Going from reading a very bad book onto reading a very good one is like coming out of pain. It goes to say double for the books that were a lot more fun to write than they are to be narrated. Bottom line, I will need a whole lot more of creative work-out before my books are fit for public: it is not my intention to cause pain. Really - I have no desire for profound human drama or political messages or some ingenious ode to suffering of the abused teenage mothers of Beirut. My genre is the adventure/humour fantastic realism with lots of food recipes and praise of good men. I am about a billion years away from being Bryson - or Stieg Larssen, but then he wasn't a particularly happy person and he died reasonably young. (I began reading about the tricky wasp Salander, but settled for the movie, impatiently, though both are excellent choices. I've decided not to proceed onto the last two thirds of the Men Who Hate Women trilogy, simply because the story gets too meshy, too global, too busy with characters and back-stories all over the place - and I already know it ends well for the unlikely couple.) It was such a neat moment, watching the movie in bed (that time of the month again and I am skull fucked by the severity of it, hugging the hot water holder/ tummy warmer toy), admiring the casting, agreeing on how very attractive the totally non-Hollywood male lead is... and then looking down on the sleeping vision of the General with his absurdly long and handsome legs and his pouty gentle face (only when he's sleeping) and that mountain of his shoulder, thinking: yeah, but mine is better still  :D

            Although!... in the spirit of things we did try to sketch his future tattoo onto him with black watercolors just before he showered: I've finally gotten the full idea of it: on the chest it will be like a snake or an arm hugging him, done in tribal geometry; around the pre-existing shied on the biceps and onto the shoulder blade will be the image of two hunters, male and female, that in some sense seem fighting, hunting, disagreeing, but in another, like when he's sleeping, they will seem like making love. I got it perfectly right the very first time I did it: every detail is dubious and needs to be connected, so the options for stories is limitless... On the bottom, going down the arm under the shield, remains the line from Indiana Jones III, the one Jones Sr. made up about the Charlemagne (and we both instantly loved): Let my armies be the rocks and  the trees and the birds in the sky...