe inside bars. Why a photo of this bird not as good as the mysterious Quetzal bird and if not why not?

Now what is going on when the earth tremors? I really don’t know. I have not read the book. I could make it up but I wouldn’t want to misinform you. A little geological understanding is probably a dangerous thing – an eruption? Let me through I’m an amateur GEOLOGIST!

But my point is that things were getting a little SHAKY.

And then, as if to stress the point I saw a man die in the street. Next posting for that.

4: THE COLONIALS WON

2006-01-29T16:22:00.000-06:00

First stop in Guatemala: Antigua

The old Spanish colonial capital, right in the south near the border with the other countries. The Spanish conquerors were real bastards to the indigenous people but they built great cobbled streets. It all seems to level out in the end. Antigua is horrifically, painfully pretty as a result of all that historical craziness.

Wide streets are bordered by low lying buildings whose walls are covered with perfectly flaking paints in rich reds, burnt ochres, rusty blues and faded greens, and which always– ALWAYS – have an old man in front wearing a big hat and a sun worn expression.

Moving people (walking, running, pushing etc) I have noticed, rarely wear hats.

This is a man with a briefcase who is in a hurry and HE HAS NO HAT. Maybe the desire to wear a hat is linked, on some neurological level, with the desire to watch life go by. People with little time have little time for hats. No one in England wears hats you see. Apart from students, who have lots of time.

The food here is good and cheap and the bars friendly. Daily markets sell vibrant coloured weaved fabric which are good for buying and then throwing over various family and friends on return.

Kids play to the camera...

and sometimes not...

but indigineous mayans in ethnic dress stand won’t let you take pictures because their spirit will be taken away. However 3 Quetzales (20pence) puts it back. That seems cheap and slightly insincere to me, even by their economic standards, but to say that is probably being ignorant, deluded, culturally blasphemous and in the end only demeaning myself.

Inevitably the local idyll has attracted a traveller’s scene.

Wherever there is beauty there are dreads. Its Nature’s way of balancing things out. Every cheap hostel has a burden of dope-smoking-ethnic-trouser-wearing-north-American-guitar-strumming-bob-Marley-listening-hair-braided-henna-tattooed-fire-breathing-bad-juggling-bearded-DREADLOCKED traveller TYPES (of course to call them TYPES is to imply they have no unique identity which I must not) who offer you endless dope and eternal friendship. Actually I enjoy their company and deep down I think I have some whitey dreads and a strong tendency towards spiritual nonsense. The other day an ageing traveller from Norwich with beer in his goatee told me that it is vital to learn something new everyday. I nodded.
He said ‘once you stop learning you stop living’.
I nodded again and looked at the ground. After the appropriate amount of silence I asked him what he learnt yesterday. He looked taken aback then took a long swig of local beer and said slowly ‘I learnt that if you place your candles in a certain order it means something.’
‘Oh I see,’ After another pause I asked ‘…and…what does that mean?’
He took one more long swig. ‘I’ll learn that tomorrow’.
I wanted to tell him that yesterday I had learnt the Spanish for frog. And that today I had learnt that it was of no use at all.

But then I thought better of it. I didn’t want to steal his thunder. I pondered what he had told me, chewing it a bit like cheap pork scratching from a pub, it tastes good but you know its full of shit, and then examined the stain on his beard. He was probably a good man who loved numerous stray dogs and who had a family somewhere, but I couldn’t help feeling that a haze of sadness surrounded him. He had been travelling for 30 years. He talked to everyone and was full of stories. He was well and healthy. But you have to wonder why anyone travels for 30 years and I got the sense that all the people he spoke to were like figures passing outside the window of a train and he was the only passenger. I hope one day he wakes up and learns how to stop and get off. That might be the best thing he ever learns.

The traveller scene is thankfully none too toxic. Any amount of dreads and spiritual nonsense is easily diluted with a large dose of refried beans and an expansive view of the volcanoes. Breathe in. Look over there, another bloody volcano, look over there another plate of refried beans, oh look ANOTHER volcano. Volcanoes everywhere, beans everywhere, volcanoes, beans, volconoes, beans

This is the volcano that looms over the town.

You eat beans and then you fart, you look at a volcano and it puffs smoke. Sometimes there is so much symmetry in the world I want to cry!

