bee feast

London's got the Olympics. I'm fairly unimpressed - I do wonder if Stratford would ever have seen any development were it not for this. This way the government gets to look awfully charitable. I think the poignant meaningful world-stage power-and-glory stuff that the government and media will be able to dine out on will mask an awful lot of actual headache for ordinary people, who will only benefit in patches, but we'll see. I don't like the looming inevitability of it, though, no siree. And try as I might I cannot give a good goddamn about international sport.

I just had an email from an exasperated and, by the sounds of it, very young blogger whose boyfriend is picking at her English. Asked me to help her, just once, please. And provided me with a lengthy extract for me to look at. I told her that unfortunately I can't proof stuff for free, but if her boyfriend is nitpicking, she ought to pick at some things she thinks he isn't good at. She was grateful. And so was I, really. I mean, I'd like some actual work, please, but it made me grin.

Watched 'The Jacket' this evening. Flawed and messy but sweet and disturbing and stylish, which unusual combo makes it worth anyone's while. Keira Knightley actually did some acting, although a lot of it still consisted of her waving her lips about. She is almost too much of a Face to be an actress, or even a model. She looks like she should be some sort of statue on permanent display somewhere. I was mostly transfixed by Adrien Brody however, who I vaguely noted as stunning in 'Summer of Sam' but I'd forgotten. . .my, how beautiful. I'm happy that he's as famous as he is, because although he had to earn it by actually having talent and not a pretty face, he might possibly do a bit of yer old challenging of them pesky conventionalstandardsofbeauty. Made me remember that these apply to men at least to some degree as they do to women, although men get an awful lot more rope in that respect. It's the other side of what I thought when I saw Danny Bhoy the other week - I could only think that he would never have got as far as he has on that rather well-trodden material and amiable but forgettable delivery were it not for his cute pop-starry appearance. I'd like to think - or would I? - that this sort of prettyocracy is a modern product of decadent society etc etc but I'm afraid in this case there is some kind of evolutionary basis to it. Even features = suggestion of good genes = natural rise to top of any given heap. But then there is always room, highly developed as we are, to find value and delight in the non-standard. See also: unnerving and unhealthy uniformity of pedigrees vs. boundless diversity and robustness of mutts.

So it's all well and good to admire the apposite features of whoever and feel the pleasure of aesthetic harmony as well as the nice little lurch of mild lust, but an interesting face. . .hell, I don't think I could look at Brody's face with its huge wonky nose and too-close-together eyes and not-quite-sensual lips for a prolonged period without weeping. Man's a fucking angel.

Anyway.

And, like, this incredibly luscious body that really defies description.

Anyway.

I flinch not from spiders of any size or speed, I have formed close relationships with snakes rats and large intimidating dogs, but I have a full-body-tremor shrieking-fit terror of craneflies. It's a genuine phobia. It's not as bad as it was, but still the sight of one tap-dancing across a wall makes me start to shake and start swearing. The way they move in twenty directions at once, and the way you can never hit them and their endless legs and the whirring of their wings - I almost wallow in how nightmarish and alien they are.

So one appeared in the study window this afternoon, doing its crazed insane alien tippy-tappy spindly-bounce thing. I went at it with a rolled-up Private Eye, which flimsy fading satirical publication was hopelessly inadequate to the task, and the tangled insectoid fled. I stared at the carpet for some moments until my eyes started to sting. I tried to encourage the dog to hunt it. I managed to get on with something until it reappeared, mostly undamaged, dancing the dance of unspeakable horror on the pane. I clamped a glass over it and watched it move around frantically inside, trying to desensitise myself, as seemed like a good idea.

I left it there while I went out. When I looked at it some hours later it had lost a few joints of one leg. I had a closer look, which I would never have been able to do a few years ago. It had a long head like a seahorse, tiny feelers underneath and fringed antenna on top. This disproportionate armoured thorax. It still didn't look organic, it looked like something man-made although its movements now did approach the animal-like.



I'm already too sensitive to the world. I'm exhausted by feeling for people and things constantly. I can't afford to diversify into insect life - not any further than bees, for which I ache when I find them twitching and waving on the ground. And certainly not as far as my least favourite creature in the world. No. But I started to get a bit uncomfortable watching this thing in its little glass prison.

I would normally have let it die a slow lingering death but for some reason I decided to let it go. Slid a card underneath, carried it into the backyard, made flinging gesture, scuttled back indoors. It should know that if it comes back into the house it will get cruelly hairsprayed to death.

There's not much that isn't beautiful, really. And it's true, it's knackering.


Look how beautiful this thing is. I'm nothing if not consistent. This is a vulture. It is bald because its lot in life is to shove its head inside fly-blown carcasses on African plains. And I like to look at it.


And this thing. An unpronounceable eagle with fierce red beak.


And a heart of vultures.

I haven't got as far as taking pictures of dead ones yet, but give me time, and Adrien Brody.