Entry One

Entry One in the "What Chris is Doing In Colombia Over the Next Month" creative writing competition.

By Molly Greene, 15, of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Chris rises at dawn, drinks a glass of water and eats some Vegemite. On a rice cracker. He is prepared for a new day at a lovely seminar camp. Unfortunately, he discovers he can't discover or recall where he left his favorite shirt, dyed in the Himalayas by Wiccans in the most delicate shade of saffron. It is the only shirt that matches his parachute pants, the only clean pants he has. "Good grief," he thinks to himself. "Whatever shall I do?" At this moment a water spirit appears in the doorway. "Christopher, matchy-matchy is out, as everyone knows," the water spirit announced. She had long spidery hair carefully clothing her scale-y body and Christopher wondered how a naked water spirit could be advising him regarding style."What are you doing here?" he wondered aloud. "There isn't water for acres." "Ahh, foolish lad," she replied wisely. "The true water is found in the mind." At that moment, Chris knew what had befallen his favorite saffron shirt. "You!" he cried. "You have my shirt." "Nay, nay," she whispered. "The shirt too is found in the mind." Chris, usually a mild soul, began to lose his temper. "Beastly wench," he hissed. "Return my shirt to me immediately.""Only if you answer me one question: Why is the ocean blue?" She looked a thim smugly because surely no one knows why the ocean is blue. However, Christopher knew. "The ocean is blue because it reflects the sky, which is also blue." At that moment the water spirit disappeared, replaced by the saffron shirt, which Chris wore for the duration of the seminar camp and grew to love more and more every single day. The end.

Please send further entries to standardlinedelivery@gmail.com in order to fill the void in posts over the coming months.

One Week Report, Illustrated.

(Figures 1 and 2: Antony Gormley artwork titled "Asian Field", exhibited at Pier 2/3 as part of the Biennale of Sydney, 2006. Gormley got a village in China to make these critters out of local clay and then assembles them in various galleries around the globe. There are over 180 000 figures in all. The art of setting them up and transporting them is the most impressive part and it was truely one of the most beautiful art pieces I have ever seen.)

(Figure 3: The main Cathedral in Bogotá, with cloudcrested Andean peaks behind it. Bogotá is a city with many pigeons, gracious old churches and girls with big asses in tight jeans. It has this crazy cool transport system which is called Transmilenio, which is like a metro system but with special buses, with their own traffic lanes and stations and it's very cheap and crowded and wonderful.)
(Figure 4. Downtown Bogotá street. Bogotá also has many lovely streets and small children who, very cleverly speak Spanish. Both are present in this illustration. What you can't see is that in Bogotá there are well dressed and altogther finely presented young people dancing well to Latin music in many many swanky nightclubs. It was at one of these such places that I danced next to the famous ex-child actor Carla Giraldo who, years ago, played the title character in the Colombian telenovela "Lolita" and recently posed naked and discussed her bi-sexuality in a mens magazine. She was indeed, kissing girls in said nightclub. I attempted the salsa and didn't do so well.)
(Figure 5: the tips of the mountains that overshadow Bogotá on the eastern side. At least three people told me to use the mountains to keep orientated in Bogotá. So I did. Bogotá is at about 2500 metres above sea level and it is possible to suffer some effects due to the altitude. I didn't, unless you can count the strange and vivid dreams I was having each night, which come to think of it I also had while trekking in Nepal. I've mentioned the Guus dream in a previous entry, but others involved me seeing four people from the upcoming Seminar camp being ripped apart by a bus and also me sucking, briefly, the tongue of a fifteen year old girl and worrying that my breath smelled. Both of these dreams resulted in my waking up and wondering if they were real or not for at least 30 seconds.)

(Figure 6: A cloud above the campsite, in el Retiro, near Medellin. The campsite, which we visited today, is incredibly beautiful, with ponds and geese and green trees everywhere and a cosy house with big windows and a wood fireplace. The nearby town is just as wonderful, with little dim cantinas gathered around a cute main square, packed with old men with moustaches drinking aguardiente and eating chorizo. I'm actually not sure I've ever been to a country so consistantly attractive before in my entire life. Anyway, I leave to the camp site on Monday, so this may be my last entry for some time. Enjoy the rest of the World Cup, readers, and remember me in your autobiographies. All the best. )

Street Art: Bogotá

Children at home and abroad. I have just written the longest blog entry I have ever written. It was about trying to watch the Australia-Croatia game here in Bogota, about the transport system, about my insecurities, about my continuous jetlag and about the crazy dreams I have been having, including one in which Australian socceroos coach Guus Hiddink was attacked, on field, by a guide dog which ravaged his right ankle. I had just finished it, and tried to use the backspace bar to erase one letter and for some reason it erased the whole thing. I had been writing for one hour and a half and it was a good entry, I think. My efforts to get it back were fruitless. I must go now, but I'll end this heartbreaking entry by saying that I will not, after all, have internet access at the camp, which begins next week. As a result, don't expect too much from this motherfucking blog. You are, however, warmly invited to send, by email (standardlinedelivery@gmail.com) your own fictional accounts of what you imagine I might be up to, at the camp, or just freely wandering the verdant forests of Colombia. All submissions will be published. Excuse me while I go stand in front of a bus.

One Fork in the Path.

I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.
- Jorge Luis Borges

On the outskirts of Buenos Aires, beside the autopistas which run between the city centre and the Ministropistarmi airport, where the green commons are lined with leafless trees of early winter, where streams trickle in shy gullies, an old man has balanced his bike on the trunk of an elm while he stoops to collect firewood. Above him in the branches, as in a number of other trees in nearby fields, an abandoned kite hangs tangled, its long colourful tail lashing slowly in the wind. Its an overcast sky, thick and low. The man moves slowly on the grass, ties bundles of sticks to the frame of his bike. There are small birds above the telegraph wires. The sound of tyres of damp roads.

Downtown, the cobbled streets of el barrio San Telmo are peppered with porteños - amourous couples tightly held, students in scarves and sweaters, tired eyed beggars with infants wrapped close, Argentine women with carefully constructed hairstyles. It's Sunday, and Plaza Dorrego is crammed full with a labyrinth of stalls, selling antique candlesticks, timepieces, binoculars, hats and old photographs stuffed in metal tins. Groups gather and grin around the street performers. Here is a leotarded contortionist, here a puppeteer. Here, old men in brimmed hats are playing piano accordion, here couples dance the tango. And the old women, wild haired and with smudged lipstick, whose attraction is just that they are mad, and who bang out rhythms on deoderant lids or tango with stuffed toys. All attract crowds. Then the smell from the resturaunts, of thick, juicy beef steak, of fried potatoes, of chorizo. And, as darkness approaches the people slowly leak downwards, into the tiled subte stations, another labyrinth, musty and echoing, once grand.