The volcanoes are dark and strangely protective when silhouetted against the open sky. Some are still live and puff out their smoke, others collect clouds at the top which spin off as candyfloss into the big sky. But when you see how many volcanoes there are, an army of them marching into the distance on their way across Central America you have a feeling that trouble is afoot. Something is bubbling underground. Grrrrr it goes. This is a land that was formed from fundamental instability, from bits of the earth going wrong, trying to clamber on top of each other, thrashing and ugly. It’s geological war frozen in time. To admire it as landscape seems a little like looking at football hooligans for a millionth of a frame and appreciating their flying fists and angry bodies as if they are marbled venuses. If you really think about, if you really look at the smoke from the volcanoes, if you really consider that central American is a crashing of plates coming together like rucking bulls things begin to feel off kilter. Beauty hides threat. The recent history of Guatemala, what terribly little I know of it – civil war, mistreatment of the mayans, poverty, lack of education etc etc – seems to have been played out on a fittingly unstable stage. Although the country is now relatively secure again and the economy back on its feet (only just – apparently the economy is so dependent on the coffee exports that when the international price for a container goes down children have to beg on the street, when it goes up they get to go back to work) there are still a few volcanoes puffing a little smoke, reminding you of the danger that could return at any moment. And wherever you look there are men with guns hung around their necks as if to prove the point. Oh don’t get me wrong, there is nowhere more pleasant than Antigua with its cafés and cake shops and bars and tequila, and there is no where with more smiles, but when you see a twelve year old walking down the street with a shot gun on his shoulder, although you know it WON’T go off, the smoking volcano in the background tells you that it COULD go off. So you think nothing of it and go and get another cake. And then…

And then something does go off.
An earthquake. Fuck. Next posting....

3: WHERE THE WILD THINGS REALLY ARE

2006-01-27T16:12:00.000-06:00

To cut the story short and so no doubt warp the truth in the process it was time to leave Costa Rica and its animals and go to Guatemala in search of something different altogether. Actually, that’s too much of a contraction. Becky and I spent a few lovely weeks travelling the Nicoya Peninsula (north pacific coast of CR) visiting empty beaches and looking for turtles and watching the sun set and sleeping in hammocks and hiring a 4x4 and crossing rivers and eating freshly fallen avocados and all of it under big blue skies but that is our story. We even went on a zip line across the tops of the jungle canopy: massive wires tied between tree houses way above the jungles leaves, 500 metres long. They harness you up, clip you onto the wire and then send you flying through the jungle like a sack of potatoes. At 30mph. Hopelessly un-ecological but too much fun to worry about that.

(Weirdly enough, in a thrush-type irony, the Wolverhampton family turned up on our zip tour. We had to laugh. ‘Right Ben-ben’s, do up your harness tight, we’re going FAST and we’re going HIGH!’ Before they took their rides father-father took a photo of them all in their helmets ‘IN THE JUNGLE ON A ZIP TOUR!!’.

Thankfully they were sent to the front where father-father, and Ben-Bens were strapped together, hung like a bundle of old clothes on the washing line and then pushed off at high speed into the bowels of the jungle. The last I saw of them was father-father, at 30mph trying to get out his video camera and screaming ‘WE’RE OFF BEN-BEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNSSSSSSS!!!!!’ before the jungle fell ominously silent. I waited to hear the cartoon crash of glass from stage-left followed by a great release of squawking birds into the sky but I wasn’t indulged. We were, however never to see them again. Please is you do see them, say hello.

At this point I should shift tone. Before I pollute things with stories of disastrous tourists and other mishaps I should clear the air and say this: there’s magic in Central America. Please smell the whiff of roses in my blog. There’s magic in the impenetrable jungle canopy, there’s magic in the pacific sunsets and there’s magic in the birds that dive into the waves near the horizon. There’s magic that will never be touched by any amount of video filming and screaming kids and fluorescent windbreakers. When we dropped off the back of the walk through the night jungle we came to a clearing from where we could look out into the night sky (when Ben-bens passed us looking up he said to his dad ‘What are they doing?’ to which father replied ‘Oh, they’re just a bunch of Greeks’, which neither of us quite understood.) But the stars feel closer over here and the night wraps up the day tighter than at home. After 7pm the crack on the horizon.

From where we stood we could look across the top of the jungle and see the leaves lit by moonlight and stars. Anything could have been hidden beneath the tops of the trees in the distance.
‘In the distance’. In other words far enough away to reach by imagination but not by foot. You hear noises ‘in the distance’ and you’re not sure where they come from and what has made them and its better that way, its better not to get the photograph of the creature that is calling to the moon because then its colour and shape and sound will live in your mind and not in the branches. Our minds are big jungles. Sometimes we have monkey minds, full of chattering thoughts and thisandthats, and sometimes we have bird minds, full of nightsong and dreams, but whatever is making the noise I reckon its OK let the animals be. That’s where the wild things are, over there, out of reach. Max sailed the seas and tamed them, but I always think it a shame that he did. Better not to know. Let a small island be where the wild things roam. No need to have their picture. That way you will never have to face the fact that noise was in fact a thrush, and that the thrush was probably singing: ‘Do you know the way to Uckfield, young sir?’ and that your photography project has not worked out at all. Instead you can imagine the noise was the mysterious Quetzal bird and that it has colours to make an oil painter cry and you will imagine the bird is calling for the crimsons and violets and nightgreens of its lover and then…then, you will imagine the lover has been away for months on … some sort of excursion, a business trip to Birmingham perhaps.

Someone once told me that a romantic is never happy because they always dream of someplace better than here.

Is that true?

Surely we all need to look to places we can never know: stare at parts of the jungle that are out of reach. I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t live without a sense of magic in your life. I say this, I suppose, because I so often lose touch with it. Then when I taste it again (and it is like a taste or perhaps a scent) from a walk at night, from being with someone at the right place and right time, from a passage of music, during a film or from arriving in a new city at dawn, I remember again what its all about. It can come when you least expect it (in fact I think this is a condition of it coming) and then it goes with equal independence. I think of it as the Bisto Gravy smoke, invisible until it crosses your path and then ….ahhhhh, bisto! Ahhhh… life!

If only we could buy it in cubes, if only we could get it when sitting with the family and eating cheap casseroles. But not so easy. If you try and grab it is disappears but if you don’t try at all you won’t get it either, so what do you do? You write blogs lamenting about it.

Normally the scent is accompanied by a faint association of another time, like how certain smells can transport to a particular time and place (a cheap brand of suncream from the early eighties takes me back to family holidays in Germany and the inevitable sunburn we all got– it was factor 2 as was typical in the day : ‘Mr Zed’s Hawaiin Coconut Cream’ or something equally cancerous) I reckon we are transported because magical moments are tinged with that wide eyed wonder we had as kids but which we seem so intent on losing as we grow up. I don’t know what to do about that and it pisses me off. We’ve got to remind ourselves that this world is bigger than us and we can’t understand it otherwise we’ll leave behind the playground of our imagination. When me and B came across that view across the jungle it was like that. A bisto ahhhhhhh! You’ve got to keep your nose open I suppose. And your eyes.

Look! There’s even magic in the electric showers over here.

The wires come straight down into the water to heat it up. How you don’t get electrocuted is total magic to me - and no doubt also to the electrician that installed it, now sitting in a bath heated up with his electric stove.

After Becky had to return home to work and I was left very lonely and sorry on my own I decided that I could leave the Quetzal bird at the back of the jungle and pursue other things. So I went to Guatemala and found the cheapest hostel I could and met some white people with dreads. So that’s why I came here. More magic and mishaps awaited me.

2: MY ONGOING PROBLEM WITH THRUSH

2006-01-25T10:41:00.000-06:00

Why am I in Guatemala?
Truth is I don’t really know.

I originally planned to spend my whole time in Costa Rica on a photographic mission to capture some of Central America’s more weird and wonderful animals. It was for my upcoming exhibition in London (easter sometime, called ANIMALS: DEAD OR ALIVE? - I’ll explain later). Even then I knew the trip was a poor excuse for a holiday but I had hoped to turn it into some sort of contrived Darwinian adventure. Where Darwin had revolutionised our understanding of the way creatures evolve and co-habit I hoped to broaden our aesthetic appreciation of the similar creatures by taking a number of shots from quite literally ‘new angles’. Here for example is a shot I got of a monkey with its testicles trapped against a branch.

MONKEY PHOTO TO BE UPLOADED SOON

You see, London had only offered me pigeons and dogs and a few stray tabbies and it wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunger for form, line and devastating composition. I knew that the jungles of the pacific coast would be a rich hunting ground for the images I needed. How wrong I was.

