Different Wiredly...

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers"

2009-10-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers" ~ Charles W. Elliot (1896)

Canary bright the front and dim rumours are the windows. The sun kneads hot hands on my neck as I turn my back on Parisian traffic. That old familiar fierce brightness of early summered midday sunlight on a concrete makes me smile. I take a deep breath and taste the city. The wind is purring down long avenues of wilted trees, dust and fumes of a heavy June fill my throat. The air tastes full and sweet and bloated with the sensual and the stale; a timeless city panting in the heat.

Turning again with a happy sigh I enter through those doors. I’ve found it. The bookshop. THAT bookshop.

My oh so humble sandaled footsteps echo Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as I cross the doorstep. One time owner Sylvia Beach published James Joyce’s Ulysses under this roof and pressed copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover into hot eager hands.

It is cool inside and my eyes take a moment to see through the gloom. The walls are forested in shelves heaving under the weight and responsibility of writing. And the smell; paper, books, bindings, glue, age, dust, time, ambition, the reek of handling, the smell of word adoration, all those long nights of grappling with words, all those battles won. This place is full of what it is to be human; tears and dreams and longing to be somewhere else. To be someone else.

A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend. ~Author Unknown

And I am home…

Seascape

2009-10-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

I see grey. The sky, the sea, the streets all a gunpowder blend from the same palette. I’m drenched from toe to thigh and there is bog water swirling about my boots; a manufacturer’s claim found sadly lacking. Its been another long day’s hike and this early winter unlight fails to warm the island’s plain face with any blushful sandstoned glow. Full summer’s lush opulence is long, long gone leaving yellowed hollows and mournful bleak bushes. A final heave and swing of pack and I troop into the pub, Egyptian gait employment rendering mud smears harmless shadows and my landlady a chintz loving carpet proud innocent.

I am washed and warmed and full of ale. All about the house, along the streets and past the boat sheds the wind rises and beings a slow keen. It whines and swirls and hurries dull copper clouds in garbled streaks across a darkening sky. I’m suddenly curious - the sea. Turning the corner and southeast a blast of wind assaults me from below as I step down pock marked concrete steps to a pebble strand.

The light is incredible. My hands slow to react and I fumble with my camera. Waves lash and break, pound and suck again the shore. Gulls dip and loop in unconvincing abandon. And the sun sharply and suddenly streaks light on the broken water and the scene is transformed.

On forgotten places

2009-09-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

Sliding heat swollen fingers beneath the faded brim, I shove back dark, sweat dampened strands with growing irritation. The canvas rim is stained a nasty greying camel shade; rippled and twisted. Leaning over I grasp the map again and unfold it clumsily. A small hole is forming at the crease. Gingerly tracing my finger over the gap, already wondering about the missing contours and place names, world and home to some unknown lives. A faint feeling of guilt descends; bright light seeping through faraway classroom windows allowing no hiding for tear-snotted fingers and the furious smudges of anguished arithmetic.

We’ve been driving for hours. The two black points are not a fingernail width apart; Australia’s deceptive highways are streaking my face in sweat and road bug debris, my lashes fringed dust red. Worlds fly by; tanned sunny pastures of the rural west coast; low slung farmhouses, wooden fences neck lacing homesteads as wind mills flash in the mid summer sun.
Leaning against the warm car door my hands trace the air as I squint out into the distance and claim its contours. Plastic animals dot the landscape, the roughened scrub hill tops are corduroy brown, shorn meadows are buttery suede and the green coarse clumps of tired bushes in yellow grasses the swirling carpet farmyard of my six-year old living room. I yearn for the sight of a lego man smile.

Slamming the car door in relief, I stretch my travel wearied frame. The settlement, like many, bloomed into existence in a time of fevered excitement, of young men with young dreams; their thoughts filled with one word - gold. The town is faded. Crossing the wide main street I wander through the door of old glories; its front a threadbare promise. Inside is empty and dim; a television’s game show trickles canned laughter from somewhere several walls away. Overhead a fan wearily revolves, shuffling the mugginess from one end of the bar to the other.

