CARACAS - 15 June 2004

Got out of bed this morning and ate the other mango. Showered, without soap, as the doctor suggested yesterday, and applied this creme around my middle. He looked through the miscroscope but didn't see anything of consequence wiggling under it. He couldn't tell me why I was itching. Psoriasis popped into my head just now, so I will go look it up when I am done here. I have no idea what it is, it just, like a message from my guardian angel, popped into my head.

I got such a message from my guardian angel several days ago. It was early morning and I couldn't get back to sleep so I switched on the TV at 5 o'clock to see an report about an Afghan who was killed in Moscow by skinheads. He left a Russian wife and a less than one year old child.

Then I was reminded of the Peruvian recently killed by skinheads in Moscow.

I started wondering if it were for some good reason why I had turned on the station. For months, my top priority had been to visit Moscow. I didn't make the trip when I was in St. Petersburg in 1996 (?). Maybe I didn't have the time to take the round-trip. Anyway, it is working itself back into my head. Why should I let some skinheads regulate my itinerary! Let's hope those aren't my last words.

Speaking of last words. I believe the Reagans have manufactured an urgan legend. His daughter spoke warmly of how, after being a vegetable for about ten years now, how he opened his eyes, which had been shut for a few days, how he opened his eyes, looked at his dear Nancy, who he hadn't recognized from God knows when, looked at her in a very knowing way, and died. I think that is a load of crap. Is that the way death goes? You are a vegetable for ten or more years, and at the moment of death, lucidity appears?

OK, where was I? Enough of Moscow. This morning, I went for a walk in the SILENCIO neighbourhood, which is where I am staying. It is chock full of life. First, I went to Plaza Bolívar, which had a long line of people. Later, I found out that they were renewing their ID cards, which they will need for just about every transaction, including voting on August 15, when the United States hopes that Chávez will lose the referendum. My thoughts: Pond scum! And I wasn't referring to the Venezuelans.

The streets nearby are chock-full of small booths, selling all manner of knicks knacks.

I returned to the hotel at about 10 o'clock and had breakfast in a room that lets the sun in. The roof has a colored glass, or is it plastic? Because of the tint, the color of food suddenly becomes strange. You've never seen food like that before, unless after a while, forgotten in the refrigerator.

But, suddenly, when I opened my book about Robert F. Williams, a heroic but largly unknown freedom fighter in the South, the highlighted portions literally jumped out at me from the pages, as if summoned. It was quite amusing to see this effect.

I took the metro to Bellas Artes, then took a cab to Maripérez to take the Teleférico de Caracas. I'll tell you about this cable car in another post.

PBB