Many of you will be aware of the experience that Becky and I had in the lush cloud forests of northern Costa Rica so I will only summarise. We were told, correctly I think, that Costa Rica has more wildlife or ‘species’ per square mile than anywhere else on earth. What we weren’t told is that they HIDE. After three hours of searching through humid foliage with an exceptionally long lens and an impressively INDIGINEOUS guide we stumbled across our first sighting: a thrush (or maybe it was a finch). It had flown over from the UK (or maybe france – but who cares). The guide was terribly excited. My entire body clenched with disappointment. We walked for another hour, occasionally breaking into a run because the guide thought he saw the QUETZAL bird flashing through the trees. The Quetzal bird lives more in the popular imagination than it does in the wild. No one ever sees it except on the back of every coin in central America, where it is small and squashed. In reality it is full of colour and wonder. It has a tail twice as long as its body, rich inky plumage that shimmers in the light and an effortless flight that when seen across the jungle canopy makes even the most indigineous guide weak at the knees. It is magical. But it HIDES.

As I was about to give up on the day our luck changed. Coming through the large and no doubt dangerous leaves came a long haired pig. It was heading straight for us. I fired off a series of shots risking my life in the process. When I was done, lying on my back with my rucsac under me like an upturned turtle the guide calmly explained that the pig was called Charlie and was owned by the café at the park entrance. It could beg for bananas. I got up and let it trot past.

When I returned to our hostel, and after I had asked if they had any duvets, we were told that most animals come out at night.
OK!
A text book error had been made. Perhaps I would see the rare Quetzal bird after all. (By now I had decided, quite naturally, that to see the Quetzal bird was the goal of any self respecting wildlife photographer in Costa R. Once I had seen its magical colours and its supremely long tale I could return to the UK happy, put down my camera and concentrate on producing grandchildren by sitting in an old rocking chair on my porch. This was my Yeti, this was my Nessy, my tootenkarmooon (also a cupboard range at Ikea)……this was my cure for Thrush!

Becky and I once again decided to risk our lives and booked a night tour into the jungle with an even more indigineous guide who no doubt had incredible sensory powers the way that the Indians in films do when they can hear a flea’s fart from 1000 miles by placing their ear to a rock (although to assume this is to be culturally bigoted. So I didn’t) We knew to wear shoes and socks and to take our hands-free torches. The ground would be alive with venomous ooze and we would need our hands free to to grapple with unidentified silent creatures silhouetted against the moon, their eyes blinking amogst the stars. Little did we know that we were to encounter the most dramatic and astonishing creatures of all, a wild breed that is feared the world over:

THE FAMILY FROM WOLVERHAMPTON.
Britainicus touristicus terribilus. It makes you want to weep.

On a night walk through the jungle the first rule is to be neither seen nor heard. The hunters and the hunted are playing a devastating game of hide and seek and to be a witness is to wear ninja slippers, place your fist in your mouth and sink into silence. This is spectacularly difficult to achieve with a family in bright wind breakers whose hyperactive children are called ‘Ben Bens’, ‘Little Jess’ and ‘Ralphy’ and whose father has just bought a ‘great new Panasonic minicam in the sales, bloody marvellous it is1 3 megagiblets, but I don’t know for the life of me how to work the bugger, isn’t that right Ben-ben’s… Ben-ben’s?? …. Ben-ben’s! Take your hand out of that hole in the ground’. (No no ben-bens, put it in deeper … please!). Just their very presence made the chance of seeing the Quetzal bird, or antynig else for that matter, shrink as quickly as a willy in a cold bath. It seemed as if with a single flick of his Panasonic to ‘ON’ father-father was able to send the entire eco-balance of the forest into irreversible chaos. Where vines and trees had been living in precarious symbiosis and butterflies were forming delicately overnight, the whole balancing act came crashing down like a house of cards as the video starting rolling and the narration began: ‘COME ON EVERYONE LETS STAND IN THAT BUSH, LETS GET A BLOODY GOOD SHOT OF US IN THE JUNGLE! RIGHT, HERE WE ARE IN THE JUNGLE!!!! BEN BEN’S I SAID OUT OF THAT HOLE!!!’ I half expected Dom Joly to turn up with a huge camcorder ‘I’M IN THE JUNGGGGLLLLEEE!!!!’ LOOKING FOR AAAANNNNIIIMMAAALLS!’. While the fiasco unfolded, and while Ben Ben’s started his campaign for chocolate icecream and Little Jess couldn’t do up her windbreaker and so mother started to curse Marks and Spencer, the deadly fer-de-lance snake and the rare three fingered sloth (which normally moves only ten metres a night) had long packed their bags and were on their way, with directions from the Thrush, to Uckfield, Sussex.

