Distend, Then Tighten

So I woke up back in Blogville this morning after a looooong absence and continued trawling through old posts and comments in an attempt to recall what the world was like before Trump and Covid. I feel like Snowman Jimmy wandering the deserted streets in Oryx and Crake.

I've got as far as November, 2007 and found a doozy I had forgotten all about.

In trying to explain why I would never use BabelFish to translate my Japanese homework, I had run a French poem through it, from Nathalie's Avignon blog and the result included the line, "The treasures hidden at the bottom of you, Distend then tighten with the wire of time."

Here's the whole thing for you to treasure. Adopt a poet's stance and declaim it aloud:

"To say what makes me vibrate.
I will take you along.
At the soft hour one will take the accommodation ladder, one will go up on the bridge to breathe the salt of the life.

You feel like the air of the night is made velvet?
Here it is my kingdom.
That where the hearts are untied, where the bodies open, where the large things are achieved.
A rich black and chocolate flux with spangles.

It is the paddle with the fingers of pink which will bring back for us Ground of fire, will-o'-the-wisp, cow's milk, pigs, brooded Which odours will accommodate us, frangipanier, dried fish, gas oil spices spruce?
We will go to the meeting of these funny of others.

There are all these hands which are tightened in this letter box.
The treasures hidden at the bottom of you, Distend then tighten themselves with the wire of time."

Anyhoo; make of that what you will, I'm off to distend and tighten the treasures hidden in my bottom.

The Revenant

Well, bugger me with a splintered gatepost it's like Fallout 4 or The Last of Us in here.

The walk over to Blogville reminded me of Cormac Mc.Carthy's laugh-a-minute "The Road".

I've not visited for a long time, but reduced working days brought on by the planet-wide Choking Death gave me the spare time to go back to the early posts of 2006 and marvel over the wonders of comment-fests a yard long in the crowded and happy streets of Blogville.

Of course, some ex-Blogville residents now live quite contentedly in the trashy trailer park of Fæcebookland and we still keep in touch. Others have simply faded into the ether and their links lead nowhere. At least one has died and gone to Ankh-Morpork (where all good Pratchett fans go).

It's actually almost quaint to go back through what now seem like the good old days and read of our fear and loathing of Dubya and Bliar, as if they were leading us back to 1930s Germany and heralding the resurgence of Zombie-Fascism.

Well, we were right, only we were nowhere near frightened enough. Fascism is back with a bang; racism, homophobia, misogyny and ultra-violence are now government policy both sides of the Pond.

Trump? For fuck's sake! TRUMP? And over here we have Trump-Lite with Johnson and Rees-Mogg and their murderous clique of incompetents, running around like headless chickens, hoping Covid will miraculously go away.

Ah, yes … Our new plague. My mate Adrian's Mum died of it on a Friday and his Dad the following Monday. Happy days.

It's a fucking strange new world. We're all now living inside Margaret Atwood's head. It's Gilead and Oryx and Crake all rolled into one, with Fake-Haired-Fascists running the show.

There's an election coming up over in the Colonies; one can only hope sanity prevails.

Oh, by-the-bye; since last we met, Old Dive has been diagnosed with Asperger's. Yay! Explains my whole fucking life. At least I know now that there's a reason why I am what I am and frankly, it's a blessèd relief.

Anyhoo … I'm back. I've swept all the spiders out of my old Blogville residence, dusted off a chair, cranked up the generator and put the kettle on. I think I'll stay here for a bit and watch the world outside.

Is anybody there? Robyn? Sassy? Sharifa? Shan? Maria? Lynn? Katherine? Speedway? Prudence? Ms.M? Shazza? Vic (now Bruce - huzzah!)? Kate? Utsav? Crazy Ame? Old Knudsen?

Well, at least it's nice and quiet here.