Key in hand, I wander staircases and hallways, past empty lounges and slumbering ballrooms, up steps and across landings. After wiggling of key in lock and resting of bags on neat, worn bedcovers I wander back down through the corridors. The place is colossal; a mile of rambling levels and staircases, dining halls and washrooms. I step into the cool dim blue light of reflected white enamel and eagerly run to splash my face. Ten plain pale sinks stand side by side. Ten rough white facecloths and matching pieces of unused soap are waiting at each. I turn and see the same on the opposite wall. Have I just missed them?

Back in the bar and its still empty but the clatter of distant beer crates tells me the silent owner is still about. He saunters in and serves me a beer with an easy quiet smile then pads out back through the door. I perch on a bar stool and nurse my bottle enjoying the immense feeling of memory that fills the building. Leaning back on my stool I look back out the opposite bar door and down a corridor to double doors of frosted glass. The evening sun streaks through low from the west, dancing dust speaks in shafts between the growing shadowy gloom. I get up and try the door. Another ballroom; the air a soft dampness, smelling of floor polish, dust and tattered sequins. Aggrieved again, for it seems that I’m just too slow; the party has moved on.

A comfortable night spent and away in the morning with still that one unanswered question, one puzzle unsolved, one over-riding sensation; where is everyone?
Corridors awaiting the heavy tread of work wasted feet, beds empty but ready for wearied heads, beer not drunk, soap never handled, dining rooms in silence; no the scrapping of chairs and clattering of cutlery. The bar is a silent echo of long gone voices, stories never to be retold.

A hotel haunted by absence.

Ideology versus Reality; a bedtime story

2009-08-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

It was the lack of funds that did it. An over-stuffed, under washed backpack reeking of long bus journeys, and day-old sweat where the clothes on your back have damped and wilted and dried and redrenched and re-dried and become finely sweetened with alcohol laden perspiration and sloshed with absentminded tequilla filled gestures only to be whipped off, tossed on the nearest surface and then remashed back into the pack the following morning. This was our uniform.

Hence moolah in short supply, we plucked for cabanas. Under mid-morning Mexican glare they were luscious shady retreats, cool and dim and sweet smelling. The large double bed hanging on ropes from the ceiling swayed invitingly as the muslin rippled and billowed in the lazy Caribbean breeze. We were ready to be charmed and the one chair, battered candlestick and lame lopsided candle stub sold it for us. The showers were charmingly situated in a building towards the back of the enclosure and we were told that though the generator was proving a problem tonight and we might have to undress by the light of our pre-provided candles, we were sure to have power tomorrow and wasn’t this the best way to see the stars? We assented and gushed in return, gathered our bathing things and dashed for the sea and the sun and the joy of it all.

Sun passed high over and tilted towards the west before pitching headfirst into the ocean in crimsoned abandon and gold tinted glee. Long after the low purple shadows gathered and the torches were lit, after the meal and the laughter and beery bluster, post zigzagged meander cabana-ward and the giggle-filled match dropping and fingertip sucking pantomime preamble we are ready to retire.

The corners are pools of darkness. Our meagre candle does little to shift them, its flicker spills warm light in gentle eddies, caressing spots on the earthen floor for a moment before dancing and dipping away to tease with another glimpse of reality. After a brief struggle with muslin mosquito nets and a twice aborted attempt to climb onto swinging bed, I settle and wait for sleep to find me.

“What’s that??!” A sudden rustle in the corner sends me shooting up, though application of torch light reveals nothing. The wind is rising and the sea sounds nearer somehow. That purring Caribbean breeze feels darker and hostile, waves are breaking and crashing somewhere out there in the foreign night and even thoughts of all that starlight are little comfort.

This night is bustling with life. Here’s rustle and whisper, patter and whir as the creatures of the night go about their business. Cockroaches scuttle and mosquito’s whine and the leafy roof overhead aches and strains under its weight of wildlife and wind loaded sighs.

All the monsters of childhood and a few adult besides are suddenly all around, I relight the candle. Shadows swell giant-like and shrink to the size of a needle. Imagination tugs at my sleeve, whispers possible truths in my ear and finally shoves me aside and takes over itself. The roof is crawling with snakes and the floor and living rippling mass of bugs, the air is filled with groans of ‘that hidden man of ill intent’ who lurks on the edges of sleep.

