Flying Lizards

            On Tuesday morning when I turned on my computer the frantic beeping went off again even though this time the external hard drive was fully unplugged. I tried turning the computer off and pulling a different usb device out of the back before each time I restarted. Finally it was unplugging the keyboard that allowed my PC to start. After it was on there was no problem when I reconnected the keyboard.

I worked out most of the chords for “Si ca peut te consoler" (If it’s any Consolation) by Serge Gainsbourg.

Around noon I removed all the things hanging from the hooks on the inside of my apartment door, then washed and scrubbed the door. It had gotten almost black in some areas over all the years that I’ve lived here.

While I was working I had the door propped open and so Benji came out to talk with me. He informed me that Sundar, our former superintendent had died a few days ago. He had been in bad shape for the last few years. He had cancer in his tongue and neck and part of his tongue had been removed. On top of that he had been on kidney dialysis. He moved out about five years ago because he couldn't handle the stairs. He was the same age as me. The place started going downhill since he moved out since we no longer had someone to regularly take out the garbage and mop the hallway and stairway floors. 

I had some roast beef and yogourt for lunch.

In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish’s mother in law is still living with him and Sapphire. She is still under court order to not speak out against Kingfish and so she has her son Leroy move in so she can do so through him. On top of that Leroy is eating Kingfish out of house and home. One day he saw Leroy try to eat the lightbulb in the fridge because he thought it was a boiled potato. Kingfish spreads the rumour that there is a mother in law killer working his way through the neighbourhood. He’s a former whaler who uses a harpoon on his victims. Mrs Smith and Leroy move back to Brooklyn. After that the house is peaceful until one day Kingfish’s only living relative cousin Sidney, who he hasn’t seen since he was five, shows up at the door with his loud wife and a giant parrot. They are even worse that Mrs Smith and Leroy and so Kingfish pays them to come back. They come and chase Sidney and family out but it turns out that “Sidney” and company were friends of Mrs Smith from Brooklyn and part of a scheme for her to get back in.

I had planned on taking a bike ride but it seemed like a cold day. It had snowed earlier and so I decided to stay home.

            I finished listening to the Bjork discography and watching all of her videos and documentaries about her. That included the 2005 two and a half hour film by her then boyfriend Matthew Barney, “Drawing Restraint”. It’s one of the most pretentious films I’ve ever seen and most of the footage is like watching fish dry. It stars the director and Bjork who arrive separately on a whaling vessel and become transformed into a Shinto lady and gentleman. Cultural appropriation? The movie could be boiled down to a good half hour segment in which Bjork and Barney are sensuously using knives to cut each other up and it seems to transform each other into whales.

I want to finish uploading to YouTube the songs that I video recorded in 2017. I think there is only one left. I looked at my journal from December and saw that the song is Andalusian Dream. After that, once it gets a little brighter in the mornings I will begin recording more songs. I think that I will also eliminate a couple of songs from my song practice that have already been uploaded and which I do well, and move a couple of songs that I only do every few days into daily practice, move a couple that I only do parts of every few days into full versions and start doing a couple of ones by Boris Vian that I’ve worked out the chords for but never practiced.

I weighed 89.6 kilos before dinner.

I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching the 1950s documentary series “Zoo Quest” hosted by David Attenborough. David and his cameraman have reached the eastern end of Java and load their jeep onto a ferry to take them across the strait to Bali. Five hundred years ago most of Indonesia was Hindu but the Muslims became dominant and the Hindus were all pushed to the island of Bali where the people have become famous for their terraced rice fields and their expertise at growing rice. Hindu temples are all over Bali and one village will have at least three. Different temples are sacred to different animals. One of them is full of macaque monkeys that beg for food from all of those that enter. There are two tribes of monkeys that fight over the territory ans within each tribe is an hierarchy in which the old leader gets the most and best food. At one point a young monkey chances to get some of the food David has given, but its mother grabs it, reaches into her child’s mouth and removes the food for herself. Another temple is built adjacent to a bat cave. Outside David found a different kind of bat. They are the giant fruit bats, also known as flying foxes, with a wingspan of two meters. David didn't acquire a flying fox but the show closes with one from the London zoo in the studio. He was there with a Mr Dalby, who takes care of the bats there. The fruit bats eat almost exclusively fruit, but he has seen them catch and eat mice that have wandered into the cage. He says they don’t mind captivity and they breed well at the zoo. David and Dalby disagreed on a couple of points. David said that he'd seen the fruit bats fly across the strait to Java but Dalby doubted that because he said fruit bats are lazy and stay in a tree until it is stripped of fruit. They also disagreed on whether a flying fox would make a good pet. David said they smell bad but Dalby didn’t think so.

In the second episode David and Charles are still in Bali where strangle looking pot bellied pigs found nowhere else are one of the domesticated breeds. The Balinese enjoy the sports of cock fighting and cricket battles. David observed the scaly anteater which climbs trees to suck up the ants that cover the limbs. David didn’t capture this animal because the London zoo would not be able to provide enough ants for the creature to live. David also observed a colony of ants in the process of constructing a new nest. Some ants fix themselves holding a lower leaf with their jaws and an upper leaf with their feet while other ants fasten them together. Some of the ants carry their own larva in their jaws and use them as glue guns by squeezing them with their jaws which causes them to produce strands of silk and manipulates the threads with their antennae in order to tie the leaves together and form the wall of their nest. David then saw a small lizard whose ribs were extended into flaps of skin that served as gliding wings so it could travel from tree to tree as far as twenty metres. A lizard that David captured was a tokay gecko.  Its eyes have a vertical pupil like a cat that makes for better night vision. They are called “tokay” geckoes because the sound they make is “to-kay". For the Balinese it's lucky to have one in your house and unlucky to not have one. If you hear it say "to-kay" more than six times it brings increasingly good luck. They can walk on walls and ceilings because of fine clamping hairs on their feet.

In Bali, every village has its own orchestra and its own dance group. They make their own instruments, write their own music and practice every day. The music accompanies special dramas that are held periodically and commemorate epic battles between a protective temple monster called the Barong. Two dancers wear the costume and go into a trance to become the monster. He fights battles with an evil witch called Rangda who lives in the graveyard and plays with the dead bodies of the villagers. During the battle the men from the village go into a trance and rush forward to protect the Barong but Rangda takes control of their will and tries to force them to stab themselves but the Barong also exerts his will on them and stops them just short of penetrating their own skins.