- The
land of the flat faced bat-cat with tufted ears and a knife-sharp-tooted
grin
- The
sheikdom of the eyeless Arab
- The
skies flown by the awe inspiring pterodactyl
- The
planet ruled by the monkey with lightening coming from its eyes
- That
location of which the blunt-toothed gargoyle speaks animatedly
He cannot tell, because he cannot go there, perhaps even with the
assistance of psilocybin mushrooms,
( although the quantities
of them that he has taken so far give him the feeling that he might be starting
that journey), but none of the above seem as though they might be good places.
Yet, although the faces of their denizens and rulers, as shown in the bathroom
wall tiles, have fearsome aspects, they do not seem to be bad places either.
Merely very, very different places with unknown rules based on huge tessellated
and towered mental structures discerned dimly through the swirling patterns of
the bathroom tiles and
the complicit smirks of their understanders, for demons are always good and
bad.
On Christmas morning one can wake up feeling free of demons, for a second
or two at least, until you realise that you are on a package holiday in Tenerife . Trapped in vast leisure Industry mega-factory
thousands of miles from mainland Europe . Stuck
on a strip of sand and lava between the saw-toothed mountains and the sad Atlantic , hemmed in by motorways and patrolled by short
trousered police on electric scooters and private security dressed up in Tyrolean
costumes or as gnomes. A temporary escape can at least be made on a whale
watching catamaran cruise.
Grinning tanned reps assemble enough Angloid lardbuts to load up their
catamaran and then sail slowly south, plying the lardy ones with free booze the
while, lest they get any thinner. Riding low in the water, the catamaran soon
comes across the pod of pilot whales that usually sleep on the surface near
here.
The whales whistle to one another to maintain their relative positions
and formation, the catamaran cuts its engine and circles them. The lardies look
on, drink, point their videos and cameras, drink, stand up, drink, drink point
at the whales, drink, eat sandwiches and , drink. The captain of the catamaran
tells the lardies a story about the pilot whales.
“This whales are short-finned pilot whales. They is sleepings now,
please do not shout, we do not want to disturb thems. This whales is not eat
plankton, this are toothéd whales, have tooths. This whales eat gigante squid.
This squid is living very, very deep in the sea, 400 metres perhaps. At this
deep the whales cannot see, but each whale have in his head this echo-location,
he is like sonar, so he find the squid. The giant squid is very, very big and
the short-finned pilot whales is only quite small, you can see…..”
We could see, the pod that we circled was about ten or twelve beasts
big. These beings were black, six or seven feet long, one at least with its
smaller whale calf following. Their dorsals cut the sea’s surface and it was
possible, after a bit, to see that individual whales had different fins. One
was curled over, almost into an ‘S’ shape, others were almost sharply triangular,
most followed the damned bell curve between these two extremes, being rounded off
triangles. Sometimes the whales coasted along all fins above the surface, and
at others, perhaps when the boat got too close, they dipped under the sea top
and rose up again a few yards further on. This motion was like the way dolphins
swim, but without all the showy leaping, squeaking noise and begging to track
suited guards for herring.
Now the captain of the catamaran psychoanalysed the whales: ““This
whales is very clever, they do not sleep like us who is dives deep in sleep and
is probing the Id underneath, and all
this collective unconscious and all this. Underneath whales is ocean, we fly
over it like birdes is fly over us. To us ocean is one blue thing, is one mass
of water, is saltwater, is wet water, is one blue wet thing. But ocean is not
one thing, he is not homo, he is hetero watter….”
The lardies, who the captain was
apparently addressing, were by now either so pissed on free beer and wine that
they couldn’t understand what he was saying, even if they had been able to
understand it anyway, (when sober, which was infrequent), or they were Dutch or Scandinavian, or as was
the case with the two of them with the most developed mentation, they were
arguing over the only one last free
bocadillo left between the two of them and who to sue about it, given the
zero-sum situation about bocadillos
which appeared then to prevail on the catamaran i.e. that some other greedy
lardperson had consumed two of them instead of his/her single bocadillo ration.
“….he is watter of different levels.” The captain continued. “ This
levels I speak of is levels of temperature, of pressure, of consciousness, of
being itself, which, (one assumes), entails different world views. But goes up,
the other goes down, the whales and squids that is. In day, the ocean segment where
squid is frolic descend, he go down and short finned pilot whale cannot dive so
far, so he sleep here, but their breathing is voluntary, so they is trifurcate
their brain: swim, sleep, breathe all at once. Clever whales.
At night the squid level rise and the clever whales dive, but unlike the
psychoanalytically trained captain of catamaran, they is conscious when they go
so deep. I can only reach the level of the squid when I sleep, sleep, and sleep.