Eventually this jumpy nervous and utterly exhausted girl drifts into a restless snooze, just skimming the surface of consciousness. Dawn outskirts our jungle prison in silver and rose and I slip into a real and welcome sleep. The sun is high and the gulls are shrieking and calling in full throated joy when I saunter bleary eyed to breakfast/lunch. My friend’s hand reaches across the table, squeezes mine and places something into my palm. Looking down, I grin. Sometimes earplugs are the answer.

On Laughter

2009-07-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

Sodden leaves collect in pool of grey frigid rain water. The day is drab and dank and a bitter wind pulls at my open jacket as I step around the water and hug my sleeves around myself. My sister trudges alongside me. She twists the cuffs of her cardigan around her thumbs, stretching the fabric taut so they form one tight mean line from her elbows to the tips of her rain-chilled fingers, an attempt at warmth as futile as my own in that gnawing biting break of day.
We have agreed to attend mass, my mother’s abiding determination and sheer strength of will proving too much for even our combined efforts at teenage resistance. Her ‘Ive-failed-as-a-good-catholic-mammy’ stance, the set of her mouth - part doggedness, part sorrow - and her grim grip of teapot being more than either could handle.
The back of my trousers trail in the puddles, raking mushy silted matter in my footsteps; slowly, relentlessly the dampness climbs a muddy tide mark, past ankle and blooms dampened denim leaf patterns up my calves as the leaden dread of bored nothingness grows in my mind. We climb low steps to the church doors, neither speaking. My hand is on the door to enter when a noise causes us both to jump. The silent little chapel porch is filled with a braying “hugghhhNAAAAAApmh” as the thitherto unseen elderly priest sitting in the small red ford escort blows his nose with elephantine bravado. We stop and stare at him, both caught suddenly, ripped from privacy of the little spaces we all escape to in our minds into the sheer mundanity of stuffed sinuses.

Realising where we are we turn and scurry toward the doors again. I look at my sister and giggle faintly. She turns, grins and does the same. Pushing open the wooden lined glass doors, both hands and a shoulder on the diagonal brass handle I suddenly feel a gush of laughter building and unwisely give in to it. My sister snorts a reply of muffled merriment. I laugh aloud, she answers with increasing volume. We’re inside the church, in front of a congregation, on a bitterly cold Sunday morning. There is nothing remotely funny in the setting, just country people at prayer.

All of a sudden the oppressive indoors, mulish forced attendance, soggy ankles, weary spirits and the priestly proboscis pantomime merge and somehow it is all HILARIOUS. We are shaking and shuddering in a vain effort for control as wave after wave of laughter roll up from inside, break, burst forth and smash out into the gloomy church. Guffaws are gagged with rain dampened sleeves, cackles cushioned behind upturned collars. The obvious idea of re-exiting the church for air and composure somehow never dawn on us and we hurriedly shriek and whoop our way up the aisle, shoulders shaking.

Throwing myself into a pew I huddle, a rolling, shaking ,shuddering form desperately trying to regain composure. Looking at my scarlet faced sister whose mouth is wide open, eyes screwed shut, her howls of laughter punctuated with furious gasps as she sucks in the saintly air. I am a ball of agony, side muscles screaming, tears streaming mingle to form an unfortunate snotty path to my upper lip I feel her body shuddering mirrored helplessness against my own, My sister opens her eyes and still struggling darts a look of utter desperation and sheer horror at what we’re doing in our local place of worship. “Shhhhhhheeeesh” she manages.
Highly inappropriate, but it felt bloody wonderful.

San Cristobal de las Casas; first impressions

2009-07-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

Eighteen hours through the night. Eighteen hours of the sound of scuttling beetles on the floor, the steady drip of water from the air vents. Eighteen hours of tired lungfuls of stale air reeking of human sweat while a potent rust-filled bouquet blooms forth from buckets of prize chicken blood congealing somewhere in the darkness. Snatching sleep mid the bus’s bone rattling advance alone I stir and with gritted gaze peer out the grime-streaked window. Sky above the jungle tops shows grey and pregnant as darkness recedes and dawn slowly inhales night-freshened air fuelling her circadian crescendo.

The bus pulls in and grumbles to a stop. Passengers slowly untangle themselves from blankets and dreams and shuffle off; woolly with sleep. Oh lovely mountain city - how welcome the caress of early morning light and butter coloured cobbled streets appear to this weary traveller. Feeling the muscles of my back relax, extend and uncurl, wingspans of soul rejoices with them. Wandering up the street I reach a large square, Spanish influences apparent on all sides with pillared porches and slippery cobbled steps. This morning’s merry meander leads to an airy zocalo where in birthday cake and toothsomed splendour sits the cathedral; a golden-sugar star frosted delight.

The city is stirring. A flicker of life shows under her eyelids as slowly her early risers flit quietly past on their way. Shop are unshuttered and door steps swept. Cue good natured yawn and gape and she stretches, rolls over and with a great flourish of lip smacking San Cristobal de las Casas awakes just as the full Mexican sun pours over her shabby streets and bathes them in morning loveliness.

Soon people are everywhere. The inhabitants are what give this city her charm turning a simple colonial mountain town into an amazingly rich mosiac of life and colour, voices and movement. Small in stature, dark and usually barefoot, they adorn and dress the city as an elderly maiden aunt made young and beautiful again when wrapped in crimson violet shawls and jauntily battered peacock feather. The women sit, legs curled up under them like swans cushioned on water, straight backed and proud. High cheek bones, dark braids of hair woven with scarlet ribbons they are quick to laugh but carry an air of suppressed uneasiness, as if eternally expecting a great shooing.

Men lean nonchalantly against their trucks in heavy ponchoed attire and heavy roughly woven woollen jackets. Sometimes one appears and strolls loftily by in exquisitely embroidered white shirt decorated with searing gold and blue stitching, cherry red flowers as emerald greens flash and gleam peacock-plumed glories. Between these groups are the city’s children. Little girls swarm and flutter around me like flocks of chaffinches. High voices, dark eyes beseeching ‘un pesos, un pesos per me!’; the glimpse of my camera sends them scurrying and shrieking, wild with mischief and mirth. Their day will be spent chattering and giggling, laughing and gossiping as they sell the simple bracelets of brightly woven wools that the mammies and grannies have made hours before. It is easy to be captivated and seduced by this picture of mountain serenity, but as the sun rises and spills over the town evidence of a harder life heightens with it till the shadows grow long.

Pendant

2009-07-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

A pearly honey-hued heart-shaped trinket catches my eye. Nestled it lies in its faded jaded bed of russet velvet, begrimed with age, dust and the years of bedside fire soot. My six-year old fingers clumsily snatch it up with chubby-fisted determination. Shuffling quietly to the window, slipping under the yellowed net curtain I turn towards the greying rain-smeared light that weakly spills through the gloom and gently lay it on the sill.

Even on this half-hearted March morning, its dull smoulder softly burns with butter-coloured bloom. Leaning low, anxious to explore before some knowing wise adult snatches away this toy, I trace its curve with sticky-fingered nudges, watching my breath fog form, cloud and recede on its chilled contours. Covering one side are the letters D L S spelt out with swirled flourish; some long forgotten resume of reminiscence. Freckled with tiny baby teeth marks, the dents dark points in the gold, a legacy of motherhood; I am charmed. Utterly absorbed I stand, lost in the beauty of this little thing.

Beyond my cobwebbed muslined wall my mother’s dry pain-filled sighs escape in spite of herself as slowly she packs worn cardigans and hats well past their prime into battered cardboard boxes. The air smells of dust and cold and the dampness of an empty redundant bed. I stand on one leg and furiously scratch my ankle with my foot; my best woollen socks a small personal grievance but she doesn’t notice or tell me to stop. The world seems swollen with sadness and sorrow and a confusion I cant understand. I turn back to the window as funeral bells toil their truths to the town.

Lullaby of Tulum, Mexico

2009-06-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sky and sea blended to an exquisite infinity. Strolling down the sands, lush vibrant greenery to the right, the purring Caribbean to my left. Turning to the horizon and between quivering light-stressed lids I peer at a chronology of colour. The ocean runs deep in gentian, cornflower, a violet charcoal; kohl-lined to the farthest contours, flaunted beauty, iris-like. Bottle greens, turquoise and inky smudges of unknown gloom blend and brew and merge in a glowing mass of living movement. Breakers rise heavy-shouldered, uncurl themselves with fern-like delicacy, pause one perfect breath and laughing, fall with dash and bravado to munch the sea’s surface.

