Galápagos Retrospective

I'm not going to be doing much traveling for awhile, but it seems you guys enjoy the pictures, so I thought I'd share some photos of my Galápagos adventure with Kelly (two years ago this month). It might sound trite, but observing evolution at work, and at such close range, is a profound experience. We had the good fortune to be adopted by a lovely South African family living in London (Nikki, Andrew, and 14-year-old Jamie), and hanging out with them made our trip all the more enjoyable. Even the frustrations (the cockroaches on the boat, the hilariously bad food and creepy cook, the irresponsible behavior of our fellow tourists) fell into the category of 'never a dull moment.' If you ever get a chance to go, DO!

(Above: a frigatebird strutting his stuff. The bird life is wonderful—clever little sparrows hopped right up to me whenever I opened my water bottle, and we even spotted a few penguins!)

But read Mike D'Orso's Plundering Paradise first. I had the privilege of working on this book while I was at Harper, and I reread it during our trip—it's an engrossing, very personable travelogue touching on the myriad environmental and economic problems wrought by tourism, immoral/illegal fishing practices, and government corruption, all through the eyes of island natives, scientists, and other long-term residents.

Anyway, without further ado, here's my little slide show, with a few journal excerpts thrown in.

Galápagos tortoises at the Charles Darwin Research Station, Isla Santa Cruz.

Unlike humans, marine iguanas don't seem to mind the lack of personal space.

Tuesday, 21 August 2007: "Just got back from our second morning of snorkeling—swam behind a sea turtle for maybe half a minute, saw a few sea urchins and a big indigo-colored fish, then a huge sea lion towards the end. We heard stories of sea lions mistaking people in wet suits for their own species, and even attacking. Yesterday morning I saw a small ray and a wider variety of fish—several schools (makes you feel so serene, watching them swimming in unison); a few pale medium-sized fish streaked with pastel pink, blue, and green; and a larger blue fish lying still beneath a rock."

Kelly chillin' with a sea lion.

Thursday, 23 August 2007: "Been having a tremendously good time—never again will I be able to speak the words "he peed in Barbara Bush's coochie" to a family of Jehovah's Witnesses..."

The boat circled Kicker Rock early in the morning—well worth getting up at 6 for, don't you think?

Thursday, 23 August 2007 (later): "Watched a sea lion in labor (for nearly an hour!) Came back from our walk and found mom and pup in the same spot on the beach near the pier. Blood on the sand. Saw waved albatrosses doing their mating dance, clacking beaks like a furious game of hockey. Stunning cliff views...

Aforementioned beak-hockey mating dance.

The infamous blue-footed booby.

"Horribly rough passage from Santa Cruz to Santa Fe this afternoon—newcomers were all seasick, and we all felt pretty queasy too. But I laid down and listened to Elbow. Proud of myself for not puking. Delicious hot chocolate served after snorkeling."

Sally Lightfoot crabs are cannibals! We saw the whole, um, feast.

Wednesday, 29 August 2007 (back on the mainland): "Last delicious thing we had on that boat, let me tell you..."

Kelly on Isla Bartolome, during the most scenic walk of the trip. Notice rocket-shaped Pinnacle Rock at top right—there's another view of it in that picture of us at the top of the entry.

My First Meme

How I'm entertaining myself this afternoon instead of working: this meme I found on a random blog, whereby you answer questions about yourself using only the song titles of your favorite band. (It doesn't really count as navel-gazing if it's good for a laugh, right?)

1. Are you a male or female: Switching Off

2. Describe yourself: Newborn

3. How do you feel about yourself: Great Expectations

4. Describe your parents: Grounds for Divorce

5. Describe your ex-boyfriend/girlfriends: Picky Bugger

6. Describe your current boy/girl situation: Any Day Now

7. Describe your current location: Fugitive Motel

8. Describe where you want to be: Flying Dream 143

9. Your best friend(s) is/are: The Everthere

10. Your favorite color is: Red

11. You know that: I’ve Got Your Number

12. If your life was a television show what would it be called: Little Beast

13. What is life to you: Grace Under Pressure

14. What is the best advice you have to give: Lay Down Your Cross; Don’t Mix Your Drinks

Why don't you leave a comment with your own answers?

In Despair, or in Cahoots?

They've been called "the drinking man's Coldplay," but Elbow are in a league beyond that much more famous British pop/rock band. (As Brian Boyd wrote when Elbow won the Mercury Prize last year for The Seldom Seen Kid: "A band such as Coldplay will happily confess to you that they put filler on their albums in the knowledge that there are enough big, anthemic songs around the filler that no one will really notice or care. Chris Martin has fessed up to 'borrowing' from Elbow's Grace Under Pressure song to help him with the writing of Fix You." Listen to those two songs one after the other, and Coldplay's debt becomes remarkably obvious.)

So please, let me indoctrinate you into the greatness that is Elbow. Here's a link to a BBC video Brendan's sister Aileen posted to Facebook yesterday:


Oh, kiss me like the final meal / Yeah, kiss me like we die tonight

Doesn't it make you feel happy to be alive?

Music can really inspire me when I write. It sets the mood in a scene, of course—I used plenty of Nina Simone lyrics in Mary Modern, and my Petty Magic heroine sings a wistful Berlin cabaret tune, Irgendwo auf der Welt ("Somewhere in the World"), during a pub session. The best lyrics inspire as well, perfectly evoking a scene with only a handful of words. Take these lyrics from Fugitive Motel:

Curtains stay closed
But everyone knows
You hear through the walls in this place
Cigarette holes for every lost soul
To give up the ghost in this place

It's all there—the despair, the isolation, the claustrophobic shabbiness of a highway lodge advertising cable TV and ceiling mirrors in every room.

Or take this single line from Switching Off:

Early evening June, this room and a radio play

Can't you just see the fluttering curtains, the trees outside casting dancing shadows on the unmade bed? Can't you just feel the cool breeze wafting through the window and the tinny voices coming from the radio on the dresser? The character in the song re-lives these memories so vividly that it puts the listener there in that moment as well. Switching Off has another of my favorite lines:

You, the only sense the world has ever made

You can see why this music makes me want to be a better writer.

Two Days in Dublin

Brendan and I went to Dublin for a couple of days to see Elbow at Vicar Street Monday night. The concert was fantastic. I've heard it said more than once that the true test of a band's talent is if they sound even better live than they do on the album, and this was definitely the case. I'll write more about Elbow later though. Here is another little photo essay from the last couple days.

Brendan's first ride on the Luas. Weeeeeeeeeeee!

(You know how much I usually deplore this sort of couple-y smugness, but I think the artistic value of this shot makes it worth including.)


Brendan and Diarmuid after lunch at The Bank on Dame Street. Probably the best gastropub in Dublin--food, service, and original nouveau decor all awesome.


Shitmonkey: the only toy Diarmuid and his brother Donnacha ever had, apart from a lego set.

Eh...no caption on this one.

And here are some shots taken from the balcony at the Elbow concert: