8 April, 1958.

2007-01-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Even at that early hour the tropical sun's rays were hot enough for us to move around shirtless and the sky was full of ugly cormorant sea-birds whose image decorated the operation's emblem. As I watched them flying around I never guessed for a moment that later the same day I would shovel up hundreds of their corpses with the eyes burned out of their pointed-heads after they too had witnessed a megaton nuclear explosion.

We were given a simple white cotton suit to pull on over our shorts and shirts while others just stood with their long trousers and khaki jackets. The sailors and the marines were, for the most part, dressed in normal gear with no special protection. This was to be the first nuclear bomb test which I'd ever witnessed and it would be the one and only time I'd ever be issued with any form of protective clothing. People claim we were issued with scientific equipment in the form of little badges or dosimeters which measured the levels of radiation we were exposed to but in my personal experience this did not take place. To this day I've still to wear one of these metering devices. I've also seen photographs of men wearing futuristic-looking goggles with hoods, taped-up seams and special boots who were reputedly stationed on Christmas Island during the nuclear bomb tests. Yet, in the year-long period I was on the island and throughout the five nuclear tests I witnessed, I never once clapped eyes on any such equipment nor, for that matter, any individual from the services wearing it.

"This could be a live run,". "Five ... Four ... Three ... Two ... One ... Zero ..."

"Cover your eyes!" bawled the voice from the loudspeakers. I had my fists shoved into my eyes and my back to the area where the bomb was going off. At the moment of detonation there was a flash. At that instant I was able to see straight through my hands. I could see the veins. I could see the blood, I could see all the skin tissue, I could see the bones and worst of all, I could see the flash itself. It was like looking into a white-hot diamond, a second sun.

oh ! romania !

2007-01-10T22:49:00.000-08:00

some recent interests/themes

2007-01-10T20:51:00.000-08:00

soldiers, colonialists, scots.
kilties/tartan.
somnambulists.
crystals.
blackamoors.
jam application.
sound-proof walls.
yinka shonibare.
nigerians, generally.
artifactism.
cravattes.
farrow and ball.
golders green.
solipsism.
creeper fog.
funk.
nedko solakov.
hubristic delusions.
voodoo.
mami wata.
dutch batik.
pressure cooked meat.
horse hair.

bob's sporting coons

8 April, 1958.

oh ! romania !

some recent interests/themes