Needless to say my entire body clenched in disappointment.

Me and B fell to the back of the group and dropped our heads in despair barely able to even turn on our torches. We reluctantly followed the group to a hole in the ground which Ben-Ben’s tried to put his hand down again. He was stopped abruptly because it was the home of a tarantula. Shame. The guide assured us the spider nearly always came out at night. Me and B tried to watch through a tangle of Wolverhampton legs and arses, but we were barely able to recognise one hole from another. Father-father pushed his way to the front and stuck his Panasonic down the entrance to the hole. ‘STAND BACK KIDS I’M FILMING THE BUGGER!!! RIGHT COME ON TA-RAN-CHOO-LAR!’.
Did it come out?
Did it fuck.
It was like expecting to get a press conference with Osama Bin Laden by installing a large group of reporters from CNN outside a random cave on the Afghanistan border and throwing Big Macs into the hole.

We did see a few things. Bats, a few slugs, a snake a long, long way away (on its way to Sussex) and some dull insects, most of which were asleep. I got a picture of a sleeping worm. It is the best photo of a sleeping worm that I have ever taken.

WORM PHOTO (uploaded soon)

In a brutal hit of irony we also came across a sleeping thrush. I don’t know if it was the same as we had seen during the day but I bet it had flown over from the UK too. It must have done because it wasn’t in the slightest bothered by the windbreakers or loud mouths and carried on sleeping. Perhaps it was on UK time.

Things were not good. The Quetzal bird was fast flying from my imagination and the colour of my hope turning to grey.

1: A CRAPPY GUATEMALAN BREAKFAST

2006-01-22T19:18:00.000-06:00

At 4000 metres this was the highest cloud I could reach. But the Quetzal bird was not inside.

Dear all

I hope you are well and I send my love from Central America. This is my blog.

Writing about myself on MY holidays and broadcasting the news live on the internet feels a little like placing my ego in my bottom, holding a megaphone to my buttocks and letting off a very long fart across the ENTIRE world. Attention, attention, me, me, me.

What a stink!

Having said that I'm excited by blogs. They seem a genuinely exciting media and it’s worth the risk of exposing myself in the chance of stumbling across the new. With their tight weave of text, image and nonsense blogs will surely replace dairies, group emails and family photoalbums in the near future bringing the long promised democratisation of the internet. Revolution!! Farrrrrrrrrtttttt.

Won’t they?

I want to get my hand in early. Like trying a new pen that can also be a pencil and rubber and if you press the top little wings come out for throwing it to other people. New things shine.

I am aware that while the concept of a blog may be interesting this is no guarantee the content will be anything other than tripe. In fact from a brief look online there is a high guarantee that they WILL be tripe. As I start writing I can already feel the weight of millions of other blogs pressing down on me through which mine will have to swim to reach some air. It feels like starting a marathon at the back of a large crowd, right behind the man dressed as Piglet who will hop for 15 hours and not let you pass. Everyone has a blog. Alan from Mississippi has one about a new high carb diet for low self esteem, Marcus from Austria has posted his thoughts on carp fishing and the apocalypse, Jennie from Scotland’s has a rant about Christian underage sex accompanied by photos of her prize-winning sponge cakes. I want those people to have a voice, I really do, but I don’t want them to have it near me. Put them in a room. These people are my equals in every way but may I rise far above them.

So, aware of the risks I will start with some photos. A thousand words and all that. These images will send me through the crowds, right to the front of the blogging race where the thin men are running in tight shorts pulled up too high. I am in training you see, typing so fluently and posting images so incessantly that my shorts will soon be up to my nipples.

Let's start. Here is a photo of a fat man doing up his zip.

And here is a picture of some refried beans that were served to me in the exact shape of a turd.

I can’t think what went wrong in the kitchen. Despite the assumptions of those who know me best I did not have a row with the chef. He must have got out of the wrong side of his hammock. At least no sweet corn was offered as a side. I should add, however, that the meal did come with camomile tea, the exact colour and heat of warm pee. Surprisingly it turned out to be a most satisfying breakfast for which I left a good tip.

