Savage Picnic

 

I don’t have a knife, but am in the mood for an avocado so I’m eating it like a pear, which of course it is, though my brain is still catching up with my actions and watches somewhat aghast at this savage picnic (helluva band name, just googled it, not yet taken, you’re welcome).

My location for said pear-gate is a Vietnamese beach where I am watching a fisherman navigate his intriguingly spherical boat back to shore. I did attempt the requisite documentation of this event, using the universal communication method of waving a mobile phone in the air whilst pointing vaguely in the direction of an object or person, but after much toothless grinning and insistence that I closely inspect his fishing nets, his wife appeared with a slightly-less-than-fresh platter of fruit and slightly-more-than-usually aggressive demeanour, so I’ve paid an unknown sum (the currency here feels deliberately insane to enable ease of rip-off) for some mouldy bananas, and also failed to get a photo. Ah, travel.

Ah travel indeed! I am delighting in these limitless little divergences, especially after visiting Australia, where I ended up driving on the wrong side of the road (the right side, if you will) because after such a long flight, you’d assume you can leave British peculiarities behind (that is, if in your sleep deprived state you are just enjoying the pretty view rather than focusing on its bleak history).

Anyway, what I am left pondering, nay, revelling in, is the simple fact that we do things differently the world over; what a wonderous species we are, with our infinitely creative ways of finding a fish, let alone making music, or building a temple, or iconising the ephemeral in order to do something mysterious and meaningful within its walls.

It feels important right now to articulate this interpretation of reality, simply to offer a counter-melody to our current, brashly one-dimensional media march of doom. If you look, there is always something to celebrate, and right now it is the simple pleasure of such a perfectly round sea-faring specimen. You don’t get that in Hastings!  

Chào tạm biệt


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