The sun is high and light is sharp. I drop my gaze to where my feet are leading me. Bailey cream sands licked flush pink, baby fingers grasping the shore, touching, tasting. Dewy moist exploration, the seas insatiable hunger for the land. When will this gentle caress turn the bones of this world to nothing?

Gulls burst forth with a lonesome wail above, circling. The gently sloping shore of palest sand that peters to green is punctuated with rising cliffs; their might spelt out in the words of rock and time. They grow to giants proud and stern; unwise to the power of the wind and the ocean. And crowning them the ruins of Tulum. They stand alone, bleached bone-bare in midday brilliance. Everywhere around there is light and heat, not the fleshy ripened verdant heat of the jungle but of something that time has gnawed and worried leaving nothing for virulent Mexican nature to gorge upon. The remaining buildings stand tall and proud, outwardly confident in structure. The soul-deep knowledge of an ending era screams forth from these walls, blanched and stripped and left to the mercy of the waves and the gales and fading memory. Tulum, late Mayan, reduced and functional they document the dissolution of a once indomitable universe of men. When sent reeling and vanquished the descendents of refugees survived, fed themselves on stories of might and blood-lust, building shadows of empires by the shore’s purring, forgiving ocean.

I am confused in my days. The song of the ocean is theme to my waking and seeps into my dreams at night untill slowly and surely the core secret vibrations of the soul twist in a dull-witted attempt to harmonise. Perhaps this refrain repeated in the hearts and minds of the dwellers of Tulum. Mournfully, wistfully it murmured, promised and teased till the painful consciousness that the true people of the gods were gone, the bursting of dreadful truth nullified - dilution of blood to that of lesser stock, the horror of graves blasphemed, duties unfulfilled and all thoughts of vengeful war eased at last and calmed to a slow-pulsed slumber. Think not of these abominations, the winds will catch them and scatter them and they will be lost to north and south, to east and west. Perhaps so it was with the people of Tulum, strewn souls lost to the sea. Now this city is full of unwistful memory. The taming of its people has left an emptiness that neither the light, the seagull's distant lament nor the coaxing chant of the sea and the winds can fill.

Taxonomy; from Beagle to Borneo and the joy of modern scientific discovery

2009-06-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

In 1831 a young man found himself on board a ship bound for South America, following a little-travelled route across the world. The ship’s captain Fitzroy, officially on a surveillance mission, was destined for Tierra del Fuego to return a group of natives to their home. He had had the foresight to bring a naturalist along him. This young graduate’s name was Charles Darwin.

So it was that the father of modern evolution came to be in the Galapagos Islands where answers to the puzzle of such unique animals and their habitats planted the seeds of what later became the Theory of Natural Selection. Darwin’s name has become synonymous with controversy but the vast majority of the scientist’s work was actually in the area of zoology and taxonomy - the naming and characterisation of animals and plants. One story he loved to tell of his endeavours was his efforts to be the first to track down a particular ostrich species Rhea darwinii. Supplies on board were slim and usually supplemented by whatever crew members could shoot. Halfway through one hearty meal a very horrified Darwin realized he was tucking into the same much sought after bird.

Over the next five years of his trip he documented thousands of specimens, insects, birds and mammals. This vast collection is now housed in the Natural History Museum in London. In an effort to get these specimens home he used gallons of formaldehyde and hundreds of glass jars, not all of which survived the long and sometimes stormy voyage back to England. On his return he set about labelling and recording his finds. He went on to donate his work to the Natural History Museum having, one might imagine, run out of jars.

Darwin was only one of many figures to take up the reins of zoology and taxonomy. From Slone’s Jamaican expedition in the 1680’s right up to the John Murray’s Challenger voyages in the 1870’s discoveries were rich and varied and this period is seen as the golden age of taxonomy. With the foundation of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in 1895 taxonomy was no longer the pursuit of the rich and the otherwise idle.
In a skeptical twenty-first century the consensus is that everything has been discovered, studied, named and renamed; all mysteries solved and ‘monsters’ unmasked. But according to the ICZN this is not the case. A recent WWF report documented at least 361 new species having been identified and described in Borneo between 1994 and 2004. Of these species, 260 were insects, 50 plants, 30 freshwater fish, seven frogs, six lizards, five crabs, two snakes and one toad. And that not taking into account all the newly discovered smaller life forms; the yeasts and bacteria.

