Blogging Bolaño 2666 6/26/08

Along the way into day three of this 2999 sprint, he carved out time for a little two-person asado o barbacoa, out in the little yard behind their triplex apartment house: that little patch of grass that neither their upstairs nor their basement neighbors seemed to pay much regard. They, he and Maia, had the little mini-Weber grill that had survived in Oregon before, during and after their time in Bogotá. Bogotá is only relevant because Maia grew up there, though truth be told government records can prove clearly, to her everlasting discomfort, her legal birthplace as Cali.
Maia was taking a rest while ‘the rake’ was marinating the ‘organic’ split-breasts, a steal for just over $6.09, in thick Petaluma red ale, fresh tarragon from his parents’ garden, a splash of olive oil, lemon pepper, lime-rind and salt on the kitchen counter. And while he divided the lines of coals on either side of the lop-sided, squat little cruddy black grillgnome and sprinkled them liberally with lighter fluid. His preferred method of achieving the desired grilling temperature (since the charcoals ought to be synthetic and mesquite-mashed) was to vigorously fan either side of the mounded coals with a broken-flat wheat cracker box. That particular brand of wheat cracker box he admired with utilitarian satisfaction, combining as it did equal parts flexibility and strength, not to mention the air displacement ratio coincidence apropos of the little rusted, busted down mini-Weber.
He sat out in the yard, buffeted occasionally by a clean, early summer wind. He read through his tome; an endless chronicle of fictional lives that though less-described, were often equally essential as our own.
This sort of dark, analytical, joyful, shivering novel existence struck him, as he watched the resplendent green foliage on the southern hill of the yard swing back and forth and tried to concentrate on the hollow sorrow of the wind chimes hanging under the stairs leading to the houses upper floor. How superior they must feel tramping about up there unfettered, he thought. This sensation struck him as logically as the dark flow of Bolano’s characters’ narratives, caught up as they were in upsetting yet not truly dire endeavors that one nonetheless feels building in the way every word and phrase is supposed to in a short story pushed to the shifty red limits, pushed outward by an ‘event’ the circumstances surrounding which are subject to strenuous daily debate. He got into his mind the scenes from Terry Gilliams’ film Brasil, in which terror and farce are pushed to the limits of absurdity: a place where suicide bombers and fine dining need not disturb each other provided that the ‘central bureaucracy’ keeps all its documents in order.
Being a bona fide bureaurcrat {he never could spell it properly}, his occupation felt phantom-like to him, as though—as he’d ready recently—a short course of mirror therapy might produce in him astounding results, seeing as how it had proved quite intriguing in the treatment of those whose brains had mal-functioned in the face of a shorted-out interpretation. ‘Just hit the right reset bundle and you can be cured by correction the expectation of a part that’s no longer ‘objectively’ there, by exploiting the image of the good brains’ reflection, allowing the previously atrophied side of the brain to unclench, declench and bench press a new realization of nothing. This seems to have happened to Liz Norton, the English professor in section 1 of 2666.
That’s why the phantom limb mirror treatment can’t be applied to those the most disturbed by a select few disorders. Those kinds of experiments minted not a few but at least seventeen documented cases of death or dire damage to the applicator {foot} etc. by the applicated. There were even cases posted on YouTube, before those got taken down by popular and legislative demand, showing grainy, muffled rampages.
‘It’s like watching fucking freddy cougar with shards of glass glued to his fists!’ one stoned adolescent had declared, the U-Tube video of his reaction quickly virating to the those in the know gawkers.
Back before, during the waiting part of the backyard BBQ for two, while she slept, he tended the grill and his book, the newly acquired coal design succeeding beyond expectations. Then they were inside and La Maita—looking stunning and sated after a long day of wall-painting at the perennially under-funded public media office on MLK—was raving about her roasted corn and he was devouring his chicken with two hands like a maniac. Mostly during the grilling process he had burned himself adjusting the food and wiping his greasy, black-flecked hands on his green corduroys and trying not to get any stain on the 2666, but at the same time absolutely drug into the story of the black magazine reporter who’s mother dies at the beginning of section 3 ‘The Part About Fate’. He heard the wind chimes again, blown to swinging by the warm gusting winds, and heard the meat sizzle and downed the rest of the 22 oz. Lagunitas as he fumbled around back by the wild yellow roses planted in the corner lee of the house under the stairs leading to the third floor. He was slated to read another solid 100 pages this evening but he only dreamed of plowing through fifty assuming he kept himself sober. That would be enough, he thought, to still allow him plenty of time to catch up on Saturday.