gingatao

Giant Pink Snail

As a child I loved the original Dr Doolittle movie with Rex Harrison and I particular remember the amazingly fantabulous giant pink snail. For some reason there is no picture of this snail anywhere on the internet which is both a great disappointment and a mystery.

One of the things about the internet which has always intrigued me is the way that themes seem to arise in various places at the same time, spontaneously like magic. I think it has something to do with the fact that on the net there is literally no time (since everything exists permanently in archives) and no space (because links make everything adjacent).

There is no rational explanation for why one of my favourite poets, Maxine Clarke, should have posted this fabulous poem remembering a snail, “Trespassing (a poem)” on the same day that Paeonia Miko posted this beautiful photograph of my book “The Puzzle Box” being visited by a snail in Bali.

There is something special about seeing photographs of “The Puzzle Box” in places I’ve never been. It is as though I was travelling on the back of that Giant Pink Snail. Adulthood is an illusion. It is an uncomfortable suit of clothes which makes us stiff and complex and at odds with life which is fluid and simple and wondrous.