Some dwarf kids with huge beards were splashing around in the pool; one of them was jumping very high up on the diving board, and he was so fat and jumping so hard on it that I thought he would snap it right off, but then he suddenly whipped through the air and did the most gorgeous triple flip I think I've ever seen. He landed in the pool with the straightest dive, it was like watching Mick Felli at the Olympics (I always remember that Sinsa dive he did in Crete that one year). I was impressed; but in Zanzaru people like that who are particularly good at things pop up everywhere. They call it the flight of brains because everyone with a real good one eventually winds up at Zanzara, doesn't matter what field you're from. Surgeons, doctors, physicists, chemists, scientists, artists, actors, writers, everybody winds up there oftentimes. "The flight of brains".
I ran my finger along Marinellas forehead and through her hair. She had, at that point, just a week earlier decided to undergo the "coloring treatment" and she had dyed her skin as milky looking as she could get it and she had also had tons of freckles put in, mostly on the left side of her face , she had had a ton of them . Her nose and lips she had some work done too as well, and though I wasn't sure I liked those (the lips seemed a little too curly) I wasn't gonna complain. For her hair that day I remember she was wearing this beautiful rainbow wig with bangs; but of course Marinellas wig changes daily.
I ordered a White Russian and the waitress brought one and I sat by Marinella as she slept. She had decided to go sleep down by the pool for her 70 hours of further rest that the doctors at Zanzara east had ordered, and now she was just about due to wake up, when the clock struck 5 pm. Our first plans, she had told me before passing out, was that we were gonna head to a special Bamboo restaurant that Paola Brown- a colleague of hers back home, long since vanished to the colonies on Uranium now actually-- had recommended to her. She said they had this crazy hallucination rice and fire dancing midgets who entertained you as you ate. Plus she said that celebrities were sometimes said to be seen there. When Paola brown had been there she had supposedly seen the star of Black Gutter Kite, (I had never watched that ridiculous film of course) and when some lady that Marinella had read online had been there, supposedly the drummer and pianist from Mercurial were there . Well I always did fancy those two songs Mercurial got big on with their first record so I figured OK....
Memories drip from life's secret fountains
A boy hides like a lamb in a secret mountain
I don't know girl, just why you're shouting
But the strength of the Gods, you shouldn't be doubting
When we got to the restauruant of course not only was there no celebrity eating there or anything like that, but there was actually nobody there at all and the place seemed to be under some sort of renovation. Marinella was disappointed and just when I thought she'd flip out, I fortunately noticed a joint right across the street that seemed right down her aisle. It was a similar bamboo theme as the one Paola recommended but it had a Komodo dragon on its little roof , instead of a lizard, which is what the Paola one had. It started to literally downpour thick white rain I remember -- only in Zanzara-- just as we were about to get in. We smoked a pretty thick joint as we waited. There was a line...
Marinella was ecstatic when we got in and she had reason to be. Even I was impressed really by it and trust me that never happens. But there were these miniature elephants that tiny little chinamen were riding on the back of all around the place - and that was how they served you, they'd come up on the elephants---and then the walls were all video tapes of different things and it was all in 3D. Like at the wall we sat next to in our booth (and the booth by the way massaged you) there was a video of some lady in the mask of a gazelle who was playing piano. It was really interesting ....so full of culture . The lady seemed to be in some massive arena with a design like I've never seen. Everything looked like a mix of molten lava and ice, oddly enough. .
Then of course the menu. I suppose it's not worth telling any tale of Zanzara that I can still remember without mentioning the menu of at least one joint but honestly I don't even know how to describe it. Marinella could probably do a better job , but she's back to be with her kids on the Lanai Space Station for the next year , (she loves the deep pools on that space station) so I can't ask her and ...I don't know how to describe it to do it honor. I just remember that night though she ordered what they called a "slaughter pig" and it was a literal living pig-- or seemed it, at least--that came to her on a big silver platter, strapped down and oinking , and it was surrounded by green leaves and rice and beans drenched in what was supposedly cow blood from Saturn (so the menu, written mostly in Chinese, said). The blood looked like metal someone had heated up and melted. I keep meaning to one day get a ship to Saturn cause Bobby Ply only plays his shows there these days but I never do it.
Anyways, as for myself that night now that I'm thinking about it I cannot remember what I got to eat. Probably because of that slaughter pig. And trust me that thing tasted like eating gold and afterwards it gave me and Marinella both the most beautiful visions and this cool electric feeling throughout our body . I vividly recall stabbing my blade into it and tearing out huge chunks and just biting down these absolutely enormous slabs of the pig as it kept oinking and oinking. It smelt so good that pig. So good. I'm sitting at the desk typing this now; my mouth is watering thinking of it. Been awhile since I had pig of any kind. These days I usually just eat frozen pizzas I cook out behind the house.
.After the restauraunt though we went to see the main amphitheatre of Znzara back in them days, which was the Crystal Light Amphitheatre. It was incredible and back then it was probably the single biggest place that had ever been built on any secondary planet with less than a 500 year history. We went to see a lightning show that then merged into a music performance from a very strange ambient band, and finally it ended with a battle between two wizards, an archer, and three ferocious flying minotaurs. If you remember, Marinella had told me, because she had read online, that inZanzara the wizards were everywhere, as common as street buskers. Well this turned out to be not at all true when we got there, and when we got there the truth was that the wizards had somehow managed to move up a notch and had now become solely a part of that main big performance they put on at the Crystal Light. They were no longer plying their trade on their streets. These were real wizards too; it was not a joke. These wizards had trained to be just like the ones in all the famous movies and stories of old, and they had been born on X-Cassiopeia, where people are born with actual magic. I know for folks now it isn't so shocking; I talk to kids about it down at the shop and nobody is ever even impressed by it; but back then it was an incredible discovery that there was a planet which existed that people were born with actual magic on. It was a big discovery of my time...
I remember the first wizard who came out looked exactly like Zenfire was made to look in The Boy and His Staff, except his robe was not grey or white but blood red,and I was screaming so ferociously when I saw him appear (he rode into the arena on a horse) and the second wizard who came out was wearing these sparkling pink robes (it was a female wizard). As for the archer he just looked like someone from the Robin of Loxley stories, and his bow was shown in a pamphlet you could look at in your seat, and he shot these flaming arrows all over the place doing back flips and front flips, et cetera.
And wow, they started playing these heavy bass driven rock songs when the flying minotaurs appeared -- they came bursting out of the sky after a lightning storm commenced -- and it was just, honestly, to this day, I do not think I have ever seen a better performance anywhere, in my entire life. Marinella was practically in tears with emotion as she watched, and it was the same for me. It was definitely the highlight of the trip and anyone who has ever been to one of my houses knows it too because we have three huge portaits hanging from that night in each of our houses. It was really that amazing and it was my first time ever seeing such skilled and authentic wizards at work. Up until then I had only ever seen ones with small spell books and the usual little tricks. A glowing staff. A blast of fire sort of like a shotgun blast. The ability to shrink someone. Maybe make something appear.
That was the extent of my real life experience with them. Well these ones, they were nothin like that. The female wizard would swing her staff around an then strike it down into the ground of the arena, and like an earthquake it would just rip open, and everyone in the crowd was going nuts, screaming . Then the male wizard would swing his staff and a blast would shoot off of it, and you would suddenly see a thousand sharp knives tearing through the sky, heading straight for the minotaur. It was incredible. Definitely the highlight of the trip.
The next day after that I'm pretty sure we might have gone to the Museum of the Red Night. I never really remember. We did not wind up taking the crystals til the end of the trip though, a few days before we were due back home........
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