Faro, days 1 & 2

- We discovered that ‘low cost inn Faro’ doesn’t actually provide breakfast as suggested by the copious ‘breakfast’ photos on their webpage. They instead provide you with the business card of a friend who owns a restaurant somewhere in town. We subsequently embarked on a supermarket hunt and settled for a yoghurt that contained traces of cereal. It tasted unpleasantly medicinal and was not worth the Portuguese abuse we endured from the livid check-out girl for not having the right change, or the 2 handfuls of 20 cent pieces that we consequently received.

- discovered that ‘low cost inn faro’ doesn’t possess laundry facilities either, another amenity promoted on their website. Furthermore, it turns out that faro itself doesn’t have a laundrette. Sick of having to flip my underwear inside out, or simply wearing the same pair for 5 days straight in Josh’s case, we ended up constructing a ghetto pseudo-washing machine in a bathroom sink using a sock as the plug. Was a surprisingly efficient system. Despite suffering some minor burns and hardcore finger wrinklage, our hygiene levels have sky-rocketed. We used our cylindrical fan with a belt tied round it (so as it doesn’t sound like an airplane combusting in midair) to blow dry our clothes or else laid them on the spot on the floor where the sun shone through the window (constant surveillance and an advanced rotational timetable was required to ensure optimal drying)

- had an anonymous man open our bedroom door whilst I was splayed half-naked on the bed in the process of getting dressed for dinner. Much discomfort ensued. Still haven’t ascertained whether or not it was the hostel receptionist or what this unidentified deviant wanted.

- Bought a sandstone ring from an African market stall set up in the centre of town. Discovered that sandstones don’t visually or texturally  resemble actual sand, although the colour kind of looks like sand that someone with a kidney infection has urinated on. It’s a nice ring.

- Partook in a phenomenal tapas dinner of bruschetta, pumpkin soup, homemade guacamole and olive tapenade with home-made foccacia accompanied by 2 glasses of astringent (but nonetheless appreciated) red wine for 10 euro. 

- had a ‘book party’ under a big tree just outside the crumbling ‘old town’ of Faro. Josh read Breakfast of Champions and I read The Dying Animal. Our legs were besieged by a multitude of malicious insects that we eventually conquered with our bug-slaughtering mastery.

- caught a ferry to ‘Ilha Deserta’, the uninhabited southernmost island of Portugal, where we spent the day soaking up sun, swimming

in the idyllic Atlantic ocean and reading our respective books. Unfortunately my pasty flesh of Irish heritage encountered a little too much sun for its liking and is now experiencing some bad karma from the lack of slip, slop, slapping. These last few hours have consisted of me tending to my engorged crimson limbs, trying not to envisage myself as the freshly plucked turkey that I’m increasingly resembling. 

- went out for some Mexican chilli beans. The meal concluded with a few complimentary Tequila shots from the waiter who then proceeded to leave the bottle on the table for us to enjoy. No wonder they get such good tips.

- watched 2 sets of live music by the seaside whilst hypothesizing about the lives of fish and neurotisizing about a ‘Jaws’ equivalent launching itself out of the harbor and devouring people whole. 

Granada

Neglecting that fact that I have failed to publicize a single blog or facebook note about my trip in the ten weeks I have been away so far, tonight I feel compelled to say a few words about Granada. It’s our last night down here in this southern city of Spain and I can definitively say that it has been one of the most incomprehensibly poignant experiences of my life. We arrived by bus from Madrid last sunday and I was enraptured instantly by its dynamic, yet relaxing ambience. Any internal tensions seemed to dissipate, rousing an organic sense of calm and psychological equilibrium. The Intricate islamic architecture and palpable moroccan influence both augments a sense of exoticism and compounds the multifaceted nature of Granada that is so seductive. It is a place that stimulates both the body and mind. I feel invigorated here, as if some dormant morsel of self has been enlivened and I’ve found myself drawing, writing and reading at a voracious pace, wandering the streets at night in a daze of delight and enchantment. After visiting the Alhambra (Google it.) yesterday my thoughts are still too embryonic to articulate, but essentially any adjective synonymous with phenomenal would befit the experience.  Tomorrow we leave to Seville for a few nights before commencing our affair with Portugal. Life’s pretty tough.

Guns before Butter

I feel like writing something meandering today.. The reflected light is clean and the air is thin – not emaciated, just not congested with crumbs of bygone life or mysterious animal hairs or collective grunge. My hands are chilled in the way that overparticular people like their drinks. Icy upon initial contact, but effortlessly digestible – No physical or mental exertion required. Upon further inspection I realise that I seem to have only painted 6/10 of my nails, they’re a dark purplish colour reminiscent of lavish dog food tins, perhaps ‘My Dog’ or something similar. Maybe this is why I decided to stop painting after 6 nails. I hope other people don’t look at my nails and think of dog food, or arrive at the conclusion that I live in a house overrun by an assortment of demanding canines with expensive tastes. That would just be embarrassing, by now I should well and truly be versed in the art of subjugating non-human animals. They should be serving ME ‘My Dog’.

