Friday, March 30, 2012

The Consul is Dead

Or, my reflection on Malcolm Lowry's masterpiece, Under the Volcano

The Consul is dead. He will not be returning. Take him out into the breathing jungle. Let the vines tangle and take him back into the soil. And when the sun rises in the morn, let no light find poor Geoffrey. Beneath the Cuernavaca canopy, in shadow, under the volcano.

Lesson: Heed its message. Do not go to Mexico. You shall not return. At the end of a sticky bar in the santo candle lit cantina, drowning beneath pours of cloudy mescal. You are advancing the finality of fate at dangerous speeds. Drink yourself to death in Mexico. Roasted and perspiring oblong beads of alcohol, rejected from from your pasty skin, through your white collared shirt. There is no beauty left in life for you.

Do you like this garden? It is yours. Do not let your children destroy it. We are born to destroy all that we are meant to enjoy. We are born to enjoy all that we are meant to destroy. The earth sits on its axis, at its angle, we all slide down its slippery slopes, pulled by gravity into the pits of our own making. Our scripted slide. Like lava down a volcano.

Fighting the forces of fate, or else, giving up to bits inevitable pull. The earth spins on its axis. Its angle forces the lava down the sides of the volcano. To your end, poor Geoffrey.