As recently as 2005 a number of mammals and birds have come to light - the Golden Palace Titi monkey in Bolivia, a reported fox in Indonesia and the re-discovery of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States believed to have been extinct. And surprisingly on our well-travelled earth there are still mammals existing that have avoided human detection until now; the rainforests of Borneo having been home to the Mitsinjo sportive lemur (Lepilemur mitsinjoensis), its habits a secret no longer. Elsewhere a fox-like species was caught on camera; bushy tailed and with a red coat its back legs were slightly extended causing scientists to believe it spends a lot of its days in the trees.

Until November 2007 Brazil’s mighty rainforests kept a large pig-like mammal safe from human gaze until its bones were discovered by local people and some time later the shy species was caught on camera. New technologies like DNA sequencing, high quality images and computer programs allowing for better statistical information make the process somewhat easier, yet the quantity of species is limited. And so the excitement that arose in December 2007 when the rarely seen Long-Eared Jerboa, Euchoreutes naso was finally located in the Gobi desert was understandable. Almost extinct, yet scientists knew almost nothing about this tiny mouse-like marsupial. This successful expedition to locate the species is one of a number occurring across the world.

In an age of environmental doom and gloom, with the extinction of hundreds of species worldwide imminent, it is both heartening and wildly exciting to know that we do not know everything, that our presence has not infringed on all lives, that in some corner of the earth there may very well exist the discovery of the century.

Memories of Mexico - El Día de los Muertos; the Day of the Dead

2009-06-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

The zocalo prepares for the night. Shadow-chased light slips away and corners fill with a smokey purple gloom. November leaves swirl and as wind-tossed sighs mix dust and cigarette butts over my shoes. With gently aching shouldered gait my slow ambled circuit begins, the march of guilt-filled tourism pettily determined on savouring the sights.

Low huts have been positioned against the ankle high border that lead into the square covering most of the periphery to mark the passing of a loved one. Each are flowered-filled; orange sunbursts blush with cherished time-heavy memories of half forgotten summers. Within each hut a low platform has been constructed, laden with fruits and small cheap candles. The purple dove-grey blueness smarts the eyes and struggling through tear-filled focus the photographs appear; sepia-tinted homage to loved ones. All along the roughly constructed walls they have been pinned; curled of corner and smudged by time and handling. Empty eyes stare out, line after line.

Stepping along past each little altar to the next and a tattered cloth doll lies in among the food and flowers, abandoned by some dimpled hand. I look up and straight into the eyes of its owner. A small dark-eyed child gazes out. She is removed and long gone and her expression is that of someone who knows that this is so, that it will soon be the case, resigned for death before a third birthday. The wind rises a little behind, purring through overhead trees as if calling for recognition as candles flicker and light teases over her face.
'Remember me, remember my breath on your cheek, my contented dream-flushed gurgle, my warm round hand around your finger slowly uncurling with sleep until lying perfect in your palm. I was here. I was loved.'
All around are families jubilant in their festivities, content in fulfilling the duty to a loved one, to an honoured one while the wind overhead is bloated with the sighing assertions of the dead; I lived.

Night draws in and shadow merge. The sky heats up with unheard thunder and the town with it. Mexican music blares from a budgie-bright painted truck and people move with purpose and intent, their faces bright with excitement, looking for the party. The zocalo crowd swells as the tension builds. All around is laughter and chatter as children dart between, mouths smeared with goodies as they dodge authority and slip away to their sweet sticky-handed speculations, heralding the arrival of the Mexican bride of death. Lofty gothic figures nod and twist over the scurrying procession. Stilted figures weave and sway past with ever-quickening drums. The dance pulses and swirls to its triumphant conclusion as once again the age-old human inevitability of nature is overturned. 'Catrina' watches silently as her beloved conquers the inevitable and bridegroom and death battle for her soul. A glorious carnival of gruesome hope, and as bats swoop and dive under a low turgid purple sky skulls, dancers, wedding veil and all disappear in a whopping throbbing mob and the story finishes to be continued with each generation.