It is now 5 days until I depart for 5 months. That makes a nice sentence, the repetition of 5 is soothing in a very dispassionate way. It also has a pleasantly subdued air for words with such a consequential reality attached to them.

I think it’s time for a shower.. People like people with good personal hygiene.

Kraftwerk

So, I got my snazzy craft boots on this weekend (most definitely inspired by the resounding spirit of Easter) and hand-made some creature wheat-bags. The phrase ‘Creature wheat-bags’ probably  doesn’t evoke any particular mental image for you, especially not one as unimaginably awesome as the final products of my wheat bag assembling endeavour. So, to save your brains from generating their own imagery and expending their ephemeral Easter sprightliness (which should be reserved for calculating lavish amounts of calories consumed and conjuring conjectural realities in which a genuine attempt is made to burn them off) I took a few snaps of my ‘wheat-babies’. Yes. I refer to them fondly as my ‘wheat-babies’. I’ve become remarkably attached to them in the brief days following their creation (I guess I could consider myself a benevolent Victor Frankenstein of sorts). Anyway, They’ve proven to be impeccably successful receptacles of my swelling maternal impulses. I’m no longer considering skipping pills in aspiration of falling pregnant, fantasising about adopting a slow loris (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLdQ3UhLoD4) or compulsively watching Weezer’s ‘Island In The Sun’ video clip. However, on the flip siiiiiide, is reserving them their own seat at meal times surpassing the boundaries of a ‘healthy’ attachment to inanimate objects? Let’s hope not.

Don’t they make your heart melt into a slimy gelatinous liquid!? The woolen squares are hand-knitted AND function as pockets, so they’re practical as well as being endearingly soft. At this point I’ve named the grey one Gomez and the purplish one Figgy, so together their names make ‘Go-figgy’, like ‘go figure’. Niiiiiiice.

Lazy self-expression

In place of capitalising on the collective fertility of my brain, this morning I’m simply posting a couple of pen drawings that I did a little while ago

mmm, expression devoid of articulation is so good. Especially with a side of modest self-promotion.

Wednesday’s wordly whispers

Mmm.. struggling for content (or blogtent – ‘blog’ is such a good prefix) today. My head feels like cured meat, perhaps a hunk of salami suspended by string in a muggy shopfront.

I wonder if they would taste similar, my head and salami, how much of the flavour comes from the actual meat itself and how much from the ‘curing’ process? An experiment for my to-do list perhaps.

It’s now taken me 10 minutes to write this and i’ve eaten 7 out of 10 of my fingernails; the little half-moon fragments are scattered on my desk. I’m thinking that I should arrange them into some form of meaningful pattern to get my creative juices circulating? Surely there’s a niche market out there for nail-clipping sculptures – It is indisputably ‘organic’. And ethical. Until someone starts kidnapping unsuspecting victims and harvesting their fingernails. perhaps this is a potential reality that I don’t want to engender. No nail sculptures for me tonight..

…Well, at this point, I’ve munched away all 10 of my nails and have commenced nibbling on the neighbouring skin. This is not quite as satisfying as the nail-biting process as there’s no definitive severance, just tiny chunks of elastic-y skin slivers, slightly reminiscent of confetti if I stockpiled enough of them. That’s quite a cool concept actually, scraps of skin masquerading as celebratory confetti.
Imagine the winner of Australian Idol Series #27 being showered with festering morsels of human skin.. Or euphoric and overwrought brides/grooms seeking to memorialise the day when their romance becomes centrelink legit.. I could go places with this. Let me stew on it a while.

But I’ve a gentle soul and you’ve no need to fear for your life

eyelashes fall from zenithal heights
like diminutive feathers; virtually celestial.
The current continues, undulating lash,
after lash.
A deluge of delicate quills,
casting sultry silhouettes of a practical reality.
Razored tips shred the atmosphere
seemingly aberrant.
Willful acts of desertion,
spawning naked bands of crippled lid,
asthenic and graceless.
An unmitigated extraction of the penetrator,
from the penetrated.

