The comic I did a few weekends ago for the 24 Hour Comic project is now printed and ready for reading. If you would like a copy, please smile in my general direction, or even better, give me some sugar in any way you deem appropriate.
The comic is about the conflict situation in Colombia and is based partly on my time there, but also on recent reports by Medecins Sans Frontieres and Human Rights Watch.
You can tell summer is here, because there’s moths whapping across the iridescent bulbs in the bookstore, and posters stuck with Blue-Tac are curling from the walls and by 10am its already too hot to be still in bed on a lazy Saturday morning like today’s. But here at Hyde Park, where I have come to type the afternoon away, the sun is bright but the wind is still strong and the air is filled with dragonflies and with falling leaves and with whole swarms of dancing blossom, buds of which are dropping onto my laptop and getting stuck between the keys. I am seated on my rainbow rug, alone, with a makeshift picnic consisting of White Rabbit milk and rice paper lollies (from China), SOTO cuttlefish flavoured snacks (from Malaysia) and a Berri 2.4L Family Pack container of Apple Juice (from Australia). The crows caw in crescendos, ducks preen, Italian men gather in brimmed hats, glittering ribbon hangs from the twigs of trees, remnants of a long faded park-based celebration. A lone, dumpy woman sits still, slumped slightly forward, on a bench nearby, staring off blankly across the park, white, knobbly legs poking out from a pale blue skirt like broken pegs. Groups of rosellas, swirling oaks, a wedding limousine, a girl’s laughter. The White Rabbits are not anywhere as good as I remember them to be.
Last weekend I cooked a dinner party for some people and although I had some valuable assistance from a few key individuals it was, I think, the first time I could honestly say that I had done that, of my own accord, in my lifetime. It was all Middle Eastern food, as will be the successive dinner parties or picnics which are planned to occur on a fortnightly schedule from this day forward, and to which you might be invited if you are both within proximity and particularly strategic in your dealings with me (Let us assume, for the purposes of this blog, that the food will be at least, somewhat, good). The previous menu, which all but eight of you missed out on, read as follows:
Mezze
Warm Lebanese pita bread
Olive Oil
Za’atar
Fresh Hummus (made from hand-peeled chickpeas, kids)
Muhammara (Red pepper and walnut paste)
Baba Ghanoush
Eggah (Parsley omelette)
Mains
Moghrabieh (Lebanese giant couscous) with chicken and lemon zest
Stuffed red peppers & stuffed tomatoes
To Drink
Chilled Egyptian Karkadai (hibiscus infusion drink)
In summary, I have decided that cooking can be rather fun and isn’t all that stressful after all.
In other recent news:
I have, in the course of three weeks, twice had to foil attempts to steal from the bookstore. The first time we were tipped off by a nearby store owner who suspected that the woman had just stolen some cards and maybe a tshirt from him and that she was now in our store, which she was. I watched as she tucked a number of books into her bag and then made sure than she realised that I was watching until she sheepishly, and not altogether stealthfully, removed the stack from her bag (3 x Jodie Picoult novels and 1 x WA lesbian magazine) and tried to balance them on a nearby display shelf as if nothing had ever happened. She then bought two other books and mumbled something non-sensical which I presume was aimed to throw me off making any comment about her poor attempt at crime. The other time was last weekend, when I was again tipped off, this time by the kebab store guys from next door, that a girl had just stuffed a calendar in her bag and walked a little way down the street. My reponse this time was somewhat more direct as I approached from behind and took the calendar from her bag before threatening, rather hollowly, to contact the cops. Her excuse went something like “Oh some girl just GAVE it to me to put in my bag. I dunno WHO she was! She just said ‘Here, put this in your bag and walk away’. Yeah, I don’t know what that was about”. And really there’s not all that much you can say to an alibi as strong as that.
I leave you now with a Clip-Out-And-Keep souvenir photo of me which I will take right now, with my computer, of me sitting in the park in my traditional Colombian hat. Good day.
Below is a letter I wrote to myself while I was on the Seminar Camp in Israel in August last year. The idea was for our letters to be sent to us one year or so later, which they were, and I received mine this week. Thankyou Eva, for remembering to send it out.
------------------
3 August 2005, Bet Govrin, Israel, 5.00pm
Dear Chris,
Last night there were jackals. Of course there has often, or always, been jackals before last night, every night, for a number of millennia anyway. But last night there began to be jackals for me. Jackals entered my mind, my sphere, with a distant hoot, heard above the growling cello coming through my headphones. Suddenly there I was, contemplating jackals. Contemplating my proximity to jackals. There were jackals last night.
About a week ago it had been the same thing with warplanes. Their roar filled the sky, an echoing boom over the kibbutz. Before that it had been Helene, one of the most gorgeous people who ever did live. Before that there was Eva, whose presence filled everywhere with light.
This camp has also bought new things from within. I know, now, some of my most significant and most dangerous flaws. Before, I might have guessed at them or seen them in miniature, but I may not have held them in my palms like plump, round plums. There they sit now, wet and dark, firm and promising, one in each palm, ready for me to decide what to do with them now. I cannot leave them behind: in many ways they are attached to my skin, they are attached deeper. I must carry them, learn to carry them, to hold them well. I must cherish and admire them, like terrible monsters in a nearby cage. I must learn and understand the howl of a jackal.
I wonder what the next six months will bring, what the next year will bring, what new things will grow from within me or approach from outside? What will a month of focused attention in Cairo do or bring? A month or two of desert solitude? A few weeks in Palestine? Will my heart and head jumble further, get dry, soak and expand, explode completely? Already (it’s been less than a month) I feel better, stronger, more focused, less bored – will this trend continue or will I sink back into post camp ennui? Hopeless sadness? Self doubt?
This night is advancing, we approach the close of camp. We will be spread, soon, smeared again in the CISV Diaspora. The group, unbreakable; broken. And the warplanes will roar and the jackals will howl.
And those I love and those I can no longer live without, they will be in every song, they will be in every wish. They will be the birds and the drums and the gorgeous masts of old ships. Our love can, and our love always will, from this point forward, float on.
I hope you are well & happy & safe.
Chris.
