Very Like A Whale

Last night I watched Mike Newell’s Love in the Time of Cholera. I’m not recommending it, I’m afraid (the NYT review sums things up nicely when it says “The literary texture that elevates Florentino’s story to epic proportion on the page is missing here”), but I had to watch it because it was filmed in Cartagena, with some (just gorgeous) shots of the Río Magdalena and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

And I now find myself haunted – haunted – by the combination of cinematography and sound in one particular scene: the record of the journey when, in order to separate her from Florentino Ariza, Fermina Daza’s father takes her by mule train from Cartagena over the mountains to distant relatives. As they travel across the river and up the forested hills the sound track has Shakira singing Pienso en tí  (you can hear the film version here - ignore the visuals) and the lament, the music, her voice and the cinematography together make the loveliest most unforgettable poem.

Helped, no doubt, by the fact that Shakira, of course, is Colombian and was born in Barranquilla, which is in Atlántico, the province that lies sandwiched between Bolívar and Magdalena, the two provinces where the movie was shot.

Which all goes to prove – as if proof were needed - that Colombia is a little silver dagger that will never fall out and never stop suddenly twisting. Here’s one result of the infestation.

Not sure I completely agree with this analysis. At least not where frequency/regularity of posting is concerned. By which measure this blog should be dead many times over. 

Which are the two words that best describe the only two poems I’ve written in the last month. One of them is about an eye.

I just don’t get xkcd, except for maybe once or twice a year. This is that once. Or maybe that twice.