The squids are big, I know, I have seen the vast expanses of their tentacular
reach, the enormity of their jet propelling ink-farts, the snip-snap-snapping
of their cannibalistic beaks, and the rolling and focussing of their
football-sized eyes. But whales is smarts, when they swim in id of squid, whale
is ego, grab squid and climb, climb, climb. If you have dived, you know, even
from small depth, too much pressure change too fast is bad, so squid explodes,
bang and whales eat him.”
Lardies paid no attention.
“Please only take one bocadillo each. “ One of the Capitan’s assistants admonished,
but it was too late.
“Now is time for swimming, we go to swimming, place.” the captain
announced
The lardy-laden catamaran sailed away from the pod of pilot whales to an
inlet where so semi-conscious lardies swam in the shallows, others slumped on
deck, all drank. The boat now played music to accompany these proceedings,
presumably as this would no longer distract the short-finned pilot whales from
their quasi-sleep.
As the lardies swam, displaying the full extent of their tattoos, the
music was sort of ambient, chill-out, Holgar Czukay style stuff. But then after
the lardies were all back on the catamaran and as it glided along the coast on
its way back to its harbour. Past the fish farms., the artificial jetties, the
new luxury up-market style town apartment style complexes with double electric
fencing, searchlights, watchtowers and very Tyrolean security
staff, and the shacks of the island’s
small underclass, made of bamboos and bits of old tarpaulin. As the catamaran
glided past all of this in the dry hot merciless sunlight of a near equatorial Christmas
which was at least not in Britain
The catamaran docked and he climbed back up past the ‘friendly’ Irish
pubs and Scottish pubs and German pubs and English pubs and ‘happy’ English
restaurants and German restaurants and the reassuringly English, German and
Spanish supermarkets and mini-markets, some of which sold proper crisps, baked
beans and Smirnoff at only €5 per litre. Until he reached his room in the
Tenereifoplaza hotel where there was the psychedelic bathroom wall displaying:
- The
land of the flat faced bat-cat with tufted ears and a knife-sharp-tooted
grin
- The
sheikdom of the eyeless Arab
- The
skies flown by the awe inspiring pterodactyl
- The
planet ruled by the monkey with lightening coming from its eyes
- That
location of which the blunt-toothed gargoyle speaks animatedly
He did not feel psychologically strong enough to cope with these
alternative realms yet (psilocybin mushrooms or not), especially as
their analogous relationship to the relative depths, diving capacities, and
predatory behaviour of short-finned
pilot whales and giant squid were only just beginning to sink in/up/down/into
his own sun-frazzled anglo-brain.
So he chilled out with some artisan style Gomerian potato crisps and a
nasty 72% double-brewed malt beer called “Specialer Vole-Twaart” (or
something), whilst looking at live TV shots of a tsunami drowning Sri Lankans
on Sky News.
It was horrible, you saw the brown surge of water, you saw two men
standing on the side of the partially capsized bus, the vast tide swirling
round their feet and after a bit you realised what could be happening inside
the bus. God rest their souls, they go to heaven or a better life. But why
should God rest them? Wasn’t it He/she/It/None of the above who had an itch in
the nose and went: “arrr, errr… errrr. Errrr
TSUNAMI!
Never mind, what can you do?
Immediately the answer is eat the buffet hotel meal that he has already
paid for. Drink too much red wine and have a piece of diced carrot from the
Russian salad lodge firmly in his moustache to the disgust of his fellow
singles holiday clients. Then go and see the floor show in the Tenereifoplaza
‘Bougainvillea’ performance area. It is the great DERMO and his glamorous
assistant Katrin Gigantbox. He is a sort of shiny black plastic trousered bad
latin knife throwing act who saves himself by Tommy Coopering but has to speak
25 euro linguas so ‘communicates’ mostly by fast claps and stamps and shouting
“OY” or “HAY” (or something like that). His major talent is balancing bits of
furniture on his chin whilst accompanied by a fat Polish artiste. He balances:
- Plastic chair
- Stack of (approx) 20 glasses
- Plastic table
- Wooden armchair with stuffing
- Wooden coffee table
- Plastic lounger from next to hotel swimming pool
- Sofa (3 seater) (Polish tart removes cushions)
- Medium sizes aluminium ladder
Then brings on puma cub on lead, end of act.
Now it is night, the level of concscoiusness is sinking towards the Id
as the level of water in which the giant squid swims rises. The kingdoms
concealed beneath the bathroom tiles emerge from their dimensions to connect a
human brain and call it into their thrall.
Soon there will be an empty Hotel room.
.
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