Tuesday’s Thought Trains

After scrolling down my blog page, my attention was drawn to the fact that I project myself as an unhinged psychopath preoccupied with unseemly acts of erotic violence.. Did this distress me? Slightly. Until I realised that surely there are worse things to be than a sex-smitten freak with a penchant for macabre imagery.. Hence I’m dedicating this post to the construction of a list specifying all impressions less desirable to project than mine. Generating blog content AND mitigating my image-related angst, talk about destroying two birds with one stone.. Okay, impressions more unpleasant than mine:

1. A self-proclaimed conversational pyrotechnic who recycles anecdotes of ‘glory days’, half-baked youthful misadventures or inflated family accomplishments

2. Someone who lets mustard-y green fur accumulate on their teeth so severely that it forms a complete tooth casing that gets shed bi-weekly – In a similar fashion to a snake    (I don’t know how this would be communicable within a virtual domain, but I’m sure it’s been done)

3. An uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrite

4. Someone who derives pleasure from eating inanimate objects

5. An interminable optimist

6. Someone who stockpiles their toenail clippings in aim of entering the Guinness Book of Records

…On an utterly unrelated but equally spine-tingling note, warm porridge with fresh raspberries and honey is the single greatest nourishment to grace God’s green earth at 4pm on a Tuesday.. Am thinking that Shrove Tuesday should be superseded by Shr-oat Tuesday. Although it does kind of conjure visions of throat shaving, the injurious kind (not the facial hair up-keep kind) where strips of skin are sliced off :\

Monday’s Mind Vapours

1. Slow hair growth; a definite evolutionary defect.
The longer it takes for my hair to reach gloriously feminine breast coverage length (shift eyes downward slightly)

The more liable I am to annihilate it completely, resulting in a sparse, disobedient and distinctly unfeminine hairstyle reminiscent of a cactus…

 

2. I should start making a concerted effort to stop (accidentally) ingesting globules of toothpaste before the toothbrush has even grazed my teeth.

If I can feel it fizzing throughout my digestive tracts, it can’t be healthy. However, after briefly consulting a few online forums, apparently there are quite a few Colgate-guzzling junkies out there… Perhaps I should jump on the band-wagon considering I’m already half-way there.

Mmmmm.

 

3. Should (at all costs) abstain from looking at my reflection whilst brushing my teeth as:

A) I accidentally ingest my toothpaste and

B) I inevitably end up neurotisizing over the freckles on my face. Have they strengthened in number? or diameter? Or perhaps even both if they’ve been feeling particularly malicious?

4. Is the ascription of agency distinct from the ascription of subjective experience?

A disturbing Creation

A sufficiently nauseating attempt at a short writing exercise by Josh and I…

She screamed as he entered her. She bit down hard on the pillow as his throbbing cock regurgitated a pulsating, gelatinous amoeba into her open eye. She squealed for her mother – her voice straining with escalating ecstasy. Blood gushed everywhere, saturating the sheets, coating his thickened member with crimson ooze. He collapsed at the sight, his face deathly pale. It was an inherent proclivity of his, to faint at such sights. Therapy had proven ineffective, only serving to amplify his sexual desire for women in positions of authority. Many a solitary night he had spent masturbating outside her apartment block, ensuring to ejaculate on the handles of her rubbish bins. He had done so, envisaging her dragging them to the curb, her hands and his semen coalescing in the sober brightness of day. The harsh light of day also revealed that his lover was not his therapist, but a snaggle-toothed woman at least 25 years his senior. Upon this revelation he recoiled in shock. Devoid of spare semen and of any further sexual compulsion, he shuddered and reached to put on his meagre orthotic clogs. She sensed his disdain and wept, pulling a silver blade from beneath her pillow and slicing him across the jugular. He gurgled something undeniably heinous “you seething pus pot, floppy flapped, crusty infectious whore!” He opened his mouth wider, preparing to bombard her with more insults, however, as the first utterance of a word departed his quivering lips, the tendons in his neck erupted from the slit, precipitating a torrential emission of steaming blood to laminate the woman’s hungry face. She licked her lips with an erotic voracity, her tortured form convulsing with the initial stages of climax – She drooled from both pairs of lips. She violently reached for the dying man’s blood-encrusted genitals, forcefully pumping the penis like a flaccid bicycle tyre. Straddling his body, oblivious to his dying gasps, she slipped his pathetic member into her gaping vaginal maw. The combination of viscous cunt juices and his spurting jugular fluids served to lubricate her morbid ritual of sexual domination. Through purely mechanical stimulation, against his every will, the dying man’s pathetic worm-penis became thick, engorged like a monstrous leech. The rock hard cock she then thrust into her sopping hole as her rigid muscles quaked. A searing animal energy radiated from their sweat and blood soaked bodies, as he exploded inside her and she lay screaming, her orgasm reaching Hiroshima-like intensity. Amidst her wild shrieks of frenzied fuck-lust, her ravaged lover was devoured, his mind reduced to cerebral porridge. In spite of death, his defiled penis stood erect and purple, a withered remnant of their twisted sexual bloodletting. As she stared into his dead eyes, her insatiable flaps moistened and prepared for more cock.