As you no doubt will be aware from the photos I am in Guatemala. Neither of these images are cheap and attention grabbing, I can assure you, but rather serve to introduce the theme of this blog. When I travel, although I enjoy beds with good sheeting and food served with napkins I am more interested in the dirtier side of the experience. Don’t get me wrong, I never get very close to danger or misery but I do take a particular interest in the underside of the rock. Not the sunny, warm side of travelling, but the wet, mossy side which is dark and teeming with insects. Hopefully I can serve you up some tasty grubs in the next few postings.

Before I start I do feel obliged to give some very general overview of this country and what I am doing here. So here’s the science bit.

Guatemala is wedged between Mexico to the north and another country to the south. It is smaller than Britain (at least on one of those maps that distorts the top and bottom) but for all intents and purposes it is huge: travelling anywhere takes bloody ages. The days are warm but the nights are cold (towns, at least in the south are often above 1500 metres). Greeny brown stuff everywhere. If I was painting it from an average window in an average town I would need only greens and browns and a little blue for the sky. Look I'll get a map off the internet to clear up this confusion.

Very hilly, often volcanous (sp?). Lots of coffee plantations. Impressively small people with dark parched skin and strong legs that bend in the middle, just as they should. Thank god for that then. Due to the sun and the intense working conditions the average person looks at least 20 years older than they are. This makes newborns a handful.
Most Guatemalans are incredibly kindly, even when they are carrying a shotgun and a large machete and have no teeth. It’s the simple things that they do, young men waving good night in the street, kids playing ball next to you, ancient, wrinkled grandmothers (aged 35) coming over to chat, they have a simple charm.

Now, I have to stop this line of description as I sense I am about to say something patronising, offensive and deeply ignorant, I have no idea what it is or why it will be ignorant, but I know I will say it and I know it will be wrong. Why does this self-doubt accompany me wherever I go in countries with people poorer than me who work much harder than I could? It’s a feeling that I’m going to put my big white western foot in the little black pot of refried beans. The other day I was on an open truck and I tried to get 20 mayan people to start singing a Beatles song as we drove through the trees, and then, mid rendition I had a crisis of confidence. Not because it was a rubbish song, or because I can't sing, but because I had some unspoken fear that I was insulting them, their culture, and no doubt at some level myself as well. Fuck, it was only ringo’s Octopus’ Garden. I’d like to be, under the sea… in a garden of self doubt, in the shade.

I think what I wanted to say before the censor got me is that a nice measure of a cultures success is to count how many strangers smile at you in the morning. There, said it. But then I fear that someone, like Germain Greer or maybe Fran from celebrity love island, is going to say ‘Try telling that to all the people who lost their legs in the civil war, or who would happily trade their smile with an X box you simple minded western biggot’. I don’t think its simple, I think its true. People smile more here and THAT’S A GOOD THING.

But christ they do need dentists and floss. Is that the first thing that goes in a civil war? dentistry? A tooth for a tooth and all that?

I reckon that all of us, all of us from duvet-coutries at least, AND THAT MEANS YOU READER, are prone to this weird inverted inferiority complex. Why was I not born in a civil war? Why have I got access to good education? Shit, I’ve got everything I could want, I AM USELESS! I am constantly aware that if I had to live in a hut and kill my own chickens and survive on a diet of beans and no TV I would perish almost immediately upon resting my head on the straw pillow. With my addiction to duck down, wheat-free bread and 8 hours sleep a night I am an evolutionary anomaly. I should have long faded away. Place my birth any time before the 1960’s and I would not have made it. Perhaps, just perhaps, I might have excelled as a creature that had to reach berries on leaves 6 feet four inches away, but then I would have found their high sugar content displeasing, refused to eat them unless accompanied by soya milk and promptly fallen from the branch due to a mild hunger. The tigers would have got me.

Don’t laugh, as I am sure most of you are the same. A war, a flu’ or a frog would have taken us, and the gene pool all the richer for it. No, you are all lovely, don’t get me wrong, but we are white and pale and worry about our nails too much to rank beside these Guatemalan workhorse-civil-war-surviving people. No wonder their skin is so bad.

Nevertheless I am here and I am alive and I have got my hands on the very pinnacle of bio-technical evolution: the blog. So this is my blog! Revolution! Farrrrrrrrrrtttttttt!! What a stinker! Please click on blog two to start the terrible grizzly adventure.