multilingual

I have conversations in russian and mandarin going on around me; it's late night prostitute emailing hour. The area across the road from my flat, behind Landmark casino is a small red light district, you walk along a network of pedestrian malls and at the mall crossroad you suddenly come across many very tall blonde russian women standing around, or walking slowly in circles as though they can't quite remember which street they came from. In the late night supermarket there are often women sidling up to me, i think that because i spend a long time in the hardware and obscure plastic container aisles, it looks like i'm waiting for them to make a move (I'm usually trying to find some odd item that can have a new life as a cement carving tool)
I was accosted at nine in the morning last sunday;
hello!
hello.
how are you?
busy.
I love you?
no.
You love me?
no.
You come with me?
I don't think so.
yes, yes.
no, no.
(pout)
no.

This sunday I went for a walk and suddenly ran out of peninsula; there was a wharf and lots of salty fishes hanging in shops. It smelt like they had lots of other fishes hidden from view. I walked along the waterfront as night fell, and then along the coast road once night was fallen, the crescent moon low and red in the sky, the other islands hazy in the distance. I turned east and cut back through the narrow, winding hill streets to centro, the main touristy shopping area. Now that I have my compass, I only become slightly lost; you can only walk for a couple of hours before you run out of macau and hit either the sea or mainland china.Bought oryx and crake by margaret atwood and went to the arty bookshop and bought a book for Kate (in chinese, but with pictures).

got some fine strong wire today. make good tools. need wood for handles. they have bamboo handled paint brushes v cheap at the supermercado. maybe them. bought postcard of the qing emperor's carved lacquer box of brushes for writing poetry about flowers. there were a lot of brushes in there, i thought of the other boxes of other brushes for writing about trees and whatever else and had a sudden feeling of horror at the thought of such choice, staring at the beautiful boxes and brushes and blank paper and felling utterly empty and trapped.

come to think of it, this is often how i feel, faced with a blank sheet of paper.