"The Flight: Death to COOCK"

Finally we’re are jumping ship and trotting off to Comodoro Rivadavia (middle-bottom-left Argentina), leaving Ushuia in our wake. My freshest companion is a Mr. Spears Mallis, he is a 26 year old Californian, fairly tall, with a warm face and prone to falling in love easily, very easily, too easily. It comes as no surprise then to hear that the vast majority of his sentences begin with: “This girl I had just fallen recklessly and irresponsibly in love with, throwing to the wind all manner of self and emotional preservation...” (or something to that effect).

So, the time to depart had arrived and so I set off, with Spears ‘The Heart’ Mallis at my side. The same dreams and aspirations as had polluted my thoughts yesterday still remained seat-belted in my mind, and with that we trotted off to the airport; we were not planning on enduring, once more, the chagrin of an 18 hour journey.

Arrive we did, and wait we would have to, for the plane was delayed by three hours or so. I should note at this point that this was the same company, Sol airlines, churning out the same route and most probably the same plane that was to crash, killing all on board, in three months time.

(NB whilst writing this, sat in cafe, I have just been approached by a small boy, no more than four years of age, who has declared me to be “like a girl”, on account (although I am not certain) of my hair. “He look like girl” He squeaked (four years old and he can't speak proper English, the philistine).)

Anyway, we were delayed and thus time to kill we had: bonding time. We commandeered a nice bottle of scotch, found a grassy knoll - it wasn't like normal airports - and killed the time. Of course, there will arise a few complications when arriving at your designated gate, trollied. One is that you are inevitably late. We were given three hours to cover what was probably 200 metres, and yet all 200 of those metres were still covered at a sprint. The second is that in this case my lovestruck friend brought with him, to a plane what was planning on flying, a Leatherman - essentially a tool capable of fixing a computer, skinning a squirrel, sawing down a sapling and filing your finger nails to the utmost point of perfection.

We arrived at Comodoro Rivadavia at around 2AM.

A day passed in C. Rivadavia:

For those that are unaware of this, Comdoro Rivadavia is somewhat of a shithole, picture, if you will, a soulless city with the view you’d expect to see from an oil rig in the Atlantic. I did, however, get another piercing; an act of impulse. I feel so dangerous and alive right now; I look fantastic.

Scott Adams once said that 'creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.' The art we witnessed that morning certainly supported Adams...

We decided to have breakfast and duly discovered a patch of grass to host the event. Our patch of grass was nestled cosily in the middle of a roundabout, a roundabout in the most heavily congested area of this godforsaken city. It was with a YPF (station de petrol) to our right, shouting, drum banging protesters to our left and with the sensualisation of a thousand morning commuters' sentiments that we settled down to whilst constructing breakfast. A power-box shed of sorts lay adjacent to where we sat, adorning this shed was a fair amount of graffiti, among which were the immortal words: “i liKE YOUR COOCK.”

Many things struck us about this piece of modern art and public profession of anger. One of them was the change in capitals, ‘twas as if the chap or chappette decided after three letters and much deliberation to go: “Fuck it, this is worthy of capitals, the world MUsT hear this!” I wandered to what extent this piece of art was grammatically correct: "Are we looking at a someone playing around with the homophonic qualities of the ultimate word with the subconscious leap one naturally makes when first reading the sentence? Is the artist ironically belittling the derogatory graffiti we see littering buildings and walls but simultaneously mocking us for our ignorance and essentially imploring difference in a world of mundane structures and a reluctance to enjoy individuality?" ‘Coock’ celebrates individuality, whereas ‘cock’ might also demonstrate a Freudian frustration with another person's exemption from the ordinary. Ultimately though, this was South America: they spelt it wrong. Silly boys.

I felt like Bear Grylls as we boiled our own water (Spears boiled the water) - I happen/purposely don’t travel with such weaponry as a stove, but my minion did and so we/he made some quite marvellous coffee. Sitting there, sipping away, watching the world go by in a needle-littered haven, a paradise among a sea of constructed chaos, feasting on porridge, bran flakes, fruit....oh, the fruit we dined on. I knew in that moment that class floats above all obstacles, surpassing financial struggle and situational disturbances to enjoy a good bowl of porridge whilst gazing philosophically at the words ‘i liKE YOUR COOCK’.